By Isabella Tianzi Cai
Han Han (photo: China Digital Times)
Ranked as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in a 2010 survey by Time, 28-year-old Chinese writer and rally racer Han Han has been in fact long well-known within China. While in high school, his essay “Seeing Ourselves in a Cup” won the first prize in China’s New Concept Writing Competition. Not long after, he dropped out of high school to free himself from China’s intensely selective education system and embark on a lifelong journey of self-learning. Since then he has written and published numerous articles and a dozen novels, many of which relate directly to contemporary controversial Chinese political issues.Because he can be exceedingly candid and honest in writing, a number of his blog posts have been censored by the state’s Propaganda Department. However, his blog continues to be one of the hottest in China. There, he helps the silenced minorities in China assert their uttermost concerns; he also critiques the Chinese culture from a fresh perspective of the “post-80s generation:” China’s youth who have grown up during the country’s economic boom and are often characterized as apolitical and consumer-obsessed.
