Han Han: China's bad boy blogger

The New York Times - IT’S not so easy being Han Han, the heartthrob race car driver and pop novelist who just happens to be China’s most widely read blogger. (Image: China Digital Times)

Traveling incognito is all but impossible. Local officials frequently vie for his endorsement of their latest architectural boondoggles. (He politely declines.) And love-lorn young women often approach him after races with letters bearing his name. (He says the women have been duped by impostors who have assumed his identity.)

But Mr. Han’s most vexing challenge comes from a more formidable nemesis: the unseen censors who delete blog posts they deem objectionable and the publishing police who have held up the release of his new magazine, “A Chorus of Solos,” a provocative collection of essays and photographs. “The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured,” he said with a shrug, offering his characteristic Cheshire-cat grin. “If things continue like this, China will only be known for tea and pandas.”

ALTHOUGH his posts are sometimes “harmonized” — a popular euphemism for censorship —his blog, published by one of China’s most popular Web portals, has so far been allowed to continue. Ran Yunfei, a writer and blogger in Sichuan Province, says that Mr. Han is partly insulated by his celebrity, but also by his avoidance of the most politically charged topics.

“He uses humor and wit to laugh at the injustices he sees,” said Mr. Ran, whose own blog is blocked in China and available only to those with the technical means to hop over the Great Firewall. “Perhaps the reason he’s tolerated is because he does not name names directly and he doesn’t go after the heart of the problem, which is China’s one-party dictatorship.”

His other trump card is his financial independence. With 14 books to his name and a successful career as a race car driver, he is not susceptible to pressures that constrain other critics, many of them academics or journalists whose jobs tend to evaporate when their public musings cross an invisible line. Read more.