Han Han

Han Han (born September 23, 1982, in Shanghai) is a Chinese writer who rose to fame while still a teenager and later built a varied career that also took in motor racing, popular music and film. He matters less as a novelist alone than as a figure who came to stand for China's so-called post-80s generation, and as a writer whose opinions many readers and journalists treated as a window onto young urban China.

His first public success came in 1999, during his first year of high school, when he won a national writing prize with an essay on the Chinese national character. He then failed a large number of subjects across two school years and left school. The episode became a national talking point, feeding into debates about so-called quality education and whether schools should favour broad or specialised learning.

After leaving school he wrote essays and then novels. His first novel, Triple Door, follows a third-year middle-school student in Shanghai and sold in very large numbers, reportedly becoming one of the best-selling literary works in China over two decades. He also competed as a professional rally driver and kept a widely read blog on current affairs that often sparked heated argument.

He reached an international audience in the early 2010s, when Time named him to its influential people list in 2010. In 2012, however, a critic accused him of having had his writing ghostwritten, and the claim clouded his public image. From the mid-2010s he shifted his energy toward filmmaking, making his directing debut with The Continent (2014). His legacy lies in showing how popular fiction, online publishing and public debate could flourish outside official channels.