Han Han's Magazine Lacks Bite

back

The first issue of Han Han’s much-anticipated magazine Party (独唱团, Duchangtuan, the Chinese name means Chorus of Solos or Solo Choir) was launched on July 6th, selling 100,000 copies on the first day of its release. Priced at RMB 16 (around US$2.30), it has sold 700 thousand copies to date—publishers Shuhai Publishing House (书海出版社, based in Shanxi) and Huawen Tianxia are printing extra copies.

The first issue includes fiction, non-fiction, photography and cartoons. Contributors are drawn from different social circles, such as folk musician Zhou Yunpeng, blogger Luo Yonghao, screenwriter Shi Kang and Hong Kong columnist Ouyang Yingji—besides these names, most contributors are not particularly well-known. Six-year old Wang Ziqiao, who contributed a four-sentence poem, is the youngest.

There is no doubt that the massive public anticipation of Party was largely due to the popularity of Han Han's blog. Many readers were hoping for a publication that matched the blog in terms of biting social satire and attitude, and despite Han Han's repeated public disclaimers, it appears they've been disappointed: magazine contents leaned more towards fiction than non-fiction. In the polls conducted by ifeng.com (凤凰网)，69% readers said they'd been hoping for more of Han Han’s blog-style social criticism.

The magazine opens with an essay titled The Green Train (绿皮火车) by the blind musician Zhou Yunpeng, recounting his vagrant travels around China. Han Han’s short story I Want to Have a Talk with this World (我想和这个世界谈谈) concludes the magazine.

Readers hoping for edginess weren't entirely disappointed: an article by English-teacher-cum-internet-personality Luo Yonghao, entitled The Story of a Male Qiuju (a reference to Zhang Yimou’s film The Story of Qiuju about a petitioner) recounts his experience trying and failing to sue an English training school at his hometown. Stories by both Han Han and Beishan feature the lives of prostitutes in China, and one of the photographs is the CT scan of Ai Weiwei, who was beaten by police while helping publicize an activist's plight.

On douban.com, nearly three thousand readers have voted for their favorite articles. Most popular are the Q&A column titled Everyone Asks Everyone (所有人问所有人，a column in which readers can pose questions to anyone they like, and the editors help contact the person in question and elicit answers). Second and third place are occupied by Han Han’s preface Hammer (锤子), and The Green Train.

Party had a long and troubled gestation: Han Han put out a call for submissions on May 1, 2009, promising a fee of 1 RMB per Chinese character, a far higher rate than that offered by most literary magazines. The publication date of the first issue was set for September, 2009, and the title of the magazine was originally announced as Renaissance (文艺复兴). The magazine encountered difficulties with the censors, however, and the publication date was pushed back indefinitely. Meanwhile, Han Han began to state publicly that he was lowering his expectations for the magazine, including ditching the rather ambitious original title.

Han Han finally found a publisher willing to work with him, but a print run of 300,000 copies brought out in late June had to be pulped because of a cartoon featuring the tatooed characters 爱日, which could be interpreted as "Love Japan", and fears of a nationalist reaction.

Party in its present form is published bi-monthly as a 130-page "book" rather than as a "magazine", a common tactic to avoid the far stricter censorship requirements for magazines (technically media) compared to books.

Party has little of the bite readers were hoping for, but in an interview with Wang Xiaoshan, head editor of the literary website The Banyan Tree, Han Han says that the first issue was necessarily watered-down. "The second and third issues will be a bit more steady", he says.

In the same interview Han Han discusses the finances of the magazine: priced at 16 RMB per issue, 2 RMB of which is profit, and given article fees of approximately 400,000 RMB per issue and an operating cost of 100,000 RMB per month, he notes that sales of under 200,000 copies per issue will result in a loss. While that target presents no problem for the inaugural issue, he says he's prepared to lose significant sales over the next few months.