Guo Jingming is probably among the most controversial writers in China. He is also one of the most popular and richest.
Born in 1983, the teen pop idol is an author, director as well as chairman and general manager of a cultural entertainment company.
“I am the Chinese dream in the contemporary era,” says Guo. “My dream is to fulfill my personal talents to the utmost.
“My parents’ generation didn’t have many choices,” he tells Shanghai Daily. “They were allocated jobs, whether they liked them or not. Nowadays, young people have many more choices, and they pick what they like and what they are good at in pursuit of success. That is my understanding of the Chinese dream.”
Guo’s stellar career has been dogged by controversy.
In 2006, he lost a lawsuit filed by author Zhuang Yu, who accused him of plagiarism in the book “Never Flowers in Never Dream.” A court in Beijing ruled that he had to pay Zhuang 200,000 yuan (US$32,258) in compensation and apologize. Guo paid the money but refused to apologize or admit to any plagiarism.
More recently, Guo found himself embroiled in another controversy. His debut film “Tiny Times 1.0,” based on one of his novels that he adapted, co-produced and directed, generated a storm of criticism when it first was shown in June. Critics said it was an exercise in vanity and money worship, displaying a twisted sense of values and misleading adolescents.
“Tiny Times 1.0” depicts the life of four young women and their boyfriends in a fashionable and rapidly developing Shanghai. The characters wear luxury brands and drive expensive cars. The men in the film shower their girlfriends with gifts beyond the purses of most people.
Still, the film has done well at the box office, taking in 73 million yuan in its first day. Its fans are mainly teenage girls.
“Hollywood is filled with commercial films; why shouldn’t Chinese movies be highly humanistic instead of just commercial entertainment?” Guo asks. “China should tolerate a variety of film genres. You cannot condemn a film just because it is mainly watched by young girls.”
“Tiny Times 2.0,” which continues the tale of the earlier characters, was released on August 8.
“The voices of skepticism never stop, whatever I do,” Guo tells Shanghai Daily. “From writing books to directing films, controversy persists. At first, it made me sad, but now I have become quite used to it. I try my best to conquer, but if there is no solution, I let it be. Being myself and doing whatever I like are more important.”
In the book “Tiny Times 1.0,” Guo wrote: “At Starbucks, numerous Asian faces lift packs with takeaway coffee and push open glass doors in a hurry. Half of them drink coffee, while the rest rush to the bosses’ offices, carefully holding coffee cups. On the contrary, Western faces sit inside leisurely, reading Shanghai Daily or laughing loudly, saying ‘What about your holiday?’ with a mobile phone in their hands.”
It is a slice of Shanghai’s contemporary panorama seen through Guo’s eyes.
He says he hesitated at first about whether to direct the movie himself. Having already achieved a high level of success as a publisher, he was uncertain about starting something new.
“In film circles, I was nothing,” he admits. “Directing is the art of communicating with people.”
Guo was born in Zigong, a prefecture-level city in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, known for its salt beds, dinosaur fossils and lanterns. His father is an engineer at a state-owned enterprise; his mother works as a bank clerk.
Guo, encouraged by his mother, was an avid reader as a child. The martial arts fiction of Louis Cha (Jin Yong) and Gu Long (Xiong Yaohua) were among his favorite. In school, he showed a strong talent for writing.
When he was in junior high school, his poem “Loneliness,” which expressed his melancholy about school, was published in a national magazine. That whetted his appetite for writing.
Guo kept sending essays to magazines and literary websites. He published many of his works at Rong Shu Xia, an online literature platform, under the pseudonym Disiwei. His output began to gain recognition.
An accidental browse through a book comprising winning entries of the New Concept Writing competition prompted him to attend the third contest, a national writing contest sponsored by Mengya Magazine in Shanghai.
He entered the final round with his work “Script” and was invited to Shanghai. At age 18, he stepped alone into Shanghai’s train station, ready to conquer the world.
He won first prize in the competition with his work “If There Is No Sun Tomorrow.” A year later, his work “Our Last Song on Campus” won the first prize of the fourth New Concept Writing competition, and that became the turning point in his life.
Guo was taken by the razzle-dazzle of Shanghai and decided to stay in the city, where he enrolled in Shanghai University in 2002. But Shanghai also had its dark side.
In a city drunken on materialism, Guo was considered a bit of a poor country bumpkin. He didn’t have a hand-held game console as his classmates did. He was insulted by Metro staff when he didn’t know how to use the ticket gates, and he was snubbed by a sales clerk at a luxury shopping mall.
“I felt like a forgotten soul, and could not get along with my classmates,” he says.
Guo finally dropped out of university and vowed he would make something of himself and show Shanghai who he is.
In 2003, he published his debut novel “City of Fantasy.” It was an expanded version of a short story he wrote for Mengya Magazine. The novel sold 500,000 copies in the first few months and has been since sold more than 1.5 million copies. It also won the praise of literary heavyweights like Shanghai writer Ye Xin and Cao Wenxuan, a professor of literature at Peking University.
Since then, Guo published a string of novels, including “Never Flowers in Never Dream,” “Cry Me a Sad River,” “Rush to the Dead Summer,” the “Tiny Times” series and his latest series entitled “Jue Ji,” written to commemorate his 10-year writing career.
In 2004, he and five friends established a writing studio called “Island” and started publishing Island magazine. Two years later, he established Ke Ai Entertainment Company, and started publishing his “Zui” series. He became the youngster member of Chinese Writers’ Association a year later.
In 2010, he established the Shanghai Zui Culture Development Co, serving as chairman and general manager.
He topped the Chinese Writers Rich List three times — in 2007, 2008 and 2011 — and ranked fourth on the list last year with annual royalties of 14 million yuan. Last year, he ranked 70th in the China Celebrity List published in the Chinese edition of Forbes magazine.
Guo lives in a three-story vintage villa in Shanghai’s downtown Jing’an District, which he bought for more than 100 million yuan.
In 2009, he came under fire for showing off some of the luxurious items he owns in one of his publications. Materialism is a topic that should not be avoided when looking at modern life, he says.
He makes no apologies because he says he relies on himself.
“I sleep only three hours a day because of my work, and I haven’t had a vacation in seven years,” he says. “I deserve what I have. Every penny was earned through hard work.”
For a man who seems to have everything, what next?
“I want to write better novels, help my company thrive, and spend more time on things that really interest me,” he says.