韩寒and方舟子's blog fight

[gato]

That's probably copied from 围城, as several characters are fraudsters in 围城。

[rob07]

Well, the 韩寒 character fraud is not copied from 围城 so much as copied from 韩寒's real life.

[gato]

That, too, I guess. It's a weird case.

Did you read the book a while ago? What did you think of it? I've only skimmed through it.

[rob07]

Actually, I liked it a lot. A major theme of the book is pretending to be something you are not, which I now have a greater appreciation for, whatever the truth turns out to be.

Quite a few of the jokes felt like set pieces that might have been taken from somewhere else. And the classical Chinese references and jokes were mostly not very deep (ie: I could get them), I could see a smart kid with some crib notes churning them out without actually having read all that much. For example, this passage made me laugh:

吾正谟发展矣！吾常自问，吾之爱爰其适归？他人忮吾，因吾万事皆顺；然吾未尝，反忧之。幸得汝父指点，照办之，（其过程不便缕），方知兹为真理。甚爽，切记，汝万万万万不可仿之！汝“嫂子”对汝大哥已万事俱从，欸！何至及此乎！吾尝失悔。然亟忆汝父之箴言，爰觉正确。念汝愚昧未开，故用古文，不懂也罢，期汝不懂！兹为交待，以备汝不虞。

[gato]

There is a question about whether Han Han said "代写" or “单写" in that recording of his phone call with the Sina editor.

I've slowed down the critical part of the recording by 20% using Audacity. The clip is attached.

Here is what Han seems to have said:

也包括类似五四的什么的，也是你们频道，你们网站做的，我们都退掉。反应不大好，再代（单？）写的话。

It's still not totally clear whether he said 代写 or 单写. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Here is someone arguing that it must be 代写 because 单写 means an exclusive for Sina, so it's not clear why 单写 would be a bad thing.

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/1430066938

到底是“代写”还是“单写”？

HanHan_Danxie.wav

[Outofin]

This is fun. Now I think again, 再 doesn't necessarily mean "again".

Obviously I never learned Mandarin grammar, but here is an example and my gut feeling.

如果这事儿再闹到老板那里的话……

If the accent is on 再, it mean "again". "If the issue is brought to the boss again..."

If the accent is on the verb 闹, it means some sort of escalation. "If the issue is even brought to the boss..."

I need experts' advice.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36345-%E9%9D%9E%E5%B8%B8%E4%BA%86%E5%BE%97/

Where is lie detective 姜振宇?

[gato]

http://weibo.com/1401770055/y7tASBCyP

术术的声明

[zhwj]

Yeah, the recording's not a smoking gun -- it's ambiguous enough to be unlikely to change anyone's mind, or at least it doesn't seem to be doing so on Weibo.

Li Shasha (another young writer, but one who's been taken rather more seriously than the flashy Han Hans and Guo Jingmings) put up an interesting post in which he sees language games as a thread that ties together Han Han's early, imitative work with his later novels.

[gato]

Thanks, that's a good article. I am fairly close to his views (that Han Han's novels are showy and mediocre), but I still have some doubts due to conflict between what Han Han has said about literature and writing in his interviews and his writings. His supposed obsession with classical Chinese and Qian Zhongshu and ignorance about Confucianism leaves a major question mark.

I think Han Han has brought the doubts on himself and his supporters' anger is unjustified, but I do see where some of the doubters have overstepped the bounds of legitimate criticism, too. There seems to be a vicious cycle, and only Han Han or people in his inner circle can break it.

It's a shame that both Han Han's doubters and supporters are getting so emotional and making ad hominem attacks against each other. It will take some time for the wounds to heal after all this is over, I am afraid.

See here for a list of supporters and doubters:

http://blog.sina.com...3301011ah7.html

方韩大战演员表V4.5

[gato]

I'll list some insults hurled so far, mostly on Weibo. Only those from semi-famous people. The anonymous posters are much worse. Han Han supporters first, because I think they have been a little worse.

李海鹏 (former 南方周末 columnist): 把文本分析和听力练习之类二逼行径当成质疑，一回两回幼稚，多了就是无耻。方党这帮人毫无尊严。麦田什么东西，人格破产，那个mad向来长舌妇，张放更甭提了。这帮鱼鳖虾蟹，加上一生心理失衡的方先生，无耻得很壮观。丑穷锉不是撸sir，因丑穷锉而生恨，不顾体面，不要脸了，豁出去干了，这才是撸sir。

洪晃ilook (publisher of 《世界都市iLOOK》magazine): 韩寒是中国唯一可以被称为公知的人，小时候文章的出处已经不重要了。他至少从来没有当过御用文人，从来没有給领导写过违心的报告或讲话。比韩寒老的，干过这种恶心事情的教授，知识分子应该休息了。交班吧。下一代人不会因为你们亲自写过一堆垃圾更尊重你们。

[gato]

More takes on the phone call with the Sina editor:

http://www.tudou.com...0_06_02_99?fr=1

韩寒的dai和dan的发音比较

http://weibo.com/2578566513/y7AXtmjLq

韩寒代笔音频技术分析图

[Outofin]

zhwj, I believe Li Shasha shamelessly ripped off my post #23. He has precisely the same 3 points.

1. Han doesn't deserve his fame.

2. Fang is winning in breaking down the icon.

3. It could be ultimately good for Han.

gato, what you put there is exactly why 公知 has become an insulting word. Han is a 公知, 李海鹏 and 洪晃 are 公知 too.

Han himself isn't a good example to follow. He tends to attack others personally. No wonder his supporters do the same.

When I first logged into weibo, I was shocked by the ecosystem, too.

[Peter2010]

These 共知 are annoying! Why do people tend to resort to personal insults when they can't win an argument? I mean is there a psychological reason for this? What shall we do if someone do that to us?

[PineWu]

One thing I want to point out is that China is in a flippant atmosphere. I don't know how to describe it precisely in English, but I believe the Chinese word is 轻浮的。 On most Chinese forums are just posts with only several characters, if you post something long, hard to understand and boring, even if that's artistically great or thoughtful opinion, people just ignore your post.

That's how China is like now. And Han succeed because things he wrote are easy to understand, funny, and sometimes long but generally readers could read his essays easily. What's more, in these essays he directly attacks on some dark sides of China society——something few people dare to do publicly in China. Since he became a public figure (his blog has been visited more than 530 million times), he tried to change public opinion and thus made many bad issues, grey zones and dark sides of Chinese society noticeable. He did have some influences on many aspects of China. For example, not long ago 百度 baidu has a web called 百度文库, where people could upload pdfs, docs freely. Then many writers' works are uploaded for other to download freely, making it a great copyright violation but none of these writers are so influential as Han. They did come forward but still they couldn't have a major influence. Then Han wrote a blog about it, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4701280b01017ijd.html and sued against Baidu, later Baidu apologized and deleted all documents in 百度文库 that were not granted copyright.

I agree Han is a entertainer, yet he is just trying to change China by his entertaining, satiric writing. That's good for China.

Most people are just nitpicking, admit it. And that's exactly what Fang did, he just did it publicly.

And as I know, Han has sent his manuscript of 三重门 to be tested and dated. I believe nothing is more convincing than manuscript, isn't it?

If Han's manuscript is proved to be genuine, I'd like to see how Fang respond.

[skylee]

And as I know, Han has sent his manuscript of 三重门 to be tested and dated. I believe nothing is more convincing than manuscript, isn't it?

I am not interested in this whole dispute. But why would it be hard to copy by hand a set of manuscript written by another writer? If it was very well-planned, he could even do this before the publication of the book, just in case. Now I am just curious how convincing a manuscript can be.

[gato]

You can see a picture of Han Han with the alleged manuscript here:

http://s12.sinaimg.c...8bae7d6993b

手稿

http://blog.sina.com...0b0102e0ak.html

《光明和磊落》——我的手稿集

I agree with you that the manuscript won't be able to convince the doubters. It'd be much better if he can just do a live interview and talk about his writing process for 《三重门》and the classical literature he's read and cited from.

The biggest reason for doubting him is that in the many interviews he's done, he doesn't seem to know much about literature or have much interest in it, yet in his writings he claims to have been addicted to classical literature and his first novel《三重门》 references classical literature extensively. It's hard to believe that the Han Han in the interview videos and the Han Han who wrote 《三重门》are the same person. All he needs to do is to show off some of his literary knowledge like he does in 《三重门》, and the mystery would be solved.

[skylee]

Yes I agree. Just chat about Chinese literature with 許子東 and 梁文道 on 鏘鏘三人行 and the mystery would be solved. Surely any writer in China would be able to talk about his/her favourite pieces of classical writing, if nothing else.

[imron]

Just chat about Chinese literature with 許子東 and 梁文道 on 鏘鏘三人行

But if 韩寒，许子东 and 梁文道 are all sitting around chatting, there will be no room for 窦文涛! (unless they make it 锵锵四人行 )

[rob07]

It'd be much better if he can just do a live interview and talk about his writing process for 《三重门》and the classical literature he's read and cited from.

The biggest reason for doubting him is that in the many interviews he's done, he doesn't seem to know much about literature or have much interest in it, yet in his writings he claims to have been addicted to classical literature and his first novel《三重门》 references classical literature extensively.

I don't really agree with this. All the classical literature references and jokes in《三重门》are superficial and it would not surprise me if they have mostly come out of crib books that he could have forgotten about soon afterwards. So it wouldn't prove anything to me if he crashed and burned in an oral classical literature exam.

The point is that 《三重门》is not a work that pretends that it engages at a deep philosophical level with the great classical works of the past, it is teen fiction. It is a disguised autobiography (or biography if somebody else ghostwrote it) of an immature sixteen old who likes to show off, to pretend he understands things he really doesn't to impress people and to make superficial jokes in order to hide his deep feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Typical teenage boy, basically. It is quite honest about this.

For example, I remember a scene in 《三重门》where the 韩寒 character is going on about how wonderfully artistic and insightful a poem is, quoting all sorts of classical works, trying to bignote himself as a poetry expert to impress a girl, but ends up looking like a complete idiot when it turns out that the poem is not a serious poem at all but rather a disguised joke insult. I could see the real 韩寒 looking just as stupid if he put himself in a situation where the real depth of his classical knowledge could be tested. But to me that would indicate《三重门》was authentic rather than the opposite. He basically admitted in the book that he is just being a poseur a lot of the time when it comes to classical Chinese.

I know it is not fashionable to ascribe literary merit to《三重门》, but I think this is true of a lot of teen fiction (for example, maybe Judy Blume in the West), because the characters are all immature and the issues that they have to deal with in their lives are not the same as the issues that adults have to deal with. It can be a bit embarrassing to be reminded of them sometimes. From my point of view though, although《三重门》does not offer any great insight into classical Chinese literature, it is an entertaining and largely self-aware portrait of what it is like to be an immature sixteen old who is bright but very insecure, and for that reason I rate its literary merit reasonably highly. I also enjoyed being able to get the superficial classical Chinese jokes.

[rob07]

As 韩寒 may have said:

满纸荒唐言

一把心酸泪

都云作者痴

谁解其中味？