Guo's movies are all based on his best-selling novels. The Tiny Times series follows the exploits of four female undergrads in Shanghai obsessed² with dating, fashion, and shopping.

 

Courtesy Le Vision PicturesIn 2009 he told NPR that the secret to his success was channeling the aspirations³ and insecurities of his generation: "Before me, Chinese authors were pretty old. And today's young people don't understand life depicted⁴ by older authors. So they like my work because it's by a writer their age about stuff very close to their lives."

 

Guo grew up near the southwestern city of Chongqing, the son of a bank clerk and an engineer in a state-owned enterprise. He attended college in Shanghai, where he became a keen observer of the ways in which money and materialism⁵ shape values, ambitions, and the arcs (and dissolutions) of friendships.

 

After the success of his novels made him one of China's richest authors, he happily flaunted⁶（炫耀） his new wealth, showing up to interviews in Hermès belts and Gucci caps and posting photos of himself decked out in Dolce & Gabbana accessories.

 

His novels and films' dangling⁷ of luxury brands as plot devices -- from Louis Vuitton to Dior --marks his oeuvre（全部作品） as a sort of Sex and the City meetsThe Great Gatsby. (F. Scott Fitzgerald was 28 years old when he published his satirical bestseller.) But in Guo's accounts, there's no moralizing or condemnation⁸ of young people pursuing a luxury lifestyle; nor is he interested in history or politics.

 

Guo has appeared on annual lists of both the top-grossing authors in China and the country's most-hated celebrities⁹. Assessments¹⁰ of his films are equally polarized. Fans say the movies humorously capture their daily anxieties, while critics worry about what the exaltation of consumerism says about modern Chinese culture.

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