From the interview:
> But now, many of the most famous male stars here embrace their feminine qualities.
I guess that interview was done before the current cultural purge started.
Great ideas, plot-twists but characters and their arcs are sometimes boring sometimes bizarre.
Overall I would recommend it for his thought provoking ideas.
The recent TV adaptation is pretty interesting, though. It's more of a loose adaptation and I think they've done a good job with adding more dimension to some of the characters.
The price of publicly opposing Xi Jinping's policies is disappearing for a year or so then making a scripted subdued apology on CCTV.
The perfidious thing is that even emigrating doesn't put you out of Xi Jinping's grasp. It's well documented how pressure is applied to vocal opponents of the new Leaders policies by going after their families in China.
It's well known that all the local Chinese language newspapers toe the party line, and Chinese community groups (especially Skykiwi) are infiltrated by the CCP to a rather large extent, and if you're overly critical, well, hopefully you managed to get residence visas for 奶奶 / nǎi nai and 姥姥 / lǎo lao beforehand.
Also, expect to be ostracised by the emigrant Chinese community.
Oh, and even if you're not Chinese, but you're critical of China, well...
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/the-curious-case-of-the-burgle...
It's always a good idea to pull the racism card in Germany, especially against the truth.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3124849/ch...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/covid-kids-book-pulped-a...
This example looks cute, but people can't even imagine what the propagandistic future of this cold war will look like.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/08/the-chinese-communist-p...
If you're a Chinese national, speaking out publicly against the CCP affects your family too. Even if you were out of reach of the CCP, there's nothing preventing them from disappearing your relatives.