Lowdown on the high life

From top: Guo's film debut Tiny Times creates a dazzling fantasy for those born after the 1980s and '90s. Photos provided to China Daily

Guo is a self-confessed pop writer of flamboyant fictions. He admits such works as those of China's Nobel Prize-winning author Mo Yan frustrate him, but those born after the 1980s and '90s vote for him with their wallets.

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Five questions

Guo ranked No 4 on the 2012 Rich Chinese Writers List, earning 32 million yuan ($5.2 million) that year - the sixth consecutive year he was placed among the top five.

On June 16, he sat with 300 fans, who won the chance to watch the film nine days before its national release through an online campaign. Guo developed the marketing strategy himself.

The opening credits showed his name under three titles - director, scriptwriter and original story author. The audience screamed.

That made him "happy and proud", he says.

"My readers and I grow together."

Guo refutes some critics' barbs against the film's portrayals of materialism that followed the screening.

"Our fathers and grandparents wore the same styles of clothes, and the length of their trousers were the same," he says.

"Survival was an emergent phenomenon for them. But we don't have to face this anymore. Materialism is the reality the younger generation lives with."

He points to a lamp in his living room, which is bedecked with giant oil paintings, crystal chandeliers and stone sculptures.

"This lamp is 60,000 yuan, and the chandelier is 700,000 yuan, but I shop online, too - I send the link to my assistant, and he buys for me."

Guo leaps up to snatch a horse sculpture from the other end of the room.

"This is only 180 yuan," he says.

Holding a deer figurine, he adds: "This is 150 yuan."

"They aren't from any brand but represent my aesthetics. So I buy them. I'm not telling my audiences to be luxury products' slaves. I encourage fans to appreciate and use them. My philosophy is very different."

But will youth catch the subtleties of the film, in which a magazine intern owns Prada bags and a young columnist lives in a 200-square-meter apartment in Shanghai?

"This film will certainly raise great controversy, but that's OK," Guo says.

"Then, people will talk about it."