The country's most established literary magazine, Harvest, has caused quite a stir with its spring-summer issue, for carrying a novel by Guo Jingmingin in its Novels Special.

Readers say the magazine has betrayed its standards by including the work of the 27-year-old, who has been called an "image-obsessed" pop idol by the New York Times, yet is one of China's most commercially successful writers.

The Harvest Literary Bimonthly, founded by Chinese writer Ba Jin (1904-2005) in 1957, has previously carried works by such literary heavyweights as Lu Xun, Lao She, Guo Moruo, and Wang Shuo.