Liu Haoran takes the cover of LEON China and LEON Young for the March 2019 issues! He is the first artist to appear on the covers of both magazines for the same month.

There are two covers that were released for the main LEON China - one for Louis Vuitton, and one for Tiffany & Co.'s Save the Wildlife collection. I'll post the photoshoot for the Save the Wild cover in a separate Tiffany & Co. post as I didn't want to clutter this one too much (and I think that one is deserving of a post on its own as it's for a fantastic cause). 

The LEON Young cover was sponsored by Puma (Haoran is one of the brand spokespersons for the brand in China). Both shoots were taken in Japan, and I swear this was the fasted turnaround ever - the covers were revealed about a week after Haoran came back from the trip. 

Admin note: Translations on HTTYD3 interviews, Tiffany interviews, etc. (at the very least, written translations) are coming soon - struggling to try and catch up. There's just been so much Haoran content lately which is GREAT!).

In celebration of the one year anniversary of his first book, The Eye of the Storm (which we are currently in the process of translating), Liu Hao Ran held a book signing event at the Page One bookstore in Beijing yesterday.

Apart from being in great spirits and joking around with fans, there was also a brief Q&A session before the signing started. Translation can be found below (keep in mind that he was answering questions in a half joking manner - he was in a really good mood), with more pics from the event! Shoutout to the Cfan who did the transcript. 

This is Part 2 of Liu Hao Ran's November 2018 interview with GQ - which essentially is a written transcript of him talking freely about his journey thus far, and how luck (and hard work) has played a huge role. Some of what he touches on was included in the full interview, but there isn't a huge amount of overlap.

Make sure you don't miss Part 1, which is the full interview!  

Well, it's actually happened. With the release of the November 2018 issue of GQ (we heard about this rumor months ago but weren't sure if it'd actually be true because it's so hard to get on GQ), Liu Hao Ran is now just the 14th Chinese male celeb (and the youngest by far) to have had covers on all five of the major men's magazines (GQ, Esquire, Elle Men, L'Officiel Hommes, and Harper's Bazaar Men). 

With the exception of Esquire, which was a group extended cover in December 2016 (let that sink in for a second - he was basically a newbie then!), the other four covers are all solo covers and have come within the span of a year. Not only that, Elle Men, L'Officiel Hommes, and Bazaar Men were shot before Detective Chinatown 2 even came out.

It also should be mentioned here that Daley-V, who is one of the most well-known fashion bloggers on Weibo and is connected to the fashion industry, said in a comment (when the GQ cover was released) that Haoran actually had the chance to complete solo covers for all five this year, but pushed it, presumably due to filming for Novoland: Eagle Flag. Basically saying Esquire solo cover was lined up already. I wish Haoran cared as much about magazine covers as fans and Weibo netizens do, ha, but also props to him for not caring that much about bragging rights. (But guys - if this actually happened and he landed solo covers on all five of the Men's 2+3 within a year that would be even more crazy than this already is.)

I saw a great quote in response to this (him pushing Esquire) from a fan of another actor, who said, "While I'm jealous of his accomplishments, I'm even more jealous of his mind. He really is clear headed." 

Based on what's been said thus far, the photoshoot for GQ took place in Paris back in June 2018 (presumably on the same day as the Men's Uno shoot), though the interview wouldn't take place until months later. That picture of Haoran that went viral in late September, where he was photographed leaving an interview on his bike? That was for GQ.

So the structure of this interview is a bit interesting - there were two articles released, which we didn't realize until after we already translated one, but essentially GQ released a version that was just a transcript of Liu Hao Ran talking, and then an article-based one that includes some of the content from the transcript. We've split this into 2 parts (Part 2 can be found here). 

Liu Hao Ran's eleventh magazine cover this year comes on the November 2018 issue of L'Officiel (first appearance; do not confuse with L'Officiel Hommes - a fashion magazine for men - which he was the cover star twice), which is also the first cover with short-haired Haoran that we've seen in many, many months.

Most of the interviews that we've had this year (magazine-wise) have come during Haoran's busy periods, or right after Novoland: Eagle Flag wrapped up. This is probably the first one where some time had passed after filming ended, so you get a more introspective and relaxed Haoran here, who has obviously had some time to think about things.

Personal two cents: he sounds like he's coming to terms with what it means to be an actor and trying to find ways to make it easier for himself so he doesn't struggle every time he wraps up a role. Part of that means he's starting to lose the rose-tinted glasses that he's had about being an actor, and that could be a good thing - one of the reasons why we love him is that he's such an old and traditional soul (at least when it comes to his acting approach), but it's important that he realizes that the entertainment world he's in is very, very different now and he may need to change his approach in order to allow himself to be more comfortable. Otherwise, it's like what he mentioned in the Cosmopolitan interview - he'll use himself up too quickly. 

This interview is a bit different in tone from what we've seen in the past,because while Haoran does talk about acting, it's more focused on how the profession can affect the actor in real life. There are some parts that may seem a bit confusing (we had so many conversations trying to dissect certain sections of this - someone help us with the spinach quote please), but if you keep in mind that the overarching theme of this interview is that life is life, no matter what field you may be in, it might help. Apologies for the multiple translation notes - it's just hard sometimes to keep the original meaning and tone even if you're translating all the words correctly, so I just wanted to make things clear.

For Liu Hao Ran's birthday, OK! Magazine did a special feature and accompanying cover photoshoot for their weekly issue (second week of October). This was the photoshoot that he went to Japan for back in August (right after he wrapped up filming for Novoland: Eagle Flag) and might be be the last cover (chronologically, I mean - Cosmopolitan came out before this one, but we're still working on that post) where we see him with long hair. 

"Might" being the keyword. Word on the street is that Haoran's got three more magazines lined up for the next couple of months including one that might drop in a couple of weeks (wait for the gushing that's gonna come from me if/when it does because if rumors are correct it's a huge feat), and we aren't quite sure when they were taken, so there could still be more long haired Haoran coming. 

I'm actually pretty surprised on how much I like this photoshoot - it has a very vintage vibe to it (perhaps because of the hair)? A fashion blogger that I follow on Weibo said that Haoran looked like the young master of a mafia family - in a good way, haha. 

This is a pretty straightforward (and short) Q&A - a nice break from the long articles we've been getting - but don't worry, we'll be back to that for the L'Officiel feature, ha.

Elle China recently celebrated their 30th anniversary, and when Liu Hao Ran posted a congratulatory message (well, his studio did, since he's isolated in military training), fans thought that there might be a chance that he might have an interview portion in the 30th anniversary issue of the magazine. And they were right! Liu Hao Ran has quite a close relationship with Elle China editor-in-chief Xiao Xue (she appeared in his birthday video last year), so it's not a total surprise.

Aside from Liu Hao Ran's recent interview with Men's Uno, he also had short features in Men's Uno Young (he was the cover star for August 2018) and in the September 2018 issue of Harper's Bazaar. Because these were not released electronically, I didn't realize that they existed until I saw some HQ scans from C-fans. Both are relatively short, but are rather nice pieces, which is why we wanted to share them.

The Harper's Bazaar one may sound like it's written by a fan, but promise it's not, ha.

We are traveling back in time, via a May 2016 interview that Liu Hao Ran did with The Paper. If you haven't seen the news yet, Liu Hao Ran's 2016 webdrama With You has been picked up by Shenzhen TV for its summer primetime slot after already making it on air a couple of months ago via Zhejiang TV. Although Shenzhen TV is considered to be a second tier satellite TV station, it's still the first time a webdrama has been aired in the primetime slot. Not to mention - this is a webdrama from two years ago. 

At the end of January 2018, Liu Hao Ran filmed a photoshoot for Bazaar Men and was featured on the cover of their March issue. Which means we got an interview along with it. Because Liu Hao Ran has had six magazine features in the first half of 2018 alone (and with the exception of the VogueMe interview which was conducted in March, the rest of the interviews were all done in December 2017/January 2018), the content of them aren't going to differ very much since they all center around his recent acting experiences.

We continue to get more Liu Hao Ran content out of Paris from Chinese media outlets - this time from Sohu and iFeng Fashion. Both media outlets released both a video and an article containing the interview, so I thought that I would provide both english subs and a written translation. We should be getting at least two more interviews in the next couple of days...stay tuned! 

As always, you can find updates and short translations on our Twitter, and follow our Youtube account for the most up to date subbed videos.

This is Part 2 of the Men's Uno interview from January 2018. Most of the questions here focus on how Liu Hao Ran views himself as an actor, his thoughts towards performance, and some of the more personal parts about him. Part 1 can be found here.