Shanghai Baby: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Wei Hui (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 2001

The gap that divides those of us born in the 1970s and the older generation has never been so wide.

Dark and edgy, deliciously naughty, an intoxicating cocktail of sex and the search for love, "Shanghai Baby has already risen to cult status in mainland China. The risque contents of the breakthrough novel by hip new author Wei Hui have so alarmed Beijing authorities that thousands of copies have been confiscated and burned. As explicit as Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer, as shocking as "Trainspotting, this story of a beautiful writer and her erotically charged affairs jumps, howls, and hits the ground running as it depicts the new generation rising in the East.

Set in the centuries-old port city of Shanghai, the novel follows the days, and nights, of the irrepressibly carnal Coco, who waits tables in a cafe when she meets her first lover, a sensitive Chinese artist. Defying her parents, Coco moves in with her boyfriend and enters a frenzied, orgasmic world of drugs and hedonism. But, helpless to stop her gentle lover's descent into addiction, Coco becomes attracted to a boisterous Westerner, a rich German businessman with a penchant for S/M and seduction. Now, with an entourage of friends ranging from a streetwise madame to a rebellious filmmaker, Coco's forays into in the territory of love and lust cross the borders between two cultures -- awakening her guilt and fears of discovery, yet stimulating her emerging sexual self. Searing a blistering image into the reader's imagination, "Shanghai Baby provides an alternative travelogue into the back streets of a city and the hard-core escapades of today's liberated youth. Wei Hui's provocative portrayal of men, women, andcultural transition is an astonishing and brave exposure of the unacknowledged new China, breaking through official rhetoric to show the inroads of the West and a people determined to burst free.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although it caused an uproar in the author's native China, Western readers will find 27-year-old Wei Hui's semiautobiographical offering reminiscent of fiction by the brat pack writers of the '80s, though more clich‚d and less edgy. Waitress Nikki "but my friends call me Coco after Coco Chanel" is in love with Tian Tian, a melancholy and impotent artist who falls prey to narcotics. Coco loves him madly, but not so madly that she wants to give up sex, and this is why she's also been seeing Mark, a married German businessman. Coco's deceptions, Tian Tian's problems with his wealthy mother (who he suspects killed his father) and the intertwining worlds of art and fashion are all fodder for Coco's upcoming slice-of-lifestyle novel, in which Shanghai's privileged 20-somethings are shown in their natural habitat of clubs and coffeehouses. Beneath the techno beat, though, the sore subject of Western imperialism its avatars, this time, multinational managers still lurks. Among Coco's friends, one known as Madonna stands out in particular: she earned a fortune first as a madam and then as the widow of a rich man. Wei Hui evidently wants to imitate her heroes, the beats and Henry Miller, and relishes observations like "our bodies were already tarnished, and our minds beyond help." But she spends more time analyzing people by the brands they use and the cars they drive, thus giving the book an odd air of beat fluff, as if Jack Kerouac had mated with Judith Krantz. The book is as alluring as a gossip column, but, alas, as shallow as one, too. (Sept. 11)Forecast: Forty thousand copies of Shanghai Baby were burned by the Chinese government. Proving censors make the best publicists, rights were subsequently sold in 19 countries 200,000 copies are in print in Japan alone. U.S. media curiosity is already high, but the resulting sales bounce may be minor.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Wei Hui's debut novel, which was banned in China, delves deep into the dark and glittering heart of Shanghai, as experienced by a hopeful and hedonistic young novelist, Nikki (better known to her friends as Coco, after the also irrepressibly glamorous Coco Chanel). Although deeply in love with her impotent artist boyfriend Tian Tian, the frustrated Coco takes a successful German businessman as a lover. What follows is the painful and explicit sexual and vocational journey of a young woman in search of her true self, attempting to gain control of her own trajectory as nefarious forces work on her from both within and without. Indeed, it seems almost as if the city's over-the-top materialism drives its inhabitants toward adultery and dark passions, forcing them at once into the dual role of victim/accomplice. It is just such paradoxes that make Wei Hui's novel so complex and thought-provoking: she deftly explores the intimate relationships that belie the seeming oppositions of East and West, love and desire, the natural and the artificial, hedonism and spiritualism. Haunting and resonant, Shanghai Baby proves the existence of the sacred in the profane. For all Chinese literature and contemporary fiction collections. Tania Barnes, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Atria; First edition. edition (August 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743421566
• ISBN-13: 978-0743421560
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,150,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

99 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Badly written, self-obsessed drivel, August 22, 2001

By 

Elisabeth W. Movius (Shanghai China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shanghai Baby: A Novel (Hardcover)

..."Shanghai Baby" isn't so much a novel as a guidebook to the damp, sticky underbelly of Shanghai's nightlife. Unfortunately, Wei Hui misses the ironies and idiosyncrasies of this decidedly skanky scene and rather proceeds to fawningly gush and name-drop throughout. It's quite humorous to us here in Shanghai, as we all know every one of the bar and restaurant owners she repetitively refers to...

That does sum up, however, the culture that Wei Hui is depicting. Ignore the ads: this is NOT representative of China, NOT representative of Shanghai, NOT representative of the "new youth" and NOT representative of China's budding Bohemian crowd. The lifestyle it documents is unique to the anorexic, gaudily made-up gals who lurk in expatriate bars hoping to snare Caucasian sugar daddies who will provide them with visas, condos, cars and/or cash. They'll sleep with a rock musician or artist once in a while to prove that they're "alternative" and not just party girls.

Wei Hui does little to tone down the highly autobiographical nature of the book, which is the reason why it so lacks any sense of humor or perspective. She didn't even change the name of her foreign boyfriend from his real-life version.

The author tries to prove her literary credentials by dropping references to great modern Western writers throughout the book, both in the text and in really random quotes at the beginning of each chapter. She particularly uses and abuses Henry Miller and Milan Kundera, who were extremely popular among Shanghainese college students during Wei Hui's student days. She name-drops three different writers within the first five pages of the book, and one Kundera quote gets repeated three different times. Editorial oops. What's most galling, though, is her supposed adulation of Henry Miller, who so despised the sort of artifice which fills this book to gagging.

Much has been made in the Western press of how "Shanghai Baby" was a bestseller that got banned. Well, it was in the top 5 in Shanghai for a few weeks, but hardly registered as one of China's major successes in 2000. By the time it got banned, its sales and accompanying buzz had already dropped from any radars. It was banned not for its sexual or subversive content but rather because its main audience was teenybopper Shanghainese girls, whose parents complained in mass that the book was encouraging a perception that being going to sleazy bars and bopping middle-aged white men is cool.

Sad that such a shoddy novel got picked up for English translation and distribution when so much better and more significant literature is coming out of modern China but never gets noticed.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Very Good, October 17, 2001

By 

A.T. (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shanghai Baby: A Novel (Hardcover)

As an 1980's western punker/artist ( in the U.S.) of of Asian origins, I am just amazed by the clueless comments made by some reviewers who don't have a clue about a country and base their knowledge of a country on a self serving author who plays you into the age old stereotypes of East and West, this time magnified 100 fold (e.g. impotent male vs verile male). Because it was banned , the marketing hype calls the book "real China of today" and cool, and it represents modern China. You almost feel from the raving reviews that there is this great movement and turmoil and as if every one in Coco's age is like her. Perhaps you should see how the young really live in China, just like how the world perceives America vs how we really are. Good grief! The writing is hollow and hard to sympathize when one really knows what is happening in China. You would figure us to be more sophisticated.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is there really one "real" China/Shanghai?, July 30, 2005

By 

Unus e populo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shanghai Baby: A Novel (Paperback)

As everyone probably knows, this book was banned in China. Why? Well, Wei Hui writes about things like sex, drugs, unemployment, German men and masturbation. Basically things that lost their shock value about twenty years ago in America, but managed to drive some communists insane in 2000, when "40,000 copies were publicly burned, serving only to fan the flames of the author's cult status." The story goes something like this:

Coco, the protagonist, is caught between two men: an unemployed, impotent Chinese man named Tian Tian and a horny, married German named Mark. The book reads a bit like a diary. It goes on and on about the sex she's had with Mark, what she did with her cool, modern friends and pointless details such as what people were wearing, what she bought at the grocery store, etc. The world she lives in is apparently Shanghai's underbelly, where drugs and wild parties flourish. In the end she must decide between Mark and Tian Tian. Each chapter starts with a few quotes. Some of them are interesting, but they didn't necessarily enrich the book.

Coco takes a bit getting used to. She describes herself as her daddy's little princess. She says her parents spoil her. She sometimes brags too much about how attractive, clever and talented she is. Her actions are often difficult to understand, especially because she has a tendency to do things such as quit her job and have sex in a public bathroom at the drop of a hat.

Hui's writing style is distinctive. She does have a talent for creating a mood and describing situations. The plot itself is actually pretty simple, a woman caught between two lovers. I don't think this book is terrible, I just don't think it's bestseller material. I also doubt that it truly portrays the "real" China. 80% of China's population still works agriculture, and most young people aren't as spoiled and rich as Coco/Hui.

Overall I'd classify this book as light summer read.