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 Wow, this is really targeted at the wrong market. If you want a "Bridget Jones Clone" with some more edge than most of that ilk, this is for you! If you're looking for actual insight into China from its younger writers, go read Wang Shuo and Hong Ying instead (they're cool)!One nitpick, though: why do so many modern writers write about writers (Wei Hui, Kate Christensen, etc.)? Can we please have some more vocational diversity? And Ibisarian, I agree with you about the cliche; Shanghai Baby would have been more original if the guys' races were any less stereotypical combination. Go read American Knees by Shawn Wong.
I am sure the novel is not an accurate depiction of Shanghai, though some of the descriptions do make me want to visit and read more about how Shanghai REALLY is. Also, had this book been written in the 'Western' world, it would hardly have registered a blip on the literary radar. Plus, the author needs to get over herself, because she is constantly obsessing over herself and talking about how great and good-looking she is. ANNOYING. Hate to break it, but she's not the only attractive young female novelist out there with nothing to say. She does capture a lot of the issues that young people have to struggle with, but only the young people that are in her type of social/peer group. It is a very limiting view. You would be better off reading Elizabeth Wurtzel if that is the kind-of thing you are going for. Plus, being a Chinese female, I find it extremely irritating that here is yet another 'highly-sexed asian female' in the media- a stereotype that is constantly perpetuated by roles taken on by such actresses as Lucy Liu. How bout let's try being more multi-dimensional with characters!! Bottom-line: don't expect too much but you'll be mildly entertained, along with wondering how people can be so vain, pathetic and narcissistic. The 'heroine' in this novel seems as though she is trying way too hard to be artsy, avant-garde, etc. But, you can only fake the funk for so long before people (and readers) grow disinterested. I am curious to see if this author will have something more meaningful to say the next time around. If you want great social commentary, read Bret Easton Ellis!!!!
..."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. |
It was such a speed reading since this book was clichest of clichest of clichest of cliche. I did not need to use my brain nor it took any thought. All you need to do is just use a hand to turn pages over and over remembering any of the kind of cliche of a molded and uninventive bad girl story. However, this bad girl writer from China writes so,so,so Bad--- in a sense of skilless and talentless, SO BAD that only makes readers ashamed of having read this sort of stupid tale which even sounds almost more than eighty years old(-fashioned). It holds true that people are free even to write a stupid tale. The fundamental predicament of this book is, tho', that we readers have no idea if the author knew the freedom; I wonder if she wrote the way she did by choice or wound up stupid as it is without knowing so. I suspect the latter. This novel might be an outcome of the author's limitation of knowledges of literature as well as her being talentless and skilless. In that sense, it could offer a good documentation of how cultural revolution has fatally limited and damaged people's mind by abolishing any influence from outside China. All the more the author dared to reproduce a cliched bad girl image and brag the materialistic lifestyle seemingly inspired by Western role models such as Nin and Chanel, it could not get any cheesier.
The reason I gave this book three instead of two stars is because of the nationality of the author, and the setting of the novel. Reading it will forever change most readers conceptions of "them" and "us", with "us" being the West, and "them" being the exotic ancient, or isolated and inscrutable communist China. The values and lifestlye of Coco, the heroine, and the sub-culture in which she dwells is completely interchangeable with any major Western city where an art/fashion/theater scene exists, epitomised by Berlin in the 1930's, San Francisco in the '50s, New York, London and Paris from the sixties to the present day. Coco is identical to the vain, self-centered, ambitious, talented writer/artist types I have known intimately from my life in London and New York. Clearly the author is very familiar with these Western cultural enclaves. In terms of style, she and those in her scene are doing a lot of copying. But in terms of substance, the implication is that the persona of Coco and therefore the author, is an archetype that has existed for centuries or more. Despite a lack of originality in plot and characters, I think Wei Hui does have a gift for storeytelling, and I raced through the book. And some of her writing is very creative, and her metaphors work well even in translation. In sociological terms, the story not only conforms to, but magnifies racial and sexual stereotyping: She is the 'highly-sexed Asian female'. Her Chinese boyfriend is so under-sexed that he's completely impotent. Her white lover is extremely virulent ... As an intelligent and highly self-conscious author, she must have been aware of this stereotyping. If the sexual roles of the two men had been reversed, would the storey have worked? Would Chinese women and Western men have bought so many copies of it? Grist for the sociologists mill. Not an original work of genius, but worth reading.
I agree with many of the other reviewers here--this book is a fun and quick read, (for instance, to read on the train or airplane) but great piece of literature it is NOT.
