Shanghai Baby

By Wei Hui

Book Overview

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 caf 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, and cultural 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743421574
• ISBN13: 9780743421577
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Vain, But Plausible

Yes, the title character is unbelievably vain. She talks about her private life as thought she's starring in a TV special about it. It's a bit like Sex and the City, but more believable. Coco (real name Niki) works as a waitress and lives with an impotent drug-addicted artist named Tian-Tian. Their relationship is more like mother-child than man-woman. To compensate for Tian-Tian's lack of libido, she has an affair with a German businessman named Mark. This book accomplishes what it set out to do. It's about a vain, self-obsessed, horny and insatiable young woman in Shanghai doing everything she ever wanted to do.

Shanghai Baby Review

I have read favorable reviews on Shanghai Baby from various fashion magazines declaring that Wei Hui is doing something along the lines of "speaking out for the women of China." I had high expectations from all the commotion the 250 something page book generated, like the rustic banning and burning of this book in China, and I was NOT disappointed. Shanghai Baby is about Co Co, a young hopeless-romantic writer, living in contemporary Shanghai. Like most writers, our heroine is very neurotic. Moreover, she is an experimenter, a tragic lover, and an unapologetic feminist, all of which makes her a sassy, self-reflective, and alluring narrator. With a unique voice, Co Co spills her triumphant and vulnerable moments to deliver a turbulent story involving an impotent boyfriend, an illicit romance with a foreigner, and overcoming her writer's block. Although Co Co is not representative of all the women under the Shanghainese sky, she does reflect the gained and lost values in a rapidly modernizing city. If you don't mind going for a decadent ride, Co Co is the perfect candidate that will both seduce you and warn you about the bohemian underworld of Shanghai. Final note: Read at your own risk. If you are extremely judgmental and cannot accept overt promiscuity then don't read the book.

Great simple and honest book

This is a really great book that can take you out of your daily life to remember why we have to live awake in all our senses. Passion, death, love, pain, and Shangai getting into our veins as if we were there.Fascinating book. I do strongly recommend it.

CAMUS Revisited

Reading the previous reviews, I understand their points of view. However, I'm inclined to compare Wei Hui's writing to a modern Albert Camus. Those who have read SHANGHAI BABY, should try the comparison (THE PLAGUE).Yes, there is a certain triviality in the descriptions of "Coco's" life. The "Brat Pack" of Shanghai lives! But, I think there is a sorrow for the "old life" as represented by the grandmother.Maybe I'm giving to much "hidden" meaning to this story. But, I received a feeling from her writing that I think she meant. I wish Wei Hui much success and I'm not German!

Real revolution of culture at work

It took yet another generation, but eventually China has found writers who can be translated and sold abroad even thou in their books there is no mention to Cultural Revolutions, Gangs of Four, Japanese Invasions and so forth. The book of Wei Hui represents indeed a revolution of culture. In it, Shanghai is no more the founding city of the Chinese Communist Party, nor the colonial capital of the East. It is a modern city, where Chinese youth turn out to be much like any other country's youth. Women do talk of their problems and dreams. Western pop culture has been absorbed and mixed so deeply that you cannot split it from local culture any more.When you buy this book (highly reccomended), forget about any references to the old or last century Chinese culture and history. It is definitely not another 'tourist guide' to China. Shanghai Baby is a book of flesh, saliva and sweat. Wei Hui has a story to tell. Read the story. It is time to update your cultural perception of China. Michele