Sometimes context is everything. A sexually frank novel that reeks of thinly disguised autobiography told in a confessional style would hardly cause a ripple in the West these days. In China, however, such a book is banned, damned and publicly burned. Especially when the author penning such "decadence" is a woman.
More power to her. Author Wei Hui's "Shanghai Baby" represents a flash of counter-cultural lightning in the gray, dreary skies of China's politically controlled culture. In a society where political, social and religious avenues of protest are harshly curtailed, Wei proposes personal, poetic, sexual solutions -- the Slacker approach, as it were.
Wei's protagonist Coco is a free-spirited, twentysomething writer who seeks to "burst upon the city like a firework," but is still grasping for a story to tell. In a clearly Faustian bargain, her own life supplies the material, a tragic plunge through a whirlpool of love and sex.