The Little Bed

Wei Hui has been described as “decadent and debauched,” and has become renowned as “China’s first banned female pornographic novelist.” Copies of her book, Shanghai Baby, have been confiscated and burned, and it is forbidden to speak her name in the Chinese media. The novel contains frank descriptions of sex, although nothing very shocking by Western standards, and themes such as drug use, bisexuality, and affairs with foreigners have also fallen foul of the conservative establishment.

Through banning her book, the government have only succeeded in creating a cultural phenomenon. Pirate editions of Shanghai Baby are widely available, and Wei is just one of a new generation of young female authors currently vying with a certain Mian Mian – who writes in a similarly controversial vein – for the title of China’s bad girl of literature.

In her book, Wei Hui stylishly depicts Shanghai counterculture, with a wayward cast of hip young twenty-something urbanites – the heroine is a dreamy but driven young female writer who has an affair with a rich, virile and very ‘Alpha male’ Westerner, while her Chinese boyfriend drifts into impotent, opium-induced oblivion. Viewed as a metaphor, you can see why the government might disapprove of the characterisations, although she insists this is not a slur on Chinese culture.

So Miss Wei Hei is now officially ‘notorious.’ Fine by her, but you get the feeling that the twenty seven year old author, like the heroine of her semi-autobiographical novel, is looking forward to being extremely ‘famous’, rather than simply ‘infamous.’

Tiny and slim, Wei is dressed in semi-transparent black shirt, with long dark hair and lacquered fingernails. Her English is good, although she has an interpreter on hand to explain the more complicated or idiomatic questions. She says she is enjoying the attention involved in promoting the book, if perhaps not the exhausting rounds of interviews. Formerly, she has expressed a slight frustration at being asked the same questions about politics, which, she contends, hold little interest for her or the majority of her peers.

Born on a small island off the east coast of China, Zhou Wei Hui is the daughter of an army officer, and underwent three years of military training at university. She rolls her eyes when asked about the past, indicating that she would much rather talk about her present life, which, it seems, is far more exciting. “I don’t remember much from my childhood. It was very strict and monotonous. After college, I went wild,” she laughs.

She says this need to escape restrictions and enjoy more personal freedom is something she has in common with a lot of young Chinese women. She feels she has succeeded in expressing ‘the voice of her generation.’ “Yes, I am writing my views and experiences, but I know these are shared by many – my friends, also people who have written to me and those who have written about my book.”

Is it true you’ve suffered some character assassination by the government? “It is the media, describing me as an ‘immoral woman,” she shrugs. “ A lot of the media is controlled by the government.” (The government propaganda organ, The People’s Daily, castigated her in print, before the directive went out to erase any mention of her very existence from the press.)

Wei is unperturbed by the suggestion that her phone might be tapped, viewing it as an unfortunate fact of life in her society. “I don’t mind. It’s a common thing. If you, as a journalist, came to live and work in Shanghai, your phone would probably be tapped. They would just wonder why you were there and check what you were saying even to friends.”

Her writing shows an obvious fascination with Western culture, which is something she shares with many of her peers. “For youth growing up in China, these influences are very prevalent, and we buy western music, watch films and surf the internet,” she explains.

Henry Miller is her literary hero. “We were born under the same star sign. It is more the style of his writing that I identify with – I know some people question his anti-female or misogynist views, but I like the courageous way he writes.”

Gavin Friday is mentioned in passing in the book as an icon to one of the characters. Wei Hui says she has heard his music and seen pictures of him “wearing women’s clothes and make up.” She asks if I know him. No such luck, I tell her. “And U2 are also a very big band here?” she wonders, admitting she prefers trip-hop bands like Portishead.

Wei Hui still lives in Shanghai and her love affair with the city continues. “It’s a very special place. The nightlife is very cool and the lifestyle is very fast. The bars and the clubs have their own certain atmosphere that is very exciting.” She says she is not recognised in the street, because she generally looks casual and not as carefully coiffed and made up as her publicity photos.

There are brief but strongly redolent references to Shanghai’s colourful past, throughout the novel. “In the 1920s and ’30s, there was money and growth, but with much prostitution, gambling and drugs. This ended in 1949, with Mao’s Communist rule. Over the past decade, Shanghai has again become popular as a financial city, with much foreign business. So people want to experience freedom and fun again. And less oppression,” she explains.

I refer to a passage in the book in which a group of young Chinese people having a picnic on a public stretch of lawn are ordered to leave by a wealthy western woman on the grounds that they are spoiling the view she and her husband have paid so handsomely for. I ask her if the encroaching return of cultural and financial imperialism to Shanghai could be negative? “It’s true, that with the increase of capitalism and more financial success, there will be even more western influence. There will be very different effects, good and bad, especially when things are changing so quickly.”

Is that also why she finds it so

exciting? She nods enthusiastically.

Her next novel will probably be about “a married Chinese woman who has a lesbian affair, possibly with a western woman”. Far from being worried about another ban, she obviously relishes

the idea of the publicity, although expressing a little regret for her Chinese publisher who has lost business due to ban on legal sales of her book. “On the subject for the book, I have been to some lesbian bars,” she confides, suddenly animated and coyly confessional. “One in London, and some in Shanghai, but the ones in Paris are the best.”

Before I have a chance to hear more, our time is up and I wish I hadn’t asked so many questions about politics.