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Racy books, authors' wars thrive in China
By Antoaneta Bezlova
May 16, 2001
Beijing - Mao Zedong's writings might have defined the literary outlook of
generations of Chinese people before 1978, but these days what readers find
exciting is a far cry from the sober lines of the chairman's poetic exploits.
"As Jacque unbuttoned Lucy's Saint Laurent evening outfit, her slender and
pure-white body emerged from the dress like a mermaid from a swimming pool ..."
With such steamy lines, Ai Man from the "babe" club of authors - the "new, new
women writers, born in the 1970s" as literary critics patronizingly tend to
describe them - has captured the affection of Beijing readers.
Once ruled by the rigid canon of socialist realism and thwarted by elderly
Communist Party censors of taste, Chinese literature today is dominated by a
cluster of "beauty" writers, a series of racy literary battles and the
emergence of e-fiction. China's highly-animated literary scene resembles a
theater of war where well-read writers -- the "babes" included -- fall prey to
kuping or "cruel critique" sessions, only to emerge even more famous.
Fierce competition for readership has transcended the conventional print market
and extended into cyberspace, where competing literary websites are bringing
the era of e-books a little closer. "Commercialization is the best thing that
has happened to Chinese modern literature for a long time," declares writer Yu
Hua. "Before the 1990s, there was no market for literary works. We had some
mediocre writers and the literary circle dominated by one authoritative
magazine, Harvest. It was regarded as a great honor to get your article
published by that magazine. But commercialization broke this monopoly and made
authors compete for readers," Yu Hua says.
China does not yet have its Stephen King, who self-published his book The Plant
on Internet bypassing conventional publishers, but Chinese writers are warming
up to the idea of e-books. Some of them, like pop-punk writer Wang Shuo and
avant-garde author Yu Hua, sponsored or set up literature websites last year,
provoking talk of a "21st Century Internet New Cultural Movement".
"It is more like another Cultural Revolution," observes Yu Hua. "Then, everyone
wanted to make social change - today everyone wants to get on the Web."
In this cyberspace feud, the winner by far is a website with the leisurely name
"Under the Banyan Tree:" at www.rongshuxia.com, edited by mainland writer Chen
Cun. Detractors grumble that it is the most frequented one because it launched
its own website writer from the "babe" literary school, Annie Baobei, and
titillates readers' liking with piquant gossip and kuping sessions that in
indulge in defaming best-selling authors.
"These attacks on famous writers have become so ubiquitous that now we have
forged a term for them," says Li Jiefei, a researcher at the Literary Studies
Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The purpose of kuping
is to create press furore and stir lots of attention, which ultimately boosts
sales," explains Li. "Only idols of popular writing such as Jin Yong [China's
master of kung-fu novels] and Yu Qiuyu [a best-selling writer of prose] become
objects of such critiques, exactly because everyone reads them."
The literary battle between the mainland's "hooligan" writer Wang Shuo and Jin
Yong picked up in 1999, raged in newspapers, magazines and websites and died
down only to be replaced by the fight between the "two Yus".
"Yu Qiuyu, why don't you repent?" Yu Jie penned in an indignant article last
year. To the dismay of many, Yu Jie, a young author still in post-graduate
studies at Beijing University, dared attack Yu Qiuyu, a celebrated author of
stylish essays on traditional Chinese culture.
Yu Jie asked Yu Qiuyu to come out in the open and apologize for his past, when
he was part of the Shiyige, a team of 11 writers employed by the Gang of Four
during the Cultural Revolution. That article provoked some of the most
spectacular fights to date between authors' camps on the mainland. Yu Quiyu's
fans unleashed a canonade of charges against Yu Jie, a writer too callow in
their eyes and largely unknown to square with a revered author like Yu Qiuyu.
They criticized Yu Jie for striking a pose of a "moral fighter" and reviving
the style of struggling sessions during the Cultural Revolution.
But there were also defenders of Yu Jie who accused Yu Qiuyu of everything from
"retrograde thinking" to "low taste" because his book was reportedly found in a
prostitute's bag during a police raid of a karaoke bar. By some media accounts,
Yu Qiuyu, rankled by the high-pitched brawl, announced he was retreating from
writing and any cultural activities.
High-brow intellectuals deplored the "fashion of slander", laying blame on the
same commercialization that has transformed mainland writers into noisy
hawkers.
Modern China's money obsession is changing not only writers but their arbiters
as well. The days when writers knocked on the doors of publishing houses for
contracts are gone, bemoans Li. "Today we have somewhat of reversed creativity
process," he says. "Writing is initiated by publishing houses. Authors begin to
write novels only when they have an order and an advance of few thousand
dollars. Some publishing houses have special teams probing the readers' market
and compiling lists of the writers with the greatest market appeal."
Another change from the 1980s, much deplored by traditionalists who love "the
way China was", is the media's influence in the literary process. If books
become hot property on the market or get banned by Communist Party censors, it
is because of media hype.
"Chinese bureaucrats don't read books," asserts Zhao Zumo, associate professor
of the department of Chinese language and literature at Beijing University.
"They occupy themselves with some reading only when the media has gone crazy
about something. It is not that they do not want to control, it is simply that
they cannot control."
The flock of "beauty" writers, represented by Mian Mian, Wei Hui and Zhou
Jieru, were the most recent offenders of the guardians of socialist mores.
After banning Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby and Mian Mian's Candy last spring, the
authorities found another shockingly pornographic example in the novel The Web
of Little Siren by Zhou Jieru and ordered its removal from the shelves.
But this did not dampen the enthusiasm of the "babe" writers. "A new version of
Wei Hui's erotic bible Shanghai Baby, entitled Beijing Baby and written by Ai
Man, hit the book stalls last summer.
"This type of writing is shallow but very popular with young people," says Li.
"We call the writers meinu or beauties, not for their physical features but
because they write about love and sex very intimately. Through their writing,
those female authors want to become the 'dream lovers' of their readers."
There is nothing kinky in mainland's obsession with graphic sex scenes,
reflects Yu Hua. "It is all because Chinese people's lives are too dull. There
are no big happenings, everything is pre-arranged and life goes in the same
rails for everyone. So plain is our life that I can still remember what
excitement it was for us when Coca-Cola came to China."
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China's
new female writers captivate world
1-16-2003
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