John Pomfret of The Washington Post has written the first properly-researched newspaper article on Mu Zi Mei. The piece sets the Mu Zi Mei phenomenon against the broader loosening of controls on Chinese citizens’ private lives and “an aggressive search for individualism and personal liberation occurring among China’s young”.
The story ends with a nice little sting:
“It seems like my government wants people to think of China as the traditional China with Confucian morality and blah, blah, blah,” said Li [Mu Zi Mei], nursing a fruit tea and puffing on a Marlboro Light. “We have these interminable meetings, talk a lot about morality, but when it’s all over, people go home and return to their real lives. Most of the propaganda guys I know all have mistresses. Heh, I’ve even slept with some of them. That’s why they’re scared of my morality. I know their secrets.”
The Washington Post article is titled ‘A New Gloss On Freedom – Sexual Revolution Sweeps China’s Urban Youth’, and you can find it here.