Mu Zi Mei is not the first Chinese girl to get famous by writing about sex and debauchery. In the dying years of the 20th century, a Shanghainese writer named Mian Mian wrote about casual sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. Some commentators said she was a brilliant writer and a revolutionary, others said that all she was doing was appealling to the lowest common denominator. Mian Mian’s success and notoriety was successfully imitated by another Shanghainese authoress named Wei Hui. The two of them had a drawn-out literary catfight, which was eagerly followed by Mainland newspapers and provided fodder for discussion in many chat rooms in during the dot com boom.
This is Mian Mian.
This is a description of her from her own website:
“The milieu depicted in Mian Mian’s work is drawn from her life experience, and many of her fictional characters are also inspired by the subculture she moved in, a subculture peopled by aspiring singers, drug addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, gangsters, the mentally ill, slackers, and self-proclaimed artists. She became the first Chinese writer to describe drugs . Her style, characteristic of “cruel youth” and her simultaneously hip and introspective attitude towards self-reflection quickly attracted a large following of young readers.”
Mian Mian’s website is here
An article about Mian Mian from the Straits Times is here.
A reveiw of Mian Mian’s book Candy is on hackwriters.com here.
Another article on the amazingly long-lived Beijing Scene server is here.
And finally, for some balance in the great Mian Mian / Wei Hui dispute, a review of Wei Hui’s book Shanghai Baby is here.