Shanghai Baby

“Shanghai Baby”, by Wei Hui:

Wei Hui’s novel is straight-forward: through the first pages, characters, setting and plot are laid out.
In today’s cosmopolitan Shanghai lives Coco, the narrator (in many ways the author herself). Young, bright, and beautiful, the writer of a few successful short stories presents herself as a confident and educated woman (alum of the prestigious Fudan U). The reader of the novel may add to the list a high libido. By her side, sharing her life and his apartment, is TianTian, Coco's impotent but true soul-mate. Tiantian will die. He is a handsome man described as "a fetus soaking in formaldehyde who owed his life to unadulterated love, and his death was inextricably linked to that love." Tiantian lives with the spleen of a Shanghai Beaudelaire, a dark angel touched by despair due to a complicated family history. The second main figure in Coco’s world is Mark, a married German businessman met at a party. His maleness and sexuality becomes quickly part of Coco’s unbalanced sentimental life. Orbiting the novel is present a small circle of friends. Thus is set the story: a pretty woman with a high libido, two men, one condemned the other married, a city, a book, few friends, and the family.
In the midst of what could be seen as a chaotic life and thus novel, is the book Coco has set herself to write following the request of Tiantian. The drafting of the book will be the leading thread of the novel, the element that forces her to go from point A to a point B.
Wei Hui’s prose is sensual, up-beat, self absorbed, sprawling and decadent. Quotes from various figures, from Milan Kundera to Mother Teresa via Henry Miller "the spiritual father", punctuate her narrative. The tone of the book has an underlying tension, a little like Coco’s life. A lot of references, sensual and sexual, to tobacco, alcohol and drugs, are part of the set. But present also is the artistic side of creation and passion. In addition, the diverse relationships are dictated by love taking different shapes and roles: parents to child, man to woman and vice versa, woman to woman, man to man. Attached to this notion of love is a waltz of feelings: desire, need, lust, but also negligence, abandonment, torment, and despair. The overall result is a feeling of great confusion that emanate from the young generation.
A few days after having finished the book, I felt that the confusion present in the book turned into a feeling of great emptiness on the part of the novel overall and needless self-inflicted sufferings on the part of the characters. Concerning the emptiness of the novel: how could it be since there were so many references and quotes from different famous intellectuals, singers, etc to feed Coco’s thoughts? In that sense, the novel questions the purpose of the education of the narrator. She certainly attended one of the most prestigious Chinese universities, competed with thousands of other students to get there, and finally is part of a close circle of intellectuals… nevertheless, one can wonder to what end?

The notion of education is raised. What is called education and what is the goal of an education? In the case of Coco, her education is measured in terms of culture, liberated sex life and also, I think, in terms of self-perception as higher than other.
While the ultimate goal of education is outside the scope of this review, my mention of the issue is to show that finally the education of Coco is useless (at least at the moment). The first reason is that she doesn’t seem to find fulfillment and that she drifts in a self destructing way regardless of this education. The second reason is that she doesn’t turn her education toward the benefit of the society and others.

Finally the answer to her ill being is actually addressed by her father in the book. Himself an intellectual (he is a professor), he tells her:
“Don’t become complacent about your status as an author; first you’re a human being and a woman- and only third, an author”. This quote means that that she needs to come down from her pedestal as a writer to face life as a human being: a being of flesh that breathes, eats, and interacts with others first before being an intellectual.

Overall I think the novel is worth reading to discover another aspect of China and of Chinese youth culture: a cosmopolitan youth that has succeeded but that is nevertheless deprived of goals in a society that is in perpetual motion (here Shanghai). In a way this golden youth feels lost and overwhelmed by the reality of life and the materialism around them. In response to this feeling of loss, they escape by recreating an artificial underworld of sex, alcohol and drugs that is, at the end, not fulfilling because it turns out to be ephemeral and self-destructive. As a result, the book leaves a slight taste of sadness and frustration.

"The ferries, the waves, the night-dark grass, the dazzling neon lights, and incredible structures-all these signs of material prosperity are aphrodisiacs the city uses to intoxicate itself. They have nothing to do with us, the people who live among them. A car accident or a disease can kill us, but the city's prosperous, invincible silhouette is like a planet, in perpetual motion, eternal"