Urban Educated Women as Marginalized Mainstream in China: Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby and Mian Mian’s Candy

Abstract

Urban Educated Women as Marginalized Mainstream in ChinaWei Hui’s Shanghai Baby and Mian Mian’s Candy Jing Song (bio) introduction When Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby (Shanghai Baobei) was published in China in 1999, it was officially deemed distasteful, immoral, and harmful and, for a while, was banned.1 Mian Mian’s Candy, published in 2000, got a similar reception.2 But official prohibitions could not dampen the interest the novels sparked across the country, and pirated versions and unauthorized copies of both novels appeared on the street. Sales flourished throughout China. In April 2000 the government officially banned Candy, but hundreds of thousands of pirated copies had already circulated through small private bookstores and street vendors.3 Soon afterward the novels were translated into English, French, and German, generating a range of controversies with international and domestic influence. The novels take as their subject matter the forbidden issues of sexuality, drugs and alcohol, violence, and prostitution, issues traditionally considered taboo, disclosing the full spectrum of challenges on the turbulent and troubling side of contemporary Chinese society. In exposing these socially ignored political and social realities, Shanghai Baby and Candy have drawn their readers’ attention to conflicts that may be hidden from the surface of urban Chinese women’s lives underneath their economic prosperity, but that are nevertheless manifested within their newly materialist lives characterized by high-rise buildings, international clubs and hotels, luxury cars, and fashionable people rushing down globalized urban streets. Through unconventional narratives on forbidden topics, the novels offer rich sources of material for understanding the invisible experiences of Chinese urban educated women as participating agents in pursuit of personal [End Page 109] space, dreams, and opportunities in the changing social topography confronting Chinese women. By analyzing such issues as sexuality, family relations, and materialism embedded in the protagonists’ lives, this article maps the desire of urban educated women to break the silence of female desire, exploring their ideological understanding of the self and of otherness and the dilemma of their identity as participants in a marginalized mainstream in a changing China. I argue that enmeshed in different but overlapping forces of capitalism, traditional culture, and national politics, Chinese urban educated women attempt simultaneously to resist, cooperate, retaliate, and negotiate the meanings of being a woman. This article begins with a brief introduction to the political, historical, and cultural context in which urban educated Chinese women have been situated. Then the article moves to the discussion of the intricate connection of Wei Hui and Mian Mian as writers and Coco from Shanghai Baby and Hong from Candy and the subjects with which to identify urban educated women’s experiences through the writers’ literary productions. Next, through examination of the protagonists’ attitudes to their bodies, to sexuality, to gender relationships, and to materialism, I attempt to make visible these women’s dilemma of performing their femininity and being part of the mainstream culture while simultaneously being discontented with the current male-dominated social order. urban educated women in china In this article both Wei Hui and Mian Mian, as professional writers, are considered as urban educated women who have engaged in writing to express and release their stress, confusion, and struggles.4 Urban educated women in China are generally portrayed as a privileged group of women who have specific training in the systematic application of knowledge that makes them suitable for contributing to the urban global exchange.5 Their education and appropriate knowledge give them access to economic opportunities enabling them to be successful in both the public and private realms.6 However, these urban educated women are also expected to demonstrate their femininity, support their husband’s work, understand a man’s physical and psychological needs, become educated in the arts and sciences, and be willing to assume responsibility for housework.7 Such images of urban educated women have their roots in a resurgence of the notion of femininity from post-1978 China, the beginning of China’s “open door” policy. Historically, notions of womanhood were rooted in the cult of female chastity and feminine virtue.8 To perform feminine virtue, women were discouraged from cultivating talents and were defined as naturally inferior [End Page...