Reasons to Read Shanghai Baby

For the quotes:
“Well, there’s a wide wide world of noble causes
And lovely landscapres to discover
But all I really want to do right now
Is find another lover!”
- Joni Mitchell (1)

“And the good girls go to Heaven, but the bad girls go everywhere” – Jim Steinman (16)

“A woman who chooses the writing profession often does so to give herself a rank within male-dominated society” – Erica Jong (16)

“Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified performance”. - Helen Lawrenson (31)

“A healthy sex life. Best thing in the world for a woman’s voice” – Leontyne Price.

“Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.”
-Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” (both 57)

“Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” _ Flannery O’Connor (62)

“Oppose monotony, support diversity, oppose inhibitions, support wild passion, oppose unanimity, support hierarchy, oppose spinach, support snails in their shells.” Salvador Dali.

“I am reluctant to let my young daughter appear in public and face the cruelty of life. She should remain in our living room as much as possible”. – Sigmund Freud (121).

Man’s Happiness: I will
Woman’s Happiness: He will.
(Forgot the name)

"It is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple." - Virginia Woolf.

For Milan Kundera’s insights:
“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite amount of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).” (5)

“kundera says that in the twenty-first century any of us can become an author. All we need to do is pick up a pen and tell our own stories. The desire to pour one’s heart out to others is a spiritual need common to every human being".

Wei Hui’s own writing – her vivid and drugged descriptions and her truths:

“ ‘But I’ve found you, and decided to put my faith in you”, he said. “Don’t stay with me just out of curiosity, but don’t leave me straight-away” (3).

“Love’s the most powerful thing on earth. It can make you fly and forget everything else”.(12) (I know this is the most trite of them all, but I’m a sucker for the idea of love).

“… all these signs of material prosperity are aphrodisiacs the city uses to intoxicate itself.”(14)

“Intelligence is a gift and madness is an instinct” (p. 21).

“Our lives are short and bitter and romantic dreams leave no trace.” (25).

“…I got that sense of unquestioning trust that the act of sex bestows upon one’s partner” (65)

“Many people think love and sex shouldn’t be lumped together. For many liberated women, finding a man she adores and who adores her, and who can give her an orgasm, is the ideal arrangement for her personal life. These women would say “Separating love and sex needn’t conflict with a healthy attitude to life. Women’s intuitions and aspirations are shaped by the daily grind, and they look for a lifestyle that gives them a sense of security. They put the key that can unlock life’s secrets safely under their pillows.” (83).

“Women whose lives are littered with ex-lovers are a dime a dozen.. when they pass thirty, their faces reveal their lack of inhibitions.” (105)

“Once beautiful, but now a dream in which willow branches have withered, clouds have scattered and drifting petals have fallen to the ground. A face that has been corroded by pleasure, impetuosity and dreams, each of which has left scars on it…” (112).

“Your body bears the mark of many men, at least a hundred… your body’s too tired. It’s burdened with the memories of too many men.”

“Girls who are street-smart are put down as ‘crude’ and those who are gentler are treated as ‘empty-headed’ flower vessels” (117).

“ A learned man should also understand romance: he should know what the beauty of a woman is, what a good woman is, and what a woman’s sorrow is” (123).

“Young artists bring out the maternal instinct in a … woman. Artists are unreliable; they’re in flux, and their quest is for art, not for a particular woman” (126).

“While writing… I was stargazing with my head down. The stars twinkled among words that appeared spontaneously, and then I achieved nirvana…” (129).

“In my opinion, many athletic events are like large-scale orgies. The fans in the stands and the players on the field were jointly excited to the point where they could hardly control their hormones, and the air was filled with their scent.” (131).

“The most important rule being that we should both keep our balance; there should be no sentimentality and no envy.” (134).

“It’s only fair to match one cold face with another, for protection’s sake”. (144).
"Everytime i saw him I imagined I was willing to die for him, die under him - and each time I left him, I thought that he should be the one to die". (202)

"... if you give any woman a new, adorable lover, she'll become broad-minded and let the past go. (When it comes to inconsistency, women are right up there with men). New love is the key to recovering self-confidence." (213)

"The stars in the deep, cold heavens were like small cuts from an explosion; flowing out from them was silver blood, and if I'd had wings I'd have flown up there to kiss each one." (221)

"One condition necessary to be a truly great author is to abandon vanity, and learn how to be independent ina precarious profession. Don't become complacent of your status as an author; first of all you're a human being and a woman, and only third an author." (227)

"A swarm of affectionate, mutually dependent little fireflies, we devoured the wings of imagination and had little contact with reality. We were maggots feeding on the city's bones, but utterly sexy ones".

"By way of my vulva he had reached my vulnerable heart and then the intimacy behind my eyes. Since feminism began the hypnotic quality of this kind of sex has been demystified, but I discovered through my own body a woman's inherent flaw. I'd fooled myself by saying that it was all just a game - amusing for us both..." (232).

Her writing is vivid, dense, profound but light as a meringue puff or a butterfly at the same time. Her view of women is utterly compelling and acute. A lot of the quotes I've picked, Ive realised with a shock, are ones that particularly affect me in the stage I'm in. It would be interesting to read it againa few years later and see which phrases strike me then! She has far more lovely graceful descriptions - but their lyicism is lost separated from the text in this arbitrary manner. Not to exoticise but the oriental lightness, petiteness, compactness and poetry definitely comes into play.

I can see how this story may have creaed furore in the Chinese literary world. Sex, drugs, power, the alternative cultural underground that insidiously creates a pop culture that seeps into the brains of the youth through seemingly innocuous mediums is a frightening prospect for any totalitarian/purianical/orthodox society based on the ideology of unquestioned tradition and authority. I haven't read anoug contemporary Indian literature that's not ABCD, but I imagine a similar uproar would be created here. God, this country can't even accept pre-marital sex. Some star in South India mentioned it and she was forced to apologise and there were riots and these men are under the illusion that their women are pure. If they are so pure who the hell are all of YOU sleeping with? Give me a break. I won't opine if it's good or bad, but the fact is, it exists. Hormones are powerful enough to overcome any law. Do something about rape instead, government (insert not good word here). The story isn't classic. But in some ways it touched me a lot because having been in a progressive liberal arts college, I've come in contact with those types. And I've longed ot be one of them - see and do the world differently. Create change through questions, but realise that everything comes back into a slightly different variation of a timeless balance. Are we as women, as artists, as humans, struggling pointlessly against a hegemony whose sum is greater than all our parts? It cannot be. I should not be.

Read it.