Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
first writers from the one-child generation (born post-1980) to attract national attention
have emerged. The work of Han Han and Guo Jingming will never win any literary prizes
(indeed, both authors have been accused of plagiarism, or of merely being the front for
teams of ghost writers), but their tales of urban youth have made them media icons and
the best-selling authors in China.
SEX & THE CITY
Long a taboo subject in the arts, and in Chinese society in general, sex has become one of the abiding themes of
modern Chinese literature. The former poet Zhang Xianliang's
Half of Man is Woman
(1985), translated into
English by Martha Avery, was a hugely controversial exploration of sexuality and marriage in contemporary
China that went on to become an international bestseller. Zhang followed that with the clearly autobiographical
Getting Used to Dying
(1989), about a writer's new-found sexual freedom (also translated by Martha Avery).
The novel was banned in China until 1993.
In recent years, though, it has been female authors who have most successfully mined sexuality as a theme.
The provocative
Beijing Doll
(2004) by Chun Shu, translated by Howard Goldblatt, is written by a high school
dropout who lives a life of casual sex, drink and drugs. The novel reveals the emergence of a shopping mall and
punk-music-obsessed teenage tribe unimaginable in Běijīng even a few years before.
Annie Wang's
The People's Republic of Desire
(2006) also holds nothing back with its candid exploration of
sexuality in modern Běijīng, while Anni Baobei (real name Li Jie) writes hugely popular short stories and nov-
els, such as
Lotus
(2006), that feature alienated young women caught up in dysfunctional or abusive relation-
ships.
