Results tagged “weihui”

Here, Shanghai, were your favourite stories for the year 2007:

Will this finally be the end of the Shanghai clique? The death of Huang Ju, a former Shanghai mayor and party secretary and now former member of the Standing Committee of the Politboro, spells trouble for Jiang Zemin's already waning influence on the Hu administration. Having ascended to the role of vice premier of the State Council in 2003, Mr Huang had long served as the figurehead for the "Shanghai Clique", a group of politicians joined by their love of all things Shanghai (and Jiang Zemin). Were Raekwon the Chef asked to sum up the situation, he might say something like this: "The Shanghai Clique forms like Voltron and Huang Ju was the head."

We are all sorry for Wei Hui's misery, but we still loathe her notorious Shanghai Baby—exactly what in this book attracts people? A slutty Shanghainese girl has an affair with disloyal married German man? C'mon, like these kind of stories aren't rampant in Shanghai? When we learned this book was adapted into a movie, we felt even worse. This Shanghaiist, as a Shanghainese woman, thinks this trash movie is going to make the reputation of Shanghainese women even worse, urgh! But when someone threw us this link today, we are shocked to see how well Bai Ling (we don't like her either) fits this character, Wei Hui's book and Bai Ling's acting, indeed a match made in heaven!

The end, at least, as an author. Recent news reports revealed that the erstwhile sexual socialite and author Wei Hui (卫慧) the author of the once titillating novel Shanghai Baby (上海宝贝) suffered a major spinal injury that left her in a coma for over 20 days and was in danger of permanent paralysis. The article, in Chinese, is not clear about what happened, but says that it was an accident that occurred in Shanghai while Wei was out "playing," which might mean partying or just out on the town.

We're sure her London-based publisher is happy to hear this. Zhou Wei Hui, author of banned-by-Beijing Shanghai Baby, admits that she self-censored her latest book Marrying Buddha (Shanghaiist review) because the Chinese government let her back in the country.

Wei Hui's debut into the literary world six years ago was marked by controversy, furore, criticism and ultimately commercial success -- Shanghai Baby was banned by the Beijing Government in April 2000 for its worship of Western culture and blatant representation of female sexuality and its author denounced as "decadent, debauched and a slave of foreign culture." Subsequently, 40,000 copies of the novel were publicly burnt, Hui's editor was fired and Shanghai Baby predictably shot to the top of best-seller lists around the world.