, Reuters reported. "Shanghai Baby" went on sale in the United States last month.
"I believe that it was quite a silly thing. It is a very cute love story book that got turned into a big deal," Wei Hui told Reuters in a recent interview.
"They think that this book shows the dark side of Shanghai. But for the Chinese authorities and the Chinese readers, they don't want to see it. It is like airing your dirty laundry. But this is not dirty laundry," she said.
"Shanghai Baby" is a semiautobiographical book about a 25-year-old Chinese writer named Coco who falls in love with a charming, impotent young man with a drug problem.
The couple travels among the fast crowd of Shanghai. They go club-hopping, head to the hottest parties and Coco strikes up an affair with a married German expatriate.
The book struck a cord with young Chinese urban readers who were looking for a voice for their generation. But Chinese state media slammed Wei Hui for being "decadent, debauched and a slave of Western culture."
A student of Chinese literature, Wei Hui said she wanted to forge a new language in the book that would embrace ancient Chinese poetry, Western literature and the hip buzzwords of Shanghai's youth culture.
And the story was to be told through the voice of an independent and strong Chinese woman.
"The young Chinese women are socially and sexually liberated. They are so different, and their voice is strong and fresh," Wei Hui said. "Shanghai in my books looks like it could be anywhere in the West."
The port city of Shanghai was famous in the 1920s and 1930s as a finance center as well as for its fashion, vice and wild night clubs. Prostitution, gambling and drugs completed a picture of extravagance and immorality that largely came to an end with Mao Zedong's 1949 Communist victory.
But the wild times have returned in the past 10 years, brought on by the city's rapid growth and reinvention of itself as a financial hub.
"Shanghai Baby" is sold in about 20 countries and has done well in Japan, where it sold about 200,000 copies. The U.S. publication is from Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., which rolled out an initial printing of 25,000 copies.
Wei Hui, the daughter of a Chinese army officer, lives in Shanghai and studied literature at the city's elite Fudan University. Although her name and works cannot be mentioned in China, she writes a popular weekly column for a newspaper in Hong Kong.
Wei Hui said she calls Shanghai her permanent home but she knows that her next book is all but certain to be banned in China.
Wei Hui said she will stay in the United States for about half a year as a visiting scholar at New York's Columbia University and she is gathering material for her next book, which also will likely be told through the voice of an independent young Chinese woman.
Wei Hui is said that she will have to get used to publishing her works overseas because Chinese authorities have erased her works and name from official mention. The author is a hot topic on Chinese Internet sites and thousand pirated copies of her book have been downloaded on the Web.
"I still keep my reputation in China. It is like a legend. I believe that I am still in people's memory," she said.
Banned Chinese author brings Shanghai steam to US (2001-10-17)Chinese Censors Create a Star (2000-07-09)Racy ``Shanghai Baby'' stirs controversy, incurs ban (2000-06-02)
