Women and Sexuality in Wei Hui's Shanghai Baby

As we know that women are always related with sexuality, many people use this theme as a main topic of their novels, articles or any other literatures; included Wei Hui – one of the controversial Chinese feminist writer – who put women and sexuality as her main topic in her forbidden novel, the Shanghai Baby.
Having lived in a state of quasi-servitude for over two thousand years, Chinese women began to demand liberation from their serfdom within the family clan complex. They sought to outlaw arranged marriages, selling of wives and children, infanticides, and the practice of binding feet begun in the 10th century.
According to Bettina L. Knapp, “The establishment of girl’s schools was one of the most significant steps in China toward the acknowledgement of women as individuals rather than mere appendages of the husband and family, or as concubines, courtesans, or prostitutes.” (Bettina L. Knapp, 1992:80).
More and more men and women in China these days are having sex before marriage, creating a new youth sex culture based on romance, leisure, and free choice. In Shanghai Baby, Coco (the main character) is having sex and living with her new impotent boyfriend without marriage (Wei Hui, 2001:3-5). Almost all of unmarried women in the modern China think about sex when they are in the same room with men. They don’t think they need love, but just a man.
The Chinese themselves describe these changes as an “opening up” in response to foreign influences and increased westernization. With many games of seduction, young men and women in China balance pragmatism with romance, lust with love, and seriousness with play, collectively constructing and individually coping with a new culture based on market principles.
In Shanghai Baby, Coco is a woman graduated from the Fudan University, so she is well educated. But Coco is one of the Chinese women who have many love adventure stories with different men (Wei Hui, 2001:34). Many of the Chinese women see that having sexual ‘strength’ weak masculinity implies a surplus of female sexuality, a situation more denigrating to men than women.

Why is it Shanghai? Shanghai is the one where people imagine the real sexuality of the Chinese women. Shanghai is far more westernized and sophisticated than much of the rest of the country. So of course Shanghai is the perfect example for the picture of the lives and loves of avant-garde youth as representative of the whole country of China.
As a semi-autobiographical novel, Shanghai Baby, Wei Hui also told her admiration to Shanghai trough Coco’s taught that Shanghai is the fun-loving city, a unique Asian city (Wei Hui, 2001:25).
Since the 1930s Shanghai has preserved a culture where China and the West met ultimately. The Shanghai women who were also the pre-communist Shanghainese were the prostitute and the film actress, associated with a free but co modified sexuality and a modern moral sensibility. Farrer said that even during the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai girls found ways to dress better than women in other cities to attract their opposite gender (Farrer, 2002:84).
“Shanghai Baby”, this title is enough to make us know that this novel told about a Shanghai woman with all of her western life and sexuality. The mindset changing of sexuality and virginity takes a big part inside this novel. There are a lot of parts which show us the explicit sexual seduction by the main characters. All of that part informs us about the change of the sexual life style in Shanghai which are:
1) The new understanding of virginity
Coco said to Spider that become and claim ourselves as a virgin is shameless.
“Nowadays, virgin after something, too. Didn’t you know?”
I (Coco) teased. “And any girl who could say that sound shameless.” (Wei Hui, 2001:20)
It shows us the distinction of the ancient Chinese norm of premarital virginity for women. Young Shanghai men and women increasingly shared a new understanding that sex no longer constituted grounds for demanding marriage, as it once had.
2) The new understanding of marriage
Zhu Sha (Coco’s cousin) divorced from her “perfect” husband just because she felt not to be loved passionately.
……, and she (Zhu Sha) suddenly realized that she herself had never loved. And a woman nearing thirty who has never loved is apathetic thing. (Wei Hui, 2001:52).
It shows clearly that the arranged marriage paradigm does no longer exist in the urban Shanghai people life. Today the Shanghai youth easily choose to divorce if they fell they aren’t loved.
3) The free expression of the individual sexual activity.
In some parts of Shanghai Baby show us explicitely the sexual activity of the characters.
a) Coco’s masturbation.
Fingers furtively rubbed the swollen spot between my legs. Orgasm cam………the true flavor of my flesh. (Wei Hui, 2001:42).
b) Coco’s affair with Mark, a German seductive man.
I (Coco) closed my eyes and listened to him moan a sentence………I climaxed with a sharp cry. (Wei Hui, 2001:63).
Shanghai Baby is a novel which performs well the new free expression of the Shanghai women in doing their sexual activity. There is no taboo anymore to have yourself a sexual pleasure (through masturbation) or get climax and express it in screaming.
4) The development of the sexual disorientation among the youth.
According to Rani Kawale, the urban space offer numerous opportunities and possibilities for dissident sexualities to flourish (Rani K, 2003:181).
Lesbian, homosexual and even bisexual are mentioned in Shanghai Baby. It shows how the modernization and westernization has brought a big change in the people mindset of the sexual gender.
Madonna (Tian-Tian and Coco’s friend) is the example of bisexual. She had a relationship with Ah Dick, her young boyfriend, but also felt a strange passion with Coco.
Her (Madonna) cold, clumsy hands clung to mine (Coco)………her fingers trembled (Wei Hui, 2001:123).