The semi-autobiographical novels Shanghai Babe (1999) by Weihui (b. 1973) and Sandbed (2003) by Ge Hongbing (b. 1968) are both set in Shanghai in 1999, and portray a globalizing city in the midst of commercialization and sexual liberation. The novels largely take place in bars, nightclubs, bathrooms and bedrooms, making the city a sexualized space of intoxication and temptation that functions as a playground for sensory experience. Unsurprisingly, Shanghai Babe and Sandbed both triggered heated debate among (online) readers, critics, and scholars. Whereas some regarded the novels’ depiction of hedonism and promiscuity as a blatant celebration of transnational consumer capitalism, others regarded it as a candid portrayal of tensions imposed on the individual by a changing society.

Shanghai Babe promptly alarmed the authorities, who labelled the novel a ‘slave to Western culture […] burning 40,000 copies and instructing the State-media to never mention the author or the book again because of its sexually charged content’, as Ian Weber (2002: 347) notes. Sandbed became subject to criticism from, in particular, the academic world. An established literary scholar himself, Ge Hongbing was criticized by his colleagues for succumbing to commercialism, displaying a lack of morality, and expressing a nihilist attitude to life. Nevertheless, the sensation turned both novels into instant bestsellers in China, and Shanghai Babe – translated into 34 languages and having sold over 6 million copies in 48 countries – is one of the most sold contemporary Chinese novels.

Shanghai Babe and Sandbed are arguably not so much worthy of note from a strictly literary perspective – e.g. their use of imagery, stylistic, and narrative inventiveness or sophistication – but rather representative of Chinese fiction published since the 1990s in which ‘the expressive “content” of literature was prominent and held to be of importance, and formal experimentation was in a comparatively “marginal” position’, in the words of Hong Zicheng (2009: 444). It is indeed the ‘content’ of these novels that caused their controversy and impact on the cultural field. In addition, the authors themselves became targets of attack and personally mingled in the public debates. Just like Nie Wei 聂伟 (2008: 151) remarks on the works of the female Post-1970, these novels are ‘no longer a purely literary phenomenon, but have become a socio-cultural event deserving to be discussed’.