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OCTOBER 23, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 16

The Pen is Nastier Than the Sword
China's great literary catfight pits the salacious, no-holds-barred prose of one bad-girl writer against that of another

Literary infighting is rarely as gripping as it has been in China this year. The battle royale between Mian Mian, 29, and Wei Hui, 27—both apparently vying for recognition as China's "bad girl of letters"—has captivated even those who have not read their remarkably similar and steamy novels about sex, drugs and dropout chic. In April, Beijing banned both books. Soon U.S. readers will have a chance to see why, when both are published in the States. Here is an advance look, in the first English-language excerpts from the novels.

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Madonna's Marriage: Extract from Shanghai Baby, by Wei Hui


EXTRACT FROM CANDY
By MIAN MIAN

LAMENT FOR LINGZI
When it rains I often think of Lingzi. Lingzi once told me about a poem that went: "Rain falling in the spring,/ Is Heaven and Earth making love." These lines were perplexing to us, but Lingzi and I spent a lot of time trying to unravel various problems. We might be trying to figure out germs, or the fear of heights, or even a phrase like "love is the fantasy you have smoking your third cigarette." Lingzi was my high school desk mate, and she had a face like a white sheet of paper. Her pallor was an attitude, a sort of trance.

Those days are still fresh in my mind. I was a melancholy girl who loved to eat chocolate and did poorly in school. I collected candy wrappers, and I would use these, along with boxes that had once contained vials of medicine, to make sunglasses.

Soon after the beginning of our second year of high school, Lingzi's hair started to look uneven, with a short clump here, a longer hank there. There were often scratch marks on her face. Lingzi had always been extremely quiet; but now her serenity had become strange. She told me she was sure that one of the boys in our class was watching her. She said he gave her "steamy" looks—"steamy" was the word she used—and I remember exactly how she said it. She was constantly being encircled by his gaze, she said. It made her think all kinds of unwholesome, selfish thoughts. She insisted that it was absolutely out of the question for her to let anything distract her from her studies. Lingzi believed that this boy was watching her because she was pretty. This filled her with feelings of shame. Since being pretty was the problem, she decided to make herself ugly, convinced that this would set her back on the right path. She was sure that if she were ugly, then no one would look at her anymore; and if nobody was looking at her, then she could concentrate on her studies. Lingzi said she had to study hard, since, as all of us knew, the only guarantee of a bright future was to gain admission to a top university.

Throughout the term Lingzi continued to alter her appearance in all kinds of bizarre ways. People quit speaking to her. In the end most of our classmates avoided her altogether.

Then, one day, Lingzi didn't come to school. And from then on, her seat remained empty. The rumor was that she had violent tendencies. Her parents had had to tie her up with rope and take her to a mental hospital.

I sneaked into the hospital to see her. One Saturday afternoon, wearing a red waterproof sweat suit, I slipped in through the iron mesh fence of the mental hospital. In truth, I'm sure I could have used the main entrance. Although it was winter, I brought Lingzi her favorite Baby-Doll brand ice cream, along with some preserved olives and salted dried plums. I sat compulsively eating my chocolates, while she ate her ice cream and sweet olives. All of the other patients in the ward were adults. I did most of the talking, and whenever I finished saying something, no matter what the subject was, Lingzi would laugh. Lingzi had a clear, musical laugh, just like bells ringing. But on this day her laughter simply struck me as weird.

What did Lingzi talk about? She kept repeating the same thing over and over: "The drugs they give you in this hospital make you fat. Really, really fat."

Some time later I heard that Lingzi had left the hospital. Her parents made a series of pleas to the school, asking the teachers to inform everyone that Lingzi was not being allowed any visitors.

One rainy afternoon, the news of Lingzi's death reached our school. People said that her parents had gone out one day, and a boy had taken advantage of their absence. He had brought Lingzi a bouquet of fresh flowers. This was 1986, and there were only two flower stands in all of Shanghai, both newly opened. That night, Lingzi slashed her wrists in the bathroom of her family's apartment. People said that she died standing.

From Candy, by Mian Mian. Copyright (c) 2000 by Mian Mian. English-language translation to be published by Little, Brown. Translated by Andrea Lingenfelter. Originally published in China in 2000. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown

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the arts ALSO IN YOUNG CHINA: THE ARTS
Singing the Blues: Why Chinese rock doesn't rock

Looking Inward: Today's artists are beginning to explore individual rather than collective themes

Riot Grrrls: Mian Mian and Wei Hui face off

Literary Boom: Youth fiction is far more varied than the sex-and-drugs glam-lit that nabs headlines

What's Hot: The fads du jour among urban youth

Father and Son: Two generations of filmmakers reflect on their differences—which turn out to be less than they had feared


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