the lower body 321or avant-garde types of literature.^18 Both poetry and fiction have since
thoroughly problematized their status as high art. Anti-intellectualism,
the celebration of “hooligan” (⌕⇧) lifestyles and the exploration of
sexuality beyond current convention are manifestations of the shock
value of literature that has foregrounded the city and the body as
prominent themes, during the 1980s and especially since the 1990s.
For fiction, scholars such as Robin Visser and Lu Jie have shown that
the city is a site of both glamor and ugliness, and of the alienation and
anxiety that modernity and globalization bring.^19 The (sexual) body
becomes extra significant in women’s writing, because of age-old sexist
bias coupled with traditional biographist views of literature that equate
the speaker in the literary work with the historical person of the au-
thor. All this takes place against a backdrop of the sweeping commer-
cialization of culture and the arts.
Going on from there, let’s compare Lower Body poetry with fic-
tion by the equally controversial women authors known as Glamlit
Writers or Beauty Writers (㕢ཇᆊ), specifically Weihui’s Shanghai
Babe (Ϟ⍋ᅱ䋱, 1999) and Mian Mian’s Candy (㊪, 2000), with refer-
ence to research by scholars including Megan Ferry, Sabina Knight,
Sandra Lyne and Kong Shuyu.^20 There are similarities in that Yin
Lichuan’s, Shen Haobo’s and Weihui’s allegiance with youth culture
and their anti-intellectual and “hooligan” claims are complicated by
the strategic downplaying of their own formal training—Mian Mian
is the only one without a degree from a prestigious university—and by
the fact that their readers far exceed the scope of youth culture and
include many intellectuals and few hooligans. This brings to mind the
ambiguities in Hooligan or Thug Literature (⌕⇧᭛ᄺǃ⮲ᄤ᭛ᄺ)
godfather Wang Shuo’s relation to high culture, as noted by Wang
Jing, even if it would have been unrealistic to expect a seriously hooli-
gan readership for Wang Shuo’s work to begin with.^21
Neither the Lower Body nor Glamlit fiction make sexual passion
a substitute for political, Maoist-revolutionary passion, an operation
identified by Wendy Larson in Anchee Min’s Red Azalea.^22 In the work
(^18) Yeh 2003: 525, Knight 2003a: 528-529.
(^19) Visser 2002, Lu 2004.
(^20) Weihui 1999, Mian Mian 2000, Ferry 2003, Knight 2003b, Lyne 2002, Kong
2005: ch 4. 21
Wang Jing 1996, chapter 7: e.g. 284.
(^22) Larson 1999.