Banned and burned in China,SHANGHAIBABYis the story of a young urban woman, Coco, who waits tables by day and explores Shanghai s intoxicating underbelly by night. While trying desperately to write a novel:so that she might "burst upon the city like fireworks," Coco falls in love with an impotent and drug-addicted Chinese artist, but also begins a wistful affair wit! a rich, married Western businessman with a penchant for seduction With her candid yet poetic exploration of the outer limits of a woman's sexuality, Wei Hui reads like a modern-day Anais Nin, Her provocative portrayal of men and women in cultural transition astonishes, with its exposure of the unacknowledged new China and of a generation determined to burst free.