Although we are taught not to judge a book by its cover, the covers of Shanghai Baby (1999) by Wei Hui (b. 1970) and Sandbed (2003) by Ge Hongbing (b. 1968) might move one to agree with cultural critic Zhu Dake's qualification of Ge Hongbing as ‘a male Wei Hui’. The first thing that catches the eye is the women, with their similarly shaped eyes and mouths, slim faces, and half-naked bodies. Besides the suggestive titles (‘sandbed’ (沙床) seems to be a homophonic pun for ‘go to bed’ (上床)), the covers also seduce the reader with catchy sentences on love, sex and the city, such as ‘A physical and spiritual experience from a woman to other women […] an alternative love story set in the secret garden of Shanghai’ (Shanghai Baby), and ‘A mournful love experience; a sorrowful life story […] Shanghai: my party of life and death, my secret grand banquet’ (Sandbed).

The semi-autobiographies indeed share many similarities. In Shanghai Baby we follow the writer CoCo (after Coco Chanel) and her love affairs with the impotent drug addict Tian Tian and the married German businessman Mark; Sandbed tells the story of a terminally ill Christian, Professor Zhuge, and his love affairs with, among others, the student Xiaomin, widow Pei Zi and fitness instructor Luo Xiao. Both are set in Shanghai in 1999, and depict a globalising city in the midst of commercialisation and sexual liberation. Both portray hedonist characters delving into the modernising city, leading a cosmopolitan life of transnational sexual adventure and enjoying Western cultural products. Both largely take place in shopping streets, bars, nightclubs, bathrooms and bedrooms, making the city a sexualised space of intoxication and temptation that functions as a playground for sensory experience.

Contrary to the other works of art discussed in this volume, Shanghai Baby and Sandbed are evidently not political and/or critical works; rather than disrupting the spectacle of Shanghai – predominantly characterised by consumerism and frantic growth – they reflect the spectacle on many levels, as I will show in this chapter. ‘Shanghai Baby is spectacle,’ Harry Kuoshu indeed argues, ‘showing the advance of the McWorld in China, and indicating how a market-transmitted lifestyle is mounting the centre stage’ (2005: 97).