If Hong Kong seems a little thin in its literary production in comparison with that of Mainland and Taiwan, Hong Kong is sufficiently interesting as one of the “Triple Cities” ( san cheng ), along with Shanghai and Taipei. The city as an imagined space, the success of women authors, the body as a cultural sign, and the rise of popular culture at the end of the twentieth century have all contributed to the enormous attention “the Triple Cities” have received from prominent critics and writers. Since its first edition in 2001, “the Triple Cities” have published three editions so far, having as editors famed writers and critics such as Wang Anyi, Chen Sihe, Xu Zidong, David Derwei Wang, and Huang Jinshu. It is within the social and cultural context of the international and / or post-colonial metropolis that women authors become controversial while negotiating their gender, cultural and national identities.
The other side of the rising popular culture is the increasing popularity of cultural studies in all these global Chinese locations, and literary criticism and cultural critique often complement each other in the analyses of a piece of work. The recently published Cultural Studies in China deals with a variety of topics, issues and themes including Chinese women’s writing, contemporary Chinese cinema, consumer culture, literature, and nationalist discourses.15 Specifically, cultural studies are particularly useful in light of criticisms on the controversial phenomenon of Beauty Writers. In fact, Shao Yanjun of Beijing University takes to task four Beauty Writers—Wei Hui and Mian Mian of the post-1970s generation as well as Chun Shu and Zhang Yueran of the post-1980s generation—for their conformity to the violence of commercial culture. Although Shao provides a thorough analysis of the role the publishing industry played in the cultural production of Beauty Writers, the post-1970s and 1980s, she is too ready to label these writers “crazy” (fengkuang ) and “morbid” ( bingtai),16 not distinguishing the differences between the label “Beauty Writers” and the writers themselves. While the label itself is frivolous and affected, the writers (beauties or not) and their (textual) bodies are far more complex and dangerous.