Yan Yu: City/Gender

CYBER WRITING AS URBAN FASHION: THE CASE OF ANNI BAOBEI

XIN YANG

COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY

This paper explores the cultural implications of “cyber writing” in China as it is related to the urban fashion of the “petty bourgeois” (xiaozi) frenzy at the turn of the new century. I specifically examine Anni Baobei, one of the famous cyber writers, and her success as an urban xiaozi symbol through her cyber writing. Though Anni Baobei demystified the deceptively rosy fantasy of cyber/urban escape in her novella Goodbye Vivan, she herself nevertheless has been disseminated as a new, stylish urban figure in both cyber and urban spaces.

Cyber writing, or wangluo xiaoshuo, emerged as an exciting literary and cultural phenomenon in fin de siècle China. The internet expanded literary space and enabled more people to publicize their writings. The results challenged the conventional concepts of writing and writers. However, in China’s social context at the end of the 20^th century, internet access belonged only to socially and culturally privileged groups. Both cyberspace and cyber writing have become symbols of the “petty bourgeois” (xiaozi) or “middle class”, and the stylish escapist imagery has been peddled endlessly in commercial markets. Such imagery has also been deployed by the media to appeal to the collective aspiration for the good life at a time when China has been trying to integrate itself with the outside world economically.

As a famous cyber writer, Anni Baobei is an interesting case of how cyber writing circulated the xiaozi fantasy and became stylish itself. Fashionable and tempting, the space of internet fiction is nevertheless neither as emancipatory nor escapist as first appearances suggest, as the virtual cannot be separated from the reality. To demonstrate this, I will focus on Anni Baobei’s novella Goodbye Vivian (Gaobei Wei’an), in which the dialectic between urban- and cyber-space is delineated and a critical space is opened to demystify the deceptively rosy fantasy of the “petty bourgeois.” [1]

Cyber Writing and Petty Bourgeoisie

At the turn of the new century, the emergence of the cyberspace as a literary media was a new phenomenon in the Chinese literary field. Everybody who had access to the internet could post their writings on an online blog, discussion forum and in chat rooms. Such opportunities were traditionally limited to those who could secure scarce space in newspaper or journals. As a result, the internet provided an alternative space for writers to publicize their literary identity. A large group of “internet writing fellows” (xieshou) emerged. Some set up their own website, and communicated with the readers through bulletin boards, chat rooms and email. [2] Some had their writings and pictures posted on the internet. Some unconventional (linglei) writers could not secure a legitimate space in the traditional journals and publishing houses, so the virtual space became the only way for them to make their writings available to readers. [3] Some writers, such as Anni Baobei, were directly engaged in writing and publishing novels on the internet. These writers enjoyed certain popularity among people who regularly surfed the web. Their writings were widely read across the internet.

Cyberspace also offered an alternative path, a shortcut to some extent, for people to approach the mainstream literary space. As more people uploaded their writings online, publishers started to collect the writings from the internet and compiled them into books. Zhishi chubanshe (Knowledge publishing house) brought forth the “E-age” series. Chunfeng wenyi chubanshe (Spring breeze publishing house) tried to discover new novelists through the internet and compiled the “Youth, Love” series. Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe (Chinese Literature Association) also had published “selected works of the new age cyber fiction.”

As more and more writings appeared over the internet, a term “internet literature” (wangluo wenxue), or cyber writing, came into view. It is vague, however, what kind of writings can be labeled as internet fiction. According to Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi (History of contemporary Chinese literature), cyber writing includes three categories: the conventional literary works that are scanned and loaded onto the internet, writings that are enabled by technology (such as the hyperlink packed articles), and writings that are directly written for and publicized on the internet.[4]

Due to the media in which this writing was written and disseminated, that is the media of cyberspace, cyber writing has taken on a different cultural significance from traditional writing. The general views of cyberspace focus on the utopian and dystopian roles that the internet plays in people’s life. The utopian view emphasizes the anywhere/ anytime/anybody function of the technology-enabled cyberspace that breaks the boundaries of social framework and allows people to realize the impossible in real life. [5] The dystopian view-holders emphasize the cyberspace’s role in compartmentalizing individuals in real life. Cyberspace enables distant communication. Yet when individuals make contact through the computer network rather than face-to-face communication, they are partially isolated and disconnected from real life. [6] Kevin Robins demystified cyberspace and located it in the broader social and political contexts in which cyberspace is constructed, and argued that real life issues, such as racial, ethical, gender problems, still exist in cyberspace.[7]

These arguments approach cyberspace from different perspectives and offer theoretical frameworks on internet politics. Nevertheless, the “utopian, dystopian and heterotopian possibilities” of the cyberspace are situated in mature capitalist societies.[8] China, however, is a developing country where the market economy has only recently taken off. How should we understand the meaning of the internet in China where the unbalanced regional growth and wealth gap remain serious issues? What role does cyberspace play in the social context in which the socialist ideology still has a powerful influence? These issues are directly related to the imaginary of cyberspace in the urban reality and fictional narrative. To answer these questions, I would like to examine who had access to the internet in China at the turn of the century, when the internet just started booming.

According to the statistics collected by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in 2000, the internet users were 8,900,000, 6.8% of the total population. 85.8% of the internet users were young people between eighteen and thirty-five years old. Eighty-four percent had a college or above level of education. About 66 % of the internet surfers were concentrated in the economically developed big cities in coastal areas. [9]

From the statistics, we can see that those who can regularly use the internet constituted a small proportion of the population. The internet was available primarily to a group of urban-based people who belonged to a culturally, financially or socially elite class. The big cities have better access to the global opportunities in terms of profession, technology, and facilities. Most of the technical problems of the internet require higher level training, and the internet fee was relatively expensive, compared with the average income of the common people. Because of these basic requirements for internet users, it was natural that young people with higher income and college students with convenient school facilities became the major faction of the internet users. The former belonged to the petty bourgeoisie (xiaozi) and the latter to the potential members of the xiaozi.

The concept of xiaozi was not produced overnight. The emergence and popularity of xiaozi was related to three factors. The first was the de-revolutionized daily life. For the first part of the twentieth century, xiaozi was related to class struggle and revolutionary politics. It was in opposition to the peasants, the major force of the socialist revolution. The negative implication of xiaozi did not disappear until the economic development and the pursuit of wealth were legitimized in the reform era. The second factor was the newly emergent urban class, such as the white-collar professionals, which emerged due to new opportunities brought about by global capital and commercialization. The third factor was the circulation and consumption of global commodities. Before xiaozi became a popular term, the media was already constructing the imaginary of alternative lifestyles and consumption. The cultural input of Taiwan and Hong Kong songs, pulp fiction and TV soap opera were the prelude to xiaozi discourse. Meanwhile, magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Rayli and Elle, with high quality pages, introduced in detail concern with fashion, travel and interior decoration.

What exactly is petty bourgeoisie? The definition of xiaozi, just as the oft-mentioned term “middle class”, was quite ambiguous in China’s context. So far nobody gave a precise definition of xiaozi. Yet most people agreed that xiaozi shares some common cultural experience and consumption styles. Generally speaking, xiaozi refers to a taste, a lifestyle, an imagination and a conception rather than a real class in political sense. A xiaozi person likes a big metropolis like Shanghai, Beijing or Paris. S/he regularly uses the internet. S/he drinks coffee and likes French cuisine. His/her wardrobe is filled with brand-name clothes. S/he has Zhang Ailing’s books on her bookshelf. S/he watches European art performance and listens to Italian violin. [10] The cultural commodities that xiaozi identify with were mostly related to the transnational imagination. Consuming the globally circulated commodities confirmed xiaozi’s “taste,” identity and status, and enabled an imagined participation in global fashion. Nevertheless, most of the Chinese population are rural peasants and workers. Xiaozi occupies only a small percentage of the population. Yet the term is related to such concepts of “good, classy life” as cozy houses, cars, and fashion, and therefore implies a rosy ideal in the urban public. The media and the commercial market sold this ideal as an attractive “other.”

In the urban xiaozi discourse, the internet played a double role. It was a media space in which xiaozi fantasy had been enriched and circulated. It was also one of the many xiaozi imageries. There were “xiaozi channel,” “xiaozi forum” and “xiaozi fashion” on various websites. As I mentioned before, the internet was one of the facilities that xiaozi possessed. The ownership of and accessibility to the cyberspace was also a token of social and cultural status. The internet users were well-maintained new urbanites who could break away from various social restraints in the cyber communities. Being a member of the internet users correlated with the adoption of a stylish urban identity. The internet, just like cars or houses, belonged to the urban fashion (shishang), especially at the turn of the century, when the practical function of the internet, such as online shopping and banking, was yet to be developed.

Because cyberspace offered a rosy illusion, a seemingly free community, it became the main escapist fantasy, which provided the imagined mobility and communication, yet unintentionally kept urbanites away from the reality around them. The ambiguous balance between the cyber illusion and urban reality became an intriguing topic, which is best embodied in Goodbye Vivian written by Anni Baobei in 2000. The story is about a man’s displaced, and therefore tragic, fantasy in the dual reality of the urban and the cyber. Goodbye Vivian was typical cyber writing since it was originally written and publicized on the internet. It was also typical xiaozi text as it is filled with a detailed description of the stylish urban lifestyle.

Anni Baobei: xiaozi in Cyber/urban Space

Since both the internet writers and readers were in some sense xiaozi, the cyberspace writings were developed to meet the cultural and emotional needs of this group of people. This explains why Anni Baobei’s online novels were very popular among internet surfers. Nothing better embodied the relation between the internet and xiaozi imagery than Anni Baobei and her initial online writings. Not only are the protagonists in Anni Baobei’s writings the stylish city dwellers who frequent shopping malls and office buildings: the modern urban spaces, but the writer herself displays good taste in her choice of music, ice cream and casual dress.

Anni Baobei, the cyber/pen name of Li Jie, was always related with “internet writing.” The transliterated name, “Ann” (anni) plus “Baby” (baobei), suggests a sense of exoticness, cuteness and feminineness. Anni Baobei started her writing career online. Her novels, such as Goodbye Vivian and Flowers at the Distant Shore (Bi’an hua) are full of typical xiaozi imageries. A girl would always wear a white cotton dress, with her bare feet in sneakers and silver bracelets on her wrist. A woman would be seen in short-sleeved, embroidered silk qipao and her shoulders are wrapped in a pure wool scarf with tassels. The coffee is not ordinary coffee; it is either cappuccino with cinnamon or Italian double espresso. The residence is not an ordinary house; its architecture is European and it is landscaped with parasol trees. The car is not merely a vehicle of transportation; it is a black BMW with a special plate designating its owner as foreign.

Anni Baobei admitted that she has more passion for materials than people.[11] Her novels can be read as handbook for xiaozi, teaching people what is really “classy” and how to have “taste.” The online discussion on Anni Baobei goes, “Wanna be a xiaozi? Read Anni Baobei’s writings.”[12] The xiaozi materials, mood and sentiment, constructed in the fictional narrative, were popularized through cyberspace and attracted many readers online. When Goodbye Vivian was printed as a book, it was well received in the market. Within two years, the book had been printed twice.[13] Anni Baobei herself also became a cultural code, a young (post)modern urban woman whose identity involved many imaginary that urbanites admired: a free lance writer (which hints freedom and good income in her case) and elegant connoisseur (which suggests good taste).

Goodbye Vivian is on cyber romance. White-collar professional Lin is attracted by a somewhat mysterious girl named Vivian in an online chat room. In the subway station of the city where he lives, he meets a girl in black T-shirt whom he believes is Vivian. Meanwhile, he and his colleague Qiao have an affair out of loneliness. For a while, his cyber/urban, virtual/real, “romances” are balanced. He keeps a vague good feeling towards both cyber Vivian and urban Vivian, and detaches himself from his real affairs with Qiao. The balance is destroyed when Qiao becomes pregnant and Lin refuses to make any commitment. Qiao commits suicide out of desperation. Her death drives Lin to question himself and seek out the true identities of both cyber/urban Vivian. The elegant subway girl, the urban Vivian, turns out to be a drug-addict, a mistress of a married rich man. The online Vivian reveals the truth that she lives in a faraway city and she does not want to meet Lin in person because she wants to keep the beautiful feeling of their cyber relationship forever. Lin’s cyber/urban fantasy collapses. He has to leave both Vivians as well as the city he is living in.

The two “Vivians” embody the dialectical relation between the real and the unreal, the nearness and the distance, symbolizing a cyber/urban fantasy as well as objects of male desire. The cyber Vivian provides a virtual connection to the distant places, a possibility of mobility and a potential virtual adventure. The male protagonist’s internet romance moves him away from his immediate reality. The urban Vivian, a girl often seen in the subway, entices the male character to explore the metropolis. The urban scenes, such as the subway, office building, coffee house and apartment, constitute each individual scene in the narrative, highlighting the melancholy urbanites and their ambiguous desire. In Lin’s life, the two Vivian are more real in his self-absorbed reality. His is obsessed with his daily online chat with one Vivian and his urban encounters with another one. The loneliness, melancholy and sentiment as well as various modern urban imageries are the trademark of Anni Baobei’s writings. They are the symbols that the urban petty bourgeoisie people identify with both culturally and emotionally.

Since neither Vivian is real, the male fantasy of a cyber/urban Vivian cannot be fulfilled. The pessimistic ending demystifies a cyber/urban fantasy: as the protagonist pursues the intangible, he loses what is at hand, and eventually, his whole city reality. The mental attachment to the distant “other” enabled by the cyberspace and detachment from the reality were the common attributes of urban xiaozi. As one critic commented, what xiaozi liked were “past tense” and “future tense.”[14] The former include some deliberately created nostalgia, such as Shanghai of the 1930s, when Shanghai then was related to the westernization; and the latter refers to the aspiration to share in the grandeur of economically advanced foreign countries, embodied by foreign-brand commodities. It is the future tense because the expensive consumption was not common at a time when the majority of the Chinese population were still concerned with the basic problems of living. “Xiaozi know what is happening in Paris and New York better than what is happening around them.” commented Li Jingze, vice-editor-in-chief of People’s Literature. [15] Xiaozi’s taste was built on the imagination of “other” and the obsession of self in the imagined community. What they ignored was the “here” and “now” reality. Therefore, xiaozi was criticized as narcissistic, self-centered, pretentious and vain.

Nevertheless, xiaozi still remains an attractive image in the media and the commercial market. Starbuck’s Coffee is seen on the corners of major Chinese cities. Foreign-branded commodities, such as Haagen-Dazs, sell well. Online romance has become increasingly popular as many people place their personals on the web in hopes of meeting a future date. Anni Baobei let her protagonist Lin fail as an urban xiaozi, since he is too obsessed with the unreal. Yet Anni Baobei herself is very successful as a token of xiaozi. At least, that is how she and her cyber writings are packaged and sold in the urban market.

Originally one of the cyberspace celebrities, Anni Baobei soon surpassed other online writing fellows. Her writing is seen as both alternative literature and as an attempt to explore the social imagination of an elegant, romantic “other.” [16] She took advantage of the internet and became a successful symbol of the new urban petty bourgeoisie woman. Without any commercial promotion or political propaganda, her writings were well received by internet surfers. Her cyberspace writing won her attention from the publishers. Many of her online pieces have since been compiled into books, and she also began to write novels in the traditional way. Her success in cyberspace turned out to have real world consequences on her life and career. Her current identity as both an online e-journal editor and a conventional free lance writer proves that the virtual is not only related to reality, but also capable of changing the reality outside of it.

Selected Bibliography

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Ah Mei. “Xiaozi wuyu: bushi jiao ni zuo xiaozi” (Petty bourgeois story: not a guide to

becoming petty bourgeois). 8 October 2004. http://www.qdgdb.com/BaiWei/20041008/105642.htm (accessed December 28, 2004).

China Internet Network Information Center. “Zhongguo hulianwang fazhan

zhuangkuang tongji baogao” (Statistical report on internet development in China),

July 2000. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/download/2003/10/13/91748.pdf

(accessed December 24, 2004).

Elwes, Catherine. “Gender and Technology.” Variant 15 (1993), 64-65.

Featherstone, Mike and Roger Burrows, eds. Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk.

London: Sage, 1995.

Robin, Kevin. “Cyberspace and the World We Live in.” In

Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk, ed. Mike Featherstone and Roger Burrows, 136-155. London: Sage, 1995.

Li Gan, Xiong Jialiang and Cai Shuxian, eds. Zhongguo dangdai wenxueshi (History

of contemporary Chinese literature). Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2004.

Li Zhengliang. “Taipei, Shanghai he Zhongguo xiaozi” (Taipei, Shanghai and Chinese

petty bourgeoisie). http://www.srcs.nctu.edu.tw/CSA2005/papers/0108_A1_1_Li.pdf (accessed December 10, 2004).

Mao Jian. “Xiaozi shi zenyang liancheng de” (How petty bourgeoisie is tempered). http://www.cul-studies.com/asp/list2.asp?id=1375&writer=maojian (accessed December 30, 2004).

Sherman, Barrie and Phil Judkins. Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell: Visual

Reality and its implications. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992.

Zheng Guoqing. “Anni Baobei, ‘xiaozi’ wenhua yu wenxue changyu de

bianhua” (Anni Baobei, “petty bourgeois” culture and the changing literary field). Dangdai zuojia pinlun (Criticism on contemporary writers) 6

(2003): 74-79.