Wei
Hui

Wei Hui was born in 1973 in Ningbo near Shanghai. In 1990 she was among the first students compelled to complete a full year of compulsory training at a military school, following the student unrests. It was at this time that she began to write. Wei Hui studied Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, graduating in 1995. Afterwards she worked in various professions, including as a journalist and a television editor.
Wei Hui belongs to the younger and more liberated generation of Chinese authors, who have proved controversial in breaking with the tradition of collectivism and state propagated moral dictates; not only do they unashamedly and comprehensively portray individuals oscillating between the desire for life and the fear of existence, but they also discuss sexuality openly.
The overriding compulsions of the protagonist in Wei Hui’s semi-autobiographical first novel »Shanghai baobei« (1999; Eng. »Shanghai Baby«, 2001) are inebriation and hedonism.