＂Shanghai Baby＂, Chinese Xiaozi, and ＂Pirated＂ Lifestyles in the Age of Globalization

The commonplace in the West is sensational in China-the Western readers may find the familiar lifestyles in the banned novel ”Shanghai Baby” confusing. Knowledge of the culture associated with the popularity of ”Shanghai Baby” in China becomes crucial for a proper understanding of the novel, which will eventually enrich one's understanding of the Cold-War confrontation between China and the West in a changed form in the age of globalization. ”Shanghai Baby” indicates a Chinese boom of xiaozi literature that emphasizes fashion, lifestyle, taste, and emotion in the leisure of everyday life. Body controls xiaozi experience at the expense of mind. This emphasis reflects China's breaking away from the grip of the grand narratives of its revolutionary, rural and collective past. It also showcases China reinventing an urban, de-centered, privatized everyday life. In the post-colonial, post-Cold-War world of today, tension between China's older ways of life and the globally transmitted lifestyles has replaced overt ideological warfare in the international arena. In today's China, pirated lifestyles boom with pirated DVDs and the advance of McWorld. The Chinese government's harsh oppression of ideological dissidents and leniency toward the market logic imported from the West assisted this boom.