Sex writer's tell-all online diary spurs debate in China

By Jim Yardley
The New York Times

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"I think my private life is very interesting," said the columnist, Mu Zimei, arching an eyebrow and tapping a Marlboro Light into an ashtray. "I do not oppose love, but I oppose loyalty. If love has to be based on loyalty, I will not choose love."

Mu Zimei is both reviled and admired, but she is not ignored. The country's most popular Internet site, Sina.com, credits her with attracting 10 million daily visitors. Another site, Sohu.com, says Mu Zimei is the name most often typed into its Internet search engine, surpassing one occasional runner-up, Mao Zedong.

Her celebrity, which exploded when she posted an explicit online account of her tryst with a Chinese rock star, first seemed to baffle government censors but now has drawn a familiar response. Her forthcoming book was banned last week. She has quit her magazine columnist job and halted her blog, or online diary.

Yet at a time when "Sex in the City" episodes are among the most popular DVDs in China, the Mu Zimei phenomenon is another example of the government's struggle to keep a grip on social change in China. Her writings have prompted a raging debate about sex and women on the Internet, where more people are writing blogs or arguing anonymously about a host of subjects in chat rooms and discussion pages.

"She does bring a huge impact on Chinese society," said Zeng Fuhu, a top editor at Sohu.com.

Mu said she never realized her online diary would be so widely noticed, or that it would grow into a national controversy. But she defended her right to sleep with as many men as she pleased — and to write about it.

"If a man does this," she said, "it's no big deal. But as a woman doing so, I draw lots of criticism."

Mu Zimei is the pen name of Li Li, who began working in 2001 as a feature writer at City Pictorial, a glossy magazine covering fashion and social trends. At the end of 2002, editors decided they wanted a sex columnist who could write about "real life" issues.

Mu said she was chosen because editors knew she was familiar with the subject.

Her first sexual experience — on April 30, 1999, she noted — led to an abortion and left her wary of men. She followed that with a "pretty normal boyfriend" before concluding she was not a one-man woman. "Personally, I felt I was suitable for temporary relationships," she said.

Her biweekly column in City Pictorial began in January. Her topics included recommendations on the best music for good lovemaking, the aphrodisiac benefits of eating oysters, and technical pointers on making love in a car. It was racy stuff for China, but hardly without precedent.

While writing her magazine column, she had hopped from man to man, sometimes hopping to two men at once, sometimes hopping to married men. Her topics, though, remained more thematic than explicit.

What changed everything was her decision in April to start her own online blog at a new Chinese site for personal diaries. She began writing explicitly about her encounters, or those of her friends, and on July 26 described her brief and apparently unsatisfying liaison outside a restaurant with a famous guitarist in a Guangzhou rock band.

The entry was posted at a popular online discussion board, spread among China's "netizens" like wildfire and was quickly picked up in the gossipy newspapers that feed China's growing celebrity culture. Eventually, she was featured in China's edition of Cosmopolitan magazine.

She also became a hot topic of debate in different Internet chat rooms and discussion sites. Was she an amoral hussy peddling pornography? Or was she a liberated woman?

"The most loathsome person in the world is not the woman who writes exotic words, but those sanctimonious men!" wrote one contributor to a discussion page.

"I despise Mu Zimei!" one critic countered. Another added, "This kind of diary will only serve as an excuse for more people who want to live a wild sexual life."

For months, the government had remained a bystander. But on Nov. 16, the state-run Beijing Evening News strongly criticized Mu and accused Sina.com of wrongly promoting her to attract more visitors.

Mu does not regard herself as peddling smut. She said her generation of Chinese grew up with little or no sex education. "Some learned it from videos," she said. "Why not from words?"

She also said the controversy had cramped her social life: she has, she said, been celibate for two weeks.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company