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'Naughty Mu' Banned By
China Censors

By Richard Spencer in Beijing
12-9-3


China's "yellow censor" has shown there are limits to new-found social freedoms by banning a book describing the encounters of the country's best-known sex diarist.
 
The exploits of Mu Zimei, a 25-year-old "rock chick" from the southern city of Guangzhou, have become the internet's hottest property.
 
Since the "blog" or web diary in which she recorded her numerous boyfriends and one-night stands was discovered, she has been analysed by sociologists, attacked by state propaganda and interviewed by magazines.
 
She became an overnight internet sensation with her description of an encounter behind a restaurant with a well-known pop star.
 
But the publication of a collection of extracts and musings on lost love has proved the final straw, despite the government's acceptance of a wider degree of sexual freedom for women than China has seen for centuries.
 
Her publishers have been ordered to withdraw it by the office dealing with matters of taste, known popularly as the yellow banning room.
 
Mu has been transferred from the gossip magazine where she wrote a sex advice column to another department of the same company producing in-house company newsletters.
 
Last week her publishers, 21st Century Publishing House, were told not to distribute her book, though copies were already on the streets.
 
A spokesman claimed yesterday that the company had made the decision itself. But Mu said she had been told the yellow office had been "irritated".
 
"I can't see any reason why a book written by a good girl like me could annoy high-ranking central government officials," she said. "It's ridiculous.
 
"I heard they decided my book is of low quality and only caters for lowly interests. I only thought that my book demonstrated my lifestyle, which is quite common to today's young people."
 
 
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/09/w
blog09.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/09/ixworld.html
 

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