The novel by Muzimei "The Ashes of Love."

"If you want to get an interview, make love to me first. The longer you can last in bed, the longer the interview will be," said ascendant Internet sex writer Muzimei to a male journalist who wanted to approach her for an interview.

The call to Muzimei finally got through after a string of busy lines, answered by a sweet voice like that of a young student, which seemed not to have any relation to words such as "wild sex." She agreed to give a "short and simple" interview.

Who is she?

Muzimei, who lives in Guangzhou, has continuously posted details of her sexual experiences and stories on blogcn.com (on-line diary) since June 19 this year, named "Ashes of Love."

The New York Times ran a story about her on November 30, describing her as a "25-year-old sex columnist whose beat is her own bedroom."

When she was not working, she frequently visited bars at night to meet guys, according to the account given in her own column.

Her life was full of one-night-stand experiences. She once refused to disclose the number of men she had had sex with, although the New York Times reported she said she had slept with more than 70 men.

She didn't hide the men's names in her diary. One of them was Wang Lei, a relatively unknown rock star. She mentioned their session of love-making in the open air.

Cost of fame

She has to shut down her web-site on blogcn.com because more people were logging on than the server could support.

"I don't want to make my on-line diary into a kind of public reading," Muzimei said to the Shanghai Star. "It was a diary for a limited number of audience, while my current popularity was created by the media. It's all due to their hype and tricks, nothing to do with me. They entertained themselves."

She herself, however, was a media professional, with the real name Li Li, a columnist and editor for a Guangzhou magazine called City Pictorial.

"I was persuaded to quit my job with the magazine about a fortnight ago," Li said.

She has since started a new job for another media organization.

"I'm very busy now and I have no time to write my on-line diary at the moment," she said.

Her book, priced at 20 yuan (US$2.40) and collecting her diary, poems and short novels (excessively detailed sexual descriptions were deleted), was said to have been banned.

It was published by the Nanchang-based 21st Century Publishing House in East China's Jiangxi Province.

Li said that the contract was settled before she became famous.

"I've always longed to publishing a book of my own. They read my columns and other stories and we signed the contract long ago," she said.

Her private life seemed to have been intervened. "I was invisible before this, but now everybody is looking at me."

Although she told the New York Times that the controversy had cramped her social life, she had, she said, been celibate for two weeks.'' Li told the Shanghai Star that her fame didn't really scare the men around her.

"Some of them support what I have done," Li said. "Guys are not like my belongings that I should always own and keep in my drawer. My life is just different from that of ordinary people who are managing their loves and marriages more traditionally."

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