EVER since JD Salinger’s 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” became world famous, the disaffected protagonist Holden Caulfield has become an icon for teenage rebellion.

So much so that many later novels that deal with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss and connection are labeled another “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Among this list is Lu Nei’s autobiographical novel “Young Babylon”. Dubbed by critics “the Chinese ‘Catcher in the Rye’, it tells the wry, slightly detached story of Lu Xiaolu, a 19-year-old high school graduate from Daicheng, a small city located between Shanghai and Nanjing, in neighboring Jiangsu Province, and is set in the early 1990s.

Xiaolu failed his final exams and didn’t make his way to college. But he didn’t want to accept his most probable destiny, arranged by his parents, to work his way up the hierarchies at the local chemical factory where his had father spent the whole working life.

But he had no alternative.

For a while, Xiaolu seemed to adapt to the bureaucratic factory routine, making the best of the situation by bonding with coworkers, flirting with girls and refusing to give in to the expectations of those around him.

“I was not standing outside; neither was I on the curbstone. I felt myself more like someone who unintentionally broke the red light and got stuck in the middle of the street. I watched the people of my time gathering on either side. Sometimes I found them funny; other times I found myself funny standing there,” said Lu, referring to himself as the hero Xiaolu in the novel.

The factory was old, dingy, dreary, dirty, dangerous, and rat infested. Some of the chemicals were volatile and industrial accidents common, he recalled.

There were hierarchies within hierarchies from frontline workshops to departmental level. There were the cadres, the bullies and the privileged.

And there were the laboratory girls and Bai Lan, the young female factory doctor, in whom Xiaolu found solace.

But their poetic relationship ended abruptly after Bai Lan went to medical graduate school in Shanghai and finally left Daicheng for good.

“She was so resolute that I had to let her go,” Lu recalled, admiring the daring character of her even today,

“But later, I thought it through seriously. It was time I had my journey of discovery too.”

As Xiaolu decided to fight for the life he wanted, a startling portrait of economic transformation, marked by the rise of a free market economy and an inflow of foreign investment that led to a slew of reforms in China’s traditional factories, emerged.

“The golden time for being a worker in a state-run factory ended in 1994,” Lu said, “Around this time, the factory slogan changed to ‘If you don’t work hard today, you’ll be working hard to find a job tomorrow.’

“The workers nearly soiled their pants when they saw new slogans like this. Though old slogans such as ‘The working class leads everything’ from years before could still be seen on the little red building, they read just like memories of a teenage dream,” Lu joked.

Lu finally resigned and left the factory, which was “full of evidence” of how he spent his early twenties.

He later tried his hand at a variety of jobs, including as a salesman, a warehouse manager and a radio broadcaster.

Before he became a professional writer at the Shanghai Writers’ Association, he had been creative director of an advertising agency for more than 10 years.

“I was almost 30 when I took the train to Shanghai to find work. In the past 10 years, I have made my money and settled down in Shanghai. But when recalling those past events of my youth, I felt like lifting my head and smashing it against a pane of glass,” Lu said.

In the epilogue, Lu wrote about a young man sitting in the same carriage as him on the train to Shanghai: “For no apparent reason, he took off his glasses and wept. I sat there looking at him, unable to comfort him.

“He was crying with such sorrow and such anguish. I felt the sorrow from when I was 20 dripping out along with his tears and falling all along the tracks,” said Lu.

“And I guess many who have lived will respond to such an image “when we were young and innocent.”

Here Lu Nei answers more questions about the book and about coming of age in 1990s China.

How did the book come about?

It was in 2006 and my ma had passed away. When going through grief, I thought of my rebellious youth I’d spent with them back in my hometown, and the story just poured out. It was a nostalgia that came from the deepest part of my body, in my blood. And it wasn’t just for me, but for the others too. I had it done within three months, which was quite an achievement as it was my first novel.

What does Babylon mean in the book?

Babylon is a Biblical term for the bare lands that tribes of Israel were banished to by God and which has been used in literary circles to describe someone who lives an unruly life and suffers the consequences. In the Hebrew Bible, the name is interpreted in the Book of Genesis to mean “confusion.” The modern English verb, to “babble” — to speak meaningless words — is popularly thought to derive from this name.

How do you look back on the changes in the 1990s?

It was a fast-changing period. With many of the old factories shut down or restructured, workers were either laid off or forced to make compromises. Tossed out of my old orbit without proper knowledge of what a “free market” meant, I became a salesperson, like many of my peers. We could be selling the same product, or even selling a non-product, at varying prices. Without the painful changes — or sacrifices — during the 90s, we wouldn’t have, for example, what you see Shanghai of today, which is a city offering more opportunities for jobs and development, and an improved quality of life.

What will your next subject be?

After “Young Babylon”, I published another novel, “Following Her Journey”, in 2008, which took me six months to write. But it was after a long lapse of six years that I finally finished my third novel, “Where The Angel Falls”, to complete the “Babylon” trilogy. But I haven’t done with Xiaolu yet, because growing up is something every generation identifies with. I want to talk about sex in my next book — which was a taboo for those coming of age during the 1990s. There’s something about the 90s that’s so charming, isn’t there?

About the Author

Lu Nei, originally named Shang Weijun, was born in 1973 in Suzhou, in east China’s Jiangsu Province. He is the fiction moderator for the “under-literature” section of the website sickbaby.org. He has so far published five novels in Chinese and “Young Babylon” is his first novel to be translated into English. A film based on “Young Babylon” directed by Xiang Guoqiang, screened in June at the Shanghai International Film Festival. It was nominated for the “Asia New Talent Award” in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.