China's New Youth

How the Young Generation Is Shaping China's Future

Alec Ash

• Publisher: Arcade
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781950691722
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

"Paints a telling portrait of this most restless generation raised in a system that has provided them with unprecedented personal opportunities while denying them political ones.... A gifted observer."— Washington Post
"Informative and often humorous... Presents a refreshing range of perspectives about being twenty-something in China."— Forbes
"Masterfully crafted." — Los Angeles Review of Books
"A perceptive and quietly profound book."— Booklist, starred review
"Compelling and beautifully written."— Prospect China's new youth are the generation that will change China. Offspring of the one-child policy, with no memory of Tiananmen, they are destined to transform both their nation and the world. Understanding their motivations, dreams, and attitudes is possibly the most important gauge of China's future direction as it plays an increasingly important role in shaping this century. China's New Youth followsthe lives of six young Chineseas they navigate their aspirations, discontents, politics, and love lives. Their stories include a netizen nationalist, a country migrant, the daughter of a Party member, a rising pop star, and a feminist entrepreneur. With intimate access to this diverse generation, Alec Ash—a young writer based in China since 2012—gives a vivid, immersive, fascinating account of young China as it comes of age. China's New Youth was originally published in hardcover until the title Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China. The new paperback edition has been updated with a new preface and afterword by the author and a new foreword by Karoline Kan.

XIAOXIAO AND DAHAI

This time the married couple got their honeymoon. Xiaoxiao had always wanted to go to Tibet, but that was remote and expensive so instead they travelled to Yunnan province in China’s far south. Yunnan—‘southern clouds’—has mountains, forest, valleys, gorges and grasslands, as well as a mouth-watering cuisine. Street stalls sell goat’s cheese pancakes and roasted insects by the cup. The region is known for its ethnic minorities, and local Han performers put on song and dance shows in bright folk dress for the benefit of domestic tourists, even if not everyone appreciates the cultural appropriation.

After their official wedding ceremony they flew to Kunming, the provincial capital, and borrowed a friend’s car to drive to Dali, a lake town on the backpackers’ trail for both Chinese and foreigners. From there they went to Lijiang, its beautiful old town protected by UNESCO but prey to souvenir shops selling Naxi minority trinkets. Lijiang, with its canal-side bars and courtyard hostels, has a reputation among young Chinese as a destination for bohemian stoners and erotic casual encounters. But the second-time newly-weds followed the tourist itinerary. They rode horses in the grasslands, set loose floating candles in the canals, and bought hemp ponchos and silk scarves dyed in hippy colours.

Xiaoxiao had finally made it to the opposite edge of China from her birthplace, her dream since she was little. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment: where she had imagined the exotic and adventurous, in-stead there were entrance tickets and fridge magnets. The coloured silk scarves were of the same kind she could have bought on Taobao, and were probably made in the same factory. Her best memories from the trip were of the food. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to go to Tibet any more, out of fear it would be the same. After two weeks they flew back to Beijing, bearing gifts of bamboo chopsticks and Buddhist-style peach-stone bracelets for their friends.

In September 2014 they both turned twenty-nine. According to the old way of counting age in China, xusui where at birth you are one year old, that meant they were thirty. It was the age Confucius had in mind when he said, ‘At fifteen I set my mind on study; at thirty I took my stand’. Dahai and Xiaoxiao had a joint celebratory dinner at a post-80s-generation themed hotpot joint called Number Eight Courtyard. From the outside it looked like any other cheap eatery, except it was exclusively for customers born after 1980. ID cards were checked at the door, strictly no one older was allowed in, and post-90s could only enter if accompanied by a responsible post-80s. They didn’t have a policy for post-00s.

Inside was a lovingly reconstructed classroom from Xiaoxiao and Dahai’s childhood. The tables were wooden study desks with chipped plates, tin mugs and an ashtray (it had always been Dahai’s dream to smoke in class). Class rules were printed at the front—punctual assembly, no talking over the teacher—and on the walls were all the familiar posters of every Chinese school: Lu Xun, Lei Feng and a chart for the daily eye-rubbing exercises that brought back memories. Behind the cash register was a blackboard and lectern, and when all the diners were seated a school bell rang. One of the owners (born 1982) banged a wooden baton against the lectern.

‘Hello, students!’ he said. ‘Welcome to Number Eight Courtyard. There is just one important rule here. There is one word you can’t say: “waiter”. We are teachers. Does everyone understand?’

‘Yes, teacher!’ the class chorused back.

The menus were in the desk drawers: a multiple-choice questionnaire to mark up with a stubby pencil, choosing which meat and vegetables to go in your hotpot. When one student piped up with a smart remark the teacher brandished his baton at him, then switched it for a long wobbly saw. Later the saw was upgraded to a machete, and after that a plastic Kalashnikov. Everyone laughed along in bittersweet nostalgia for their school days when the rod was no joke.

After the meal was finished, the teacher led the class in a singalong to the theme tune of the nineties cartoon Little Dragon Club. There was a musical quiz for other childhood theme songs—The Calabash Brothers, Slam Dunk, Ultraman, Doreamon—and Dahai was quickest to answer one of them. His prize was a packet of tiaotiaotang candy powder, the kind that fizzes on your tongue. As they left Xiaoxiao bumped into a high-school classmate from her home town who was coming in for the next seating. Neither knew that the other was in Beijing. They hadn’t seen each other in ten years.

*

The decade had passed Xiaoxiao and Dahai by as if without warning. Depending on perspective it seemed like either yesterday or a lifetime ago that they were fresh out of high-school. Now they were almost thirty, married, with a car, a home and fixed income—‘like grown-ups’, they said, before realising that they had been for a while. Sometimes it felt like they didn’t recognise their nineteen-year-old selves, or the plans that other them had made for the future they were now living. Not a cliché about dreams left behind but a feeling of something setting, like molten metal cooling into a groove as it runs.

Dahai’s anger at authority, for one, had been tempered by his new responsibilities. Once he had imagined he was a superhero, standing up to his bosses both at work and in Party central. Now his goal was to become one of those work-unit leaders—if you can’t beat them, join them. Before he had posted subversive comments online about the government. Now he bought a hardback edition of the collected speeches of Xi Jinping, titled Governance of China, and even admired ‘Daddy Xi’ (a popular nickname) for his strong-man fight to clean up corruption. Dahai still didn’t like the system. The difference was that his livelihood now depended on it, and at this age he knew he wouldn’t do anything rash like join a protest. He was the first to admit that he had compromised.

Xiaoxiao saw compromise in her life too. Her first small business, the clothing shop Remember, had been priced out. The second cafe she worked at had been closed down by local government, and she hadn’t tried a third time. She still nursed an entrepreneur’s fantasy of opening a combined coffee-and-clothes shop in Beijing, but the business rents anywhere central were prohibitive. The truth was that in marrying Dahai she had swapped those aspirations for a considerable degree of dependence. She kept looking for employment and worked briefly as a barista, but in the end settled for a stable office job in Dahai’s work unit which he helped set up. With the tunnel finally finished, their new project was to extend a subway line to Beijing’s far east.

Ten years also meant that Dahai was overdue to dig up his diary. On the eleventh anniversary of its burial in May, he and Xiaoxiao returned together to the mountain behind his childhood military compound. It wasn’t only them who had changed but the mountain itself. Where before there was a solitary pagoda at the top, now the whole hillside had been transformed into a tourist site. There was a row of ticket windows and electronic turnstiles; a tiled square with a water feature; two giant golden Buddha statues (one standing, one reclining); a line-up of fifteen busts of historical Chinese figures; a stele perched on top of a stone tortoise; and a golden sculpture of a hand taller than Dahai, thumb and forefingers closed in a gesture of meditation. At least the new cable car saved them a steep climb.

At the top, the path to the summit led through a series of interconnecting caves, newly decked out with fairy lights and brightly coloured Taoist god statuettes. Next they walked along the back of a miniature fake Great Wall that zigzagged up a second peak, until the old pagoda was in sight. It was covered in scaffolding, in the process of being renovated and given a new paint job by a dozen workers. The team leader didn’t want to let them through, but Dahai found a way onto the site around the back and they picked their way over gangplanks, past supply pulleys and a cement mixer, and across an arched stone bridge to where the plot of pine trees still stood.

This is where he stopped. Which was the right tree? There were a few dozen possibilities and X did not mark the spot. Dahai unfolded his collapsible spade and started to dig at random. Later he switched to a full-size spade that had been left behind on the construction site, while workers on their lunch break gathered around him to gawk and take pictures. But it was no use. After an hour of futile archaeology in the beating sun, the earth yielded nothing but roots and stones. Perhaps someone else had found the box by accident and was reading the pages he had written. Or maybe he was looking in the wrong place entirely. Dahai never did find his diary that day. He shared a cable car with Xiaoxiao back down the mountainside, and they went home.

They wouldn’t miss the uncertainty of the twenties, as they found their path and partner in life. In that respect youth was a time for embracing bad decisions in order to figure out what the right decisions were. They hoped the thirties would bring just as much excitement, surer in the knowledge of who they were. And they could only imagine what the view would look like from forty or fifty or eighty. Would they have transformed again entirely? Would they obsess over fading memories? Or laugh at how little they had understood? Would they have money? Would they be happy? Would they still be together? Would their child have a better future than they did?

They planned to wait until the year of the monkey before having a baby. (Xiaoxiao didn’t like the year of the sheep, an animal often regarded as feeble.) When news came that the one-child policy had finally been scrapped, it felt like the end of an era. From 2016 all couples could have two children. Along with other urban families it didn’t make a difference to them, as they still planned on having just the one. Xiaoxiao was resolute that she wouldn’t pamper or over-pressurise her child, as had been the fate of her generation. The next lot would inherit a different China entirely. And in time their own little monkey would grow up, and be young like they were, once.

*

They celebrated the Chinese New Year at their own home. Dahai’s parents came over from Miyun, and so did his brother Xiaoyang with his wife. They invited their English friend as well, the one who was writing a book about them. There was spicy sausage from Hubei, sun-dried for weeks, and generous shots of Moutai-brand baijiu for the men. The Spring Gala on TV was co-hosted by an animated ram, and at various points viewers were told to use the ‘shake’ function on WeChat to compete for digital red-envelope cash prizes. Everyone in the room except the parents shook their phones like crazy all night long.

For Xiaoxiao it was another New Year’s Eve away from her parents. She knew that when she had a child of her own it would be more difficult to visit, so near the end of the festival fortnight she flew back to the north-east. In Harbin she visited the site of her old shop, and remembered Remember. Her home town of Nehe was frozen as ever, minus twenty degrees at night. She ate apples and pears from crates in her parents’ fruit storehouse, like she had as a kid. She enjoyed her favourite local barbecue dishes and drank boiled Coke poured from the kettle. She walked past her primary school and the sweet shop next to it, now shuttered for the holidays.

The fifteenth and final night of the holidays was Lantern Festival. It was a day traditionally marked by eating yuanxiao, sweet glutinous rice balls filled with red-bean paste in hot water, and by solving riddles. It was also a night for lovers, who would sneak out to light lanterns together under the first full moon of the new year. That evening Xiaoxiao’s extended family gathered in a restaurant for one last big meal. While they slurped their glutinous rice balls the fireworks started—a final chance for the residents of Nehe to paint the skies red before festivities ended.

After dinner Xiaoxiao split off from her elders, who were going to bed. She wanted to walk into the centre of town, and two of her friends and a cousin came with her. She pulled on her winter furs, tightened her scarf and went out into the street amid the crackle and patter of firecrackers. They headed in the direction of the park, where the biggest crowd was gathering. Along the way other groups and couples joined them, walking south down the main road. Above them was an opposite current: thousands of wish lanterns flying north on the wind. Xiaoxiao had brought one with her, and at a crossroads within sight of the park she unpacked it, careful not to tear the thin red tissue paper. The corners had to be prised apart from flat, until the wire frame opened and the gossamer walls bloomed into a cube. Into a tin cage ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Note on Names
• Cast of Characters
• Xiaoxiao
• Dahai
• Fred
• Snail
• Lucifer
• Mia
• Snail
• Fred
• Dahai
• Xiaoxiao
• Lucifer
• Mia
• Snail
• Fred
• Lucifer
• Dahai
• Snail
• Xiaoxiao
• Mia
• Lucifer
• Dahai
• Snail
• Fred
• Lucifer
• Dahai
• Xiaoxiao
• Snail
• Mia
• Lucifer
• Fred
• Dahai and Xiaoxiao
• Snail
• Lucifer
• Fred
• Mia
• Xiaoxiao and Dahai
• Afterword
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author