Meet China’s ambitious youths
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CHINESE youths, who account for nearly a third of the world’s most populous country, are “destined to transform both their nation and the world,” claims Alec Ash in his first book, “Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China,” out in June by Picador.
Ash introduces us to six young people born between 1985 and 1990 in different parts of China. We follow them from their often pampered early childhoods to the grueling discipline of school that culminates in the all-important gaokao (university entrance exam), and from the freedom of university to the struggle to find work after graduation, and the search for romance and marriage.
“The post-80s generation whose coming into age coincides with the country’s reform and opening-up faces fierce competition to succeed. Pressure starts young, and their road isn’t easy,” Ash says at his latest book launch at M on the Bund in Shanghai.
Ash’s protagonists include Dahai; born in central China’s Hubei Province, studied computer science in Wuhan University and now a construction project manager digging tunnels in Shanxi.
There’s also Xiaoxiao: daughter of small business owners hailing from northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. She studied art at Harbin Normal University and later opened a clothes shop called Remember.
Fred is an official’s daughter, born in south China’s Hainan Province. She has a PhD in politics from Peking University and is a lecturer with the China Youth Politics University.
Snail is a country boy from east China’s Anhui Province. He dropped out of college due to video game addiction and now ekes out a living in Beijng.
Lucifer, from north China’s Hebei Province, won the 2010 Global Battle of the Bands in London. He’s now busy taking auditions for various dating or talent shows and dreams of finding his own audience one day.
Mia is a reformed punk and fashionista from Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. She enrolled at the art and design school at Tsinghua University and is now ready to try her luck in Shanghai.
Offspring of the one-child policy, this is a generation in transition, says Ash. In the early years there are four grandparents and two parents to shower attention on one child; but in adult life this reverses, with the child being asked to care for six aging seniors.
If the expectation for women is to marry well and bear children, for men it is more bluntly economic — to secure a job, buy a home and wage an uphill struggle to be a high earner in a system rigged against the less privileged.
Ash uses the stories of his subjects to frame a larger narrative about China’s young adults, both within their own society and on the global stage. Like their counterparts elsewhere, they are rebels as well as aspirants struggling to make their way in the world.
“I hoped that the book could be not only about China, but more simply about being young,” says Ash, who recently agreed to an interview with Shanghai Daily.
What brought you to China in the first place?
I have always been interested in Chinese society and culture, and above all how it is changing. I think it’s the energy and dynamism of this country that grabbed me — the sense of being at the frontline of history during a transformational time in its history.
Having lived almost a decade in China, why did you focus on Chinese youths instead of writing a book of your own China experience?
Firstly, I don’t think my own story is so interesting — I’m just another foreigner who came to China to study Mandarin, teach some English and learn about the culture and society. But I have always been interested in my peers, the generation of Chinese millenials. I felt that the portrait of them in English media was too simple, with stereotypes like “materialistic” or “braindead” that needed nuancing. I wanted to show young Chinese as individuals, with the same dreams and challenges as us all, as well as some different ones particular to their environment.
How did you choose your six characters from among the over 320 million young people living on China’s mainland?
For one, they all got a university education and all ended up in Beijing — they are the aspirational kind of young Chinese in the city that I wanted to write about in the first place. I found the six variously: Snail in a World of Warcraft forum, Lucifer at a gig, Fred through her teachers, Mia on a geo-location app, Dahai and Xiaoxiao through their wedding photographer. Over the past three years, I traveled to each of their home towns with them, and saw other key locations with my own eyes.
Now after the book, how do you define this generation?
Hope and aspiration were for me the defining themes of the generation. This is one of the first generations China has seen in a long, long time where as a young person you can have individual wishes and aspirations. You can want to start your own business, go abroad, be a superstar... They could be so incredibly varied, but on the whole I’m quite optimistic about their futures and how they will have a positive impact on China’s development. There are lots of challenges ahead, just like there are for any one individual, but that energy and dynamism still exists.
Alec Ash is a British writer who resides in Beijing. He first came to China in 2007 to teach English at a Tibetan mountain village in northwest China’s Qinghai Province. Over the next two years, he studied Mandarin at Peking University. In 2012 he started writing about China, alongside his teaching work.
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