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China news tagged with: youth culture (59)

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Taboo Removal: In China, Tattoos Make a Comeback

McClatchy looks at the growing trend of tattooing in Beijing, where the hottest tattoos are written in English, much as Chinese characters (often badly mangled) are all the rage in the U.S.:

Tattoos have been around for nearly a millennium in China. Perhaps the most famous one graced the back of Yue Fei, a famous general in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 A.D.) whose back read: “Serve the country loyally.” Legend has it that his mother ordered the tattoo as inspiration. Under recent decades of Communist Party rule, however tattoos have been largely taboo. Soldiers and police officers must be ink-free. Sports stars rarely have them. And employers discriminate against those with tattoos, thinking they signal a criminal bent.

Only in the past few years have scores of tattoo parlors opened in China’s capital, often in back alleys and in private apartments. The industry is unregulated but flourishing, operating in a gray area that occupies a significant slice of Chinese life, neither legal nor illegal.

“I’m busy every day of the week from morning to night,” said Liu Yubo, who operates the Wumo People tattoo parlor. “People have to make an appointment a month in advance.”

On his blog, reporter Tim Johnson has a brief profile of tattoo artist Zhou Xiaodong.
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- April 7, 2009 9:43 PM
Documentary: China’s New Faces Marrying into Her Family

This documentary film investigates a Chinese tradition’s change in Zhejiang province - men from other provinces marrying into women’s families in Zhejiang. Beside longing for love, young people in Zhejiang think realistically to pursue a win-win situation: a woman wants new hope and energy to safeguard her family’s future, in the meantime a man doesn’t have to worry about the housing pressure while developing his career. The film concludes that such a phenomenon is the result of the One-child Policy, the fast growing economy in Zhejiang, and the strong sense of lineage continuity. From Youtube:

The one-child policy has left some families with only one daughter. Feeling the need to carry on their family lineage, women now look for men who are willing to marry into their families so that their children could take up the mother’s surname. Meanwhile, men from other provinces are finding it hard to make ends meet in the cities, not to mention supporting a family. Because of this, some men are willing to do what it takes for a better life. With supply and demand in place, matchmaking agencies dedicated to this type of marriage are a thriving business.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

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- March 11, 2009 7:16 PM
Chinese Youth Conflicted About Sex, Survey Finds

From Reuters:

A recent survey revealed that though China’s young people are more open about sex than previous generations, reservations about one-night stands and homosexuality remain.

“…more than 96 percent of the surveyed first had sex with their partner, rather than just a one-night stand. Nearly 20 percent first had sex before the age of 20. “The survey found that on the one hand they had sex earlier but on the other it was in a stable relationship,” the newspaper said. “This shows the contradictions felt in the first generation of single children towards sex.” Most did not approve of one-night stands, and almost three-quarters said they would never try homosexuality, the report added. Premarital sex and cohabitation were not generally felt to be problems, the survey found.”

According to a previous post on China Digital Times, previous surveys have also found a low occurrence of awareness about the spread of HIV/AIDS.

China’s Sexual Revolution

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- October 15, 2008 4:58 PM
No Such Thing as ‘Made in China’

In the Guardian, Alice Xin Liu writes about the universality of youth culture and says its existence in China should no longer have shock value for visitors:

Public displays of affection can be awkward. Snogging lesbian teenagers on the Beijing subway may be something one wants to take a photo of and put on a social network site for the world to see. But the reality is you see this kind of thing in any big city in the world. Does the fact that this happened in Beijing make it more shocking, because of the conservatism and strict social control in China? Such a view is what gives Beijing its “gawk factor”, which basically means that a westerner in China, especially the parachute tourists, will take a sight like this and stare more than on the streets of, say, Berlin. But when will Beijing lose its “gawk factor”?

First time visitors from the west, if they decide to attend a rock concert in Beijing, Shanghai or Wuhan, may have a similar reaction, lavishing it with praise such as, “This is wonderful, for China!”, “I thought the communist regime, the autocracy and the repression couldn’t produce rock or punk!” or, “This is amazing and they’re singing about Zhongnanhai!”
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- October 10, 2008 12:01 PM
Post-90’s New Student Military Training

The chinaSMACK blog has a recent post on the new military trainees at Wuhan’s Hubei University of Economics.

These youth grew up during a time of breakneck-speed economic development. How did the experience affect them? Chinese BBS users have displayed various reactions to these post-90s teens. From Netease, as translated by chinaSmack:

The post 90’s generation grew up during China’s economic boom. To tell you the truth, I worry for them. I don’t know if they will put country above themselves. Our country’s future belongs to them; I don’t know where they will lead it to.

I don’t know what is the point of military training from middle school to college. Is it just for swindling some more uniform fees?

We all grew up drinking San Lu, forgive them!!!

And Tianya:

Why indiscriminately blame it on post-90’s kids, what does this have to do with the 90’s generation. We’re living in different times now.

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- September 22, 2008 7:59 PM
Chinese Media Dubs Youth ‘Bird’s Nest Generation’

The Olympics is apparently defining the new generation of youth in China. According to this report from AFP, a Chinese newspaper has created the term “Bird’s Nest Generation” to describe young people who came of age while China was preparing for the Games:

The term – inspired by the nickname of the iconic National Stadium – covers those aged 10 to 29, about a third of China’s 1.3 billion people, who grew up during the nation’s preparations for the Olympics, China Youth Daily said.

“This term is all about self-confidence, the love of peace, patriotism, openness and friendliness,” the newspaper wrote.

The label was an apparent attempt to put a more positive spin on a generation often seen as spoiled and sometimes referred to as “little emperors” because of the one-child policy that focuses families’ entire hopes on them.
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- August 26, 2008 2:24 PM
To Remember Beijing, Indelibly

The New York Times looks at Beijing’s nascent tattoo culture:

ALTHOUGH many foreigners have been coming in for tattoos, the chair is usually occupied by Chinese, said Mr. He, who charges about $120 an hour, and has owned a Beijing tattoo shop for six years. “Tattoos let people create an identity and help give meaning to their lives,” he said.

A decade ago, tattoo parlors were rare in Beijing. Most Chinese tattoo artists are self-taught, having experimented on their own bodies or on willing friends. Because the industry is largely ignored by the government, tattooists must rely on their own knowledge regarding hygiene and safety issues.
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- August 22, 2008 9:48 PM
Plight of the Little Emperors

Psychology Today looks at the mental health impact of the one-child policy on Chinese youth:

When China began limiting couples to one child 30 years ago, the policy’s most obvious goal was to contain a mushrooming population. For the Chinese people, however, the policy’s greater purpose was to turn out a group of young elites who would each enjoy the undivided resources of their whole family—the so-called xiao huangdi, or “little emperors.” The plan was to “produce a generation of high-quality children to facilitate China’s introduction as a global power,” explains Susan Greenhalgh, an expert on the policy. But while these well-educated, driven achievers are fueling the nation’s economic boom, their generation has become too modern too quickly, glutted as it is with televisions, access to computers, cash to buy name brands, and the same expectations of middle-class success as Western kids.

The shift in temperament has happened too fast for society to handle. China is still a developing nation with limited opportunity, leaving millions of ambitious little emperors out in the cold; the country now churns out more than 4 million university graduates yearly, but only 1.6 million new college-level jobs. Even the strivers end up as security guards. China may be the world’s next great superpower, but it’s facing a looming crisis as millions of overpressurized, hypereducated only children come of age in a nation that can’t fulfill their expectations.

This culture of pressure and frustration has sparked a mental-health crisis for young Chinese. Many simmer in depression or unemployment, unwilling to take jobs they consider beneath them. Millions, afraid to face the real world, escape into video games, which the government considers a national epidemic. And a disturbing number decide to end it all; suicide is now China’s leading cause of death for those aged 20 to 35. “People in China—especially parents and college students—are suddenly becoming aware of huge depression and anxiety problems in young people,” says Yu Zeng, a 23-year-old from Sichuan province. “The media report on new campus suicides all the time.”
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- August 13, 2008 1:14 PM
China’s Lost Generation

Photographer Rian Dundon explores the disaffected youth of Changsha, Hunan Province, for Time magazine:

Like many young people in Changsha, Mao Ce has great difficulty discussing his future. “I feel that my life is like a wind, blowing quickly and changing direction often,” he says. “I have no plan for my future, and I don’t want one. I never think about my future.” Twenty-four-year-old Mao’s comments are not reflective of some melancholic post-teen pouting — his feelings of resentment and despair are commonplace among the young adults of Changsha.

Check out a slide show of Dundon’s work here.
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- July 8, 2008 12:17 PM
Videos: Young and Restless in China

On June 17, Frontline will broadcast a documentary exploring life for young people in China today:

FRONTLINE explores the generation coming of age in China today. Shot over four years, the film follows a group of nine young Chinese from across the country as they scramble to keep pace with a society changing as fast as any in history. Their stories of ambition and desire, exuberance, crime and corruption are interwoven with moments of heartache and despair. Together they paint an intimate portrait of the generation that is remaking China.

Watch three excerpts below:

Rapper Wang Xiaolei, aka MC Sir, uses his music to express a dark view of China’s new boom times.

Entrepreneur Ben Wu, who also works for a major multinational, opens a busy Internet cafe.

Public interest lawyer Zhang Jingjing represents more than 1,000 families in a dispute over a power line built for the Olympic games.

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- June 12, 2008 12:32 PM
China’s ‘08 Generation Finds a Voice in Tumultuous Times

Reuters looks at the generation born in the 1980s, who are coming of age just as China confronts a series of challenges, from global protests around China’s hosting of the Olympics, to natural disasters including January’s snowstorm and the recent earthquake:

Wang’s belief that this year’s cascade of crises, especially the quake, has been an initiation rite for Chinese born after 1980 is widely shared. And it could leave a deep impression on a nation where the ruling Communist Party has warily faced its youth raised on global capitalism, Internet and text messaging.

“For us, it’s been a chance to show we’re not just kids who grew up pampered and useless,” said Wang, a slight 19-year-old, who took time off from a university course in English to work in a temporary tent hospital for quake refugees in Mianzhu, Sichuan.

Read also “The ABC’s of China’s post-1980s generation” from Reuters.
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- June 4, 2008 11:18 AM
Qian Minjie: The Earthquake Changed My Cynicism

A Chinese student wrote on his blog about how he changed his cynical attitude towards China after the Sichuan earthquake.

Qian Minjie, a 23 year old graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University , said that he used to care a lot about the country’s politics and social problems, but was disillusioned after a talk with a college teacher. The teacher, who had been a student leader in the Tiananmen Square protest, told him that the enthusiasm of his generation for a better China had died out.
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- May 22, 2008 12:23 PM
Youth Culture in Modern China

Rian Dundon is a photographer living in Hunan Province. The following series of photos, “Between Love and Duty: Youth Culture in Modern China,” was featured at the Angkor Photography Festival in Siem Reap, Cambodia in November, 2007. From Flickr:

It has been a quarter of a century since the implication of the One-Child or Planned Birth policy in the People’s Republic of China. An unprecedented social experiment in population control, it is famous throughout the world despite further distancing an already alienated culture from its global neighbors. As worldwide economics have drawn the planet closer during this time, Chinese industry has reinvented itself. From a traditional agrarian and rural lifestyle to a modern, urban one, the youth of China today are unlike any generation previous. Just as a sense of Otherness has always existed in the West towards Chinese culture, today the youth of China are as isolated from their parents’ generation as they are from the American and European cultures with which they have a tenuous relationship.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

See more photos at www.riandundon.com.
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- March 18, 2008 9:16 PM
Valentine’s Day With Chinese Characteristics.

An article in Beijing’s central state-run English daily reveals just how much the West’s most famous Hallmark holiday means to some in China. From China Daily:

“Nowadays, Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated in China, and divorce on this ‘day of love’ could be hurtful,” the newspaper cited Gao Zhi, a judge at the Xicheng District Court, as saying.

“We didn’t arrange the sessions of any divorce cases on Thursday, which is courtesy, rather than a policy,” said Yu Lihua, a senior female judge in charge of divorces at the Shijingshan District Court.

The reason for the practice, according to Yu, is that the majority of the judges presiding over divorce proceedings are young people who take the Valentine’s Day seriously.

Below are Some photos taken on Valentine’s Day in China, via fengniao.com and Daqi.com:

And in another China Daily article, Chinese fall hard for imported holiday of Valentine’s Day:

In the booming eastern city of Wenzhou, young couples rushing to get married on this special day led a downtown registry office to open 30 minutes early on Thursday morning — and to stop accepting divorce applications for the day.

Even old couples want to try the Western holiday: 60 years into their marriage, a couple in Xi’an in northwestern Shaanxi Province decided they, too, wanted to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

The news was published on a local newspaper on Tuesday and by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, about 1,500 people had put up Internet postings, 90 percent of which voiced support.
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- February 17, 2008 11:27 AM
A New Cultural Revolution - Richard Lea

Chinese literature is changing rapidly with the fast growing economy. Richard Lea takes a closer look at China’s literary culture flux, from Guardian Unlimited:

“…Now there’s this whole generation of young people, who have grown up since the Cultural Revolution, who aren’t that interested in the classics, but are deeply involved with the changes in society, the future, the terrific things happening around them. That’s what moves them.”

“The older writers will complain that young people aren’t reading any literature,” adds Harman, “but they read a lot more than our young people do. They’re just not reading what the old guard want them to.” And it’s not just Harry Potter - though JK Rowling has been huge in both legitimate and pirated versions. Much teen fiction is not written by respectable middle-aged writers, but by young people themselves. Han Han, a superstar author who drives racing cars, found fame as a 17-year-old back in 1997. Zhang Yueran, whose sensationalist plot lines would carry parental advisories in the west, was first published in magazines at 14. “It’s interesting and lively,” says Harman, “but it’s not great literature….” [Full Text]

[Image by Greg Baker/AP via Guardian Unlimited]
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- January 16, 2008 7:26 AM