From single-child pressure, to test taking madness and the frenzy to buy an apartment as a prerequisite to marriage, from one-night-stands to an evolving understanding of family, Young China offers a portrait of the generation who will define what it means to be Chinese in the modern era.
The author, who writes with an infectious energy, lets us eavesdrop on the conversations he’s had with scores of young Chinese, often referring to them by the Western names they were given by teachers or chose for themselves. In venues ranging from cacophonous Karaoke bars to opulent office parks, these Toms, Zizis, Renées, and Lin Lins share their life stories and offer opinions about everything from skyrocketing real-estate prices to parent-child relations … There is a refreshingly ordinary, as opposed to sensationalistic, feel to many of the stories recounted in Young China: The author is such a lively spinner of tales that he can tease humor and pathos out of even run-of-the-mill interaction … We do not, despite the subtitle, get much of a sense of how the ‘restless generation’ will or even might ‘change their country and the world.’
He paints a remarkably revealing portrait of China's youngest generations in his fascinating new book, Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World … No generations in China's history have been more exposed to the outside world nor, perhaps, more devoted to questioning societal assumptions. These bold, anxious, and driven young people could produce a new kind of Chinese resilience, a new kind of nation – and a new kind of world power.
...entertaining and instructive … Dychtwald develops insights about everything from the obscure (the hugely popular ‘double-eyelid’ cosmetic surgery, which creates a more ‘Western-shaped’ eye) to the well known (China’s now abolished one-child policy) to the inevitable (sex). He discovers that contemporary young people in China and the United States have essentially identical dreams. But the journey to this point is a fascinating story, and Young China tells it well.
