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Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China
The youth are the generation that will change China. There are over 320 million in their teens and twenties, more than the population of the USA. Born after Mao, natives of a nation on the rise, they are destined to have an unprecedented influence on global affairs.
These millennials, offspring of the only child policy, face fierce competition and pressure to succeed. Dislocated from their country's tumultuous past, they are caught between tradition and modernity. Their struggles are also the same as those of young people all over the world: moving out of home, starting a career, falling in love.
Wish Lanterns tells the stories of six young Chinese. Dahai is a military child and a rebel; 'Fred' is a daughter of the Party. Lucifer is an aspiring superstar; Snail a country migrant addicted to online gaming. Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north; and Mia a skinhead fashionista from Xinjiang in the far west.
Alec Ash, a writer in Beijing of the same generation, has given us a vivid, gripping account of young China as it comes of age. Through individual lives, Wish Lanterns shows with empathy and insight the conflicts and challenges, dreams and wishes of China's - and the world's - future. It is a vibrant and intimate book, for readers of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy.
These millennials, offspring of the only child policy, face fierce competition and pressure to succeed. Dislocated from their country's tumultuous past, they are caught between tradition and modernity. Their struggles are also the same as those of young people all over the world: moving out of home, starting a career, falling in love.
Wish Lanterns tells the stories of six young Chinese. Dahai is a military child and a rebel; 'Fred' is a daughter of the Party. Lucifer is an aspiring superstar; Snail a country migrant addicted to online gaming. Xiaoxiao is a hipster from the freezing north; and Mia a skinhead fashionista from Xinjiang in the far west.
Alec Ash, a writer in Beijing of the same generation, has given us a vivid, gripping account of young China as it comes of age. Through individual lives, Wish Lanterns shows with empathy and insight the conflicts and challenges, dreams and wishes of China's - and the world's - future. It is a vibrant and intimate book, for readers of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 2, 2016
73 people are currently reading
2404 people want to read
About the author
Alec Ash
5 books72 followersAlec Ash is a writer and journalist in Beijing, author of Wish Lanterns, literary nonfiction about the lives of six young Chinese published by Picador in 2016.
His articles have appeared in The Economist, Dissent, BBC, Prospect, Foreign Policy and elsewhere. He is a contributor to the book of reportage Chinese Characters and co-editor of the anthology While We're Here.
Born in England, Ash studied English literature at Oxford, where he edited The Isis magazine and hitchiked to Morocco. After graduating he taught in a Tibetan village in west China before moving to Beijing in 2008.
In 2012 he founded a 'writers' colony' of stories from China at the Anthill. He is a regular blogger for the Los Angeles Review of Books and has interviewed over sixty authors about their literary influences at Five Books.
In his free time he enjoys playing piano, doing qigong and writing about himself in the third person.
His articles have appeared in The Economist, Dissent, BBC, Prospect, Foreign Policy and elsewhere. He is a contributor to the book of reportage Chinese Characters and co-editor of the anthology While We're Here.
Born in England, Ash studied English literature at Oxford, where he edited The Isis magazine and hitchiked to Morocco. After graduating he taught in a Tibetan village in west China before moving to Beijing in 2008.
In 2012 he founded a 'writers' colony' of stories from China at the Anthill. He is a regular blogger for the Los Angeles Review of Books and has interviewed over sixty authors about their literary influences at Five Books.
In his free time he enjoys playing piano, doing qigong and writing about himself in the third person.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
February 7, 2017
This is the story of six young people growing up in China and faced with the pressures of a life so very different from their parents in the time of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. They are all expected to be high achievers in that they can afford their own house and marriage in their twenties. However, the whole time I was reading it, it just seemed to lack authenticity.
The author is the editor of The Anthill, a collective of almost entirely foreign expats living and writing in China. Here I am in Thailand, listening to expats here and realising that all they know about Thailand is coloured very much by why they are in the country and their own backgrounds. They are charmed or repulsed, interested or dismissive, but all from their own frame of reference.
I live in the Caribbean, I've lived there more than half my life and I could write authentically about much of the life on my island, but still, I realise from my sons that I ascribe motives and perspectives that seem logical to events and stories, but they aren't how the people feel, not quite. And that my interpretation of cutural events and ambitions is very different from their parents who are my generation but who were brought up in what was almost a pre-modern age.
And so it is that I question the authenticity of these reported stories, interesting and readable though they were. I just wonder how the six young people would have written their own stories from perspectives of an old, old culture overlaid with the terrible events of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Famine (see Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962) which must have impacted their parents and grandparents in the same way as WWII was a defining event in European history.
I've read quite a few of Xinran's books, and the first The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices written in 2002 from transcripts of long messages that filled her answering machine every night as she requested, she was a dj, for women to tell their own stories, is of another world. That was just 14 years ago, the people in Wish Lanterns would have been 10 to 12 or so back then. Is it the way the stories are written, is it because it is reportage by an expat or have the lives and expectations of the young really changed that much in such a short time?
The author is the editor of The Anthill, a collective of almost entirely foreign expats living and writing in China. Here I am in Thailand, listening to expats here and realising that all they know about Thailand is coloured very much by why they are in the country and their own backgrounds. They are charmed or repulsed, interested or dismissive, but all from their own frame of reference.
I live in the Caribbean, I've lived there more than half my life and I could write authentically about much of the life on my island, but still, I realise from my sons that I ascribe motives and perspectives that seem logical to events and stories, but they aren't how the people feel, not quite. And that my interpretation of cutural events and ambitions is very different from their parents who are my generation but who were brought up in what was almost a pre-modern age.
And so it is that I question the authenticity of these reported stories, interesting and readable though they were. I just wonder how the six young people would have written their own stories from perspectives of an old, old culture overlaid with the terrible events of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Famine (see Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962) which must have impacted their parents and grandparents in the same way as WWII was a defining event in European history.
I've read quite a few of Xinran's books, and the first The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices written in 2002 from transcripts of long messages that filled her answering machine every night as she requested, she was a dj, for women to tell their own stories, is of another world. That was just 14 years ago, the people in Wish Lanterns would have been 10 to 12 or so back then. Is it the way the stories are written, is it because it is reportage by an expat or have the lives and expectations of the young really changed that much in such a short time?
April 13, 2019
Videorecensione: https://youtu.be/ngdlpZcN3Zk
Il giornalista Alec Ash aveva un'ambizione gigantesca: raccontare la Cina attraverso le storie VERE di sei millennial cinesi completamente diversi tra loro, ma in grado di offrire una panoramica affascinante della generazione post-proteste di piazza Tienanmen, ormai distante dalla ribellione e incastrata in un sistema che la vuole efficiente e assetata di successo. I sei ritratti che compongono il libro sono splendidi: c'è l'inquieta ragazza punk tutta tatuata contro gli standard di bellezza cinesi, la fashion blogger dagli ottimi voti, il figlio di militari che ha seppellito il diario segreto e le lettere d'amore per una ragazza alla quale non si è mai dichiarato, il nerd schiavo dei videogiochi, la ragazza fedelissima al regime che si ricrede e trova nuova libertà nel cristianesimo e il cantante in total-leopardato che sogna di essere una star internazionale.
Una lettura ricca, coinvolgente, bellissima. LEGGETELO.
Il giornalista Alec Ash aveva un'ambizione gigantesca: raccontare la Cina attraverso le storie VERE di sei millennial cinesi completamente diversi tra loro, ma in grado di offrire una panoramica affascinante della generazione post-proteste di piazza Tienanmen, ormai distante dalla ribellione e incastrata in un sistema che la vuole efficiente e assetata di successo. I sei ritratti che compongono il libro sono splendidi: c'è l'inquieta ragazza punk tutta tatuata contro gli standard di bellezza cinesi, la fashion blogger dagli ottimi voti, il figlio di militari che ha seppellito il diario segreto e le lettere d'amore per una ragazza alla quale non si è mai dichiarato, il nerd schiavo dei videogiochi, la ragazza fedelissima al regime che si ricrede e trova nuova libertà nel cristianesimo e il cantante in total-leopardato che sogna di essere una star internazionale.
Una lettura ricca, coinvolgente, bellissima. LEGGETELO.
August 15, 2016
There’s some slight professional jealousy flowing through my veins right now as I begin this book review, for you see, Alec Ash stole my ideal life.
I guess I should explain.
Roughly ten or twelve years ago, I had dreams (and let’s be frank, dreams are all they were) of transforming myself into some kind of literary genius type figure based in China. Too poor and too unconnected to go down the traditional route of interning in London for five years in order to gain a foothold in the journalism industry, I basically tried to game the system by attempting to achieve it in China instead. China was cheaper, was a country that I held a passion for, and seemed to be a land of opportunity where any young and diligent young pup could build a name for themselves with enough hard work and talent.
Sadly, life didn’t turn out quite as planned, and I find myself today in the very same position that I was trying to escape from over a decade ago – stuck in corporate hell with no outlet for any creativity. Ash, on the other hand, has managed to achieve quite the name for himself within Beijing’s literary circles. He has helped to set up websites like Beijing Cream (Rest in Peace, Laowai Comics Guy) and The Anthill, has organised Whisky and Writers nights at The Bookworm (Beijing’s premier venue for sitting around looking pretentious behind a MacBook) and now he has a book out through Picador that is getting rave reviews on outlets like the FT, the New York Times and the BBC.
In short, a part of me really wanted to hate his book.
And then, because he is such a bastard, he actually wrote a very good book that is impossible to dislike.
In some ways, Ash is a reverse mirror image of myself. He covers a lot of the same ground that I cover in my own book Party Members – generational pressure, university exams, corruption, house prices, even regional TV talent shows – but somehow still manages to find some light within the darkness whereas I can only find darkness. Partly this is due to his subject matter. Wish Lanterns follows the lives of six young Chinese all born after 1980 as they struggle to build a foundation for their lives in and around Beijing. It would be a very grim book indeed if these young people didn’t have hope to build better lives for themselves. For sure, there is darkness – and more than a few of the dreams of Wish Lanterns‘ six protagonists eventually hit a dead-end – but there is life and hope along the way. If there was any truth to Xi Jinping’s nonsensical propaganda slogan of the “Chinese Dream”, then the content of that dream is to be found somewhere within this book.
The six protagonists are used as narrative devices to highlight different aspects of modern China. Each one has a different journey and their various class backgrounds and career choices gives Ash an opportunity to explore the entirety of modern China through these windows on their lives. Wannabe rockstar Lucifer gives us glimpses into China’s banal television industry; upper middle-class Politics student Fred (former China TEFL teachers will be unsurprised to learn that Fred is a girl) allows Ash to tick off the boxes of China’s political changes over the last three decades; party girl Mia highlights the edgy arty side of Beijing; and the slightly more ordinary (but no less interesting) three remaining protagonists of Dahai, Snail and Xiaoxiao are vehicles to explore the every day events of marriage, birth and death in the Peoples’ Republic.
Despite the different backgrounds of the various characters, they all share some of the same challenges. The heavy prospect of marriage and buying a house looms over every single one of them as they enter their mid-twenties; the pressure bearing down on some of them more than others. My favourite character in the book was Snail – a rural migrant from Anhui who more than any of the six protagonists experiences the most setbacks on his journey: internet addiction, lack of housing prospects and (in the book’s saddest moment) miscarriage of his first child. Snail named himself after the titular gastropod due to his childhood sightings of them in his countryside home and his foresight in knowing that his future home was to be wherever the turbulence of China’s social upheavals would take him. Yet he also shares another trait with his namesake: the weight of familial expectations and pressure slowing him down in comparison to his peers. It’s the struggle and hope that still remains within Snail despite the challenges that life throws at him that makes it hard not to respect the perseverance of many of China’s millennial generation.
Ash certainly knows his topic well and has done his research. I was impressed by his thorough knowledge of modern Chinese history, but I was ultimately more impressed by the little details that proved he had really gotten to know his case studies. On more than one occasion he mentions something that I was arrogantly sure I was the only foreigner in China who knew about it, for example the joke that Hebei’s capital Shijiazhuang is referred to as “shit plus dirt” or the ins and outs of mid-2000s PC games like Counter Strike.
Wish Lanterns is well written, in-depth, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. As loath as I am to mention Peter Hessler lest I get arrested by the Cliché Police, Ash actually succeeds in out-Hesslering Hessler as he manages to provide a wide-ranging full-scope overview of what life is like in today’s China, but doesn’t embarrassingly avoid some of the more risqué topics that Hessler frequently avoided. There is sex in the book (especially in Lucifer’s chapters); Ash doesn’t go as in-depth as other topics he covers, but at least it is there and not conspicuous by its absence as I found to be the case in Hessler’s River Town.
My above mention of Peter Hessler (I’m sure Ash is sick of hearing about him) brings me nicely to my final point about Wish Lanterns. There is one character missing in Wish Lanterns, and that is Alec Ash. In interviews, Ash has stated that he deliberately kept himself out of the book as he wished for the book to be about the subjects themselves and not about their foreign friend and his life in China (although there is one teeny tiny mention that Ash allows himself right at the end of the book). However, though Ash is missing from the book, in retrospect he is actually there all the time. The stories of Dahai, Lucifer, Mia et al are all told by Ash; and it is Ash who selects what is featured and what is deemed important enough to include. At the same time I was reading Wish Lanterns, I was also reading some essays by Isham Cook, especially one entitled The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma. Have a read. As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Ash has simultaneously managed to successfully build a career for himself within respectable publishing circles and has written a book that shines light and positivity on aspects of Chinese society whereas I’ve often only found despair. One wonders if this is due to a positive mindset within the author or if his balanced coverage of China is a prerequisite of the requirements of large publishers.
A relevant paragraph from The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma:
"Let’s unpack this a bit with the help of Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of ventriloquism or “ventriloquation” (The Dialogic Imagination). To ventriloquize is to pretend to assume the voice of the Other. Of course, this is something creative writers do all the time; fiction and drama depends on the ability to capture a multiplicity of voices (what Bakhtin calls “heteroglossia”). In the case of nonfiction, however, the writer is bound by a compact with the reader to tell the truth, and by other constraints as well—ethical, legal, financial, etc., as mentioned above. These constraints are amplified in the case of journalists writing for the big publishers, where power and monetary interests are at stake. Here the writer’s relationship with the reader is more complex and bi-directional. He or she is no longer merely the author ventriloquizing the Other, but is just as likely being ventriloquized as the subject and instrument of power."
I highlight the above not because I wish to criticise Wish Lanterns, but because after reading the book it raised questions within myself about my own attitudes. It may be possible that the positives and hope that are expressed towards Chinese society within Wish Lanterns are due to the demands of an international publisher with interests in countries across the world, but if I accept that the truths within Wish Lanterns are filtered through the author’s voice (or the voice of his publisher), then I must also accept that the “truths” in my own more negative attitude towards China is filtered through my own perspective. The characters in Wish Lanterns who have it much tougher than I do, like Snail, certainly don’t wallow in gloom. I’m reminded of the final sentence in Ray Hecht’s South China Morning Blues:
“Well, this is my universe, my voice, my perspective, it’s for me, and at least that means I get to have the last word.”
Any book which provokes self-reflection and contemplation within the reader – especially unexpectedly – is a worthy read. Add to that the already significant achievement of creating a narrative that wonderfully captures the zeitgeist of modern China in a way that few others have and you have a very good book indeed. However, since this is my book review I get to have the last word: you’re still a bastard Alec for being more successful than me.
I guess I should explain.
Roughly ten or twelve years ago, I had dreams (and let’s be frank, dreams are all they were) of transforming myself into some kind of literary genius type figure based in China. Too poor and too unconnected to go down the traditional route of interning in London for five years in order to gain a foothold in the journalism industry, I basically tried to game the system by attempting to achieve it in China instead. China was cheaper, was a country that I held a passion for, and seemed to be a land of opportunity where any young and diligent young pup could build a name for themselves with enough hard work and talent.
Sadly, life didn’t turn out quite as planned, and I find myself today in the very same position that I was trying to escape from over a decade ago – stuck in corporate hell with no outlet for any creativity. Ash, on the other hand, has managed to achieve quite the name for himself within Beijing’s literary circles. He has helped to set up websites like Beijing Cream (Rest in Peace, Laowai Comics Guy) and The Anthill, has organised Whisky and Writers nights at The Bookworm (Beijing’s premier venue for sitting around looking pretentious behind a MacBook) and now he has a book out through Picador that is getting rave reviews on outlets like the FT, the New York Times and the BBC.
In short, a part of me really wanted to hate his book.
And then, because he is such a bastard, he actually wrote a very good book that is impossible to dislike.
In some ways, Ash is a reverse mirror image of myself. He covers a lot of the same ground that I cover in my own book Party Members – generational pressure, university exams, corruption, house prices, even regional TV talent shows – but somehow still manages to find some light within the darkness whereas I can only find darkness. Partly this is due to his subject matter. Wish Lanterns follows the lives of six young Chinese all born after 1980 as they struggle to build a foundation for their lives in and around Beijing. It would be a very grim book indeed if these young people didn’t have hope to build better lives for themselves. For sure, there is darkness – and more than a few of the dreams of Wish Lanterns‘ six protagonists eventually hit a dead-end – but there is life and hope along the way. If there was any truth to Xi Jinping’s nonsensical propaganda slogan of the “Chinese Dream”, then the content of that dream is to be found somewhere within this book.
The six protagonists are used as narrative devices to highlight different aspects of modern China. Each one has a different journey and their various class backgrounds and career choices gives Ash an opportunity to explore the entirety of modern China through these windows on their lives. Wannabe rockstar Lucifer gives us glimpses into China’s banal television industry; upper middle-class Politics student Fred (former China TEFL teachers will be unsurprised to learn that Fred is a girl) allows Ash to tick off the boxes of China’s political changes over the last three decades; party girl Mia highlights the edgy arty side of Beijing; and the slightly more ordinary (but no less interesting) three remaining protagonists of Dahai, Snail and Xiaoxiao are vehicles to explore the every day events of marriage, birth and death in the Peoples’ Republic.
Despite the different backgrounds of the various characters, they all share some of the same challenges. The heavy prospect of marriage and buying a house looms over every single one of them as they enter their mid-twenties; the pressure bearing down on some of them more than others. My favourite character in the book was Snail – a rural migrant from Anhui who more than any of the six protagonists experiences the most setbacks on his journey: internet addiction, lack of housing prospects and (in the book’s saddest moment) miscarriage of his first child. Snail named himself after the titular gastropod due to his childhood sightings of them in his countryside home and his foresight in knowing that his future home was to be wherever the turbulence of China’s social upheavals would take him. Yet he also shares another trait with his namesake: the weight of familial expectations and pressure slowing him down in comparison to his peers. It’s the struggle and hope that still remains within Snail despite the challenges that life throws at him that makes it hard not to respect the perseverance of many of China’s millennial generation.
Ash certainly knows his topic well and has done his research. I was impressed by his thorough knowledge of modern Chinese history, but I was ultimately more impressed by the little details that proved he had really gotten to know his case studies. On more than one occasion he mentions something that I was arrogantly sure I was the only foreigner in China who knew about it, for example the joke that Hebei’s capital Shijiazhuang is referred to as “shit plus dirt” or the ins and outs of mid-2000s PC games like Counter Strike.
Wish Lanterns is well written, in-depth, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. As loath as I am to mention Peter Hessler lest I get arrested by the Cliché Police, Ash actually succeeds in out-Hesslering Hessler as he manages to provide a wide-ranging full-scope overview of what life is like in today’s China, but doesn’t embarrassingly avoid some of the more risqué topics that Hessler frequently avoided. There is sex in the book (especially in Lucifer’s chapters); Ash doesn’t go as in-depth as other topics he covers, but at least it is there and not conspicuous by its absence as I found to be the case in Hessler’s River Town.
My above mention of Peter Hessler (I’m sure Ash is sick of hearing about him) brings me nicely to my final point about Wish Lanterns. There is one character missing in Wish Lanterns, and that is Alec Ash. In interviews, Ash has stated that he deliberately kept himself out of the book as he wished for the book to be about the subjects themselves and not about their foreign friend and his life in China (although there is one teeny tiny mention that Ash allows himself right at the end of the book). However, though Ash is missing from the book, in retrospect he is actually there all the time. The stories of Dahai, Lucifer, Mia et al are all told by Ash; and it is Ash who selects what is featured and what is deemed important enough to include. At the same time I was reading Wish Lanterns, I was also reading some essays by Isham Cook, especially one entitled The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma. Have a read. As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Ash has simultaneously managed to successfully build a career for himself within respectable publishing circles and has written a book that shines light and positivity on aspects of Chinese society whereas I’ve often only found despair. One wonders if this is due to a positive mindset within the author or if his balanced coverage of China is a prerequisite of the requirements of large publishers.
A relevant paragraph from The Ventriloquist’s Dilemma:
"Let’s unpack this a bit with the help of Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of ventriloquism or “ventriloquation” (The Dialogic Imagination). To ventriloquize is to pretend to assume the voice of the Other. Of course, this is something creative writers do all the time; fiction and drama depends on the ability to capture a multiplicity of voices (what Bakhtin calls “heteroglossia”). In the case of nonfiction, however, the writer is bound by a compact with the reader to tell the truth, and by other constraints as well—ethical, legal, financial, etc., as mentioned above. These constraints are amplified in the case of journalists writing for the big publishers, where power and monetary interests are at stake. Here the writer’s relationship with the reader is more complex and bi-directional. He or she is no longer merely the author ventriloquizing the Other, but is just as likely being ventriloquized as the subject and instrument of power."
I highlight the above not because I wish to criticise Wish Lanterns, but because after reading the book it raised questions within myself about my own attitudes. It may be possible that the positives and hope that are expressed towards Chinese society within Wish Lanterns are due to the demands of an international publisher with interests in countries across the world, but if I accept that the truths within Wish Lanterns are filtered through the author’s voice (or the voice of his publisher), then I must also accept that the “truths” in my own more negative attitude towards China is filtered through my own perspective. The characters in Wish Lanterns who have it much tougher than I do, like Snail, certainly don’t wallow in gloom. I’m reminded of the final sentence in Ray Hecht’s South China Morning Blues:
“Well, this is my universe, my voice, my perspective, it’s for me, and at least that means I get to have the last word.”
Any book which provokes self-reflection and contemplation within the reader – especially unexpectedly – is a worthy read. Add to that the already significant achievement of creating a narrative that wonderfully captures the zeitgeist of modern China in a way that few others have and you have a very good book indeed. However, since this is my book review I get to have the last word: you’re still a bastard Alec for being more successful than me.
August 26, 2016
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pf1bbDescription: The stories of young Chinese lives, particularly those young people born under the one-child policy of the 1980s, as they seek to negotiate the expectations of those around them and their own inner desires for self-fulfilment.
There are approximately 322 million Chinese aged between 16 and 30 - a group larger than the population of the USA and destined to have an unprecedented influence on global affairs in the coming years. The one-child policy has led to a generation of only children. There is intense competition for education and jobs, and a tug-of-war between cultural change and tradition, nationalism and the lures of the West. We know the headlines of their lives, but what of the details?
1: Dahai is a military child and a rebel,
2: Fred is a daughter of the Party
3: Xiaoxiao grew up in the far north and longed to travel south.
All were infants when the tanks rolled through Beijing in 1989 and none really know much about their country's recent past. But the way China develops in the future is very much something that will affect their lives - and their behaviour and decisions will affect ours.
December 19, 2022
Outdated
In China, every three years is a generation gap, and Wish Lanterns serves as a time capsule for a period in China 6-9 years ago where affluence and opening to the west was still outpacing patriotic thought and the expectations of family. I remember this time and its optimism, but that was a window of light soon eclipsed by political clouds.
Alec Ash tells the story of people he meets and does a good job with it, yet even through the book you can trace the lines of a foreigner in 三里屯 befriending and then chronicling these stories. It would be as if an aspiring Chinese writer came to Cupertino and told the stories of the Americans they met: interesting, but not representative.
For now, better to start with Young China, and return to Wish Lanterns only if you want more history.
3.5 Stars
In China, every three years is a generation gap, and Wish Lanterns serves as a time capsule for a period in China 6-9 years ago where affluence and opening to the west was still outpacing patriotic thought and the expectations of family. I remember this time and its optimism, but that was a window of light soon eclipsed by political clouds.
Alec Ash tells the story of people he meets and does a good job with it, yet even through the book you can trace the lines of a foreigner in 三里屯 befriending and then chronicling these stories. It would be as if an aspiring Chinese writer came to Cupertino and told the stories of the Americans they met: interesting, but not representative.
For now, better to start with Young China, and return to Wish Lanterns only if you want more history.
3.5 Stars
September 18, 2017
This is a marvellous book. Thoughtfully written, insightful and non-judgmental, the author lends voice to six young individuals of the 80's generation, all single children borne out of China's now-abandoned "one child policy". We follow them as they go through their lives and face hard questions regarding education, vocation, marriage; and whether to follow their dreams or settle for reality.
The writing is so subtly masterful, it somehow drew me in to a point where I could simultaneously identify with 6 different people of diverse backgrounds, pursuing different dreams. I could feel their hopes, understand their anxieties, empathise with their failings and share their joys. It's not something I expected when I first picked up the book.
Ash's knowledge of traditional Chinese norms and contemporary youth lingo is prodigious. It's clear he's not just another passing "laowai" writing on something with which he's only vaguely familiar. Please read Arthur's great review above for a much better account of this wonderful book.
The writing is so subtly masterful, it somehow drew me in to a point where I could simultaneously identify with 6 different people of diverse backgrounds, pursuing different dreams. I could feel their hopes, understand their anxieties, empathise with their failings and share their joys. It's not something I expected when I first picked up the book.
Ash's knowledge of traditional Chinese norms and contemporary youth lingo is prodigious. It's clear he's not just another passing "laowai" writing on something with which he's only vaguely familiar. Please read Arthur's great review above for a much better account of this wonderful book.
August 28, 2016
From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
The stories of young Chinese lives, particularly those young people born under the one-child policy of the 1980s, as they seek to negotiate the expectations of those around them and their own inner desires for self-fulfilment.
Dahai is a military child and a rebel, Fred is a daughter of the Party and Xiaoxiao grew up in the far north and longed to travel south. All were infants when the tanks rolled through Beijing in 1989 and none really know much about their country's recent past. But the way China develops in the future is very much something that will affect their lives - and their behaviour and decisions will affect ours.
There are approximately 322 million Chinese aged between 16 and 30 - a group larger than the population of the USA and destined to have an unprecedented influence on global affairs in the coming years. The one-child policy has led to a generation of only children. There is intense competition for education and jobs, and a tug-of-war between cultural change and tradition, nationalism and the lures of the West. We know the headlines of their lives, but what of the details?
Written by Alec Ash
Read by David Seddon
Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pf1bb
The stories of young Chinese lives, particularly those young people born under the one-child policy of the 1980s, as they seek to negotiate the expectations of those around them and their own inner desires for self-fulfilment.
Dahai is a military child and a rebel, Fred is a daughter of the Party and Xiaoxiao grew up in the far north and longed to travel south. All were infants when the tanks rolled through Beijing in 1989 and none really know much about their country's recent past. But the way China develops in the future is very much something that will affect their lives - and their behaviour and decisions will affect ours.
There are approximately 322 million Chinese aged between 16 and 30 - a group larger than the population of the USA and destined to have an unprecedented influence on global affairs in the coming years. The one-child policy has led to a generation of only children. There is intense competition for education and jobs, and a tug-of-war between cultural change and tradition, nationalism and the lures of the West. We know the headlines of their lives, but what of the details?
Written by Alec Ash
Read by David Seddon
Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pf1bb
September 30, 2022
Was an interesting read about life of young people in China. Alec Ash follows the life of six millennials born after 1985 from their childhood to entering their 30s. He took a pretty diverse group where we had a child of a politician, a kid from a farm trying to start it in a big city, a military child etc. Their diversity and experiences show us what life is (was) like in China for young people when they are discovering themselves and starting their life following their their dreams. We get to learn some from history and culture of China and how it affects the contemporary life. I like this kind of books which show a little bit more inside the countries which I usually just see in the news. This one was a pretty light read which also let me see China in a different way.
June 1, 2023
The portraits of these citizens’ inner and outer lives were good, and for this reason I gave the book 4 stars instead of 3. But the English writer, despite trying their hardest, can’t help but project their feelings onto the matter despite saying otherwise in a postscript— they are constantly trying to interject the idea that China is still “behind” the West because of their “rejection” of Western political values. Of course it reeks of a liberal whose understanding of Marxism and Leninism is surface level provided by their bourgeois collegial education. Based off the text I would be quite surprised if Alec Ash has read more than the Comminist Manifesto as required by some course in “politics”. In Fred’s chapters this is most evident.
What can we say about the narratives themselves? I think from the evidence provided here it is clear that an ideological rot has occurred in the people, which only helps make clear that Xi Jinping’s course is correct. These millennials are disillusioned by individualist pursuits and alienation (in the Marxist sense) alike.
The Cultural Revolution was misguided in execution but not entirely theoretically. Deng’s reforms were necessary to allow China to potentially surpass the West, but these reforms have caused serious issues in the masses’ understanding of the present, because of the embrace of the market and commodities and thus American/western culture (that is, the embrace of bourgeois values). At the same time the embrace of ancient Chinese philosophy has created deviations in ideology that show themselves in a Han-chauvinist way. The contradiction between Chinese philosophy and Chinese Marxism can however be squared away with Mao’s own clarification on contradiction analysis, see Roland Boer’s book on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a most succinct explanation of this for English readers; essentially there is an early form of dialectics in Chinese philosophy. The other contradiction’s solution lies in the path the CPC takes moving forward. So far it seems like they might be on the right track.
Either way a generally interesting account of the day to day lives of some modern Chinese people that was easy to burn through.
What can we say about the narratives themselves? I think from the evidence provided here it is clear that an ideological rot has occurred in the people, which only helps make clear that Xi Jinping’s course is correct. These millennials are disillusioned by individualist pursuits and alienation (in the Marxist sense) alike.
The Cultural Revolution was misguided in execution but not entirely theoretically. Deng’s reforms were necessary to allow China to potentially surpass the West, but these reforms have caused serious issues in the masses’ understanding of the present, because of the embrace of the market and commodities and thus American/western culture (that is, the embrace of bourgeois values). At the same time the embrace of ancient Chinese philosophy has created deviations in ideology that show themselves in a Han-chauvinist way. The contradiction between Chinese philosophy and Chinese Marxism can however be squared away with Mao’s own clarification on contradiction analysis, see Roland Boer’s book on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a most succinct explanation of this for English readers; essentially there is an early form of dialectics in Chinese philosophy. The other contradiction’s solution lies in the path the CPC takes moving forward. So far it seems like they might be on the right track.
Either way a generally interesting account of the day to day lives of some modern Chinese people that was easy to burn through.
August 20, 2021
4.5 stars rounding up to 5.
As the author notes at the end, this isn't just a book about young people coming of age in contemporary China, this is also just a book about being young; I loved that. I might be biased because the people in this book are only a few years older than myself, but their struggles and concerns felt universal.
One of my favorite quotes from the book: "The decade had passed ... without warning. Depending on perspective it seemed like either yesterday or a lifetime ago that they were fresh out of high school ... Sometimes it felt like they didn't recognize their nineteen year-old selves, or the plans that other (sic) them 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."
This was an easy read; intimate portraits of relatively diverse young lives. I liked it, I enjoyed it, and I learnt something.
As the author notes at the end, this isn't just a book about young people coming of age in contemporary China, this is also just a book about being young; I loved that. I might be biased because the people in this book are only a few years older than myself, but their struggles and concerns felt universal.
One of my favorite quotes from the book: "The decade had passed ... without warning. Depending on perspective it seemed like either yesterday or a lifetime ago that they were fresh out of high school ... Sometimes it felt like they didn't recognize their nineteen year-old selves, or the plans that other (sic) them 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."
This was an easy read; intimate portraits of relatively diverse young lives. I liked it, I enjoyed it, and I learnt something.
July 23, 2024
It's been a very long time since I've felt this satisfied after reading a book, where my expectations have been met and exceeded. With less than 3 weeks until I am in China once more, I was looking for something to learn about the country and its people before I head there. Having previously been exposed to books, articles, videos etc of the Chinese Communist Revolution and the succeeding period under Mao (particularly the back-to-back flops with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution), I wanted to read about post-Mao China to get a better understanding of the country as it has changed dramatically since then, starting with Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" means two completely different things pre-1976 (Mao era) and post (Big D and beyond).
I felt that this was exactly the book I was looking for, although its scope was limited to covering (presumably) Han Chinese millennials from mid/high socio-economic background + they all go Uni. Certainly not representative of all of China, but "Wish Lanterns" never pretended to be, with Ash acknowledging this limitation in the author's note and continuing on to state that we should be careful not to generalise the lives of these 6 millennials with the entire group I identified above. But, despite his warning, I honestly felt that I could (keyword: "felt", note that I won't) and that's a testament to the strength of Ash's work.
At first I found it a little difficult to follow, with each 6-8 page chapter focusing on a different person and struggling to remember who did what (note-taking helped with this). But each of the character's stories captured me, and I learned so much about China through them. Ash does an excellent job of contextualising each story with interspersed short history lessons that are all incredibly interesting and informative, not only giving us a greater look into the lives of the sextuor (Xiaxiao, Dahai, Fred, Snail, Lucifer, Mia). This is the best way I absorb history, when these facts are attached to narrative (be it fictional or non-fictional). I found myself highlighting almost every page on my Kobo e-Reader with something interesting. Here's some that stood out:
• Junxun (military education/bootcamp for Chinese students - middle school, high school, uni) - unclear if its compulsory or not though? (Dahai);
• Eye exercises at schools for students to prevent myopia, with eye exercise posters in classrooms (Dahai);
• Elections in villages for Village Chief experimenting with democracy at level with lowest stakes (Fred);
• Gaokao: China's college exams generating all-determinative single score out of 700 (similar to ATAR) (Snail);
• Dakaou: hole-punched discarded CD imports bought in bulk by Chinese scrappers from record labels and sold in China (dirt cheap, foreign music) (Lucifer);
• Li Yang's english language group course/cult where Yang would belt english phrases into a mic and the crowd would repeat them back (screaming), as if it’s a concert (Lucifer);
• Console games banned in 2000 out of fears of "spiritual pollution", opening the way for computer gaming at internet cafes (e.g. WoW) and the corresponding tech-addicted nerds (i.e "zhainan") (Snail);
• The first Chinese blog to take off was the sex diary of a woman in her twenties in 2003 (Dahai);
• Decree: online rumours shared 500+ times or seen 5000+ times criminally culpable (first victim was 16 yo) (Dahai);
• Ketamine: the drug of choice at karaoke parlours (Chinese stand-in for bars) (Snail);
• Karaoke girls (Snail);
• Mao's rule resulted in greater acceptance of women in the workforce (nice to know he's a feminist king albeit a flop for the most part) (Xiaoxiao); and
• Diaosi: meaning penis hair (slang for loser) lol, young ppl with no money, no prospects, dead dating life (Snail).
Another two big pluses for Ash: (1) his choice not to include his interactions/meetings with the characters in the story. The decision to remove himself completely from each story reinforced that he was only a conduit for the stories of these 6 people. (2) despite the many unique aspects canvassed about the lives of chinese millennials, and there are plenty, he made it all quite relatable as a collection of stories "simply about being young". Although this is sometimes lost with the info overload, this part from the last chapter (on Xiaoxiao and Dahai) probably tied it all together: "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".
Already purchased Ash's 2024 work and am super excited to read it, esp because I'm going to some more remote regions of China very soon. Would love to read more books like this about different countries (if anyone knows any lmk).
I know this is already super long but here's some other insights (moreso so I can have a list to come back to, goodreads has become my brain dump):
• Tens of millions of Chinese children in the post-80s were raised by grandparents while parents were away working in cramped cities sending money back (Xiaoxiao);
• Fu'erdai and Guan'erdai, the rich second generation and Party second generation, respectively (Fred);
• Patriotic education post Tiananmen in schools (Fred);
• Democracy, in a chinese context, meaning rule "for" the people (single party) rather than rule "by" the people (elected representatives) (Fred);
• Less than half rural children attend high school in China (Snail);
• Universities: an "environment where there is more to gain from silence and everything to lose from speech" post Tiananmen (Fred);
• In the past (i.e. Tiananmen) C9 students were the chief critiques of the CCP, now, for many, the ultimate goal is to join the CCP (Fred);
• Very high college unemployment rates (at least circa 2008, 16-25%) (Dahai);
• Infantilisation in dating culture (e.g. men being attracted to coquettish fits of women similar to children) (Snail);
• Over 300 internet addiction bootcamps with electro-shock treatment for zhainan (Snail);
• The reverse pyramid: 4 grandparents, 2 parents giving love/affection to 1 kid (due to one child policy) becomes 1 kid supporting 2 parents, 4 grandparents, often financially (Dahai);
• Netizens online using webspeak to avoid filters/censorship (prior to Xi's reforms e.g. KYC internet (I'm not sure the extent of this but remember reading about it when writing an assignment in uni) (Dahai);
• Almost all high-rises in China have basements as they were once compulsory by building code as bomb shelters … now become cheap mouldy/hazardous dwellings for young graduates and migrant workers, circa Parasite (~1mil in Beijing) (Snail);
• Wedding ritual: bride locked in parent's house and groom must make a scene (pretend to break door down and plead) (Snail);
• Haigui: sea turtles (opposite of brain drain; foreign chinese students returning) (Fred);
• Chasing women studies (aka pick-up artist education) (Lucifer); and
Hukuo: the importance of residence status (i.e. conferring different benefits/restrictions on, for example, property acquisition).
I felt that this was exactly the book I was looking for, although its scope was limited to covering (presumably) Han Chinese millennials from mid/high socio-economic background + they all go Uni. Certainly not representative of all of China, but "Wish Lanterns" never pretended to be, with Ash acknowledging this limitation in the author's note and continuing on to state that we should be careful not to generalise the lives of these 6 millennials with the entire group I identified above. But, despite his warning, I honestly felt that I could (keyword: "felt", note that I won't) and that's a testament to the strength of Ash's work.
At first I found it a little difficult to follow, with each 6-8 page chapter focusing on a different person and struggling to remember who did what (note-taking helped with this). But each of the character's stories captured me, and I learned so much about China through them. Ash does an excellent job of contextualising each story with interspersed short history lessons that are all incredibly interesting and informative, not only giving us a greater look into the lives of the sextuor (Xiaxiao, Dahai, Fred, Snail, Lucifer, Mia). This is the best way I absorb history, when these facts are attached to narrative (be it fictional or non-fictional). I found myself highlighting almost every page on my Kobo e-Reader with something interesting. Here's some that stood out:
• Junxun (military education/bootcamp for Chinese students - middle school, high school, uni) - unclear if its compulsory or not though? (Dahai);
• Eye exercises at schools for students to prevent myopia, with eye exercise posters in classrooms (Dahai);
• Elections in villages for Village Chief experimenting with democracy at level with lowest stakes (Fred);
• Gaokao: China's college exams generating all-determinative single score out of 700 (similar to ATAR) (Snail);
• Dakaou: hole-punched discarded CD imports bought in bulk by Chinese scrappers from record labels and sold in China (dirt cheap, foreign music) (Lucifer);
• Li Yang's english language group course/cult where Yang would belt english phrases into a mic and the crowd would repeat them back (screaming), as if it’s a concert (Lucifer);
• Console games banned in 2000 out of fears of "spiritual pollution", opening the way for computer gaming at internet cafes (e.g. WoW) and the corresponding tech-addicted nerds (i.e "zhainan") (Snail);
• The first Chinese blog to take off was the sex diary of a woman in her twenties in 2003 (Dahai);
• Decree: online rumours shared 500+ times or seen 5000+ times criminally culpable (first victim was 16 yo) (Dahai);
• Ketamine: the drug of choice at karaoke parlours (Chinese stand-in for bars) (Snail);
• Karaoke girls (Snail);
• Mao's rule resulted in greater acceptance of women in the workforce (nice to know he's a feminist king albeit a flop for the most part) (Xiaoxiao); and
• Diaosi: meaning penis hair (slang for loser) lol, young ppl with no money, no prospects, dead dating life (Snail).
Another two big pluses for Ash: (1) his choice not to include his interactions/meetings with the characters in the story. The decision to remove himself completely from each story reinforced that he was only a conduit for the stories of these 6 people. (2) despite the many unique aspects canvassed about the lives of chinese millennials, and there are plenty, he made it all quite relatable as a collection of stories "simply about being young". Although this is sometimes lost with the info overload, this part from the last chapter (on Xiaoxiao and Dahai) probably tied it all together: "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".
Already purchased Ash's 2024 work and am super excited to read it, esp because I'm going to some more remote regions of China very soon. Would love to read more books like this about different countries (if anyone knows any lmk).
I know this is already super long but here's some other insights (moreso so I can have a list to come back to, goodreads has become my brain dump):
• Tens of millions of Chinese children in the post-80s were raised by grandparents while parents were away working in cramped cities sending money back (Xiaoxiao);
• Fu'erdai and Guan'erdai, the rich second generation and Party second generation, respectively (Fred);
• Patriotic education post Tiananmen in schools (Fred);
• Democracy, in a chinese context, meaning rule "for" the people (single party) rather than rule "by" the people (elected representatives) (Fred);
• Less than half rural children attend high school in China (Snail);
• Universities: an "environment where there is more to gain from silence and everything to lose from speech" post Tiananmen (Fred);
• In the past (i.e. Tiananmen) C9 students were the chief critiques of the CCP, now, for many, the ultimate goal is to join the CCP (Fred);
• Very high college unemployment rates (at least circa 2008, 16-25%) (Dahai);
• Infantilisation in dating culture (e.g. men being attracted to coquettish fits of women similar to children) (Snail);
• Over 300 internet addiction bootcamps with electro-shock treatment for zhainan (Snail);
• The reverse pyramid: 4 grandparents, 2 parents giving love/affection to 1 kid (due to one child policy) becomes 1 kid supporting 2 parents, 4 grandparents, often financially (Dahai);
• Netizens online using webspeak to avoid filters/censorship (prior to Xi's reforms e.g. KYC internet (I'm not sure the extent of this but remember reading about it when writing an assignment in uni) (Dahai);
• Almost all high-rises in China have basements as they were once compulsory by building code as bomb shelters … now become cheap mouldy/hazardous dwellings for young graduates and migrant workers, circa Parasite (~1mil in Beijing) (Snail);
• Wedding ritual: bride locked in parent's house and groom must make a scene (pretend to break door down and plead) (Snail);
• Haigui: sea turtles (opposite of brain drain; foreign chinese students returning) (Fred);
• Chasing women studies (aka pick-up artist education) (Lucifer); and
Hukuo: the importance of residence status (i.e. conferring different benefits/restrictions on, for example, property acquisition).
May 8, 2018
I was strangely convinced I wouldn't enjoy this, but it was actually pretty fantastic. Ash does a great job showing the lives of these six young people, and I was surprised to feel a very strong rush of emotions at the end. I think I've learned some new things. Ash maybe isn't quite as good a writer as Peter Hessler (there are places I feel his critique intrudes ever so slightly wheras Hessler has this peculiar way of letting stories speak for themselves), but this book is definitely more up to date, and would probably be a good suggestion for anyone who has read Hessler's books on China and wants something more current. The lack of resolution is both frustrating and increases the book's impact, because it reminds me that everyone Ash wrote about is out there right now, and they still have a lot ahead of them, and that's what life is all about.
April 20, 2020
Uno sguardo vicino e appassionato sulla Cina moderna attraverso le storie di ragazzi come me. Lettura consigliata soprattutto a chi nutre interesse nel vedere non solo l'attualità occidentale ma anche quella orientale con gli occhi timorosi, spaventati ma anche sognanti e speranzosi dei giovani che stanno costruendo il proprio futuro. Molto bello!
July 2, 2021
Lanterne in volo racchiude e intreccia le storie di sei ragazzi cinesi nati tra la fine degli anni '80 e l'inizio degli anni '90, le cui vite non potrebbero essere più diverse: c'è l'aspirante popstar, la figlia del politico di provincia, c'è chi si rifugia nel mondo virtuale e chi cerca la propria strada senza adeguarsi alle aspettative che vogliono la donna sposata entro e non oltre i 30 anni, pena lo stigma sociale.
Una lettura davvero affascinante, anche e soprattutto per la capacità di Alec Ash di prendere queste storie e srotolarle davanti agli occhi del lettore con grande spontaneità: Ash ha vissuto dieci anni in Cina e si vede! Il suo obbiettivo era dare voce a questa generazione "in divenire" in tutte le sue sfaccettature, e devo dire che ha fatto un ottimo lavoro.
Per quanto mi riguarda leggere questo libro è stato doppiamente piacevole: sia per quanto riguarda le storie in sé, davvero interessanti, sia per il semplice fatto che anche io appartengo a quella generazione, e mi sono riconosciuta in molti desideri, paure, gioie e sfide affrontate dai protagonisti.
Una lettura trasversale: può essere interessante sia per chi la Cina la conosce già, sia per chi ha appena iniziato e vorrebbe capire com'è la vita dei giovani adulti cinesi.
Particolarmente indicato se, come me, appartenete alla stessa generazione dei ragazzi intervistati, i millennial!
Una lettura davvero affascinante, anche e soprattutto per la capacità di Alec Ash di prendere queste storie e srotolarle davanti agli occhi del lettore con grande spontaneità: Ash ha vissuto dieci anni in Cina e si vede! Il suo obbiettivo era dare voce a questa generazione "in divenire" in tutte le sue sfaccettature, e devo dire che ha fatto un ottimo lavoro.
Per quanto mi riguarda leggere questo libro è stato doppiamente piacevole: sia per quanto riguarda le storie in sé, davvero interessanti, sia per il semplice fatto che anche io appartengo a quella generazione, e mi sono riconosciuta in molti desideri, paure, gioie e sfide affrontate dai protagonisti.
Una lettura trasversale: può essere interessante sia per chi la Cina la conosce già, sia per chi ha appena iniziato e vorrebbe capire com'è la vita dei giovani adulti cinesi.
Particolarmente indicato se, come me, appartenete alla stessa generazione dei ragazzi intervistati, i millennial!
December 31, 2017
I didn't really understand this book when I started reading it, but I liked it by the end. It takes the reader through the lives (so far) of six millennials in China. Much of it is mundane detail, but that's kind of the point, and it was interesting to read. The author does a good job resisting the urge to cram the individuals' stories into a trite overarching "thesis" and instead lets them speak for themselves. The author also does a good job giving context and talking about cultural trends without being overly political.
I learned that it is truly mind-boggling how quickly China is changing.
I learned that it is truly mind-boggling how quickly China is changing.
January 25, 2020
Interessante spaccato sulla nuova generazione cinese, quella che non ha vissuto i fatti di piazza Tienanmen perché non era ancora nata. L'autore ha scelto di raccontare le vite di sei ragazzi realmente esistenti e di seguirle dall'adolescenza all'età adulta.
Ne emerge un quadro di speranze, illusioni, inventiva, voglia di fare che spesso si scontra con le esigenze della vita vera e con una cultura in cui le esigenze del singolo sono sempre state sottomesse al bene della collettività.
Per dare maggior continuità io avrei raccontato ogni singola storia dall'inizio alla fine, senza saltellare da un personaggio all'altro come ha fatto l'autore.
Ne emerge un quadro di speranze, illusioni, inventiva, voglia di fare che spesso si scontra con le esigenze della vita vera e con una cultura in cui le esigenze del singolo sono sempre state sottomesse al bene della collettività.
Per dare maggior continuità io avrei raccontato ogni singola storia dall'inizio alla fine, senza saltellare da un personaggio all'altro come ha fatto l'autore.
August 24, 2023
What really struck me was the hope. These young Chinese people had opportunities, could study, worked and work hard, had to dully compromise in the way to their adulthood, got meaningful lives and challenges, and always, grounded hope on a better future. There is a gulf between this generation and their brethren in the United States. The US isn’t mentioned in the book, except as a cultural reference, but for anyone who’s aware of the extreme social, economic, and political dysfunctionality of today’s America, the hope and the reality-grounded lives herein explored is what really makes its mark in the reading of these chronicles. Also, the writing is very good and compelling, serving perfectly the fascinating and relevant subject.
“The problem with making big statements about China is that you can immediately think of an example that suggests the opposite. To generalize is to be an idiot, William Blake said. But single dots can form an image, and six notes can make a melody. I hope that through these individual stories, I show rather than tell what it means to be of a particular generation of young Chinese at this moment in the country’s history. (…) Another thing about real lives is that they keep on going. Since I finished the manuscript (…) Finally I hoped that the book could be not only about China, but more simply about being young.”
“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 suspended at the open base she nestled the firelighter, whose heat would give the lantern its lift.
(…) The design had barely changed in two thousand years. The story goes that in the Three Kingdoms era the general Zhu Geliang invented a flying lantern while under siege, writing a message inside it to plead for reinforcements. Now they were sold in convenience stores for a clutch of yuan, set loose by friends and lovers on special occasions. They were known as kongming lamps, after the general’s ceremonial title, but also as sky lanterns and wish lanterns. Some wrote their wish on a strip of paper tied to the wire, others on the outside itself. Most silently intoned it as the lantern carried their thoughts into the sky (…)”.
“When Xiaoxiao started middle school, everything changed. Her dolls were taken away, TV was restricted and the fruit storeroom she played in became off bounds. The shift was so sudden that Xiaoxiao remembers thinking she was being punished for an unknown crime. Overnight, the pampering she was used to transformed into the true legacy of the only-child generation: crippling study pressure. Early childhood is a protected time, but the fairy tale crumbles as soon as you are old enough to hit the books twelve hours a day. ‘Knowledge changes destiny,’ Xiaoxiao’s mother used to tell her at dinner, a familiar saying. Schooldays began at 7am.”
“Dahai’s family was further out still, in a military compound in Miyun township, ten kilometres north-east in the shadow of the northern mountains. The People’s Liberation Army, over two million strong, is as self-sufficient as a small nation. Both combat forces and workers such as Dahai’s father – responsible for army-related construction projects – are housed in these closed compounds. Some of them are vast, cities within cities, with their own water supply, fire service and police. Many use food coupons instead of money at canteens. All have a guard on the gates, with no outsiders allowed in unaccompanied. To Dahai, his compound was the world.”
“She liked banyan trees the best. They weren’t as common as coconut trees, but were more beautiful with twisted trunks and veils of dangling hair connecting to the roots. There were enough of them to enjoy on the tropical island of Hainan, in China’s far south. Over water from the megalopolis of the Pearl River Delta, the island province is right at the bottom of the map, hanging underneath a peninsula west of Hong Kong as if China had dripped it out. Not counting a spray of contested rocks in the South China Sea, it is the southernmost part of the People’s Republic – politically part of the mainland, geographically not. The south of China can feel like a different country entirely from the north.”
“Miao Lin’s family had worked this land for centuries, but his father joined the exodus when Miao Lin, born in 1987, was six. He went to Jiangsu to be a construction worker, and from there to Henan and Hebei and back again, changing jobs like clothes and sending money home every month. Miao Lin’s mother and paternal grandparents tended to their crops while he was gone. They planted wheat in the autumn, soya beans and sweetcorn in the summer, as well as cabbage and chilli pepper and pak choi for the dinner table in garden plots around their home. Not an inch of land was wasted.”
“Before he knew it, the day of judgement loomed: the gaokao was upon him. Most of his knowledge was crammed by rote memorisation. For the compulsory language and culture exam, critical-thinking skills were frowned upon. Imaginative answers were wrong answers. The essay question that carried a frightening percentage of the final mark was infamous for its ambiguous prompts, but examiners weren’t afraid to give essays zero marks if a student got too creative – for instance mocking an aspect of Chinese politics or society. Leading up to and during the exams, his mother moved into a hotel in town to be near him. She cooked all his meals, did his laundry, and made sure he had nothing to worry about except study. At 5pm on the last afternoon, she waited with hundreds of other parents outside the school gates for him to come out of his final paper. When he stumbled out, she drove him back home in the family tuktuk, cooked a large meal and tried her best not to ask how it went until later.”
“As a place to grow up, Xinjiang had its peculiarities. It is home to the Taklamakan desert, the flaming mountains and miles upon miles of nothing. In the south there are spices, dates and scorpions, where it can feel more like Persia than China. The young play football in the dust, the old smoke tobacco from long metal pipes. The sun sets at eleven in the summer and rises at eleven in the winter. Xinjiang should be two or three hours behind Beijing, but the powers that be decree China is one country, one time zone. Uighurs use local time; everything else runs on Beijing time. Some residents wear two watches to keep track.”
“She loved Sex and the City but above all Friends, which is hugely popular in China. Following the romantic entanglements of the six characters (she liked Chandler best), Mia was keenly curious about their lives. She assumed their high-ceilinged, artfully sofa-ed loft apartments were the norm in New York, where there must be so much living space. That they asked strangers out on dates, or that Joey kept condoms in his wallet, were revelations. Life must be pretty good in the US, she decided, if twenty-somethings could lounge around in a cafe all day.”
“Snail was moving up in the world. With Xiaoli he had left the sunless basement and found a flat on the seventh floor of a gated residential block on the outskirts of north-west Beijing, even further out than his old university. (…) Wherever Snail went he would carry his home on his back with him. In October, at the first bite of another winter, his daughter was born. In keeping with the horticultural theme of Snail’s surname, the pictogram of grass growing over a field, they called her Guoguo – the character for ‘fruit’, twice. She would grow on the fields he sowed.”
“Lucifer wasn’t going to give up his dream so easily. The money and the sex were waiting for him. There was no doubt in his mind. He might not be a superstar, but he was finding his own kind of freedom.”
“Fred’s considered reaction was that civil disobedience didn’t do anyone any good. For meaningful political reform to happen, she still felt stability was paramount. It was certain that Beijing wouldn’t give in to allow fully free elections in Hong Kong, and in many ways the protests harmed that cause. If they escalated to threaten national security or territorial integrity, the government would shut them down with ruthless force if necessary. While most of the students were the model of civility, in other aspects of the rhetoric there were clear streaks of anti-mainland sentiment that she resented. The roots of young Hong Kongers’ dissatisfaction also included unaffordable property prices and a widening wealth gap, and Fred didn’t see how bringing the city to a standstill helped. The view from Beijing was much more unforgiving. State media stressed the unlawful nature of the protests, speculated about involvement of ‘hostile foreign forces’ and (correctly) pointed out that the British had themselves denied Hong Kongers the vote for a century and a half. The pendulum of Fred’s politics had swung dramatically. When she first arrived at Peking University in 2003, eighteen years old, she had been swept along by the progressive ideas of the Chinese political right. Soon after, still impressionable, she had turned sharply left to follow Pan Wei’s creed of Chinese exceptionalism. Now she had settled at equilibrium. Not nationalistic but patriotic. Not an ideologue but a realist. Socially liberal, politically conservative. She knew her government needed to reform, and that it didn’t behave as well as it should either to its own people or in the international arena. But she also felt that China’s path to modernity would be different to the West’s. After sampling the whole spectrum, the only ideology left was pragmatism. In the end Fred’s politics were mainstream for her generation: change in China must come by evolution, not revolution. As to the system itself – Leninist capitalism and single-party rule – she might have shrugged her shoulders, paraphrased Winston Churchill and said it was the worst form of government for China except for all the others. It wasn’t just a matter of her family’s stake in the Party’s survival; it was about her own stake in the nation’s future. There were such monumental challenges ahead: a slowing economy, regional instability, a demographic crunch as a generation of workers retired and the supply of cheap labour ran out. In her eyes the leadership, for all its flaws, was still negotiating those challenges – and avoiding the frankly terrifying alternative of a power vacuum. It was corrupt and messy and had skewed priorities, but the nation was still taking two steps forward for every step back. As Deng Xiaoping said, they would cross the river by feeling for the stones. At twenty-nine Fred thought of her future as she did her nation’s. There should be goals but no fixed plans, as the only constant was change. Principles but not dogma; the best course was whatever worked to keep getting richer, stronger, better. The teenage growth spurt and formative twenties were over. Now it was time to be responsible and find a role in the world. It would take a while yet and there would be tough times to weather, like the long Beijing winter ahead of her. But she could be patient, and wait for spring.”
“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.”
“The problem with making big statements about China is that you can immediately think of an example that suggests the opposite. To generalize is to be an idiot, William Blake said. But single dots can form an image, and six notes can make a melody. I hope that through these individual stories, I show rather than tell what it means to be of a particular generation of young Chinese at this moment in the country’s history. (…) Another thing about real lives is that they keep on going. Since I finished the manuscript (…) Finally I hoped that the book could be not only about China, but more simply about being young.”
“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 suspended at the open base she nestled the firelighter, whose heat would give the lantern its lift.
(…) The design had barely changed in two thousand years. The story goes that in the Three Kingdoms era the general Zhu Geliang invented a flying lantern while under siege, writing a message inside it to plead for reinforcements. Now they were sold in convenience stores for a clutch of yuan, set loose by friends and lovers on special occasions. They were known as kongming lamps, after the general’s ceremonial title, but also as sky lanterns and wish lanterns. Some wrote their wish on a strip of paper tied to the wire, others on the outside itself. Most silently intoned it as the lantern carried their thoughts into the sky (…)”.
“When Xiaoxiao started middle school, everything changed. Her dolls were taken away, TV was restricted and the fruit storeroom she played in became off bounds. The shift was so sudden that Xiaoxiao remembers thinking she was being punished for an unknown crime. Overnight, the pampering she was used to transformed into the true legacy of the only-child generation: crippling study pressure. Early childhood is a protected time, but the fairy tale crumbles as soon as you are old enough to hit the books twelve hours a day. ‘Knowledge changes destiny,’ Xiaoxiao’s mother used to tell her at dinner, a familiar saying. Schooldays began at 7am.”
“Dahai’s family was further out still, in a military compound in Miyun township, ten kilometres north-east in the shadow of the northern mountains. The People’s Liberation Army, over two million strong, is as self-sufficient as a small nation. Both combat forces and workers such as Dahai’s father – responsible for army-related construction projects – are housed in these closed compounds. Some of them are vast, cities within cities, with their own water supply, fire service and police. Many use food coupons instead of money at canteens. All have a guard on the gates, with no outsiders allowed in unaccompanied. To Dahai, his compound was the world.”
“She liked banyan trees the best. They weren’t as common as coconut trees, but were more beautiful with twisted trunks and veils of dangling hair connecting to the roots. There were enough of them to enjoy on the tropical island of Hainan, in China’s far south. Over water from the megalopolis of the Pearl River Delta, the island province is right at the bottom of the map, hanging underneath a peninsula west of Hong Kong as if China had dripped it out. Not counting a spray of contested rocks in the South China Sea, it is the southernmost part of the People’s Republic – politically part of the mainland, geographically not. The south of China can feel like a different country entirely from the north.”
“Miao Lin’s family had worked this land for centuries, but his father joined the exodus when Miao Lin, born in 1987, was six. He went to Jiangsu to be a construction worker, and from there to Henan and Hebei and back again, changing jobs like clothes and sending money home every month. Miao Lin’s mother and paternal grandparents tended to their crops while he was gone. They planted wheat in the autumn, soya beans and sweetcorn in the summer, as well as cabbage and chilli pepper and pak choi for the dinner table in garden plots around their home. Not an inch of land was wasted.”
“Before he knew it, the day of judgement loomed: the gaokao was upon him. Most of his knowledge was crammed by rote memorisation. For the compulsory language and culture exam, critical-thinking skills were frowned upon. Imaginative answers were wrong answers. The essay question that carried a frightening percentage of the final mark was infamous for its ambiguous prompts, but examiners weren’t afraid to give essays zero marks if a student got too creative – for instance mocking an aspect of Chinese politics or society. Leading up to and during the exams, his mother moved into a hotel in town to be near him. She cooked all his meals, did his laundry, and made sure he had nothing to worry about except study. At 5pm on the last afternoon, she waited with hundreds of other parents outside the school gates for him to come out of his final paper. When he stumbled out, she drove him back home in the family tuktuk, cooked a large meal and tried her best not to ask how it went until later.”
“As a place to grow up, Xinjiang had its peculiarities. It is home to the Taklamakan desert, the flaming mountains and miles upon miles of nothing. In the south there are spices, dates and scorpions, where it can feel more like Persia than China. The young play football in the dust, the old smoke tobacco from long metal pipes. The sun sets at eleven in the summer and rises at eleven in the winter. Xinjiang should be two or three hours behind Beijing, but the powers that be decree China is one country, one time zone. Uighurs use local time; everything else runs on Beijing time. Some residents wear two watches to keep track.”
“She loved Sex and the City but above all Friends, which is hugely popular in China. Following the romantic entanglements of the six characters (she liked Chandler best), Mia was keenly curious about their lives. She assumed their high-ceilinged, artfully sofa-ed loft apartments were the norm in New York, where there must be so much living space. That they asked strangers out on dates, or that Joey kept condoms in his wallet, were revelations. Life must be pretty good in the US, she decided, if twenty-somethings could lounge around in a cafe all day.”
“Snail was moving up in the world. With Xiaoli he had left the sunless basement and found a flat on the seventh floor of a gated residential block on the outskirts of north-west Beijing, even further out than his old university. (…) Wherever Snail went he would carry his home on his back with him. In October, at the first bite of another winter, his daughter was born. In keeping with the horticultural theme of Snail’s surname, the pictogram of grass growing over a field, they called her Guoguo – the character for ‘fruit’, twice. She would grow on the fields he sowed.”
“Lucifer wasn’t going to give up his dream so easily. The money and the sex were waiting for him. There was no doubt in his mind. He might not be a superstar, but he was finding his own kind of freedom.”
“Fred’s considered reaction was that civil disobedience didn’t do anyone any good. For meaningful political reform to happen, she still felt stability was paramount. It was certain that Beijing wouldn’t give in to allow fully free elections in Hong Kong, and in many ways the protests harmed that cause. If they escalated to threaten national security or territorial integrity, the government would shut them down with ruthless force if necessary. While most of the students were the model of civility, in other aspects of the rhetoric there were clear streaks of anti-mainland sentiment that she resented. The roots of young Hong Kongers’ dissatisfaction also included unaffordable property prices and a widening wealth gap, and Fred didn’t see how bringing the city to a standstill helped. The view from Beijing was much more unforgiving. State media stressed the unlawful nature of the protests, speculated about involvement of ‘hostile foreign forces’ and (correctly) pointed out that the British had themselves denied Hong Kongers the vote for a century and a half. The pendulum of Fred’s politics had swung dramatically. When she first arrived at Peking University in 2003, eighteen years old, she had been swept along by the progressive ideas of the Chinese political right. Soon after, still impressionable, she had turned sharply left to follow Pan Wei’s creed of Chinese exceptionalism. Now she had settled at equilibrium. Not nationalistic but patriotic. Not an ideologue but a realist. Socially liberal, politically conservative. She knew her government needed to reform, and that it didn’t behave as well as it should either to its own people or in the international arena. But she also felt that China’s path to modernity would be different to the West’s. After sampling the whole spectrum, the only ideology left was pragmatism. In the end Fred’s politics were mainstream for her generation: change in China must come by evolution, not revolution. As to the system itself – Leninist capitalism and single-party rule – she might have shrugged her shoulders, paraphrased Winston Churchill and said it was the worst form of government for China except for all the others. It wasn’t just a matter of her family’s stake in the Party’s survival; it was about her own stake in the nation’s future. There were such monumental challenges ahead: a slowing economy, regional instability, a demographic crunch as a generation of workers retired and the supply of cheap labour ran out. In her eyes the leadership, for all its flaws, was still negotiating those challenges – and avoiding the frankly terrifying alternative of a power vacuum. It was corrupt and messy and had skewed priorities, but the nation was still taking two steps forward for every step back. As Deng Xiaoping said, they would cross the river by feeling for the stones. At twenty-nine Fred thought of her future as she did her nation’s. There should be goals but no fixed plans, as the only constant was change. Principles but not dogma; the best course was whatever worked to keep getting richer, stronger, better. The teenage growth spurt and formative twenties were over. Now it was time to be responsible and find a role in the world. It would take a while yet and there would be tough times to weather, like the long Beijing winter ahead of her. But she could be patient, and wait for spring.”
“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.”
May 24, 2020
Add it to the list of books-I-wish-I-read-before-moving-to-China. This book is great introduction to everyday life and culture in contemporary China through the six lives of the post-80s generation. I'm anything but an expert, but the author Alec Ash made me feel like I was back and learning the nuances of China again. Like the game of one-upmanship that goes into building a home facade (and usually only the facade) in the countryside, or how difficult it can be for highly educated woman to find a partner, or how KTV's really operate. Ash isn't keen to make sweeping conclusions on how these lives fit in to the greater picture like similar works, rather he chooses to simply observe and describe. This in itself, is what makes the book great, it serves to show that China isn't a monolith.
March 27, 2019
This one deserves a galaxy rating, it in the middle with the stars revolving around it paying homage to its awesomeness.
When this book first came out I so wanted to read it however something which for the life of me I cannot now remember, came up and I forgot all about it. A few months back I was going through my to read list and came upon it. I decided to give it a try. It was one of the best decisions I've made in a while.
The reason for my glowing review is mostly personal. Some years back I had done research on China and could rattle a litany of economic figures about it but I had wanted a peoples take on it. The personal that could not be captured in statistics. This book did it. In addition to vastly enjoying Alec's writing style I had the added bonus of being around the same age cohort as the characters in the book. I connected with their lives on a personal level, in fact there was one character whose life and mine had uncanny parallels that it felt like reading about oneself.
I would recommend this to everyone but mostly to millenials born between 1985 and 1990. It shows that no matter where we are, life follows similar paths and its not just you, we all go through familiar things. Alec's writing style is just divine; the pace, the prose, the length of chapters and most importantly a text book example of a writer who knows the meaning of show, dont tell
When this book first came out I so wanted to read it however something which for the life of me I cannot now remember, came up and I forgot all about it. A few months back I was going through my to read list and came upon it. I decided to give it a try. It was one of the best decisions I've made in a while.
The reason for my glowing review is mostly personal. Some years back I had done research on China and could rattle a litany of economic figures about it but I had wanted a peoples take on it. The personal that could not be captured in statistics. This book did it. In addition to vastly enjoying Alec's writing style I had the added bonus of being around the same age cohort as the characters in the book. I connected with their lives on a personal level, in fact there was one character whose life and mine had uncanny parallels that it felt like reading about oneself.
I would recommend this to everyone but mostly to millenials born between 1985 and 1990. It shows that no matter where we are, life follows similar paths and its not just you, we all go through familiar things. Alec's writing style is just divine; the pace, the prose, the length of chapters and most importantly a text book example of a writer who knows the meaning of show, dont tell
August 9, 2020
This fact-filled, but highly readable book follows the lives of six young Chinese, creating story arcs so captivating that I find myself being careful not to give spoilers here. It cannot claim to be representative (3 out of 6 people having been to the music venue D22 hardly reflects Chinese youth at large), but manages to knit many of the events and developments that have been shaping China in the past few decades into its narrative, resulting in a great introduction to or refresher in what the country has been going through. I wish there was one like this for every country - I'll definitely be recommending this to people who want to get a better (or even a first) understanding of today's China.
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July 14, 2021I don't really know how to rate this book.
I think it definitely deserves five stars but I feel weird rating it since it's the real stories of real people
As someone who has lived in China I loved reading and learning more about its people and culture and this is the kind of book I would recommend to people that are generally critical of China.
The book is about people, about their culture and their politics and how these affect their lives and I feel like it gives the often villainized China a human side more people should be looking at.
I think it definitely deserves five stars but I feel weird rating it since it's the real stories of real people
As someone who has lived in China I loved reading and learning more about its people and culture and this is the kind of book I would recommend to people that are generally critical of China.
The book is about people, about their culture and their politics and how these affect their lives and I feel like it gives the often villainized China a human side more people should be looking at.
April 17, 2025
Although most of the stories were very similar to that of my Chinese friends from the same generation, I still found the book very engaging, and definitely recommend it to someone who would want to move to China without prior knowledge of the culture or the societal norms, or someone who just wants to understand the post 80's Chinese people a bit better.
March 13, 2023
The author follows the lives of a few young Chinese people mostly in their 20s. They have no memory of Tiananmen Square. They are dealing with life in China today. This is not a comprehensive look at China today. It is only a snapshot, and the author admits that it is not representative of the entire country due to the fact that the author met these people mostly in Bejing. This would be like judging all of the United States by meeting only the people living in Boston, for example. Sure, many Bostonians come from other places, but they self-selected to come to Boston rather than Houston or Chicago or Los Angeles.
I recommend reading "The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story" by Hyeonseo Lee. She lived in China for several years, coming from North Korea on a lark it seems, but soon found she could no longer go back to North Korea. Luckily she did have relatives in China, so she got a little help, but her adventures there give one a good idea of how life goes in China (IN THE CITIES). I was actually surprised at how well off the Chinese are compared to how they once were (IN THE CITIES).
The book to read about how China was under Mao is, "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang. That is the China that I recall from my reading. It was really terrible, so even though I think China is not the best place in the world to live today, it is a lot better than it once was (IN THE CITIES).
I emphasize IN THE CITIES because rural life in China today sounds fairly terrible. Still... not as bad as it used to be.
I might read/listen to this book again.
I recommend reading "The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story" by Hyeonseo Lee. She lived in China for several years, coming from North Korea on a lark it seems, but soon found she could no longer go back to North Korea. Luckily she did have relatives in China, so she got a little help, but her adventures there give one a good idea of how life goes in China (IN THE CITIES). I was actually surprised at how well off the Chinese are compared to how they once were (IN THE CITIES).
The book to read about how China was under Mao is, "Mao: The Unknown Story" by Jung Chang. That is the China that I recall from my reading. It was really terrible, so even though I think China is not the best place in the world to live today, it is a lot better than it once was (IN THE CITIES).
I emphasize IN THE CITIES because rural life in China today sounds fairly terrible. Still... not as bad as it used to be.
I might read/listen to this book again.
September 10, 2017
Wish Lanterns is a collection of personal stories in the style of other writers on contemporary China, such as Michael Meyer or Evan Osnos. While this reader seeks not to ascribe one work as better than the other within this genre, as each work is a valuable understanding of understanding the kaleidoscope of modern China. This book particularly focuses on the young, and the nature of balancing dreams with reality.
Throughout these 6 overlapping stories of young lives, people born between 1985 and 1990, one is exposed to the realities and pressures of aspiring young people, some who crave fame, and some who seek to simply eek out a comfortable living.
Wish Lanterns is a short and readable volume, and gives people an understanding of Chinese culture through the lens of personal experience. It is very well constructed, and in places, beautifully written, and is worth reading if one appreciates true story with a personal touch.
Throughout these 6 overlapping stories of young lives, people born between 1985 and 1990, one is exposed to the realities and pressures of aspiring young people, some who crave fame, and some who seek to simply eek out a comfortable living.
Wish Lanterns is a short and readable volume, and gives people an understanding of Chinese culture through the lens of personal experience. It is very well constructed, and in places, beautifully written, and is worth reading if one appreciates true story with a personal touch.
August 17, 2017
I really, really enjoyed this book. First of all, at the time I am writing this review, I am 38 years old, so all six of the kids this book is about are significantly younger than I am. Youth culture in the US feels foreign enough to me, the lives of young people in China feel doubly foreign.
I visited China a few years ago, and I was struck by how different each city I visited was: Shanghai felt very modern and western, Xi'an felt like an 8 million person backwater, and Beijing felt modern but not western. I really appreciated that Ash selected people from all over China, to get that flavor of how different the different regions are.
Overall, I would really recommend this book to anyone who is curious about what life in China is like now for the kids growing up in the current communist-capitalist hybrid time. It's not the China of matching gray Mao jackets and millions of people on bicycles. But read it soon - it will be out of date in just a few years, given how fast China is changing.
I received this book from a GoodReads First Reads giveaway.
I visited China a few years ago, and I was struck by how different each city I visited was: Shanghai felt very modern and western, Xi'an felt like an 8 million person backwater, and Beijing felt modern but not western. I really appreciated that Ash selected people from all over China, to get that flavor of how different the different regions are.
Overall, I would really recommend this book to anyone who is curious about what life in China is like now for the kids growing up in the current communist-capitalist hybrid time. It's not the China of matching gray Mao jackets and millions of people on bicycles. But read it soon - it will be out of date in just a few years, given how fast China is changing.
I received this book from a GoodReads First Reads giveaway.
August 7, 2021
A cleverly written book about modern China through the lives of six young people born in the 80’s. Having lived in the area (HK/Singapore/China) for the last 15 years many of the scenarios and historical and cultural aspects were familiar to me, however it was refreshing to revisit them as they were so skilfully woven into the stories of the protagonists.
Well worth a read and highly recommended to anyone wanting a crash course on modern China.
Well worth a read and highly recommended to anyone wanting a crash course on modern China.
March 23, 2022
As I read this book about young adults in China, I couldn’t help but think they are like YA’s anywhere! Their culture differs, of course, but the desires are the same. An engaging read.
April 19, 2022
It was really good to listen to this book on audio, after all the history stuff I've been streaking on, and to get a glimpse into the lives of six millennials in China, each one born in a different year from 1985-1990 (my cohort). The "post-80s" children, after Mao and Deng. I appreciate how Alec Ash explained approaching this project, and how he didn't insert himself into the narrative, and how he was able to weave political context into these profiles. There was a good amount of absurd observational humor but it came through poorly from the narrator. Still, I laughed a bit and enjoyed learning details like wearing a red string bracelet to help you get through the challenges that come during the year of your zodiac animal, so today in Chinatown, I found one for myself for next year, 2023, with a lil wooden rabbit attached 🐇.
Audible clips/notes
Audible clips/notes
October 3, 2019
There are so many good reviews of this book that explore its structure, intent, and its resounding success. I only want to add that Wish Lanterns also serves as a valuable introduction to China more generally, and one which is likely to leave a deeper impression than any academic overview of contemporary Chinese society. The themes that are elucidated through these young Chinese lives reverberate through all levels of Chinese society. Having lived in Beijing during most of the years covered in this book, I can affirm that it indirectly chronicles many of the critical events that shaped China at the time: the Olympics, the air pollution, the slowing velocity of the Chinese dream, the property boom, the knockdown effects of the one child policy, the development of the Chinese internet and social media platforms like Weibo, the Great Firewall, censorship... More importantly, the book sheds light on the myriad viewpoints that the Chinese themselves hold towards these events, and even how they view themselves. As such, it is also a great primer if you plan to live in China and wonder what kinds of friends, neighbors, and colleagues you might have. If you already live in China, it might make you wonder why you're not having the kinds of conversations with your Chinese associates that Alec Ash clearly has.
February 8, 2018
An account of how 6 people people of about my age (32) tried to have a career and, more generally, a life in the noughties and early tens China. Not a grand socio-cultural study by any metric, but a compelling read, rich on detail and observations.
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