For all the atomizing effects of the market age, the culture of giving was not shrinking; it was growing. Private philanthropic organizations, which had been shuttered or taken over by the Party, were returning. Blood donations had grown so much that the old blood merchants who used to go door-to-door, standing peasants on their heads, all but disappeared. After the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, more than a quarter of a million volunteers went to help; most of them were young and most of them paid their own way to get there. Zhou Runan, the anthropologist, told me, “Young people are training
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