What does it mean to be young in a country that is changing so fast? What does it mean to be young in a place ruled by one Party, during a time of intense globalization and exposure to different cultures? This fascinating and informative book explores the lives of Chinese youth and examines their experiences, the ways in which they are represented in the media, and their interactions with old and, especially, new media. The authors describe and analyze complex entanglements among family, school, workplace and the state, engaging with the multiplicity of Chinese youth cultures. Their case studies include, among others, the romantic fantasies articulated by pop idols in TV dramas in contrast with young students working hard for their entrance exams and dream careers. This book will be essential reading for students and scholars of youth culture, the sociology of youth and China studies more broadly. By showing how Chinese youth negotiate these regimes by carving out their own temporary spaces – from becoming a goldfarmer in a virtual economy to performing as a cosplayer – this book ultimately poses the question: Will the current system be able to accommodate this rapidly increasing diversity?

Examines youth cultures at three historical points - 1968, 1988 and 2008 - and argues that present-day youth culture in China has international and local roots.

In Contemporary Urban Youth Culture in China: A Multiperspectival Cultural Studies of Internet Subcultures, Jing Sun explores contemporary Chinese urban youth culture through analyses of three Chinese Internet subcultural artifacts--A Bloody Case of a Steamed Bun, Cao Ni Ma, and Du Fu Is Busy. Using Douglas Kellner’s (1995) multiperspectival cultural studies (i.e., critical theory and critical media literacy) as the theoretical framework, and diagnostic critique and semiotics as the analytical method, Sun examines three general themes--resistance, power relations, and consumerism. The power of multiperspectival cultural studies, an interdisciplinary inquiry, lies in its potentials to explore contemporary Chinese urban youth culture from multiple perspectives; explore historical backgrounds and complexity of cultural artifacts to understand contradictions and trajectories of contemporary Chinese urban youth culture; recognize alternative medias as a space for contemporary urban Chinese youth to express frustrations and dissatisfactions, to challenge social inequalities and injustices, and to create dreams and hopes for their future; recognize that the intertexuality among cultural artifacts and subcultures creates possibilities for Chinese urban youth to invent more alternative media cultures that empower them to challenge dominations, perform their identities, and release their imagination for the future; invite Chinese youth to be the change agents for the era but not to be imprisoned by the era; and overcome misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or underrepresentation of contemporary Chinese urban youth cultural texts to promote linguistic and cultural diversity in a multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world. Sun argues that contemporary urban youth need to obtain critical media literacy to become the change agents in contemporary China. They need to be the medium of cultural exchanges in the multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world. In order to best assist contemporary Chinese urban youth in expressing their voices, portraying their hopes, and performing their historical responsibilities as change agents, Sun sincerely hopes more research will be done on the contemporary Chinese urban youth culture, especially on its contradictions and trajectories, with the intent to shed light on more richly textured, nuanced, and inspiring insights into the interconnection between contemporary Chinese urban youth and media power in an increasingly multicultural, multilingual, and multiracial world.

This book examines the relation between the phenomenon of globalization, changes in the lifeworld of young people and the development of specific youth cultures. It explores the social, political, economic and cultural impact of globalization on young people. Growing diversity in their lifeworlds, technological development, migration and the ubiquity of digital communication and representation of the world open up new forms of self-representation, networking and political expression, which are described and discussed in the book. Other topics are the impact of globalization on work and economy, global environmental issues such as climate change, political movements which put “nationalism first”, change of youth`s values and the significance of body, gender and beauty. The book highlights the challenges of young people in modern life, as well as the way in which they express themselves and engage in society – in culture, politics, work and social life.

Presenting the collaborative work of 13 international specialists of contemporary Chinese culture and society, this book explores the spaces of creation, production, and diffusion of "youth cultures" in China among generations born since the 1980s. Defining the concept of "youth culture" as practices and activities that catalyze self-expression and creativity, this book investigates the emergence of new physical spaces, including large avenues, parks, shopping malls, and recreation areas. Building on this, it also examines the influence of non-physical places, especially digital cultures, such as online social networks, shopping platforms, Cosplay, cyberliterature, and digital calligraphy and argues that these may in fact play a more significant role in Chinese civil society today. As an exploration of how youth can be creative even in a coercive environment, China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces will be valuable to students and scholars of Chinese society, as well those working on the links between space, youth, and culture.

This book explores the vigorous film cultures of mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong from the perspective of youth culture. The book relates this important topic to the wider social, cultural, and institutional context, and discusses the relationship between the films and the changes that today are transforming each society. Among the areas explored are the differences between the three film industries, their creation of new types of screen hero and heroine, and their conflicts with traditional Chinese attitudes such as respect for age. The many films discussed provide fresh perspectives on the ways in which young people are coping with gender, sexuality, class, coming of age, the pressures of education, and major social shifts such as rural to urban migration. They show young adults in each society striving to construct new value systems for a complex, rapidly changing environment.

The lives and aspirations of young Chinese (those between 14 and 26 years old) have been transformed in the past five decades. By examining youth cultures around three historical points - 1968, 1988 and 2008 - this book argues that present-day youth culture in China has both international and local roots. Paul Clark describes how the Red Guards and the sent-down youth of the Cultural Revolution era carved out a space for themselves, asserting their distinctive identities, despite tight political controls. By the late 1980s, Chinese-style rock music, sports and other recreations began to influence the identities of Chinese youth, and in the twenty-first century, the Internet offers a new, broader space for expressing youthful fandom and frustrations. From the 1960s to the present, this book shows how youth culture has been reworked to serve the needs of the young Chinese.

This exciting title in ABC-CLIO's Popular Culture in the Contemporary World series offers the nonspecialist reader the only up-to-date introduction to all facets of popular culture in China. China's release from Maoist austerity has produced an explosion in popular culture. The Chinese have embraced such technologies as television and cell phones and shaped them to their own social context. Understanding modern China requires a thorough knowledge of daily life there. This book presents readers, from high-school and college students to the inquisitive tourist, with that knowledge. The author, a scholar of Chinese culture, draws on his own fieldwork, along with authoritative scholarship and reporting, to give the reader a comprehensive, lively, and accessible introduction to all aspects of Chinese popular culture. The book begins with an introduction to understanding popular culture in China and covers mass media; print media; cinema, film, and video; the Internet; and also discusses the rise of consumption and consumerism. From the modernization of traditional theater to the traditional uses of modern technology, this book presents a guide to the emerging culture of a country that will inevitably become increasingly influential in coming years.

The essays in Discourses of Cultural China in the Globalizing Age examine the discourses of Cultural China from a glocalization perspective, and attempt to understand contemporary Cultural China by recording, describing and explaining its current discourses. The book also analyses how the interpretation of Cultural China is connected with its past and how its discourses are reconstructed with those of other cultures in the age of accelerated globalization. The chapters here provide fresh empirical data and thought-provoking assessments of current discursive patterns in the Greater China region. This book is the second title in the Studying Multicultural Discourses series, which promotes a new, multiculturalist orientation in discourse studies. Discourses of Cultural China in the Globalizing Age is ideal for students, researchers, and scholars who would like to know more about the discursive practice and changes in one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.

Cultural China is a unique annual publication for up-to-date, informed, and accessible commentary about Chinese and Sinophone languages, cultural practices, politics and production, and their critical analysis. It builds on the University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre Blog, providing additional reflective introductory pieces to contextualise each of the eight chapters. The articles in this Review speak to the turbulent year that was 2020 as it unfolded across cultural China. Thematically, they range from celebrity culture, fashion and beauty, to religion and spirituality, via language politics, heritage, and music. Pieces on representations of China in Britain and the Westminster Chinese Visual Arts Project reflect our particular location and home. Many of the articles in this book focus on the People’s Republic of China, but they also draw attention to the multiple Chinese and Sinophone cultural practices that exist within, across, and beyond national borders. The Review is distinctive in its cultural studies-based approach and contributes a much-needed critical perspective from the Humanities to the study of cultural China. It aims to promote interdisciplinary dialogue and debate about the social, cultural, political, and historical dynamics that inform life in cultural China today, offering academics, activists, practitioners, and politicians a key reference with which to situate current events in and relating to cultural China in a wider context.