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The collective blends in with the environment and is very dynamic.
https://gimg2.baidu.com/image_search/src=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.sinaimg.cn%2Fty%2Fo%2Fp%2F2008-05-31%2FU397P6T12D3693106F44DT20080531161858.jpg&refer=http%3A%2F%2Fi0.sinaimg.cn&app=2002&size=f9999,10000&q=a80&n=0&g=0n&fmt=jpeg?sec=1634708214&t=95374f36bbcc98347fb5b65d58821ef2

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Reflects the social issues in the wider Chinese context.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008362/china-wants-larger-families.-unless-youre-a-single-mom.

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With the country's birth rate in a free fall, in recent years the Chinese government has made repeated adjustments to its longstanding family planning policies. The biggest of these came in 2015, when the country formally allowed all couples to have a second child. But the ensuing baby boom proved short lived. This year, policymakers upped the maximum number of children allowed to three - and rolled out major reforms aimed at "optimizing birth policies and promoting long-term balanced population development."

The new policies have sparked widespread discussion and interest within China, but one group has largely been left out of the debate: single mothers.

Long marginalized in mainstream discourse, many single mothers hope the new, looser family planning policy will result in better protections of their rights and interests. Previous revisions of national family planning policy have all stipulated that the right to start a family belongs to "a husband and wife." Although some scholars argue that, under China's Civil Code, "everything which is not explicitly forbidden is allowed," in reality, many provinces and municipalities regard out-of-wedlock childbirth as a violation of the family planning policy. Single mothers and their children have long been subject to various degrees of punishment; for example, many of them encounter difficulties in obtaining the proper hukou household registration, which is required to enroll in school.

Local governments that have taken tentative steps toward supporting out-of-wedlock childbirth often find themselves the target of public criticism. Take the northeastern Jilin province, for example. In 2002, provincial authorities revised local population and family planning regulations to allow childless women of marriageable age, but who do not want to get married, to give birth to a child through legal assisted reproductive technology. In reality, the policy was not much of a breakthrough. Although the clause appears to affirm the reproductive rights of single women, it nonetheless imposes stringent conditions on them, implying that they may only give birth if they have decided never to marry, and only then through human-assisted reproductive technologies. On top of that, there are questions as to whether reproductive technologies can be lawfully provided to single people in China, making the requirement that such assistance be "legal" an almost insurmountable hurdle.

Yet, if Jilin's amendment was largely toothless, it nevertheless sparked huge controversy among the public and in academic circles. Women who give birth out of wedlock are widely stigmatized in Chinese culture, in which marriage and childbearing remain inextricably linked. In 2004, there was a massive debate on the popular online forum Tianya over whether Chinese society could ever "accommodate" single mothers. The vast majority of users said no, with only a few scattered voices arguing in their favor.

Since then, a few individuals have braved criticism to push the boundaries of social acceptability. In 2006, a woman who had broken up with her boyfriend and was preparing to give birth alone started a blog to document her experiences. Posting under the name Diguazhu, or "Sweet Potato Pig," her site quickly attracted widespread attention - much of it negative. Many of the comments argued that single motherhood was bad for the child, as it would deprive them of a father figure and adversely affect their development. Any woman who chooses to have a baby in the absence of a male partner, the comments argued, is selfish.

A decade later, policies and public attitudes had softened somewhat. In 2016, the Chinese government clarified that children born out of wedlock were still eligible for a hukou. The following year, a grassroots advocacy group published a "Survey on the Legal Rights of Single Mothers in China." Of the survey's 2,801 respondents, 87% expressed support for single mothers, and 59% described their stance as "very supportive."

Yet the public's tolerance for single motherhood may be conditional: In online discussions, even many proponents frame single motherhood as either a collaborative effort between a single woman and a single man, or as something that a single woman enters into on her own, intentionally and with medical assistance. In practice, the circumstances surrounding single motherhood are far more diverse. From the perspective of reproductive rights, single women who give birth to children by married men should be just as deserving of protection as anyone else.

Meanwhile, as policymakers shift from restricting childbirth to promoting it, married parents have gained access to a stronger social safety net, much of which remains off limits for their single or unmarried counterparts. Even in the relatively more liberal southern province of Guangdong, which removed a major procedural obstacle to single mothers applying for maternity benefits as early as 2016, the policy has been plagued by contradictory directives and administrative practices. Some local officials, for example, simply turn away single mothers who try to apply for maternity benefits.

Single mothers in Shanghai face similar challenges. In December 2020, the Shanghai Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau stopped checking whether applicants for maternity benefits met the requirements of current family planning policies. Soon after, single mothers discovered that they could successfully apply for maternity benefits without submitting a marriage certificate. The news was widely covered by Chinese media, but some single mothers have since reported that their applications for benefits were rejected. There is still much uncertainty surrounding single mothers' legal status and their - or their children's - eligibility for other forms of social security.

In the case of both Guangdong and Shanghai, single mothers were the beneficiaries, not of new policies explicitly aimed at improving their lives, but of simplified bureaucratic procedures, which opened up opportunities for them to access benefits they had previously been denied. This kind of progress is fragile, however, and far from guaranteed.

Conflicting societal views of single motherhood stem from the tension between China's shifting population policies and traditional values. The loosening of childbirth restrictions has provided an opening for single mothers, as many of the barriers and penalties they once faced are removed from the books. However, the power of traditional family values remains strong, and policymakers often prefer to dance around the issue of single motherhood, signaling that it is neither permitted nor forbidden.

Policymakers' silence only exacerbates the stigma surrounding unmarried mothering, influencing the decisions that individuals make regarding marriage and childbirth. Studies have shown that, although cohabitation and unmarried pregnancies are on the rise in China, unmarried pregnancies are still more likely to lead to "shotgun weddings" in China than in the West - and those who don't get married are very likely to get an abortion instead.

We all pay the price for the persistence of the stigma attached to single motherhood. Though shotgun weddings may be one way for couples to avoid discrimination, rushing unprepared into marriage is hardly the foundation of a successful, happy union. Meanwhile, surveys show that Chinese women - especially urban women - are marrying later. In Shanghai, the average age at which women marry for the first time is now 29, up from 23 in 2005. As many women still prefer to get married before having kids, the delay in the age of first marriages has been accompanied by the delay of parenthood, which runs contrary to the government's desire to encourage childbirth.

If unmarried mothers are to become a new point of growth for China's population, we need to deconstruct the institutional and cultural ties between marriage and childbirth in favor of a more pluralistic idea of family - one that recognizes the validity of unmarried mothers' life choices. Single mothers not only take on the responsibility of raising a child alone, but also currently endure widespread discrimination and prejudice. We must find a way to provide them with the support and services they are entitled to - and mitigate the ongoing social and political stigma they face as a result of their reproductive choices.

Translator: Lewis Wright; editors: Cai Yineng and Kilian O'Donnell.
(Header image: E+/People Visual)

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China Wants Larger Families. Unless You're a Single Mom.

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With the country's birth rate in a free fall, in recent years the Chinese government has made repeated adjustments to its longstanding family planning policies. The biggest of these came in 2015, when the country formally allowed all couples to have a second child. But the ensuing baby boom proved short lived.

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There is some explanation of the process.
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007130/the-toy-doctor-and-his-stuffed-animal-clinic

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The 'Toy Doctor' and His 'Stuffed Animal Clinic'

Seventy-year-old "toy doctor" Zhu Boming helps both children and adults relieve their anxieties by repairing their beloved stuffed toys.

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Editor's note: If you're lucky enough to still have your favorite toy from when you were a child, it's probably seen better days. Toys, just like their human owners, grow old and worn out, and sometimes they need a checkup. That's where Zhu Boming comes in. The 73-year-old former electrical engineer operates a "toy hospital" in Shanghai, where he works to restore old dolls to their former glory. It's a rewarding job, but not a low-stress one. Many of Zhu's customers have held onto their dolls for decades, and feel very strongly about who they let "fix" them. In the following video, produced by Xinxiang SoulPix and translated by Sixth Tone, Zhu talks about what it's like being entrusted with people's oldest, most valued possessions. Editors: Wang Xuchenchen and Daniel Wilkinson.

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The 'Toy Doctor' and His 'Stuffed Animal Clinic'

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video Editor's note: If you're lucky enough to still have your favorite toy from when you were a child, it's probably seen better days. Toys, just like their human owners, grow old and worn out, and sometimes they need a checkup. That's where Zhu Boming comes in.

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Again, a recent topic.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008092/poorly-prepared-for-floods%2C-rural-henan-faces-slow-recovery

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HENAN, Central China - Despite the ankle-deep mud and piles of debris that Tuesday's deluge left on the streets of Mihe, Deng Hui walked with impressive agility.

She has become intimately familiar with the obstacle course of planks, sandbags, and deceptively deep puddles, traversing it several times the past few days to see whether the red flat-bed truck that floodwaters picked up and dropped right in front of her home appliances store had been moved yet.

Four days after torrential rains inundated much of Henan, provincial capital Zhengzhou has seen a swift clean-up. But rural areas, which were less well prepared and slower to receive emergency response personnel, are taking longer to recover.

On Friday and Saturday, when Sixth Tone visited Mihe, a prosperous township located in a valley west of Zhengzhou, its bridges lay destroyed, roads were blocked, and its only hospital was still caked in mud and out of operation.

And, as Deng discovered when she got closer to her shop, large-scale clean-up operations had yet to start. In front of her and neighboring businesses still lay an impenetrable wall of overturned vehicles, uprooted plants, and other rubble. "It's still there," she said, not betraying much emotion but pausing to look at the devastation. On an earlier trip, she had cut her foot on a submerged piece of glass. Fearing an infection, she didn't dare wade through the remaining water to get a closer look.

"The whole family relies on this shop for a living," said Deng, who is over 50 and the main breadwinner for her ill husband and three school-age daughters.

Deng Hui looks at the flooded street where her shop is located in Mihe Town, Henan province, July 24, 2021. Yuan Ye/Sixth Tone

The Mihe government doesn't yet know the full extent of the damage or how many people died in the floods. On Saturday, Liu Ruibin, Mihe's deputy party secretary, told reporters that communication had only just been restored with surrounding villages. The only known casualty was a local official who died trying to evacuate people from their flooded home.

But it is readily apparent that the township is among the hardest-hit areas in the province. For two days and nights, residents had limited electricity, food, and drinkable water, and internet and mobile networks were both down.

Province-wide, the death toll of what local media have dubbed "once-in-a-thousand-year" rainfall stands at 69 as of Monday. Over 870,000 people are still staying in makeshift shelters, at least 10,800 square kilometers worth of crops have been lost, and more than 115,000 houses have been severely damaged.

Left: A damaged car; right: A damaged road in Mihe Town, July 24, 2021. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone

Extreme weather this summer has exposed vulnerabilities to climate change the world over. In China, the biggest focus has been put on underground infrastructure after the deadly flooding of a road tunnel and parts of the subway network in Zhengzhou. On Monday, the country's powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NRDC) told local governments across the country to improve their emergency response systems, as well as map which buildings pose flooding risks.

Scientists believe the climate of the traditionally drier northern part of China is turning wetter, necessitating better water drainage facilities. Cities across the country have, in recent years, invested in so-called sponge city projects: infrastructure that soaks up excess water and helps prevent floods. But their effect is limited in the face of extreme amounts of precipitation, demonstrated by how the rain overwhelmed Zhengzhou. The situation is even worse in smaller towns. According to a document by the government of Gongyi, the city that administers Mihe, the flood-control infrastructure in the town was designed to prevent the type of floods that occur "once every 20 years."

"I personally think that the greatest weakness for northern China when facing extreme rainfall and floods is at the township level," Ran Qihua, director of Zhejiang University's Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources Engineering, told Sixth Tone. Unlike bigger cities with extensive sewage networks and capabilities to deliver timely emergency response services, populous rural townships are equally faced with climate risks but have only limited funds and poorly maintained infrastructure, according to Ran.

An interior view of a flooded house in Mihe Town, July 24, 2021. Xiao Yang for Sixth Tone

The three-day downpour has also pointed to a lack of disaster preparedness, both in Zhengzhou and Henan's rural areas. Ma Yuanren, the village chief of Mibei, near Mihe, told Sixth Tone that they received alerts for two days of heavy rainfall and immediately notified village cadres and dispatched people to check the status of drainage ditches. But residents of Mihe and its surrounding villages said they only received text messages advising them to stay at home, which many people dismissed as routine weather warnings.

Built on hilly terrain, Mihe doesn't usually see much rain, let alone floods. Drought is the more common worry. "Henan isn't traditionally affected by (such) disasters," Ran said. "So everyone lacks the knowledge and experience for how to handle them." Residents say they were caught off guard when water came gushing in on Tuesday, forcing them to evacuate to higher ground and await rescue forces. "Never in my life have I seen so much rain," said Zhou Fengjun, a 47-year-old grocer in Mihe. After four days of cleaning, the bottom shelves of her store were still full of mud.

Jiao Jinzhu, in nearby Lianghekou Village, recalled the rain beating on his windows with increasing force, and eventually causing cracks in the red soil of the hill behind his house. Fearing a landslide would damage their home, he and his wife spent the night outside.

Shop owners chat outside a store in Mihe Town, July 24, 2021. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone

Fellow villager Jiao Hongpeng said he initially merely thought the heavy rain was curious during the usually parched summertime. But when he saw a car slowly being submerged in water next to the Sishui River, he realized a flood was imminent. Jiao offered its passengers food and shelter in his home, which sits on higher ground near the river.

Yet, barely an hour after lunch, the metal sheets that make up the top floor of Jiao's house began to shake. Within minutes, the roof collapsed. Jiao rushed upstairs, where his 13-year-old daughter had been taking a nap. Luckily, she had escaped by jumping out of the window into a vegetable field. She's now staying with relatives, nursing a foot injury and processing a traumatic memory in their sturdier house.

Villagers affected by the floods, in Mibei Village, Henan province, July 24, 2021. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone

When communication was finally restored on Friday, Deng, the store owner, called her three daughters, who all attend schools out of town, to tell them both of their parents were okay.

How the family will move forward is another matter. They're not insured, but everything in Deng's store was soaked in water - she saw when she climbed the obstructing truck once - and many valuable items in their home, including the refrigerator and television, are broken.

"We have to carry on," Deng said, walking back from visiting her shop. Trucks with relief supplies thundered past.
(Header image: A man searches for his belongings amid a damaged house in Mihe Town, July 23, 2021. Wu Huiyuan/Sixth Tone)

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Poorly Prepared for Floods, Rural Henan Faces Slow Recovery

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HENAN, Central China - Despite the ankle-deep mud and piles of debris that Tuesday's deluge left on the streets of Mihe, Deng Hui walked with impressive agility.

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The characters are clearly introduced.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008094/why-chinas-boys-are-being-left-behind

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In 2014, while conducting fieldwork in Shenzhen, I watched as a parent-teacher forum descended into a fierce argument over the gender gap in Chinese education. Throughout the debate, there was one phrase that participants kept coming back to: yinsheng yangshuai, or "the yin (feminine) is flourishing, while the yang (masculine) is receding." Put more succinctly, they were worried that China's boys were falling behind - or worse, being left behind - by an education system that has little idea what to do with them.

At one point, a high school teacher stood up and launched into a tirade about how this supposed gap between yin and yang was the inevitable result of China's exam-oriented education system. Girls are simply better at "rote-memorizing books," he declared.

The academic struggles of China's young boys have been a matter of public concern since at least 2010. That year, the controversial book "Save Our Boys" warned: "Twenty years ago, campuses were regarded as the world of boys. Boys had an overwhelming advantage in all aspects, both at universities and in elementary schools," adding, "However, today's campuses are not how they used to be. Girls' grades are improving at a rapid pace, while boys' grades have increasingly become a cause for concern." More recently, China's Ministry of Education in February called for schools to stop drilling "masculine vigor" out of their male students.

But is there any evidence that " yin is flourishing and yang is receding" on Chinese campuses?

It's certainly true that Chinese girls have pushed their way to the front of the academic pack. In a study conducted by Professor Wei-jun Jean Yeung and myself, we found that in 2010, girls significantly outperformed boys in Chinese language and literature, and their performance in mathematics was roughly even with boys. By 2014, they had surpassed their male counterparts by a wide margin in both subjects.

But this phenomenon is not unique to China. Since the 1990s, female students have been leaving their male peers behind around the globe, according to data from the United Nations. This trend, which first emerged in developed industrial societies, has since been identified in more than 100 countries worldwide.

In the Chinese context, girls' improved academic performance has been driven not by the exam-oriented education system - a relative constant in Chinese history - but by the ongoing transformation of the Chinese family. Traditionally, Chinese families regarded daughters as "poured-out water," who would be married off into another household one day. Sons were the key to the family's future. As a result, boys received the utmost support in their studies, and their education was always prioritized over that of their sisters.

Over the past 40 years, the influence of traditional family structures has receded. In interviews with families affected by this transformation, we found that women from the oldest generation had generally received little in the way of formal schooling. Although they had access to education, many dropped out of school early to help their parents at home, earn money, or raise their younger siblings. Today, their children - who are firmly ensconced in middle age - grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, as China was gradually opening up to the world. The evolution of societal values coupled with the influence of the one-child policy - which prevented many families from having multiple kids in hopes of a son - meant greater access to educational opportunities for women, at least in urban areas. Still, their education was often an afterthought, especially if they had male siblings.

Today, however, the gender gap in educational opportunities has basically been erased. The mothers and grandmothers we interviewed believed that families should support their children's education regardless of gender. In urban families with only daughters, it has become common for a family to invest everything it has into her education - just as they might once have bet it all on a promising son. Even in rural areas, girls now receive positive attention from their elders if they score well on exams, a stark difference from the experiences of their mothers and grandmothers.

In short, educating daughters is now vital to the future of their families, resulting in greater gender parity in Chinese education. If anything, girls are now regarded as a safer bet: Long-term survey data shows that girls are more self-disciplined, spend more time studying outside of school, and are more likely to take on roles as student leaders than their male counterparts. Parents generally agree that girls are naturally more mature, obedient, and academically diligent than boys, an impression many teachers share. This is especially true in rural areas populated by rambunctious and unsupervised "left-behind" children.

Of course, this impression is itself a social construct. It just so happens that in this case, it works to the benefit of girls. If you accept the cumulative advantage-disadvantage theory, whereby the benefits of quality schooling in early childhood exert an ever-increasing impact on a child's trajectory throughout the rest of their education, the early positive reinforcement girls now receive is vital to their success. It's also a far more complex explanation than the widespread belief that girls are "innately" better adapted to exam-oriented education.

In other words, what is missed in debates over yin and yang is the way popular stereotypes of boys as inherently mischievous, inattentive, and ill-suited to current educational methods negatively impact the quality of education they receive. Instead, critics have focused their energies on remaking education to better suit and reinforce these and other supposedly "masculine" qualities, such as by mandating more gym classes.

It's also worth noting that good grades aren't an unalloyed benefit. In the increasingly competitive Chinese school system, girls who want to maintain their advantage over their male peers must be tireless and maintain strict self-discipline and management. In this sense, girls' so-called "advantages" may become a psychological burden.

Yet authorities and the public remain preoccupied with gender. Toxic masculinity still dominates the imaginations of policymakers and researchers, blinding them to the ways their actions and preconceptions are exacerbating the very problem they're trying to fix.

The choice to frame the performance of girls and boys in the classroom through the lens of yin and yang is itself a telling indication of the continued predominance of patriarchal mindsets. In the Chinese tradition, yin is a uniquely feminine quality typically associated with coldness, darkness, sentimentality, and death. Yang, its male counterpart, represents warmth, light, and rationality. In this sense, the concerns over flourishing yin and receding yang can be seen as a stand-in for a more profound fear: the potential destruction of the patriarchal social order.
Translator: Lewis Wright; editors: Cai Yiwen and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: A student is photographed on the first day of school at a primary school in Weihai, Shandong province, Sept. 1, 2020. People Visual)

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In 2014, while conducting fieldwork in Shenzhen, I watched as a parent-teacher forum descended into a fierce argument over the gender gap in Chinese education. Throughout the debate, there was one phrase that participants kept coming back to: yinsheng yangshuai, or "the yin (feminine) is flourishing, while the yang (masculine) is receding."

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Clean layout.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006374/navigating-a-post-pandemic-world-portraits-of-chinas-class-of-2020

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At the start of this year, I was about to begin my final semester as an undergraduate at Soochow University in eastern China. In the summer, I'd be moving to London to start a graduate program in photography - an exciting opportunity that I was sure would open up new possibilities for my future.

Then, COVID-19 descended, and everything changed. All over China, stores closed, factories shut down, and schools suspended classes. Soon after, the same thing started happening in countries across the world. Our entire society seemed to have hit the pause button.

At that time, I was deeply anxious. I was forced to defer my photography program, and worries about the future ate away at me. It felt like students graduating this year would have to shoulder a greater burden than any generation in decades.

Though I could only communicate with them online, my friends were experiencing the same concerns. The future looked fragile and uncertain. Throughout the spring semester, classes were solely online, and the design students' final-year exhibitions were all canceled.

Before we knew it, our finals were over. Normally, fresh grads like us would enjoy a "buffer period" - one last summer of fun before real life begins. But with campuses still closed, each of us found ourselves alone and suddenly confronting a harsh new reality: scarce job openings, hypercompetitive postgraduate entrance exams, and curtailed foreign study openings.

A survey of recent graduates conducted by Sixth Tone's sister publication The Paper and tech giant Tencent shows how deeply China's class of 2020 has been affected. As of late September, less than half the grads had found jobs. Of those in work, the majority had started job hunting before the pandemic struck.

In October, I met up with some university friends, and the encounter opened my eyes to just how much everyone's lives had changed. I decided to record this extraordinary moment in history. Over the next few weeks, I traveled across eastern China - to the cities of Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Yangzhou - and photographed 13 graduates, each of whom shared their story.

For me, this visual archive of the graduates of 2020 is important and precious.

Zhang Guyue failed his postgraduate entrance examinations this year. During the outbreak, he felt frustrated and anxious. After graduating, he went to work at a tobacco company in the eastern Jiangsu province. But he still insists he wants to continue his studies in radio and television.

"Because the competition in the postgraduate exams was tougher, especially in my major, the (pandemic) situation has impacted me throughout the year," he says.

Zhang chose to take part-time postgraduate exams this year outside of work. The anxiety of preparing for exams alone and the loneliness of returning home after work by himself filled his heart. He's hopeful things will improve in the future.

Zhang Yingyue graduated from her radio and television program this summer, but she left with a feeling of unfinished business. The school canceled its graduation ceremony due to the pandemic, and the short film that Zhang had spent half a year working on was never screened.

On the bright side, she did succeed in getting a place in a graduate program at King's College London. But there was a problem. Before starting the course, she needed to pass a language test, but China's IELTS test centers were all shut.

Taking a big risk, Zhang flew to Thailand to sit the English exam. She passed, and she has now started her new degree. At the moment, she's studying online.

"The epidemic has affected the choices I've made this year," Zhang says.

Cao Panpan is one of the lucky students who succeeded in securing a place in a graduate program after sitting China's postgraduate entrance exams this year. She is continuing her studies at Yangzhou University, where she completed her undergraduate degree in agriculture.

"It was actually a good thing for me that they changed the postgraduate exams from offline to online," says Cao.

Though the pandemic hasn't affected her too much so far, Pan is anxious about finding work after she finishes graduate school.

The pandemic didn't worry Xu Xiangfeng too much. Soon after completing his advertising degree, he landed a job at a creative communications agency in neighboring city Hangzhou.

"When I was job hunting, I didn't feel extra pressure," he says. "I personally felt my previous internship experience ... gave me an edge over other fresh graduates."

China's advertising industry has bounced back strongly from a dramatic slowdown during the first half of the year. Xu now often has to work until late into the night, but he's adapting to the intense schedule.

"I'm satisfied so far," says Xu. "I feel I still have a lot to learn. Maybe in one, two, or three years, I'll see if I can move to another city like Shanghai."

Gao Kaiyi spent the first half of the year almost entirely cut off from the outside world. Her parents, who were very worried about the pandemic, prevented her from leaving the house for months. The prolonged isolation followed by the pressure of post-university life wreaked havoc on her emotions.

"Graduation was like an accident that I knew was going to happen to me," she says.

With the help of her relatives, Gao was able to get a job at a local newspaper. The salary, however, was far lower than she expected. Now, she's feeling stressed about the future. She's making plans to save money and learn more skills.

Pan Haotian had been expecting to start an internship in early 2020. Instead, he spent months at home, barely seeing anyone. The extended isolation left the advertising graduate with intense social anxiety.

"When I went back to school, I saw all the classmates I knew from before, but I felt a little strange," says Pan.

In May, once China's epidemic was under control, Pan managed to get a job in the advertising industry. But he found social interaction in the office difficult, and he ended up quitting.

Finding himself out of work in a depressed job market, Pan was worried. If he didn't find something soon, he'd end up having to compete with the next batch of graduates in 2021 - and he'd be even less attractive as a candidate.

So, he gave up looking for a job related to his major, and took a position at an investment company in Suzhou. He's now trying to brush up on investing, and make a new plan for the future.

After finishing her degree in visual communication design, Zhang Qingyi originally planned to go to the United Kingdom for further studies. The impact of COVID-19, however, prevented her family from being able to pay off their business loans, plunging them into financial difficulties. Zhang's overseas education plans had to be shelved, and she began to take on more responsibilities at home.

Now, the family business has finally started to emerge from the shadow of the pandemic, and Zhang is preparing her applications to study abroad next year. She's eager to find a job in Suzhou that will allow her to support herself and save up to continue her education.

"It's just more difficult now," she says. "Things will get better in the future."

Ni Xueyan took his postgraduate entrance exams for the first time in the middle of the country's epidemic. He passed the test, but didn't get selected by a school that time. Having no work experience and concerned about his prospects in the post-pandemic job market, Ni decided to sit the exams again.

This year, the number of candidates sitting the postgraduate entrance exams is twice as high as normal. But Ni still holds out hope of securing a place in a visual communication design graduate program somewhere.

Zhao Fengmi is a research student in the final year of her postgraduate program, whose studies focus on the Sinicization of Marxism. She feels the pandemic hasn't had a great impact on those studying her major, since most of them go on to become teachers or Ph.D. candidates.

Students who want to work at state-owned enterprises or in the government, however, might be impacted. "The pandemic has led to the government focusing its resources on hiring grassroots cadres this year," says Zhao.

Life for postgraduate students is also getting tougher. Zhao's school is continually raising the threshold for graduating. She feels young people have to hustle and work hard to secure a good future.

During the senior year of his higher education degree, Yang Chen had two choices: Work as a Chinese teacher at a local high school, or study a postgraduate program. He chose the latter, and is now at Yangzhou University, majoring in subject teaching. Yang thinks the extra period of study will help him develop as an educator and experiment with new teaching methods.

"For my future employment prospects, it's better to take the postgraduate course," says Yang.

After finishing her undergraduate program, Qin Chang received an offer to study digital asset management at King's College London. With the COVID-19 situation in the United Kingdom worsening, she decided to study online this semester and hopes to travel to London to continue her studies in January.

The imminent launch of China's COVID-19 vaccines has given Qin renewed hope. She feels the past few months have been a useful life experience.

"It has given me a 'trial-and-error opportunity' that will help me make good life choices in the future," says Qin.

Lu Yao was hoping to study abroad after completing his interior design degree this year, but the pandemic nixed those plans. Instead, he has started working as an art teacher at a large tutoring organization in Nanjing. Because it's his first year of work, he has to travel between several different campuses giving classes.

But Lu is content with life right now. He plans to work hard and buy an apartment in Nanjing.

"Although I didn't get to go abroad, I'm very happy with my current job," he says.

Zhang Shuhan has been studying electrical engineering at The University of Sydney this year. After COVID-19 began spreading in China, she was forced to spend over two weeks in Thailand to circumvent Australia's travel restrictions and return to her university. She arrived just in time. Soon after, the Australian government tightened its entry policies, and many of Zhang's classmates faced enormous disruptions.

Due to the impact of the pandemic, Zhang is eager to find a good job. She's now studying at a training school in Nanjing to prepare for her professional exams.
Editors: Dominic Morgan and Shi Yangkun. (Header image: Chen Yuxing for Sixth Tone)

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Navigating a Post-Pandemic World: Portraits of China's Class of 2020

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At the start of this year, I was about to begin my final semester as an undergraduate at Soochow University in eastern China. In the summer, I'd be moving to London to start a graduate program in photography - an exciting opportunity that I was sure would open up new possibilities for my future.

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It would be clearer to have a map indicating the corresponding location.
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006906/the-logic-behind-shanghais-massive-new-urban-plan

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This January, Shanghai mayor Gong Zheng announced that Shanghai's days as a unified city were numbered. Instead of one sprawling city covering the entire municipality, Shanghai is planning to build five new cities within its boundaries, as the suburban districts of Jiading, Songjiang, Qingpu, Fengxian, and Nanhui are turned into what Gong termed "comprehensive node cities with radiating and driving functions."

Gong's speech marked the first time this plan had ever been included in a Shanghai municipal government work report, and it represents the latest step in Shanghai's efforts to balance the needs of its growing population with its hard space constraints.

The terminology of Chinese urbanism can be complex, but it's important to note that Gong's "new cities" are not the same thing as more commonly used terms like "urban subcenters" or "satellite cities." Urban subcenters exist in fixed relationships to a city's "downtown." That is, they are still part of the same city. For example, Shanghai has set up urban subcenters in its northeast with Wujiaochang and in its east with Huamu, which both remain oriented toward the city's downtown.

The concept of "satellite cities," meanwhile, is not limited by municipal or even provincial boundaries. The cities of Kunshan and Taicang in neighboring Jiangsu province could be considered satellites of Shanghai, despite being administratively separate.

But the plan for Shanghai's five new cities clearly states that they should be "independent." There are multiple reasons for this shift in approach, not least the desire to transform some of the more economically depressed areas of Shanghai's outskirts. For example, Qingpu District has certain obvious geographical advantages, but in its role as a district of Shanghai it retained a large amount of land for agricultural purposes. This has resulted in a relatively lower level of development even when compared with nearby Kunshan, not to mention other parts of Shanghai proper.

In theory, the five new cities plan should make up for these shortcomings. Each new city is expected to develop industries based around its own unique characteristics, as well as large, core enterprises capable of radiating out and driving the development of small- and medium-sized firms - the "radiating and driving" functions Gong mentioned in his speech. The good news is, some of this work was already done under previous development plans, such as Jiading District's auto plants, Songjiang District's G60 Science and Innovation Corridor, and Nanhui's new free trade zone.

The second major motivation for the new cities plan is Shanghai's need to promote new business clusters and ease the pressure on its population and land. In the past, China's suburban development has often neglected the integration of industry and city, with the suburbs only assuming the function of providing living space. People were expected to work downtown and live in the suburbs, resulting in long, draining, and environmentally costly commutes. By transforming the suburbs into new cities of their own, this can hopefully ameliorate the flaws of this older model and replace suburbs with comprehensive, livable cities.

The third and final motivation for the plan is arguably the most ambitious: the desire to further integrate Shanghai into China's Yangtze River Delta megacity cluster. This cluster consists of a ring of cities stretching across the distinct administrative regions of Shanghai, as well as Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. To complete the loop, however, Shanghai needs to build out toward its administrative borders, and these five new cities just happen to be at nodal positions along the loop.

Of course, it's easy to dream big, but it's another thing to make dreams reality. Shanghai faces two major obstacles in accomplishing this plan, the first of which involves China's largely inflexible administrative borders. All five planned cities are located close to cities in neighboring provinces, and it will be important to find ways of ensuring they are integrated with urban centers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

An even bigger obstacle is China's hidebound approach to urban planning. Frankly speaking, the country's current planning mindset is very traditional, and oriented around copying existing models rather than innovating. This has led to a fixation on things like wide roads and low density.

I already mentioned the importance of making the new cities livable. Most new cities in China are structured around car traffic, meaning they are cut through with vast roads, which encourage driving and make it harder for people to be more active. I hope that, as Shanghai plans its new cities, it keeps the streets narrow and focuses on density and walkability. Planners should also make provisions for high-speed rail connections linking these new cities with both downtown Shanghai and neighboring cities throughout the Yangtze River Delta, something that would greatly improve people's commutes.

Fortunately, there is an international model for the city's planners to study. Singapore faces many of the same spatial constraints as Shanghai, and its solutions, including comprehensive land-use, vertical infrastructure, and mixed-use zoning, offer valuable lessons in city planning. Perhaps it would be possible to collaborate with Singaporean planners - or even innovative Chinese enterprises - directly.

Whatever happens, the construction of these five new cities will radically alter the Shanghai landscape. Shanghai has long acted as a model for cities elsewhere in China. Hopefully its latest experiment can provide new impetus for rethinking how the country restructures its urban spaces.
Translator: David Ball; editors: Wu Haiyun and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: Shijue Focus/People Visual)

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The Logic Behind Shanghai's Massive New Urban Plan

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This January, Shanghai mayor Gong Zheng announced that Shanghai's days as a unified city were numbered. Instead of one sprawling city covering the entire municipality, Shanghai is planning to build five new cities within its boundaries, as the suburban districts of Jiading, Songjiang, Qingpu, Fengxian, and Nanhui are turned into what Gong termed "comprehensive node cities with radiating and driving functions."

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The interview combines a lot of images, and as I had previous material for my shoot, the parodies were combined.
https://weibo.com/tv/show/1034:4603406577500212?from=old_pc_videoshow

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The articles in the Character Portfolio series are a combination of three different characters.
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007110/the-digitization-of-chinas-working-class-palaces

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This article is the third in a three-part series on the cultural spaces that have shaped China's working class. The first and second installments can be found and .

In South China's many clustered industrial zones, a vast army of young workers slave away on assembly lines, performing mechanical movements in robotic synchrony. It's a life that leaves many of them feeling numb. After yet another day of monotonous work, they might search for some semblance of meaning in their lives by spending their earnings at one of the various malls in the vicinity of their factory.

These malls have few, if any, of the public services or cultural activities that were once offered in China's workers' cultural "palaces." Their highly intensive, repetitive jobs generally deprive them of the time and energy necessary to enrich themselves culturally and intellectually, anyway. Yet these workers are not passive, indifferent consumers. The advent of cheap mobile phones, internet cafés, and other technologies have allowed them to make the best of their industrial surroundings, achieve a semblance of spiritual fulfillment, and even develop their own cultures.

A view of a so-called download shop. Courtesy of Wang Hongzhe

In contrast with the gaudy and often prohibitively expensive entertainment venues found in China's central business districts - which are dominated by high-end shopping malls and movie theaters - the "urban villages" home to many factory workers offer a more diverse array of affordable facilities and services. Cheap karaoke venues, internet cafés, nightclubs, and skating rinks allow workers to entertain themselves, maintain their social networks, and fulfill their spiritual and emotional needs, all at a good price. "Download shops," for example, allow workers to download colossal collections of songs and films to their phone or computer for just a dozen yuan, far cheaper than the cost of even a single movie ticket.

At the same time, the rapid development of various social media platforms has pushed many workers to seek their entertainment and culture online. Hundreds of millions of workers from different industries all over the country now have a way to connect with one another. In this era of self-made, democratized media, migrant workers have forged online identities and even created their own genres and schools of literature. Many working-class writers write what they know: the fate of those on the bottom rungs of society. A few, like the domestic worker and author Fan Yusu, have even garnered readerships that span social classes.

In the process, the internet has subverted the control that the middle-class and elite once had over China's cultural discourse, helping to restore, at least in part, the notion of a "proletarian public sphere" to the country. The Foxconn factory worker and amateur poet Xu Lizhi captured the imagination of poetry critics and ordinary Chinese alike with lines such as "I swallow a moon made of iron." His subsequent suicide sent a shockwave through Chinese society, triggering a discussion about the mental health of contemporary workers.

Although very few workers are able make a career from their literary works, as some still did in the 1990s, there is no lack of literary and artistic talent on display in contemporary China's urban industrial zones. I once met a chef from the central Hunan province who had a side-gig teaching guitar to students who lived in the same urban village. His room doubled as both a residence and a classroom. After getting off work, he would pass the time by singing and playing guitar alone. His guitar was not just a way of making money, but also a source of spiritual sustenance.

Fan Yusu poses for a photo in Beijing, April 25, 2017. Wang Pan/IC

In recent years, the rise of short-video platforms like Kuaishou and Douyin has given workers even more space for self-expression. Online, their identity as grassroots workers doesn't pose an obstacle to their widespread popularity as content creators. On the contrary, it has become a selling point, helping them attract more views and followers. For example, the short-video star Manual Geng worked as an auto-mechanic and welder in Beijing before returning to his hometown, where he started making videos showing off his professional skills.

One of the best-known online communities of working-class Chinese can be found among its truck drivers. Millions of drivers spend their breaks and limited free time on Douyin and Kuaishou, forming friendships with others in their profession - people they'll most likely never meet. It's a way to free themselves from their social atomization, but also a powerful latent organizing force. Last year, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in the central city of Wuhan, drivers organized through Douyin to deliver fresh vegetables to the region from around the country.

Yet for all the real, interesting, and engaging work being produced by working-class Chinese, whenever it's picked up on and rebroadcast by mainstream media outlets, all of the experiences and perspectives of workers are inevitably boiled down in the most patronizing fashion possible and tagged with insipid labels like "inspiring," "heartwarming," and "moving." Worse, when the jokesters on social media sites like Weibo share these videos, they tend to poke fun at their rustic, stuck-in-time character. Working-class Chinese become objects of entertainment and amusement, not people to be taken seriously.

Today's workers lack many of the benefits enjoyed by the socialist-era working class, whose members were mostly employed by state-owned enterprises and enjoyed stability, welfare programs, and access to state-supported recreation institutions like cultural palaces. But the new generation of migrant workers has clearly still created its own cultural spaces and forms of art. Only, these are rapidly changing shape, even as the workers themselves are pushed out of South China by the relocation of factories farther inland.

Then again, what part of Chinese society isn't undergoing the same rapid transformations? The anthropologist Xiang Biao once famously said that "Chinese people are like hummingbirds, suspended mid-air by the fluttering of their wings." This state of suspension - frantically flapping our wings to avoid falling to the ground, with no spiritual safety net to break our fall - seems like a good encapsulation of the current era.
With contributions from Zhang Yuping, an assistant professor of journalism and communication at Guangzhou University.
Translator: Lewis Wright; editors: Cai Yiwen and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: Visual elements from Wang Hongzhe, @手工耿 on Weibo, and People Visual, re-edited by Ding Yining/Sixth Tone)

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The Digitization of China's Working-Class 'Palaces'

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This article is the third in a three-part series on the cultural spaces that have shaped China's working class. The first and second installments can be found and . In South China's many clustered industrial zones, a vast army of young workers slave away on assembly lines, performing mechanical movements in robotic synchrony.

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A section uses the sit-pick plus material format.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrplLEQQMnE

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Uyghurs Who Fled China Now Face Repression in Pakistan

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As the news story was about something that had happened before, I wanted pictures that could express the emotions of the characters at the time.
https://gimg2.baidu.com/image_search/src=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.pconline.com.cn%2Fimages%2Fupload%2Fupc%2Ftx%2Fphotoblog%2F1503%2F17%2Fc14%2F4005236_4005236_1426584510803_mthumb.jpg&refer=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.pconline.com.cn&app=2002&size=f9999,10000&q=a80&n=0&g=0n&fmt=jpeg?sec=1626749565&t=952270a0b515a4d641338bdb748b53c7

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Telling their own stories that reflect the current situation of a group of people. Combined with macro stories.
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006423/fishers-among-men-lake-tais-catholics-bid-farewell-to-the-waters

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Sept. 6 marked the first day of the fishing season for Lake Tai's net fishers, or seiners. For many members of this insular community, it may end up being the last fishing season they'll ever see.

Located on the southern edge of the Yangtze Delta between Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, Lake Tai's 2,338 square kilometers are prime fishing grounds, especially for the famed "Three Whites of Lake Tai": whitefish, silverfish, and white shrimp. With only a month every year open to fishing, the process is regimented: Each fishing team has a strictly delineated territory on which to fish, and incursions into territories belonging to other teams is forbidden.

It's a way of life that has persisted, more or less, for centuries. But this year, Jiangsu province officials revoked the fishing rights held by fisheries along Lake Tai and instituted a ban on the practice - part of a larger campaign to restore the Yangtze River's devastated fish populations.

Many of those fisheries were already on the verge of extinction. To prevent a total collapse, the central government ordered a 10-year ban on commercial fishing in the drainage areas of the Yangtze River, beginning this year, and rolled out subsidies to help the estimated 280,000 fishermen affected make the transition.

For those who fish the lake, the decision means they'll need to give up their mobile, boat-bound lifestyles and find new jobs ashore; for scholars of religious studies such as myself, it means the end of an era.

That's because Lake Tai's seiner communities are home to one of China's most unique populations of Catholic converts. Now they face an uncertain future ashore, with only the bounds of faith and family tying them to their heritage.

Conditions aboard Zhang Jida's fishing boat are cramped. During the monthlong fishing season, he, his wife Wang Aiying, and three temporary workers spend every day on the lake, deploying their nets from the bow of the ship; sleeping nestled among the supplies in the cabin; and eating meals prepared by Wang on a gas range at the stern of the ship.

Despite the close quarters, Zhang found room in the cabin for two non-fishing-related items: a statuette of the Virgin Mary and a crucifix. Even during fishing season, he says, he prays the rosary every day.

"The priest blessed us before the start of the fishing season," Zhang told me. "He'll come on board to see us in a week."

There are about 30,000 Catholics in the Lake Tai-adjacent city of Wuxi, according to official tallies. Of these, seiners like Zhang comprise roughly 90%.

Religious faith has been a fixture among the fishing communities of Lake Tai since antiquity, in part because of their unique lifestyle. Traditionally, fishers lived out of their boats and made their living by the water. This limited their interactions with the outside world and cemented their social customs. And because of the harshness of their lives - they faced exploitation, piracy, and other provocations - religion was an important source of consolation and hope.

Religion didn't always mean Catholicism. Historically speaking, the seiners around Lake Tai were characterized by an intricate web of religious beliefs. In addition to ancestor worship, they also paid homage to deities ranging from the King of Yu and Mazu to Marshal Liu, Wu Zixu, Lord Huang, and the Black Tiger God. Sacrifices eventually gave rise to temple fairs, of which the most well-known is Jiaxing City's Net Boat Fair.

An interior view of the Sanliqiao Catholic Church in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Aug. 11, 2020. Courtesy of Zhu Yiwen

Then, about four centuries ago, Catholicism slowly seeped into the Lake Tai area. The historical records of Catholicism in the region showed that fishers, known as "seiner church members," were an important source of converts for early missionaries. In his "Histoire de la Mission du Kiang-nan" the French Jesuit Joseph de Servière wrote the following account of 19th century Wuxi seiner practices:
Sanliqiao, outside of Wuxi's West Gate, has about 150 church members who are farmers and small vendors, as well as 2,000 more who are fishermen. They congregate here for every holiday and hold religious activities. These fishermen live on more than 550 boats and spend their entire year within the water channels surrounding Wuxi, fishing to make their living. To help manage these fishermen, the priests have separated them into seven 'branches.' Each branch chose the disciple whose name they would adopt, as well as one among them to act as their clerk. The fishermen in five of the branches fish around Wuxi, rotating monthly to come back to Sanliqiao for Mass. The members of the other two branches work in more distant areas and thus congregate less frequently. But they all gathered together for the four holy days of obligation, with over 550 fishing boats encircling the small church and filling the rivers around Sanliqiao.
Although the original Sanliqiao Catholic Church was burned down during an anti-Christian campaign in 1891, it was later rebuilt by a French missionary. Today the interior of the church is a sight to behold, full of inscribed plaques and poetic couplets donated by seiners.

Priest Guo Mandong (third from right) and Wang Aiying (second from right) near Lake Tai in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Sept. 11, 2020. Courtesy of Zhu Yiwen

Guo Mandong, its priest, became interested in the lives of the seiners after being assigned to Wuxi. Aside from going to Lake Tai to minister his flock during the fishing season, he has also created an exhibition gallery inside the church dedicated to their culture and history.

According to Guo, Wuxi seiners have been relocating ashore since the 1960s. Taking up residence in government-assigned homes on land, they only go out to fish during the season, rather than living aboard full time. Most of their children have abandoned the fishing profession, preferring to work in factories or do business instead. The youngest seiner today is already 50 years old.

"Fishers like Zhang Jida are practically Lake Tai's last generation of seiners," Father Guo told me. "I have to leave something behind for them."

But change came sooner than he imagined. In order to "protect the aquatic biological resources of Lake Tai and promote the effective improvement of its ecosystem," the Jiangsu provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs rescinded the fishing rights of Lake Tai fisheries this year. Starting this October, the seiners will not be allowed to fish on the lake until 2030.

For 67-year-old Zhang Jida, the news likely means this was his last fishing season.

Going forward, he plans to find work dredging algae from the lake, a job that pays by the day. "Might as well just work until I can't," he said. "At my age, finding a new job is difficult." His two sons both work in factories, so their family will no longer fish for a living.

As Lake Tai's fishing communities slowly recede into the past, their faith will continue to comfort them, a symbol of their unique status and a reminder of a bygone era.
Translator: Katherine Tse; editors: Wu Haiyun and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: Zhang Jida (center) pulls in his fishing nets in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Sept. 11, 2020. Courtesy of Zhu Yiwen)

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Fishers Among Men: Lake Tai's Catholics Bid Farewell to the Waters

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Sept. 6 marked the first day of the fishing season for Lake Tai's net fishers, or seiners. For many members of this insular community, it may end up being the last fishing season they'll ever see.

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The characters and their key sentences plus the form in which the text is composed.
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007119/where-are-the-douyin-generations-pop-stars%3F

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Last month, I was scrolling through my feed on Douyin, the version of TikTok accessible on the Chinese mainland, when I came across a "Top 10 Douyin Songs of 2021" compilation. Produced by a music company I had never heard of, I was skeptical that it was just a marketing ploy. Nevertheless, I let the video play.

To my surprise, I recognized every song on the list. Also to my surprise, most of the comments on the video were highly critical: "Catchy songs never last," read one. "Douyin updates trendy songs so fast, they're gone before I can even learn how to sing them," another user added.

The idea that Douyin has deprived China's Generation Z of truly classic songs is not a new one. In online discussions, music fans born in the 1980s and 1990s frequently reminisce over the so-called golden age of Chinese pop music. Lasting from the late 1980s to roughly the emergence of the fresh-faced boy band TFBoys in the early 2010s, it was a time when pop idols produced stone-cold classics in an endless battle for chart position. Admittedly, everything looks better when viewed through nostalgia's rose-tinted glasses, but these wistful fans are onto something. China's music industry is in the midst of a dramatic decoupling from traditional distribution channels, one that's reshaping how we experience new music.

The short lifespan of Douyin hits is an inevitable outcome of the app's short, 15-second video structure. Douyin functions on the premise that shorter is better: The shorter the video, the more likely viewers will watch the whole thing. Its 600 million daily active users never experience songs in full, but rather in short clips and usually just their catchiest parts. That means Douyin video creators want songs that are brief and can be played endlessly without getting old, not pop ballads.

In contrast with music-streaming platforms like QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music, where full songs are still the primary product, music is never more than part of Douyin's backdrop. Good music is still indispensable to the app, even if the platform has rendered it more disposable and anonymous than ever. A song's adaptability - its ability to work with a wide variety of videos and their associated visual effects - is just far more important than what it aims to express.

Take "Give You Four Seasons," for example. One of the titles listed by the above-mentioned "Top 10 Douyin Songs of 2021" video, it started as a gentle love ballad. Its Douyin version, however, added concentrated drums, making it more likely creators would choreograph a dance to it. And choreograph a dance they did: A number of influencers have set the song to a dance that shows off their rippling ab muscles.

These drumbeats and seemingly unrelated thirst traps work to shift viewers' focus away from the song itself and on to video creators. The app's famous algorithm also pushes users in this direction. Search the names of top songs on Douyin, and the app will often auto-fill suggestions like "dance" or " finger dance." Dance tutorials also tend to rank near the top of search results. In this way, Douyin engineers condition creators to produce the imitative, competitive content they want to see.

In response to Douyin's growing influence over the music market, music labels have started turning to data analytics in the hopes of finding the secret formula for producing a viral hit. Their findings suggest that Douyin's algorithm favors songs with simple, memorable lyrics and repetitive tunes, which all have a "brainwashing" effect on users. Armed with hard data, small- and medium-sized music labels now produce music according to user preferences, as opposed to what artists want to express - a practice that crystalizes the contradiction between music as "art for art's sake" and as a programmed means of entertaining the masses.

With everyone following the same formula, it's no surprise that the music users encounter on Douyin feels increasingly replaceable. The marginalization of lyrics in the music production process doesn't help, either. Some Douyin-oriented music companies have started treating lyrics as dispensable, especially when compared with the importance of crafting a danceable beat. Video creators often design each dance to click with a sound beat at a precise point, such as making a hip thrust to the sound of a drum. This coordination between beat and body is what makes the dance flow. Lyrics are practically irrelevant.

Of course, Douyin is fully aware of its role in the homogenization of pop music production. Prior to 2019, members of its music team, many of whom were trained in music, even sought to distance themselves from the trend by manually placing one or two songs deemed to be of at least some artistic value on the app's "trending" chart. For example, the song "Sheng Ge" by former idol show contestant Zeng Yiming found its way to the top 10, despite a cool reception from the app's creators. Even with the platform's support, the song's poetic lyrics were used in just 35,000 videos according to a March search. A typical top-10 song might be used millions of times.

The lack of enthusiasm for actual songs, even ones that are generally well-liked and reviewed, puzzled even Douyin's music team, according to interviews I conducted with employees at ByteDance, Douyin's parent company. The only reason they could give is that users' musical tastes are fickle. Absent any answers, the platform's music team has since abandoned its efforts to inject their musical preferences into the algorithm and has gone back to recommending music solely based on data or as part of commercial deals with labels.

Meanwhile, the competition to make the next trending hit is only escalating. According to domestic media reports and interviews with music industry insiders, if a song does not go viral within three days, the label immediately stops promoting it. It's a cruel rule, but it has nonetheless become the norm for music companies. Over time, repetitive tunes and simple lyrics - or even no lyrics at all - have become increasingly common, and songwriters and recording artists work as if on an assembly line.

All of this is turning music into what economists call a "fast-moving consumer good," a term for non-durable, low cost, and quick-selling products. If Chinese music fans are nostalgic for the golden age of pop, perhaps it's because at least then you knew what your idol was singing about.
Editors: Cai Yineng and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: A tourist walks past a promotional billboard for Douyin in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Feb. 15, 2021. People Visual)

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Where Are the Douyin Generation's Pop Stars?

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Last month, I was scrolling through my feed on Douyin, the version of TikTok accessible on the Chinese mainland, when I came across a "Top 10 Douyin Songs of 2021" compilation. Produced by a music company I had never heard of, I was skeptical that it was just a marketing ploy.

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News stories tell of something that has gone before, and the previous past experiences of the interviewee are present in my news stories.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007417/intercultural-relationships-are-hard.-but-do-they-have-to-hurt%3F

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Most years, I'd spend Spring Festival with my family or going out for a Chinatown feast with my friends. But this isn't most years, and in February, with the United Kingdom once again under lockdown, I found myself boiling dumplings and steaming fish at home with my then boyfriend, Eric. We hung red banners on our bedroom door and Googled what the ox zodiac sign is supposed to represent.

Some of my best memories from our two-and-a-half-year relationship were the times we'd share our cultures with one another. Eric - a pseudonym - was French, raised in Brussels and educated in the United States. He, like me, had seen enough of the world to be interested in cultures other than his own. We talked longingly of traveling the world together and fantasized about living in a country foreign to us both. It was a dream relationship: exciting, adventurous, and stimulating. I was always learning something new and I was pleased to think I was able to offer the same to him.

But reality is never so cut and dry. Multicultural relationships, as thrilling as they may be, aren't all dreams and new experiences. My friends talk about the dread they feel at the thought of their partner's parents meeting their own and how much easier it would be sometimes to date someone who "gets it."

Toward the end of our relationship, it became clear that Eric, too, thought a source of our problems was my Chinese background, that somehow by being both Shanghainese and part of the only-child generation, I was programmed to be a certain way. "You're an only child, a Shanghainese princess," he burst out during one particularly heated argument. "And that's not something I can handle."

It was a phrase he'd learned from a stranger - a Chinese passenger seated next to him on a flight once told him Shanghainese women were notoriously difficult - and he'd clung to it ever since. As for the only child comment, well, I'm sure he'd be horrified to know that there's an entire generation of only children in China, almost all of whom were products of a population control policy. Admittedly, I can see how that might seem preposterous to a man with 18 first cousins.

This idea that culture can influence how we experience relationships is not a new one. In 1992, anthropologists Edward Fischer and William Jankowiak published a study conclusively dispelling the myth that romantic love was a Western concept, showing instead that it could be found in almost all cultures around the world. Yet subsequent studies have proven that expressions of romantic love across those cultures vary significantly. Researchers have found that passion is a celebrated - even necessary - part of falling in love in Western cultures, whereas for both South Asians and East Asians, passion is less of a priority than ensuring the unity of two families: It is not about being swept off your feet, Hollywood-style, but about serving your family and community through long-term, pragmatic, and responsible relationships.

After Eric and I broke up, I decided to start seeing a therapist. Over the course of our weekly sessions, I came to realize that Eric was not necessarily wrong to see my present self through the prism of the past. One of the most significant memories I have from my early childhood was a fight my parents had when my mother and I first followed my father in immigrating to the United States. In a state of rage and desperation, my mother packed a suitcase and declared that she was "going back to China." She was gone for a few hours before she returned home, depleted, with her suitcase still in hand. Growing up, I noticed signs of occasional unhappiness, helplessness, and even spite in my mother's attitude: Moving to a foreign country to keep her family together wasn't an easy choice for her.

Recently I read an article in Vogue by Jeanine Celeste Pang titled, "How Becoming a Mother Helped Me Connect to My Chinese Heritage." Pang's description of her relationship with her mother struck close to home. The mother's love that Pang describes so beautifully was grounded less in explicit displays of affection or what was said, and more in what her mom did for her.

"I didn't have a stage mom or a bake-sale mom or a soccer mom," Pang writes. "Phone calls never ended with 'I love you!' Our love was between the lines. She was more comfortable showing affection through lessons in hard work, something she picked up from her own upbringing."

In Chinese, there is a saying, chi ku which, translated literally, means to "eat bitterness." More broadly, it refers to the willingness to endure and overcome hardship at all costs - a fundamental Chinese value and a quality seen as worthy of admiration and praise. It's a concept that I find myself referencing often, whenever I need motivation to keep going, to keep trying, to keep pushing. Nothing good in life comes free, right? I often wonder if my mother rationalized her own marital troubles as chi ku. And how many times I'd packed a bag in my relationship with Eric, threatening to leave, but ultimately staying because to love is to eat bitterness?

Every relationship takes work. But to an extent, multicultural relationships take that to another level. So many of our individual values and views are shaped by our childhood upbringings, and when it comes to our perceptions of love, we are inclined to mirror what we witnessed in our own homes growing up.

In this sense, the problem with the concept of chi ku in the context of a multicultural relationship is its inherent Chinese-ness. To Eric, love wasn't supposed to be hard. Love should be easy and effortless, and it should never involve sacrificing your self-respect or your happiness. Although our two conceptions of love were not mutually exclusive, they were often at odds with one another. Whereas one of us might be ready to fight through anything and everything to make the relationship work, the other might decide there was nothing wrong with walking away with their head held high.

That poses the question: How do we navigate the modern-day world of dating, one that is more global, connected, and diverse than ever before? How much of what I have to offer in a relationship is predetermined by my cultural upbringing? And if the answer is "a lot," then how can I find compatibility with partners who are products of entirely different upbringings?

The answers to these questions vary depending on who you ask. I can only speak from my perspective, but I refuse to accept that I am solely a product of my childhood. Humans are complex creatures. Sure, we are heavily impacted by our formative years, but we are also shaped by all the memories, experiences, and times that come after. I might be an "only-child, Shanghainese princess," but I'm also a dependable friend, a good listener, and stubborn or charming, depending on my mood. I'm a human with flaws, some of which have nothing to do with my upbringing or culture. I know I have things to fix, but despite there always being room for improvement, it's OK to not be perfect. I want to be with someone who sees all that in me. Though perhaps next time, I'll start by looking for another only child.
Editors: Wu Haiyun and Kilian O'Donnell. (Header image: Stuart Kinlough/Ikon images/People Visual)

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Intercultural Relationships Are Hard. But Do They Have to Hurt?

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Most years, I'd spend Spring Festival with my family or going out for a Chinatown feast with my friends. But this isn't most years, and in February, with the United Kingdom once again under lockdown, I found myself boiling dumplings and steaming fish at home with my then boyfriend, Eric.

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The graphics are clean and have a certain narrative quality that lends itself to the telling of ongoing storytelling.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1CJ411p7N4

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There are similarities and differences. A multi-character combination format.
https://interaction.sixthtone.com/feature/2021/Changemakers-The-Five-Year-Issue/

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For Sixth Tone's fifth anniversary, we revisit some of the issues and individuals central to our first half-decade covering today's China.

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The characters are placed in their environment and blend in well with it.
https://gimg2.baidu.com/image_search/src=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.pconline.com.cn%2Fimages%2Fupload%2Fupc%2Ftx%2Fphotoblog%2F1208%2F22%2Fc5%2F13103159_13103159_1345531690125.jpg&refer=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.pconline.com.cn&app=2002&size=f9999,10000&q=a80&n=0&g=0n&fmt=jpeg?sec=1626751870&t=5be1f3b924e0c47ccc9787e531917b07

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The road follows format is tightly timed.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Nb41177K7?from=search&seid=2345766531870142668