For the rest of the world, China’s 2008 Summer Olympics—with its $40 billion budget, dramatic “Bird’s Nest” stadium, and the lavish spectacle of its opening ceremony—marked the ascension of a new economic superpower onto the modern stage. Since then, new generations of Chinese youth have come of age into a society constantly rippling with changes, inundated with globalization, technology, and consumerism. The West continues to view China with curiosity, suspicion, and a sense of enigma as the country rapidly industrialized and urbanized, and its economic and political influence continues to shift. Yet Chinese literature translated into English is still predominantly written by older authors from the period of World War II, Maoism, and the Cultural Revolution, while neglecting the up-and-coming generation of Chinese artists, now dealing with wholly different lifestyles and sets of concerns.
Photo by Zhang Kaiyv.
This online portfolio features writers with a strong tie to Mainland China, addressing youth and contemporary culture: the existential questions of this new generation, who are often globalized, tech-savvy, highly skeptical, inundated with media and consumerism, living in a society changing by the minute.
This portfolio was edited by Cleo Qian. Cleo (she/her) is a queer writer born in California. She is the author of the short story collection LET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO, which was one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Best Books of 2023 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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