The New Radicals

Great feature in this week’s Asian edition of TIME on the linglei, the new radicals of China. “[A] generation of Chinese […] are now in the process of deciding what they want to be when they grow up. No longer forced to fit into a regimented Maoist monoculture, their range of possibilities has diversified along with the country’s exploding economy. For many, their path to success does not necessarily lead through the traditional tedium of high school cramming, college exams and then a junior position at state factory No. 327. Although some are dropouts whose alt-lifestyle experiments are subsidized by newly wealthy parents, they’re not all slackers. They are setting up their own companies, writing books, designing funky clothes, making music, making love—and in the process they are beginning to form the crude outlines of what in the future will be considered countercultural, even cool, in China.” Read the whole article online here.