Young China

by Zak Dychtwald

  Dozens of these groups invited me to participate. I tried the Chengdu Crossfit Society, Chengdu Billiards Boys, Chengdu Fixed-Gear Bike Squad, Chengdu Basketball Club, Chengdu Foodie Friends, See the World Weekenders, Chengdu Friends of Charity, Groovy Movie Mania, and a dozen or so more. For each group I tried, three to fifteen other groups met around a similar central theme.

  The hobbies young Chinese choose, rather than the work they do or subjects they study, can come to define how they see themselves. Some are dabblers, but a mounting number are ultraenthusiasts and superfans. Something about the personality, a level of dedication perhaps picked up in the tedium of memorization, makes my Chinese friends and their generation the most intense hobbyists I’ve ever encountered.

  Compared with the other groups, the Block Dash Crew was fairly pedestrian. BDC was a running club. Members would meet on weeknights and some really early weekday mornings and run ten-kilometer jogs around different parts of Chengdu. College students and recent graduates ran with BDC. What set them apart was their business savvy. They’d managed to get a bevy of sponsorships. All the group leaders—stylish, attractive twenty-three-year-olds—raced around in the newest Nike gear.

  BDC partnered one night with a new high-end noodle shop to sponsor a run. All runners who participated would get a free sweatshirt and bowl of noodles. Chengdu is famous for its spicy, saucy, delicious noodles. These high-end noodle shops were beginning to pop up all over the city, serving not only Sichuanese noodles but also Japanese udon or ramen, Thai curry noodles, Vietnamese pho, and noodle dishes from all over China. They were doing well, as noodles are an intuitive entry point to foreign fare for Sichuanese. Skeptical, I thought their glitzy signage and prices five times higher than local shops’ were a rip-off.

  Before we met, the group sent out a text about the air quality for the night, a 73 on the Air Quality Index (AQI), which measures the particulate matter (PM) and its diameter. PM 2.5 is particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter (a human hair has a diameter of about 100 micrometers). These types of particulate matter are produced during fuel combustion. Because Chengdu is surrounded by factory towns, most of us had an app that tracks AQI. Outdoor athletes and commuters alike are in the habit of checking the AQI in the morning, like checking the weather. Air quality of 73 was fine—not great, not bad. Even so, a few people of the fifty people who showed up brought masks to protect their lungs.

  We started off. In a Chinese city center at night, low-lying bad air bounces and refracts the light from the megamalls, office buildings, and restaurants. It is like holding a flashlight to a colored plastic water bottle—bright beams of light dilute into a duller glow. We ran and talked through the ethereal city. As we ran, a swarm of fixed-gear bikers pedaled by us towing a speaker system and blasting Chinese pop. They wore jerseys that read CHENGDU BIKE SQUAD. We ran past the English Corner. A group of college students, members of a photography club, had also partnered with BDC, and now they circled us on mopeds, one person driving and the passenger facing backward to snap candid shots. Even the elderly were gathering. Beneath a highway overpass, on a raised concrete platform on an island that separated the nighttime traffic, a large group of elderly Chinese men in tank tops and sandals fanned themselves as they listened to a local opera singer through a portable amp. Other packs of aunts and uncles glided around city squares to ballroom music, while others still did choreographed exercise routines.

  I ran next to a young man named Guo Yu. He worked in information technology at a media company. He was a twenty-four-year-old white-collar worker who had just gotten married. Guo Yu’s wiry frame, light step, and smooth gait gave him away as a serious runner. Around the eight-kilometer mark I struggled through my end of the conversation amid labored breathing. Guo Yu’s voice remained even and clear. BDC was Guo Yu’s second, less-serious running group. Like me, he had been enticed by the free sweatshirt. He usually ran on Fridays anyway, especially when he was training for a marathon.

  “Have you run a marathon before?” I asked Guo Yu.

  He nodded in the affirmative: “I ran one three days ago.”

  I turned to him, blinking, making sure I had understood. He glided along beside me, smiling back at my searching look.

  “And you’re already training for another one?”

  “That one is next week,” he responded. Two marathons, two weeks.

  “How many marathons have you run this year?” I asked.

  “This next one will be my sixth.” It was early May.

  We ran silently for a few dozen meters; he was gliding along, I was reconsidering the way I live my life. Then another question occurred to me.

  “How long have you been running?”

  Without so much as a glance at me, Guo Yu responded, “About a year and change now.”

  I stopped in my tracks. Guo Yu flipped around, jogging in place, still smiling, waving for me to keep moving.

  Fifteen months ago, someone Guo Yu used to play computer games with had picked up running. It was in the middle of a fitness craze in China, driven more by social media and showing off a lean figure than by health. After seeing more and more people take up running and watching an ultramarathoner on a Chinese TV show explain how distance running can hone a person’s self-motivation and willpower, Guo Yu had decided to try it.

  China’s respect for endurance sports is owed in part to its history. Every child in China learns about Mao’s Long March, when he and his Red Army trekked fifty-six hundred miles in a year to avoid defeat by the Nationalists in 1935. The Long March was a testament to Mao’s ironclad willpower, a feat that continues to inspire awe and command respect. It also bears a striking resemblance to running marathons, long-distance biking, and winter swimming, all of which require extraordinary mental strength and fortitude, the bitter sports, if you will.

  “Had you ever played any sports before?”

  “No, not really.”

  “How long did you train before your first marathon?”

  “Two months.”

  After his first run with Block Dash Crew, Guo Yu had started running every day. Running became his social outlet. He would run every night with friends or with clubs. Running became who he was.

  “I had no context or expectations for what was possible or what wasn’t. After two months of running, I ran a marathon,” he told me. “Two weeks later I ran another one. I thought, so what?”

  I asked if he knew that he sounded nuts. You could do that sort of thing back home—from zero miles to 26.2—but people would make a YouTube video about it, and it would become an inspirational meme on the Internet: “IT Nerd Runs Toward New Life.” And then to run six marathons in six months—it was beyond my comprehension.

  Guo Yu’s explanation reminded me of a conversation I’d had with Yu Jiawen, a young entrepreneur in Guangzhou. Jiawen is a well-known Chinese entrepreneur. Through frequent TV appearances he became known for his boyish appearance and fearless attitude, as well as the great success of his mobile platform, Super Schedule, a social app that allows students to see the schedules of, and interact with, other students in their classes. It quickly turned into the most popular way for students to find their classmates and start to flirt. In a conversation at his headquarters in Guangzhou, Jiawen told me with a big grin, “We tried to create a platform for classmates to interact and it became the largest dating app in China.”6

  Jiawen spoke to me about the unique moment entrepreneurship was enjoying in China. Over tea in his company’s Guangzhou headquarters, Jiawen explained, “It was only when foreign investors told me what I was doing was incredible that I began to think I couldn’t do it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Because China has a remarkable lack of precedent for start-ups, or for runners, for that matter, few people put limits on what they think is possible. Part of that comes from a lack of experience—it takes a roomful of chatty mediocre runners to make running a marathon feel out of reach. Another part of that, though, is the contem
porary Chinese mind-set: If I work hard, why can’t I be successful, especially if all the factors are within my control? Systematic hard work over time, like marathon running and coding? No problem.

  For China’s “Me Generation,” as its post-90s are often called, finding a sense of self can be taxing in cities whose very existence seems to negate individuality. Finding meaning in what can feel like a rat race for an apartment, a car, a kid, and more, more, more can be spiritually draining. Chinese hobbyists put their heart and soul into their passions. Building a community around something you love, and giving yourself the emotional space to love something immaterial, provides immense meaning in a changing society.

  Jiawen’s passion was coding and entrepreneurship, so he threw himself into his work. His job became his social life. Working nights and weekends wasn’t an issue; he was used to a limited or work-oriented social life, so he had nowhere else to go. For Guo Yu and the dozen or so other flash marathoners I’ve met, what they threw themselves into was running.

  That type of intensity creates an especially loyal, though distant, sports superfan. One of my roommates, Huan Huan, would set his alarm for 2:00 a.m. and then stay up until 4:00 in a red Arsenal jersey to cheer on “his” soccer team on the other side of the globe. Some offices started to allow young employees to work a special nocturnal schedule during the World Cup soccer madness that gripped China so they wouldn’t fall asleep at their desks. Hou Wei walked around Sichuan University in a Steph Curry Warriors jersey at all times. Curry’s small stature and supernatural work ethic have earned him legions of fans in China. Hou Wei’s roommate had a poster of the US basketball player DeMarcus Cousins, then of the Sacramento Kings, taped above his desk. Whenever Hou had to take a test, he would light incense to Cousins, whose name transliterated to Chinese means “God of the Exam.” NBA superfandom has gotten so intense in China that the scoreboard for playoff games always has a Chinese ad, an effort to reach fans in China like Hou Wei and his roommate.

  Some brands have even recognized and capitalized on this Chinese urge to join a hive.

  Few brands have done it better than Nike. Nike was already making all the coolest running clothing. All the best Chinese running apps were Nike’s. The problem was, Nike didn’t have any Chinese runners. In the late 2000s, participants laced up at the starting line at the annual marathon in Shanghai held only a patchwork of runners.

  Nike put its effort toward creating a running community, not toward selling shoes. The company sponsored a BDC event and events like it all across China. Nike created free apps to track how far you were running and share your progress on WeChat, Weibo, QQ, and Renren. The company turned running into a social and competitive experience; people wanted to outrun their friends and colleagues and share their accomplishments on social media. Nike supplied all the free sweatshirts, sweatbands, posters, and promotional swag. BDC runners plastered WeChat with pictures of its members running in Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Japan.

  The company understood that running culture was a perfect fit for Chinese young people. When all entrepreneurs around the world were claiming meditation and daily exercise lead to success, running was a fit. When all the new TV shows and magazines were featuring sexy bodies and six-packs, running was a fit. When young people were looking for a release, running was a fit. When young people were looking to learn how to endure in the absence of a societal mandate to do so, running was a fit. But they were also looking for community, so Nike helped build one.

  Chinese college students and young professionals ate it up. In 2015, one hundred thousand people applied for a spot in the Shanghai marathon, which had room for only twenty-three thousand runners.

  After the BDC event that night, we all sat down to eat fancy noodles. And, despite my lingering doubts about authenticity, I have to say they were excellent.

  * * *

  Given the pressures of their lives in China, young people fervently seek avenues of escape. Urban density and multigenerational homes make personal space hard to come by and a valuable commodity. Dorm rooms usually have four occupants. Places like McDonald’s and KFC, places that don’t charge to sit and won’t accuse their customers of loitering, are invaluable resources for young people without a private space to call their own. Those secondary spaces become their own little universe for young people, out of the orbit of family and schoolwork and outside the gravitational pull of responsibility. But sometimes those little universes are too small. They certainly cannot compete with the vast and dynamic gaming multiverse.

  No other industry has gained as obsessive a following in China as online gaming. A hundred and thirty million Chinese play multiplayer computer games. They pack Internet bars, rooms lined with rows of computers and comfy chairs that offer high-speed Internet and gaming equipment—a mouse and a headphone—for little money.

  In China, gaming has thrust itself into the mainstream largely be-cause of people like Chu. I met Chu during my thirty-six-hour workathon in an Internet bar while doing a rush translation job. I had been hired to translate and localize the entire script for a smartphone game I called Honor Quest: Steam & Magic, an adventure game in the style of Lord of the Rings. My computer was broken and I had a tight deadline, which was why I spent thirty-six hours straight in an Internet bar, translating Chinese into English lines like, “Quick, speak! Remember, your words decide your fate!” “What kind of magic could control Titans, the War Machines, and the minds of mankind?” and “These are the Desert Dwarves. Allow me to make an introduction.”

  Chu, who was twenty-two, was there playing League of Legends, one of the most popular games in China. The game earned such a loyal Chinese following that the largest Internet company in China, Tencent, the company behind WeChat, acquired full control of Riot Games, including League of Legends, in 2015.7

  Chu was an engineering student at a local university. He went to the Internet bar outside the university gates five days a week. “[I come here] whenever I can,” he told me. “It allows me to zone out, not to have to think about jobs, school, family, girls, or whatever else is happening.”

  Chu was on a computer to my left. On my right was another young man who also was playing LoL. His gaming handle was LiuBei, named after the Chinese warrior hero from the book (and game) Romance of the Three Kingdoms. LiuBei was twenty-five, married, and a graduate of the local university. He had started a job as a chemist at a local factory. He went to the Internet bar several times a week to blow off steam after work. “Through the game I can zone out, let my mind go blank, and forget about the stresses of the day,” he told me. “Plus, it is a way for me to keep up with friends from school and from home. We all play the same games and plan times to play together.”

  Neither Chu nor LiuBei ever played an organized team sport growing up. Their League of Legends teams were the first long-term team experiences of their lives. “I don’t feel like my classmates really get me,” Chu said at about hour eighteen in the smoke-filled Internet bar. “These guys have known me for years. We’ve been through things together, we have common experiences and interests.” Chu paused. “We’ve even gone to war together,” he laughed. “They get who I am.” People like Chu and LiuBei live all over China. Some are less educated, some are more educated. Some are employed, some are unemployed. Many are factory workers, and a surprising number of white-collar, banking and investing, or marketing employees still link up to play intense first-person shooters or participate in deeply immersive multiple-player role-playing games.

  While I was living at Outside Island, I often saw young men and women huddled around a phone watching videos together, oohing and ahhing as if watching a title bout. Then I would realize they were watching highlights from international gaming tournaments. They weren’t even playing the games—they were e-sports spectators.

  Gaming offers the least expensive diversion from life in China, an escape into cyberspace that is even further removed from reality than a karaoke box or a big meal. Not including t
he four meals of instant noodles, three cans of Red Bull, chips, processed sausage, and duck neck, the thirty-six hours cost me US$29.

  LiuBei told me, “I’m married and am a white-collar guy now. My mom lives with my wife and me. She [his wife] is expecting a baby. Mostly, I work. Sometimes, it is nice to just let my mind go blank, you know?” Click-click-click-click-click persisted in the background. “It’s a bit of escaping reality, but is that such a bad thing for short periods? My wife is OK with it. She handles the finances, and this is cheaper than smoking or drinking, right?”

  * * *

  China is full of puzzles to solve. Why is everyone in China such a great singer? Why do people love karaoke? These questions would keep me up at night. I once told my parents on the phone that I feel as if every single person in China is a talented singer. They did not believe me, so I stopped a student outside the library, explained to him that my parents hoped to hear a Chinese song, as they’d never heard one before, and he happily serenaded my parents, who listened from thousands of miles away. He sang “Within My Voice,” a drippy pop love song that was the number one hit at the time.

  When looking at these puzzles, there is a tendency to throw up your hands, say, “That’s weird!” and stop there; there is something satisfying about cultural novelty that would be somehow diminished by an explanation. For instance, when I first went to China, I thought I would make a small business of correcting mistakes in English. Signs, pamphlets, menus, business cards—the glaring spelling and grammar mistakes, I felt, made for good comedy but poor business. “Why don’t they just fix it?” I thought. When I got a job posing as a foreign client for a photo shoot for a paper producer’s corporate pamphlet, I seized the opportunity to pitch my services to the CEO. The pamphlet would, after all, be written at least partly in English. Between pictures I talked to the boss, who was there to oversee the photo shoot. The CEO looked at me with raised eyebrows before finally telling me, “We don’t have any clients outside of China.” I was startled. So I asked him why his old pamphlet included copy in English. It turned out that the English served the same purpose as my picture in the new pamphlet: to make the company seem international and modern. None of its clients actually relied on the English. Spelling and grammar? It made no difference.