Xu Jilin, "Houlang and Houlang Culture"

China’s Generation Z?  What are houlang and houlang Culture?[1]
 
Introduction by Freya Ge and David Ownby
 
Introduction

This translation marks the inauguration of a collaboration between Reading the China Dream and Freya Ge, an 11th grade student in Shanghai.  Freya contacted me a few weeks ago via email asking if she could try her hand at translating texts for our site.  I was delighted to accept, as one of the challenges I face is that the world of Chinese establishment intellectuals that I know best is dominated by men who are approaching retirement age.  I value what these “elder statesmen”  have to say, but I have no illusion that their voices are representative of the views of all Chinese people. 

That said, how to broaden my focus is not clear; googling “younger and more diverse Chinese establishment intellectuals” yields meager results.  I suggested to Freya that she select texts of interest to her and her generation, and I am very pleased with the result, which reflects a different perspective on the “China Dream” when viewed through the eyes of those in their teens and twenties.
 
The text in question is the transcription of a round-table discussion of houlang and houlang culture.  Houlang 后浪 (literally, the “rear wave”) is a figurative way of referring to the “new generation” in China; it comes from the expression “As in the Yangzi River, where the rear waves drive on those before, so each new generation surpasses the last长江后浪推前浪,一代更比一代强.”  The term became a hot topic of discussion after a video by the same name was aired on Bilibili, a youth-oriented Chinese video-sharing platform, on Youth Day (May 4) of 2020. 

Narrated by the nationally known actor He Bing 何冰 (b. 1968), the clip has the production values of a Coca-Cola ad (“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”), and is full of images of beautiful Chinese twenty-somethings living wonderful, exciting, high-tech lives.  He Bing’s narrative celebrates the glorious existence of today’s youth with a sense of awe that is both excessive and off-putting.  

Although wrapped up in the language of consumerism—“Look at all you’ve got to choose from!”—the message is in fact transparently political:  “Look at all we’ve done for you…Now how about a little respect and obedience.”  Even if you do not understand Chinese, the three-minute video is worth watching as a slick example of well-packaged cynicism (here's the link again).  We assume the video was produced by the platform itself; it is not clear whether local government propaganda offices pitched in. (Correction:  formal government offices are clearly indicated at the end of the video.  My thanks to Alex Pevzner for pointing this out).
 
Refreshingly, most Chinese young people seem to have hated the video.  First, the video clearly worships the best and the brightest, the prettiest and the richest, and thus invites disdain—or envy—from those who are less pretty, rich, and bright.  Second, the video’s celebration of the extraordinary “freedom of choice” enjoyed by the “next wave” of Chinese young adults glosses over the many stress lines that define the lives of Chinese youth.  China is an incredibly competitive society, and for many, life is a cradle-to-grave struggle to get into the right school, test into the right university, find the right job, marry the right partner, buy a house, buy a car and start all over again. 
 
As Freya puts it:  “Given my age, I should be counted as one of the houlang. But I did not like the video at all. As a student at an international school in Shanghai, most of those around me (teachers, parents, classmates) have a relatively high standard of living, but the  houlang lifestyle displayed in the video remains mind-bogglingly untypical.

Furthermore, for the majority of young people in China, who work as teachers, firemen, or nurses—and who deserve respect but were absent from the video—chasing after such dreams is too expensive even to imagine. It made me think of another video I once saw of a fireman sitting by the roadside eating a steamed bun after putting out a fire. ‘Freedom to choose’ was probably the last thing on his mind, but nobody would deny that the nameless fireman was fulfilling his own dream by doing his job and defending his community, and such ordinary but good people are the most shining ‘wave’ and the hope of China.”
 
In any event, the word houlang came to be one of the top ten Internet buzzwords of 2020, and has come to be a cutting put-down of Chinese youth who find it hard to hide their privilege.
 
Riding the “wave” of the controversy kicked up by the video, East China Normal University in Shanghai organized a discussion of houlang, which transpired on July 16, 2020.  The event was moderated by the well-known ECNU historian and public intellectual Xu Jilin 许纪霖 (b. 1957) (many of whose writings are available in translation on this site), and guests included: Zhou Lian 周濂, Professor at the Renmin University Institute of Philosophy in Beijing—and a representative of those born in the 1970s; Zhang Xiaoyu 张笑宇, a researcher at the ECNU Institute of World Politics—a representative of those born in the 1980s; and Shao Heng 邵恒, a media-personality and Vice-President of Dedao (sort of the Chinese equivalent of Ted Talks)—and a representative of those born in the 1990s.  The way in which the three younger guests discussed the topic differs markedly from Xu Jinlin’s approach, suggesting yet again the wisdom of examining how younger Chinese view the China Dream. 
 
Favorite Quotes       
 
“After watching this video, I began to wonder about the motivations behind it. Here is what I came up with:  On Youth Day, May 4th, a nationally recognized middle-aged actor exchanges positive energy with young people on a non-mainstream youth website in ringing tones…My impression is that this is not merely a commercial, but a political show grafted onto a commercial.”
 
“Last year, I talked with people at China Youthology, an organization that conducts research and marketing on youth culture. Kevin Lee, their chief operating officer, told me an interesting fact: in their research, they often hear people born around 1990 or even 1995 say they are having a midlife crisis, and some of them have even begun preparing what they call a ‘living will’ to plan for the distribution of their inheritance when they die. They have also seen 35-year-olds get laid off because they are less creative or energetic than the next generation. Therefore, it is a very interesting topic for young people to feel the anxiety of becoming members of an older generation. Although many of these people are very young, they have mentally experienced the beginnings of old age.”
 
“I believe the right to choose is not only the main feature of consumerism, but also the core concept of Isaiah Berlin's idea of negative freedom. In an age of consumerism, people's desires are created for them; you seem to have the freedom to choose what you want, but you are actually an ‘unconscious prisoner.’

But surely a bigger problem is that, not only our consumer desires, but also our emotional expression, our self-perception and even our ideals are created by the same forces. You seem to have the right to choose, but you are not free to choose at all. If we look a little deeper, we will find that this narrative is actually a pseudo-consumerist manifesto. It is an effort by both the older generation and ‘the powers that be’ to absorb the houlang into the overall logic of their narrative.”
 
Translation by Freya Ge
 
Is houlang a real thing?
 
Xu Jilin: I have always wondered what houlang really is. I started teaching here right after I graduated in 1982, so I have had students born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. This makes me think that houlang is a sensitive issue, well worth talking about. However, during one of our meetings to prepare for the discussion, one of our invited guests challenged us, saying it was a fake topic. So I want to start here—does houlang really exist? Is it a real issue? The video on Bilibili paid homage to the houlang from the perspective of someone from an older generation. Is this kind of praise genuine? Is it valuable?
 
Zhou Lian: In fact, my first reaction to the topic was one of bewilderment. Why should we talk about houlang? We know generational comparisons and class differences are things people have talked about for a long time. Does the notion of houlang add anything new here? Or is it just a fleeting label? To answer this question, I think we should first go back to what created the topic, that is, He Bing's Youth Day video on Bilibili.
 
After watching this video, I began to wonder about the motivations behind it. Here is what I came up with:  On Youth Day, May 4th, a nationally recognized middle-aged actor exchanges positive energy with young people on a non-mainstream youth website in ringing tones…My impression is that this is not merely a commercial, but a political show grafted onto a commercial.
 
But the political show didn’t work so well, and to understand why it failed, I think we should start with the metaphor of the “back wave” (a literal translation of houlang). As we all know, the back wave comes from the Chinese metaphor of "the back wave pushes the front wave and the front wave disappears on the beach". In his three-minute narrative, He Bing drips with sincerity as he appeals to the houlang, earnestly hoping that they will come to take his place, but what is awkward is that the houlang seems to have neither the impetus nor the desire to do so.
 
And why is that? One reason is that the houlang refuses to be represented. In his narrative, He Bing tries to shape the overall image of the youth, to embrace and include them all.  However, young people do not see themselves in this overly unified image of the houlang and their life experience, and the image fails to create the empathy that those who made the video anticipated.
 
Second, young people believe that the true and weighty realities they face are obscured by the video narrative. The consumerist experience that we see in the video—the two-dimensional screen subculture of anime, comics, video games and novels[2], plus the figurines and the foreign travel, all have happy, gauzy overtones, but for the vast majority of young people, it is a long way from the lives they actually lead. Class issues, the gap between rich and poor, and all sorts of real social problems are glossed over in the narrative.
 
Third, in the narration, He Bing's use of language and the way he expresses himself reek of “father knows best” despite his pretentions to sincerity and equality. It's not hard to guess what he’s getting at when he says things like "I look at you with gratitude," which clearly poses the question, "Don’t you look at me with gratitude?”  Or when he says "One day I finally realized that not only are we teaching you how to live, you are also enlightening us on how to make our lives better," this kind of pushy flattery and “guidance” always strikes people as insincere. 

Therefore, I think the narration itself, from the specific content to the form of expression, avoided the real issues and is full of affectation and false emotion. It seemed like that the older generation wanted to give the younger generation a slap on the back, but missed and smacked themselves in the face.
 
Of course, I don't think the concept of houlang is completely worthless. First of all, it's productive. Many concepts, images and topics can be derived from “back wave,” such as “front wave,” “big wave,” and “middle wave.” Second, it has a certain vitality, and I believe this word can enter our everyday language in the same way as “loser 屌丝,” “tall, rich, and handsome 高富帅,” “fair-skinned, rich, and beautiful 白富美,” and “short and poor 矮矬穷, [all of which are internet put-downs].”
 
The real question is, does the have the power to explain anything sociologically? I think houlang will become a way for people to make fun of each other in their spare time. Unlike "May Fourth youth", or "baby boomers" or " millennials", all of which point to something real, houlang only has the value of a metaphor and thus while it might become a short-lived cultural phenomenon or a topic of public discussion, I remain highly skeptical that it has any critical cultural or sociological significance.
 
Zhang Xiaoyu: I do not totally agree with Prof. Zhou's view. I agree that the video fails as an advertisement, but as a cultural phenomenon, it still has symbolic significance.
 
When I was watching the clip, I thought of a cultural event that it could be compared to:  Pan Xiao's article published in China Youth Daily in 1980, entitled " Why Does Life’s Road Grow Ever More Narrow?” This article described a young woman who had just started her first job, and found that there were unspoken rules in her work unit which meant that there was no way for her to display her enthusiasm. The article was an expression of the values of the period; houlang and the discussion that it triggered might actually be seen as discussing a similar change in values.
 
But the “change in values” under discussion here is that houlang is the creation of an advertising video that defines the mainstream values of a generation of youth completely in terms of consumerism, which I think is very rare in contemporary Chinese history. Compared to the way we used to talk about youth in the past, such as "the new youth of the May 4th Movement", or "the new generation building the motherland in the 1980s" or "those born in the 1990s and 2000s are not broken generations,” houlang presents a completely different take on the idea.
 
The key concept of "the right to choose" in the video echoes the classic writer Ziegmont Bowman's summary of the consumer society in Work, Consumption and the New Poor:  What the dazzling array of products of consumer society brings with it is the right to choose. In fact, the doubts felt by the real houlang are actually the protests of the post-consumerist class when a consumerist advertising video wraps itself in politics to propagate the values of consumerism. In that sense, I think the symbolism of the houlang is quite significant.
 
As Prof. Zhou just said, houlang lacks specific boundaries in the understanding of it own identity, which I think is exactly an important feature of the weaker class definition of consumerism. In the age of consumerism, all forms of identity are linked to consumption. You enjoy foreign traveling, skateboarding, skydiving, bungee jumping. On the surface, this is your personal choice, your pursuit of freedom, but in fact, your ability to consume allows you to pursue your sense of belonging and identity. As for the people who cannot afford to purchase their sense of belonging, their mode of self-identification is a passive denial of personal identity.

For example, I do not know who could be counted as houlang, but I know that I am not. Throughout, the video made fun of or ignored lesser youth who do not measure up to the houlang we see on the screen; if we are people without talent, we might think the video is right. Therefore, I think the cultural phenomenon represented by the video has symbolic significance. It represents the influence of consumerism on an entire generation of youth, as well as the spontaneous sense of inferiority and self-denial felt by the youth in this era.
 
Shao Heng: The reason why the topic of houlang caused such a big controversy is that it contains many layers, and is only the tip of a huge iceberg. I tried to tease out three dimensions of this iceberg, as three "sub-topics" related to the houlang phenomenon.
 
The first subtopic is who, after all, is included among the houlang.
 
Professors here born in the 1970s and 1980s would say that I am a houlang. However, when I was watching this video, what I noticed was that the pop-up screens were full of encouragement for those about to take the college entrance exam, which suggests that Bilibili thinks that houlang are high school students. This would mean that the older generation as well is faced with the phenomenon of constantly meeting the challenges and pressures brought by the houlang. I think this mentality may lead to a topic worthy of discussion—are the anxieties of the older generation coming earlier and earlier? If so, why is that?
 
Actually, this kind of anxiety is very common. Last year, I talked with people at Youthology, an organization that conducts research and marketing on youth culture. Kevin Lee, their chief operating officer, told me an interesting fact: in their research, they often hear people born around 1990 or even 1995 say they are having a midlife crisis, and some of them have even begun preparing what they call a "living will" to plan for the distribution of their inheritance when they die. They have also seen 35-year-olds get laid off because they are less creative or energetic than the next generation. Therefore, it is a very interesting topic for young people to feel the anxiety of becoming members of an older generation. Although many of these people are very young, they have mentally experienced the beginnings of old age.
 
The second subtopic worthy of attention is “what would happen if houlang disappeared?” The question was raised by the economist Liang Jianzhang, the chairman of Ctrip, in a column on finance and economics. The article pointed out that the number of people born in China is getting smaller in every generation. In terms of quantity, the houlang will slowly lose its staying power. For example, there are 230 million in the 1980s generation, and 195 million in the 1990s generation, a decline of some 15%.  Between 2000 and 2010 there were only 150 million births and in the past ten years 160 million. According to Liang's calculations, China's total population is shrinking by about half every 30 years, so each houlang will become weaker and smaller. What impact will this have on society in the future?
 
The third subtopic might be more optimistic—the rebirth of the older generation or the middle-aged houlang. From what the other professors already said, it is clear that they are quite familiar with Bilibili and trendy variety shows. However, the information sources of people like me born in the 1990s were the Financial Times, Reference News and Dr. Lilac, so I feel quite out of place. I was born in the 1990s and live in the world of traditional media and health care, while they were born in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but are like fish in water in the new two-dimensional subculture. So, I see an interesting trend in middle-aged people, and it makes me realize that the division between older and younger generations is quite artificial. Contemporary life is made up of one wave after another, creating many new life possibilities.
 
Xu Jilin: I think the video raised a real question, but the answer it gave was one-sided; this is my basic take. In my opinion, this video opened up a new perspective, or a new angle, from which to observe Chinese society, and the Chinese people. I remember in the 1990s and early 2000s, we used to divide people up according to whether they were “left” or “right”. When you met someone for the first time, you could ask him what kind of newspaper he read. If he read the Global Times, then you knew he was probably from the left, and if he read Southern Weekend, he was probably liberal. Twenty years ago, you looked at other people in an ideological way and divided them into “left”, “center,” and “right”.
 
However, in the last decade, a new vision has emerged that goes beyond "left and right" and divides society into "upper” and “lower." This refers to the class you belong to, what your identity is, whether you’re a loser or an aristocrat, whether you are part of the lower class, the middle class, or the upper class. Especially in these years, due to the rapid development of the economy, society has become highly stratified. But beyond "left and right" and "upper and lower", is there not a new way to think about the differences between people of our time? The video offered a new perspective: "younger and older."  The relationship between houlang and older generations is a intergenerational cultural difference.
 
In this sense, the video raised a real question, which is of particular interest to me, because I have been doing a study in recent years on intergenerational change among Chinese intellectuals. As a senior university professor, teaching since 1982, I have had students who were born in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and in the 1990s and 2000s, the current generation. My strong impression that there are obvious generational differences between students from different eras.

Those born in the 1960s and 1970s were the "post-enlightenment generation"; those born in the 1980s were a mixed bag; and those born in the 1990s and 2000s are representatives of a thoroughly secular society. Generational differences are not entirely based on age—culture can be even more important. What we call houlang today represents more the secularist culture of those born in the 1990s and 2000s.
 
The "Image" of Different Age Groups and Cultural Generations
 
Xu Jilin: Now let's leave the video for a moment and get back to the real question—who are the houlang? What is the culture of those born in the 1990s and 2000s? When you describe someone of a certain age, what image first comes to mind?
 
Shao Heng: Like the generation born in the 1990s, we probably listened to music by Jay Chou 周杰伦, Stefanie Sun 孙燕姿 and Fish Leong 梁静茹[3] when we were in middle school and high school. There are also some important events that I believe are common images for our generation. For example, the 2008 Olympic Games is a common memory that symbolizes an entire era for the 1990s generation. In fact, this memory has probably marked the national character of our generation.
 
Zhou Lian: When those us of born in the 1970s were young, the boys read the Hong Kong martial arts author Jin Yong 金庸and the girls read the Taiwanese Qiong Yao 琼瑶, famous for her romantic novels. If people wanted to understand the international scene, they would crowd around the notice board where the newspapers were posted to read Reference News, or go to the library to read magazines like Overseas Nebula.
 
Compared with those born in the 1970s and 1980s, those born in the 1990s and the 2000s have a unique advantage. They are the children of the computer age and the Internet age, and move in step with the latest international sports, entertainment, and political news. I think that's probably one of the biggest differences that shapes the generations, the very different ways in which we get information.
 
After 2008, China's Internet superhighway gradually spread out to become "local [i.e., universal]." This localization leads to a very interesting question: what effect does the localization of China's Internet superhighway have on the self-identity, understanding and imagination of those born in the 1990s and the 2000s? I think this a fundamental point of entry for our discussion.
 
Xiaoyu described the video narrative as a proclamation of consumerism and thus dismissed it. In my opinion, if it were only a statement of consumerism, it would not be a big issue. The real problem is that it’s political propaganda in the guise of consumerism, and politics in the guise of depoliticization.
 
For example, Xiaoyu believes that the key concept in the narrative is “the right to choose”, which is exactly the main feature of consumer society. However, I believe the right to choose is not only the main feature of consumerism, but also the core concept of Isaiah Berlin's idea of negative freedom. In an age of consumerism, people's desires are created for them; you seem to have the freedom to choose what you want, but you are actually an "unconscious prisoner".

​But surely a bigger problem is that, not only our consumer desires, but also our emotional expression, our self-perception and even our ideals are created by the same forces. You seem to have the right to choose, but you are not free to choose at all. If we look a little deeper, we will find that this narrative is actually a pseudo-consumerist manifesto. It is an effort by both the older generation and “the powers that be” to absorb the houlang into the overall logic of their narrative.
 
When we talk about houlang, if, like Professor Xu, we only stress the difference between “older and younger”, which refers to differences in cultural orientation and lifestyle, and overlook or ignore differences between “left and right”(i.e., problems of freedom and equality) and “higher and lower” (i.e., the gap between rich and poor and the issue of social justice), this is how we wind up with "one-dimensional people”.
 
Zhang Xiaoyu: I basically agree with Prof. Zhou's opinion, but I want to analyze it from another perspective. Shao Heng just mentioned two points: the first is that the number of houlang is decreasing, and the second is that the older generations are changing into houlang. I found both of these points interesting.
 
In my opinion, what we call consumerism is also an expression or symbol of the great power of the era in which we live. Everything about consumerism is shaped by the profound impact that technological progress has had on the fabric of human society and humanity. Why has consumerism become an important way to pursue identity and belonging in this era? In a sense, this topic is beyond politics, because it describes not only China, but the West as well to a certain degree, and the social fact behind it the inevitable surplus created by the development of social productivity, the result of the progress of science and technology.
 
Today's economic development depends on technological progress, but for a society, technological progress will create a surplus of people, because people will be replaced by machines, which by the same token will remove the opportunity to create value through their work. If there are fewer and fewer opportunities to create value through work in a society, then people will naturally seek their self-worth through consumption. So, all consumerist eras march in step with technological progress, but there two other things occur at the same time——class division and stubborn resistance.
 
As technology advances, class divisions become clearer, and the rebels have fewer tools at their disposal. Moving forward, these disadvantaged groups, these people who are unable to consume, will eventually dispense with their most basic human and animal desires to consume and reproduce, and society will cease to reproduce. Many houlang today have never been in a relationship since they were born. They are still single, they are afraid of marriage and pregnancy, and they don’t want to have a family. I think this is essentially a reflection of a broader forces.
 
Young people should always strive for a better life, but after the older generation has made off with so much of the huge development dividends over the past few year, the future looks to be meaningless for the houlang, so they ask themselves: “What am I striving for?” At this moment, houlang feel repulsed by older generations on many levels, because they feel like they have ruined everything, in addition to leaving with all the profits. The moral legitimacy of the current generation's denial of the older generations is linked to ideas class, social and political justice; this is different than in the past, when generations simply succeeded one another.
 
Although no common purpose unites those born in the 1990s and the 2000s, they do share one thing:  an overall negative attitude towards the powerful, a dismissal of older generations in an extremely utilitarian, realistic, and even naked manner. For example, older generations attach great importance to interpersonal relationships, but when you talk to those born in the 2000s about this, they ask if relationships will make buying a house easier, and if not, can you just leave me alone. please?  Therefore, my view is that houlang is not really a marker of intergenerational change, but rather this change marks a huge rupture and decomposition of society as a whole, which the video put on display through the use of houlang.
 
Xu Jilin: I agree with Xiaoyu. In a certain sense, generational differences can be reduced to issues of upper and lower classes.  But to return to the main topic of today’s discussion, I don’t want to use a class perspective to reduce or replace the focus on cultural differences. I myself work on ideology and culture; although I am not a cultural reductionist, I am more interested in analyzing those born in the 1990s and 2000s from a cultural perspective.
 
For example, then I asked you a few minutes ago to share some cultural impressions of our age groups, some obvious differences emerged. For example, today's young people are more accustomed to online reading, while the previous generation may be more used to printed matter. To use another example, the older generation of intellectuals always took reading seriously and sat properly, upright in their chair.  This is what we called reading, and it is hard to imagine them relaxing and crossing their legs while reading, or reading in the bathroom.

Now light reading is more popular. I once wrote a column for the online platform Tencent in the “light reading” style, addressing serious topics with value and meaning in a light way that those born in the 1980s and 1990s can appreciate. Such differences in reading habits, ways of reading and even the contents of what we read can be described as cultural differences. I wonder what our guests think about this?
 
Zhou Lian: Prof. Xu has provided us a very good analytical framework of "upper and lower, left and right, older and younger". To put it simply “upper and lower” refers to the economy, “left and right” to politics, and “older and younger” to culture. These three criteria may give us a more complete framework for understanding the world.
 
The only thing I wonder about is whether the distinction between “older and younger“ is important enough to replace “left and right” and “upper and lower” or whether the distinction between “older and younger” is a kind of incidental phenomenon already decided by “left and right,” “upper and lower.”  Some activities, such as reading online literature, are available to anyone. Other activities, such as cosplay and foreign travel, have more to do with how much money your family has.

I have always felt that if the right to choose is only the right to choose in cultural terms, this completely obscures or even obliterates really important issues of “left and right”, “upper and lower”. So, while I think, “left and right”, “upper and lower”, and “older and younger”, may be a very excellent framework for analysis, I nonetheless have some doubts about the weights given to various variables.
 
Shao Heng: On this issue, I quite agree with Prof. Zhou. There truly are generational cultural differences, which have deep economic and political implications, and the circumstances of a generation's upbringing determine its character. The Harvard professor Benjamin Friedman once noted that economic growth affects national character. In periods of relatively high economic growth, people tend to be more optimistic, aspirational, inclusive, and open. He Fan, another economist, mentioned in an online lecture that who have experienced rapid economic growth in the past 30 years, are more optimistic about globalization and technological progress.
 
For example, those born in the 1990s experienced the spread of computers and the development of the Internet, the 2008 Olympic Games, the emergence of WeChat, Alipay and other mobile Internet apps, and witnessed many major breakthroughs and developments in China. However, if we take a look at the same generation in the United States, they lived through the 9-11 terrorist attacks as children, the financial crisis as teenagers, and the COVID-19 outbreak as college graduates. As a result, only 45% of young Americans born in the 1990s say they are mentally healthy, compared with 56% of Millennials and 70% of baby boomers, according to a survey.
 
From these phenomena, I draw two conclusions. First, for any generation, individuals do differ, but perhaps not as much as we think, because the overall social environment of youth is the shared backdrop for each generation. Second, as for differences between generations, we cannot distinguish them by identity, birth year or cultural phenomenon. Instead, we need to analyze, generation by generation, when big changes occurred in the social environment in which they matured.
 
The nomadic houlang
 
Xu Jilin: You've all analyzed generational differences from an economic and political perspective.  I remember that in our pre-meeting discussions. Shao Heng mentioned that she had found her younger colleagues somewhat “nomadic” when she was interacting with them. Unlike the “agrarian” nature of the older generations, the nomadic nature of the houlang is a distinguishing feature.
 
Shao Heng: "Nomadism" is a concept put forward by Youthology. There is an argument that says that people born around 1995 seem to share few common characteristics among themselves, and looking at them from the outside it is indeed difficult to identify common cultural phenomena shared by this group. Youthology, on the other hand, uses an interesting concept—"nomadic youth"—to define the culture of those born in 1990 or 1995.  They think that young people are like nomads living on a great plain, with no defined road, social circle, or identity around them, but they can choose any road and go in any direction, and there are many life choices possible.
 
What these young people are doing is constantly "moving" and "flowing." They are constantly remaking themselves, constantly discovering new selves. Such a nomadic culture also has an impact on their identity. They cannot be defined by a particular social circle or identity because they may be part of many identities at the same time. Nomadism is a constant search for and redefinition of one's identity and value.
 
Zhang Xiaoyu: I started university in 2005. As an experienced netizen, I think the network culture of that era was marked by a kind of recklessness and free choice, and people then had more of a spontaneous personality of “go for it” than they do now. The range and depth of the topics discussed on online communities like Tianya and Tieba were actually a lot better than what we find now. The Internet culture at that time reminded me of the British Victorians in The General History of the World, in that they felt that they had many problems, anxieties, and important issues to resolve, but they had confidence that they could resolve them. I don’t see this in today’s houlang.
 
What is unique about information in the present moment is that it is fragmented. Some people call it “information liberation,” but I prefer to use Max Weber's concept—he saw all professional societies as iron cages. When I was growing up, the Internet was mostly portal sites or sites for large interest communities, but now everything is niche sites, with algorithms only pushing things you might like, which puts all of us in an iron cage of our own preferences. I think that the way in which information is “liberated,” the way in which public discourse is manipulated, and the way in which each of us is shaped, leaves us with less than what we had before. Instead of nomadism, I think we are living in a settled state that is disguised as nomadism.
 
Zhou Lian: I like Shao Heng’s nomad image, but I wonder if it is adequate to define the particularity of those born in the 2000s. Maybe all young people have the opportunity for a moment of nomadism.
 
I agree with Xiaoyu that there is really a big difference between netizens a generation ago and netizens now. In the age of "We-Media", everyone can surf the Internet and speak. However, when the Internet was only available to a very small group of people who were mainly college students, graduate students or senior intellectuals, they posted on bulletin boards on Sina or Tianya not to follow a pop star, but to discuss a certain topic, to look for like-minded people, and all of this had a certain elitist overtone.
 
Now Internet users are basically fans, who are not interested in the intellectual content of a topic or some niche issue, which could lead them to form a group of free individuals.  Now it’s about having an interest in a star or some consumer phenomenon and investing oneself in this object to acquire an identity. I think netizens in the early years had distinct individual images and unique ways of expression, and they also tried to become a special part of the network ecology. However, the image of today's netizens is no longer as clear. The language we use and the topics we care about have flattened out, becoming more popular and vulgar.  I think this is a very big difference.
 
Xu Jilin: I quite agree with Zhou Lian that every generation is nomadic in its youth. We all have those moments of dreaming and rebelling when we are young. Foucault's understanding of the enlightenment is different from Habermas's. Habermas emphasizes "communicative rationality", which is in a sense a mature, middle-aged rationality. The enlightenment that Foucault wants to defend is precisely the rebellion, deconstruction and liberation of the early Enlightenment. He Bing's video stripped away this "nomadism" and imagined the houlang as economically rational consumers. The “choice” he talks about is not transcendent and lacks a true nomadism and spiritual willfulness.
 
As a matter of fact, in my contact with young people, I feel that the new generation is not necessarily the materialistic generation, but the post-materialistic generation. Although they care about material things, they have something more willful and more important, which is called the freedom of choice, freedom of identity, and even a kind of capriciousness. These may be even more important to them.

Notes

[1] “谁是后浪，何为后浪文化?” available online at  https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_8399459.

[2] Often abbreviated as ACGN culture : anime, comics, video games, and (short) novels.  See here for more information.

[3] Zhou is from Taiwan, Sun from Singapore, and Leong from Malaysia.  All were born in the late 1970s and were widely popular throughout the Chinese-speaking world.