‘Want Generation’: author spotlights the discontent and desires of China’s millennials

Chinese millennials – having experienced the country’s great economic boom and having grown up in the post-Tiananmen era – have been generally written off as nationalistic, materialistic and indifferent to politics.

But in a new book, China’s Millennials: The Want Generation, Eric Fish, an American millennial who spent seven years working and studying in China, tells the stories of some 30 Chinese youth who are far from satisfied with the status quo.

“Chinese millennials are up against a lot [that] they don’t necessarily get credit for either at home or abroad,” said Fish. “I’m trying to show what they are up against and how they are handling this, how they are pushing change or fighting back against the way things are.”

In the book, Fish gives a profile of Li – how she became an activist and the harassment she faced from authorities after she occupied a male restroom to criticise the disproportionate number of female public restrooms.

“The police harassed her pretty thoroughly,” said Fish. “They tapped her phone, her email and brought her into interrogations. They talked to her family and tried to offer her a job so that she would quit her activism.”