Young Chinese I’ve talked with have told me the annual CCTV Spring Festival pageant, which State television shows every New Year’s Eve (by the lunar calendar), was desperately boring. I find it boring every year, but I’m typically the only one in the room who thinks so. Not this year, though. One twenty-something Chinese woman said she and her little brother sat awake until 1am waiting for the next performance to improve. They never did, and the siblings’ exhaustion levels and lack of enthusiasm the next day were all they had to show for it.

I asked another twenty-something friend what was the matter. She told me she thought central authority is simply falling out of touch with the expectations of the younger generations. “The show was more for the old Beijing officials than for the rest of us.” Even the modern dance sets, to appeal to younger audiences, we both felt, were ugly and stilted.

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The Power of the Twenty-somethings