Word: mao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like many young people in Changsha, Mao Ce has great difficulty discussing his future. "I feel that my life is like a wind, blowing quickly and changing direction often," he says. "I have no plan for my future, and I don't want one. I never think about my future." Twenty-four-year-old Mao's comments are not reflective of some melancholic post-teen pouting - his feelings of resentment and despair are commonplace among the young adults of Changsha...
...warren of hastily built cement blocks sliced by grand new boulevards and glass high-rises, Changsha - China's 19th largest metropolis - is immersed in the din of construction and the grey pallet of soot and smoke common to the cities of a booming China. Mao Ce's city is a rough and tumble place, and he and his cohort occupy a unique place in modern Chinese history. Products of China's vigorously enforced one-child policy, twenty-somethings like Mao feel that they've been left to shoulder the mistakes of their government even as they adapt to a society...
...Mao Ce has never been employed. A high-school dropout, he has almost no chance of landing a good job in the education-obsessed marketplace of modern China. His parents divorced when he was a child, so he lives with his father and grandfather in a sixth floor walk-up in a crumbling, Soviet-style apartment block near the center of this ancient metropolis. Mao's father owns the apartment, a sign of his moderate success in international trade. But as solid as his living situation is, Mao Ce, and others like him, can feel left behind in today...
...Mao Ce and his friends, along with many of the other young people of Changsha, remain in a state of postponed adulthood. Unemployed and disaffected, they have embraced a kind of blissful ambivalence towards life as they float between parties, drugs, and a sexual freedom unknown to their elders. Some run small businesses - DIY music venues, tattoo parlors, head shops. Mao Ce himself occasionally gigs as a DJ, but in a city as localized and provincial as Changsha, he has few prospects for making a career of it. "I have no wishes or dreams", he says. "When I was young...
DIED From the moment she was born on a former revolutionary base, Shao Hua's future was enmeshed with that of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1960 she became the daughter-in-law of Chairman Mao Zedong, marrying his second son, Mao Anqing. During the 1950s, Zedong's older brother, Mao Anying, obtained for her a Soviet camera, which she used to document schools, factories and villages. She was later promoted to major general in the People's Liberation Army and became the president of the China Photographers Association...