Understanding China and the World Through the Lens of Self as Method

Xiang Biao's*1 Self as Method is an unusual book. It was published inChina in 2020 by Dandu, a newish publishing house that promises to"unite a new generation of authors and readers through text, audio,video, and multimedia platforms."2 The project originated with Dandueditor Luo Danni*, based on her observation that many Chinese peopleappear not to be very happy as "China's century" dawns. At first glance,this may seem strange because, after a century and a half of humiliation,crisis, and struggle, China in the early twenty-first century seems poisedto reestablish its historical position as a (if not the) center of the world.Reform and opening have succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of thosewho initially conceived the policies, and China in 2020 is vastly richer andmore powerful than China in 1980.Yet despite China's rise, many Chinese people, and particularly Chineseyoung people-while patriotic and proud of China's rise-are anxiousand dissatisfied, at least with their individual lives and life chances. If thepolicy of reform and opening has transformed the Chinese economy, ithas also brought intense competitiveness, sky-rocketing real estate prices, China's mega-cities like Beijing and Shanghai, young people often feellike they are running in place-and running hard-as China's period ofhigh-speed growth threatens to sputter out.Luo Danni recruited Dandu journalist Wu Qi* to work on the project,and decided to address this issue in a volume that targets younger readers,which surely made good sense. In addition to their economic anxieties,young people in China might be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost ingeneral. Change in China has been blindingly rapid over the past fewdecades, to the point that Chinese authors often speak of generationalgroups of as few as five years (i.e., the "1995-2000 generation"). Thismight be an exaggeration, but it is nonetheless true that while in 1980there were almost no private phones in China, today everyone lives ontheir smart phone; while in 1980, everyone rode their identical FlyingPigeon bicycle (if they could get one) to and from work or school, nowthey take a Didi* (China's Uber) to...the airport and hence the world (atleast in pre-pandemic times)