A Kan-do attitude

The defining feature of Chinese millennials is not Instagram, avocado on toast or propertylessness. Born in the early years of China’s growth miracle, my generation idled away days on dusty village roads that would be paved as we grew up. Our adolescence coincided with the arrival of the smartphone; and now, with our jet-setting cosmopolitan ways, we drive China’s global tourism boom. We are as much at home with squatting toilets as with Starbucks menus.

In Under Red Skies, Karoline Kan tells her own millennial story of rags to riches. She was born into a poor farming community, where her grandfather tilled the fields. When she was in primary school, the family moved to a nearby town, uprooted by the sheer determination of Kan’s mother, Shumin. They were ostracised as newcomers: migrants who would always be one rung below the townies. But Shumin’s gamble paid off when her daughter was accepted by a Beijing university. From there, Kan refined her self-taught English and launched herself  into a career in English-language journalism — progressing from farm fields to glitzy evenings in the capital, complete with tiger mum, propagandistic teachers and an eventual culture clash with her roots, all within three decades.

Her memoir allows us a peek into ordinary Chinese lives through the eyes of one of those adaptable millennials. As a journalist, Kan is, unsurprisingly, critical of those in power in Beijing. She’s seen the footage of Tank Man, rolled her eyes at the compulsory military camp that comes with university education and knows how to use VPNs to scale the Great Firewall.

Much has already been written about China’s indoctrination of its children, its one- child policy and its persecution of religion, and there’s little new in Kan’s take on politics.