OCTOBER 23, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 16

Our Contributors

LAUREN GREENFIELD, one of America's most-admired young documentary photographers, spent a week living with and shooting Chinese fashion model Lu Yi.

KAISER KUO, cofounder and former lead guitarist of Beijing rock band Tang Dynasty, provides an insider's view of China's music scene. He is currently English-language editor-in-chief of Chinanow.com.

GEREMIE R. BARME, professor of history at Australian National University, argues that just beneath the surface of China's ubiquitous and homogeneous pop culture, a lively intellectual debate is flourishing. BarmE has authored and edited numerous works on modern China, including Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Career of a Great Leader and, more recently, In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture.

ZHANG YANG, a graduate of the Central Theater Academy in Beijing, is the award-winning writer/director of the films Spicy Love Soup and Shower. His next work, tentatively titled Quitting, is currently in production and due to be released next spring. In this issue, he and his father, also a renowned director, explore today's generation gap in China.

TANG HAISONG worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co. in Hong Kong before returning to China in 1999 to found Web portal Etang.com. In his essay, he examines how the Internet has forged a "Generation Yellow" in China.

WEN BO, a former environmental journalist, looks at the state of ecological awareness and activism among young Chinese. Wen has traveled to India, South Korea and the United States to study environmental issues and has worked with Greenpeace and the International Snow Leopard Trust.

HOWARD GOLDBLATT, a professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado in Boulder, contributes an essay on China's young authors. He is the acclaimed translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction, including novels by Mo Yan, Wang Shuo and Su Tong.

YU SHAOWEN writes about changing role models among young Chinese. A graduate of Capital Normal University in Beijing, Yu is the author of a collection of essays entitled Personal Comments on Culture. He lives in Beijing, where he is a reporter for the Beijing Youth Daily.

WEI GUANGQING created the image on our cover. A graduate of the Chinese College of Fine Art, Wei produces striking oil paintings and conceptual installations that have been exhibited throughout the world.

ZHOU WEIHUI, who writes under the pen name Wei Hui, is a graduate of Fudan University in Shanghai. She is the author of five novels, including the controversial, semi-autobiographical (and much-imitated) Shanghai Baby, which is excerpted in this issue.

MIAN MIAN is the author of La La La, a tale of heroin addiction and passionate living set in Shenzhen that was published in Hong Kong in 1997. Her new novel Candy, which was published in March and banned a month later, is an expanded version of the earlier work. It, too, is excerpted in this issue.

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Our Contibutors to this special issue

To Our Readers: A letter from the Editor