In the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is hard to imagine a place more exciting than China. The country's economy is growing by more than ten percent per year. The lives of Chinese citizens in every stratum of society are changing--indeed, the very rules that define the parameters of their lives are changing. Over a billion people are simultaneously hustling, trying to decipher the rules, carving a place out for themselves in the new China. Predictably, the result is a glorious mess.

Westerners are fascinated with news coming out of China, but in general, most such reporting focuses on the country's economy (growth rates, infrastructure, trade deficits, currency valuation, globalization, etc.), social issues (human rights, income inequality, diseases such as avian flu, SARS, and HIV/Aids, the traditional Chinese culture, mainstream social trends, etc.), and the current government (the workings of the CCP, its response to social unrest, etc.). Westerners hear much about China's booming economy and its role as the next global superpower from the mainstream media, but they know less about the young people who make up China's varied and fascinating subcultures.

American writer Zachary Mexico spent two years absorbing information about these subcultures, living in China from 2002-2004. Fascinated with the streets humming with the energy of constant change, he determined to return as soon as possible for the purpose of formal research on the subject of how the changing environment has affected the Chinese of his generation. This he accomplished in the summer of 2006, traveling around the country during an intensive three months of research into the lifestyles of his Chinese peers.

In China Underground, Mexico introduces young western readers to their Chinese counterparts, highlighting an unfamiliar side of China: today's varied youth cultures, which are both fascinating and under-exposed. Readers are introduced to a wannabe rock star from the desert of Xinjiang, trying to make it big in Shanghai; a disillusioned journalist; a budding screenwriter; a vagabond ladies' man; a straight-A student at China's best university; a Chinese mafia kingpin; a punk band trying their best to stay relevant; a prostitute; the world's most polluted city; Beijing's drug-fueled club scene, and many others.

This is an engaging firsthand account of a young American writer's encounter with the new China and the young people who are pursuing their future there. China Underground tells their stories, and some of Mexico's own.

Zachary Mexico started studying Chinese at age fifteen, and traveled to China for the first time at age sixteen. He has studied at Columbia University in New York and Qinghua University in Beijing. He plays in the rock group The Octagon (www.theoctagonrock.com) and the electronic duo Gates of Heaven (www.gatesofheaven.net.) He lives in New York City's Chinatown.

Twelve hours later: I'm standing before a small night market set up on the sidewalk in front of a family-run restaurant in downtown Shenyang. It's very late. Maohair and I have been the only customers for hours. The restaurant's owner has gone to sleep with his head on a folding table, and his kids are bumbling about idly with heavy eyes, waiting for us to leave so they can all go to bed. In China, these restaurants don't close until the last customer's finished his meal, no matter what ungodly hour it is.

We're hanging out with an old man who has staggered over to our table, looking for a little late-night camaraderie.

The old man's teeth are yellow and even. A ratty brown jacket hangs loosely from his narrow shoulders, like a hobo scarecrow; attached to one of the sleeves with a safety pin is a red armband that indicates his status as a neighborhood watchman. He smells like a distillery at closing time but he's a pleasant fellow, with a playful, tireless smile that seems superglued to his face.

"I was a driver,"¯ he grumbles, "a driver, back in 1980 when there were almost no cars, I drove all the government officials around, I was treated with respect everywhere I went."

He pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lights up, and hikes his pantlegs up to his knees, exposing his lily-white legs, which are spotted here and there with uneven patches of coarse black hair.

He takes a swig of Snow brand Beer. In China, every city has its own brewery: aside from Qingdao, there are no true "national" brands of beer. Shenyang Beer was recently taken over by Snow, a new conglomerate from Beijing that has been buying up breweries in second-tier cities in an attempt to create another national brand name. The resulting brew, predictably, has a different flavor in every city; in Shenyang it tastes like slightly rank beer-flavored water.


"I've been a pimp—and now I open casinos, because that's where the money is at!"

It's hard to believe that this shoddy old man is actually a casino baron. Either he's bullshitting, or he's in the throes of a transcendent bender and has entered an altered state where he owns casinos and draft beer rains from the sky. He is dressed like a bum and his monologues are straddling the thin line between humorously strange and embarrassingly incoherent.

He raises his bottle and smiles broadly at Maohair and me. "The two of you, are good friends to have, you two."

We hoist our beers and clink bottles with the old man. We drink deeply. It's six o'clock on a Sunday morning and we've been up all night talking. An array of half-eaten dishes from hours ago—tofu skin, cold tofu, lamb kebabs, boiled peanuts—lay scattered like battlefield carcasses on the folding table in front of us. An uneven procession of senior citizens stroll back and forth on the sidewalk behind us, taking their morning exercise. Dogs bark and birds chirp; the day's just beginning for normal people.

Maohair hands his business card to the old man. "Give me a call," he urges, "If anything's ever going on."¯ The old man nods and grunts his assent, and we all take another hefty swig of beer, which has by now grown quite warm and, therefore, foul.

Maohair winks at me slyly. He's drunk five bottles of beer to my two, but shows no sign of intoxication. His eyes are bright and his smile is playful. He's wearing a red shirt with white embroidery: the garment is characteristic of the ethnic minority regions of Southwest China.

The old man stumbles to his feet, crosses the street, passes by two middle-aged women walking their impeccably coiffed dogs, fumbles with his zipper, pulls out his penis, and pisses against the wall of an adjoining building.

"You see my working style? Pretty effective, right?" says Maohair as we watch the old man. "You got to know what's up on the streets."

*

To save money and to absorb the maximum amount of local color, while traveling in China I usually stay at friends' houses or shoddy government-owned hotels where the carpet is always slightly mildewy and dotted with cigarette burns.

In Shenyang, to preserve the illusion I felt I needed to give Maohair that I was a professional journalist, to help ease any concerns he may have about talking about his work, and to create a safe atmosphere for an open dialogue between us, I checked in to a four-star hotel in the center of town.

Six hours prior to our meeting, as the clock struck midnight, I was sitting in my well-appointed room, drinking a cup of oolong tea and going over my notes from the previous day. My phone beeped. I had a text message from Maohair: "I am in the lobby of your hotel."

I put down my pen, hurried out the door, took the elevator downstairs and saw a man in his twenties, alone in the massive marble lobby, smoking a cigarette and sitting in a plush chair that seemed at least one size too big for his small, wiry frame. He was smiling, and his eyes were at once calm and lively. It's a rare quality, found in excited children, the spiritually enlightened, and over-the-edge psychopaths.

*

On Maohair's website, under the "About Me"¯ section, he writes: "On my business card, it says I am a photojournalist, but I prefer to think of myself as a peasant who likes to play with a camera."

It's hip for many young Chinese artists from middle-class backgrounds to strive for a "man-of-the-earth"¯ authenticity and claim that they have "peasant"¯ roots in "the countryside."¯ When Maohair says he's a peasant, though, he's not trying to be cool or employ impressive hyperbole. He really does come from the nongcun, the impoverished countryside surrounding the countryside surrounding Fushun, a small city near Shenyang, the capital of north-eastern China's Liaoning Province.

Outsiders often fail to grasp the tremendously important dichotomy between those Chinese who live in cities and those who live in the countryside. For example, when I naively ask Maohair what his parents do for a living, he laughs at me: "What do you think they do? They're peasants! They work the earth!"¯ He hesitates and then turns serious. "In China, being a peasant is not considered a job."

China's countryside is made up of a network of small, ragtag family farms. Commerce is relegated to one or two small shops per village, and many of these families have been living in the same place for a very long time. Last century, peasants were lauded as heroes by China's political revolution and, in this century, they have been largely left behind by China's economic revolution. Deng Xiaoping's famous words, "Some people will get rich first," led to a capitalist explosion that sparked massive growth and affluence in urban centers and coastal regions. While their quality of life has most certainly improved in the last few decades, the farmers are not driving new cars, eating hamburgers, drinking imported beer, or shopping at Wal-Mart. They are still in the countryside, tilling the dirt, waiting, wondering when their time to get rich will come.