Young people in China

In any foreign country, one of the first thing any of us want to find out is how people our own age live - what are their university lives like, how hard do they find it to get jobs, what do they do for fun? In China, the answer to the last question seems to be 'not very much' - I was surprised by just how much the lives of my sister's Chinese friends revolve around study and career, ignoring social lives and even relationships at university (it's apparently rare and frowned on for students to have boyfriends in China, in case it distracts them from their work!) to get the best marks,  and then, once they have a coveted office job, working until midnight every evening to keep ageing, authoritarian bosses happy. This started to make more sense to me when I met my sister's friend Lin, and she told me about growing up in great poverty in rural southern China and the sacrifices her parents made to send her to university - with that kind of weight of expectation behind you, you start to see how your own happiness would take a back seat.

Lots of the older people we met complain that China's youth aren't self-sacrificing enough; they're only interested in new clothes and expensive gadgets, they say, too individualistic, too Westernised. I'd say they're actually much less interested in Western culture than appearances make out; there might be Starbucks on every street corner, but most young people we met hadn't been much exposed to, or had much interest in, Western films and music. The idea that they're all agitating for democracy and enthusiastically blogging for change is way off the mark as well; many said their parents' generation had been too blindly loyal to the Communist Party, and they all have complaints about local corruption, but we didn't meet anyone who thought Western government was necessarily better. Young Chinese people are more likely to say Westerners need to understand that in China things are done differently, and many are angry at what they see as Western media bias against China; over Tibet, for example, several people told us they thought the West was being hypocritical about colonialism and should recognise China's right to defend itself. I've even heard it said that the Western media risks alienating young Chinese by criticising the regime; it encourages young people to see a clash of cultures and to view democracy as diametrically opposed to Chinese values.

Schoolchildren on a visit to China's most prestigious university in Beijing - ambition starts young.

So does patriotism...

Young people partaking in traditional rituals at Bejing's Tibetan Buddhist Lama temple.

Others worshipping at the temple of shopping...

One of the Internet cafes where young people spend the free time they have - the very comfy chairs are because many stay for 24 hours or more playing video games without a break.

Little monks dong kung fu routines at the Shaolin Temple.

A PhD graduate who rows tourist boats around a lake because he didn't have the family connections to get a better job - a common problem in China.

Little boy in a traditional hutong street, Beijing.