The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China

Young China: Unraveling the Rapid Transformation and Cultural Shifts with Zak Dychtwald

• Rich Robinson

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Zak Dychtwald is one of the leading experts on youth in China. He founded the Young China Group and wrote a book called “Young China.”

In this episode, Zak Dychtwald discusses his China journey starting with Zak's fascination with science fiction which sparked his interest in China and influenced his decision to study abroad in China. He discusses how he became captivated by China's technological advancements and distinct cultural landscape and how his experiences in China challenged his Western perceptions and inspired him to acquire a deeper understanding of and fascination with the nation's evolving identity.

Zak also emphasized the significance of language acquisition in order to better understand China and develop relationships. Zak and Rich discuss their experiences in various Chinese cities, with an emphasis on Chengdu as a city that embraces both Chinese culture and global influences. The conversation examines China's growth, cultural shifts, as well as its human side, providing a relatable perspective on the emerging generation and their experiences.



Rich Robinson:

And we are back. At the speed of China. We're talking to somebody who knows a thing or two about that based in the Middle Kingdom. Calling in from Qingdao, please give a warm welcome. I don't care if you're driving, dangerously clap or on the toilet, Zak Dychtwald, everybody. Yeah, welcome to the pod. It's terrific. I've been trying to you are a get. I've been trying to get you on this thing literally for years, and I'm very, very pleased. Welcome.

Zak Dychtwald:

Thanks so much for having me. I love that. I'm imagining now your audience exclusively driving around the toilet. So I'll be speaking to those locations.

Rich Robinson:

Maybe, I think that's what's... I was just in the States in Disneyland and you saw those carts of everybody driving around.

Zak Dychtwald:

People do it simultaneously there, I

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, Maybe they've just converted those the new convertible actually, indeed. And yeah, I, you know, we were chatting pre-clicking the record button about your trials and tribulations and triumphs over the last few years during COVID. And would love to hear about your hero's journey, your growing up and your path to China, and what's been keeping you knee deep and beer and Skittles, while in the Middle Kingdom.

Zak Dychtwald:

Is that the welcome package that everyone else gets? I don't quite... I'm sitting here with a,

Rich Robinson:

I don't even know where that came from. But yeah, I just.

Zak Dychtwald:

You know, what? I wouldn't hate that. I'm sitting here with a bag of lots of tea, like, chongqing.

Rich Robinson:

That's...

Zak Dychtwald:

Spicy chicken that my father-in-law just dropped off. And that is not beer and Skittles, but it's a close, I'd say it's close first.

Rich Robinson:

Lots of cheese really good with beer. Yeah, indeed.

Zak Dychtwald:

It is. It is not bad at all. So like the back. Gosh, in some ways the arc to this bag of, spicy fried chicken is the arc, you know? Because you know, you can learn that I have a wife, which I did not have when I first got here, and certainly didn't have when I was dreaming about China. You learn that the wife is Chinese, she's from Qingdao. So there's probably some backstory there. It's been three years since we've been back in China, and that was by accident. But going back way further than that, my first interest in China came through science fiction. I grew up in the East Bay, very Berkeley parents. My dad was from Jersey, came to California on a motorcycle in '69 before they made the songs about it. So wasn't even a cliche until he didn't even know he was doing that dance. And long story short, I mean big science fiction relationship with my father. And so we would trade books all the time. He would pass the, you know, the ASIMOV series and I remember I interviewed Ray Bradbury when I was 19 at an internship when he was, I think in his early 90s. And he described himself as a 'pomegranate who explodes and has seeds all around the world.' And that was my dad's proudest moment. So it was a variety of, like large... science fiction played a big role in how, you know, I'd like to think about what could be. I like to think about things that were somewhat fantastical. And I ended up studying at Columbia from the Bay Area. And when it came time to study abroad, when you go and look at the pamphlets for where to go, I looked at France, which looked like a history book. You know, the history of religion, modern philosophy, governance in the west. Truthfully, it looked, you know, it looked like people were gonna drink wine, they were gonna go flirt. They'd come back four months later without much of a change. And then you look at the pamphlets, for me it was the University of Hong Kong. And it looked like the cover of "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep," which of course would become "Blade Runner." And I had taken one semester of Mandarin and hated it. To this day, it is the worst grade I've ever gotten in my life. But thank you to "Ivy League Grade Inflation", they passed me. And I had taken a Chinese literature course which lit me up the idea that there could be this constellation of references and comparisons, sort of the way that like everything in Western literature is kind of referencing sort of the Odyssey and Adam Smith. The idea that there could be this, like a totally different referential system that I had never really encountered, made me really want to go to China and Hong Kong was the one place I could go because of that one semester. And I got there. Hong Kong quickly became you know, and this was Hong Kong pre-all of the politics and protests the last decade. But it still sort of felt like an in between, it was like a liminal phase between entering what I was really hoping for. I went to Shenzhen with the robotics team back in 2011. And remember seeing young people sort of elbow deep in computer parts. And that level of tech fluency, the casualness with which people described the speed of change. You know, Shenzhen, the joke goes, doesn't have... Shenzhen University doesn't have a history department. They only look forward. They call it the overnight city. I mean, it's population has increased 450X in the last 30 years. I mean, you go on and on and on. And I went back to New York and felt bored. And if there's a place on Earth that can have you feeling bored compared to New York City, then you should, then you should go there. So I graduated. I didn't have a job. I didn't know anybody. I was sort of hoping to get off of that sort of banking consulting track that seems like all of my friends get glued onto when you go to a school like Columbia. And, but frankly thought I'd be there for a year and then would get back glommed onto the banking consulting track or something. And then the more time I spent, the more I got invested into language. And the more I curated an environment, you know. Because, it's easy to fall into these sort of expat job traps in China. I was really intentional about creating a sort of just like a mental environment that would, put me outside of that even just a little bit. The more it became clear that the gap between what is being described to us about China back home. For me, home is the US. Either in the media or reverberating off of those people who work at global companies who go to China for a week and come back China experts. I think we all know a couple. The gap between that and what I was seeing, experiencing, hearing, listening, feeling, tasting, touching on the ground was so intoxicating to me. Not only because it was the most interesting sort of anthropological or sociological question I'd ever encountered. Like, the speed in which identity can evolve, but also because the consequence of that misunderstanding. That gap between what's being described back home and what I was experiencing on the ground. You know, there's a lot of academic questions in the world that are really interesting, but a very little consequence to the world. This was not that, and so I decided to stay.

Rich Robinson:

Fantastic. Wow. Great origin story. Ray Bradbury. Wow, you got to meet him. My brain heated up to Fahrenheit 5,000 and whatever. I love it "Exploding like a pomegranate across the earth", that's poetic and really kind of dirty at the same time. It

Zak Dychtwald:

he's, He's got both in them. Well, cause what he's famous for is basically seeding ideas that become technology. These are sort of imaginations from the near future. Like, the flat screen TV, the iPad, the different types of projection technologies. Things like, the Wii. Like those made feature. Those were ideas that came up or were seeded in Bradbury stories and became reality. in China, I was seeing, even when I was really young, really young a decade ago now. The recognition that our misunderstanding of China's present was causing us to mis-predict or misunderstand its ambitions for its own future. And this is on like the lofty governmental level, but it's also on like the really personal level. And that's what I end up really advocating for, which is, "A People First Understanding of China." And I think that gives you a better understanding of the economy. I think that gives you a better understanding of the government. It's usually the variable missing when the think tank is, which I'm sure is not how they describe themselves. And government folks look at the place. And so as just to, just to wrap it up, I ended up moving to Chengdu, where I spent three or so years. I wrote a book called "Young China," which came out in 2018. The restless, generational change their country and the world. And for the last five years, I've run a small sort of market insights organization called the "Young China Group." Which is basically trying to bring more resources to the questions I was trying to ask and answer in young China. Recognizing that the answers to what this young generation wants in China are of inevitable consequence to the world at large.

Rich Robinson:

Fantastic. I would love to peel that back more. But you know, it's a really fascinating, consistent thread of people who have made a mark in China, is that they tanked or really hated their first Mandarin class. So, for anybody out there who's interested in China, but fighting the good fight, it's normal. You know, Chinese people struggle with Chinese. It's not supposed to... I even see, you know, not just younger kids, but you know, older Chinese struggling to be able to write Chinese, you know, they have to write it in their palm of their hand because, you know, "zenme xie?", right? And so it's a struggle in so many levels, but if you stick with it, all of a sudden there's a breakthrough and you can really, it's the only way to really, I think, truly get into China. So you really have to be able to converse with people.

Zak Dychtwald:

Yeah, there was this debate that I saw, as you know, obviously journalist friends, and they were talking to me about this and they're like, You know, to be a journalist, you don't really have to speak Chinese, was what some opinions were, which is just ludicrous to me. It's something I wholly and completely reject.

Rich Robinson:

Well, if I may interrupt there. You're right, you can do that, but there's consequences, just like you said, "You can do it, but you're not doing it to your best ability." So there's gonna be a consequence 'cause you're not getting the full picture.

Zak Dychtwald:

I don't even think you could do it. I think it should be a requirement for a place as consequential as China. Particularly, when you're considering the economic and political and potential for violence, that misunderstanding can cause. Like, the inability to speak someone else's language, often is the inability to be empathic. That the people I know who most often believe they're being scammed, hoodwinked, misled by people in China are the ones that speak the worst Mandarin. The people who always think they're getting ripped off in cabs. And it's often just like, they can't understand a cab driver being like, "Hey, there's an accident there that I saw before and I'm trying to circumvent it." It leads to suspicion. And, you know, if someone's not calling you to talk about a breakup that they had and you're not able to console them in their native language. And then when things kick off in North Korea and you have to have a discussion about 'nuclear deterrence'. Like, there's a level of language ability that not only allows you to be empathic, it allows you to talk to people who are representative, like that surface group of China who are able to be comfortably bilingual by virtue of having immersed their brain, you know, soaked their brain in an English speaking environment long enough to have that conversation with you. Means that they're no longer representative of that core of the country. Just in the same way, Rich, that you and I are not representative of like the average foreigner at this point 'cause we speak Chi-. Like what good second language ability represents. It's an entire body of experience that means that you have a different perspective than the majority, in this case.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. So, you know, some people... You know, I got involved in Shenzhen. There's an accelerator there called "Hacks", and you meet some foreign companies that come in and say, "Hey, I really want to build this piece of hardware because now is the time. All of these sensors and cameras and all, you know, the proximity in Shenzhen. Shenzhen's the place." And like, "Oh, we met a guy and he gave a firm handshake and looked us in the eye and, you know, had the right clothes and spoke English really well." And I was like, "Oh, that's probably not your guy," right? You want the guy who doesn't speak a lick of English, and maybe doesn't make eye contact and let him a limp handshake and just smokes and, you know, is not, you want the super local dude who's like, you know, and you need to be able to trust but verify. Because when you're doing hardware, it's most likely gonna fail and you need every unfair advantage you can get. And if you're getting somebody who's already bridging over to you, then you're the one that's probably, you know, they're going to make sure they benefit no matter what happens to your project, right? So it's interesting. Like, so you really have to like, dig in deep and that's a challenge now because there's more and more shadows, and more and more of a rift between China and the US. And I don't want to get into anything political, but you know, we can dig into that a little bit later. But I'd love to hear, you know, about your experience in Chengdu, because Chengdu is like a very... You really zigged where everybody else zagged, and chose way out west. And tell me about that choice and what you did there and your, some anecdotes.

Zak Dychtwald:

Yeah, well, I mean, truthfully, it was partly because of Shenzhen. Like I got to China in 2011 for the first time. I moved there full-time, 2012. And by then, Shenzhen had already happened. Like, those years of rapid crazy growth that I really remember reading about primarily in Hessler books at first. You know, at HKU on my last day there, I had a wonderful Professor, whose class I most often skipped just because it's like we're setting abroad and like I'll read all the material, and we can talk. But like, they were at times where it was just better to go and see the city and like experience it firsthand. He asked us questions about history. They were really basic questions. I was able to answer them and he was giving out books to people who could answer it right. He wouldn't give it out to me until I answered like the fourth question, right? Because I often skipped his class. But it was "Rivertown" by Peter Hessler. And it took me a long time to read it, funnily enough. But once I did it was, I mean, it's intoxicating, to me it's A-Gold standard. It's not D-Gold standard, but it's A-Gold standard for what it was. But that version, you know, Hessler was 1996 to 1998 in the Sichuan, Chongqing area, and that version of China was gone by the time I got there. It was gone, and there was this sense of when I got there, just like, "Oh, man." Like, I mean, I was in Suzhou at first, that these versions of China I had read about were already passed. And the, you know, you talk about the speed of China and I've tried to create some ways to like, help people imagine that better. So we can talk about that in a little bit. Chengdu and Chongqing in 2012, were being whispered about like, "The next Shenzhen." And the answer is, "There is no next Shenzhen in so many ways."" But there was a lot of whispers that, you know, if China's economy is like an irrigation system to a certain degree. You know, there's some places where the economy can naturally flourish, particularly the coastline. But then where the central government can stimulate and funnel resources thereto can flourish an economy. Chengdu and Chongqing were primary beneficiaries of that, developed the West. And so I, went to Chongqing, and it was in a hostel in Chongqing where I met this kid named "Huan-Huan." And I was nine months in and we talked about language before. Everyone who gets pretty good at Chinese remembers the moment when they realized they had something had clicked. And most friendships that I had formed before then with young people in China were sort of formed based on our differences."You're from China, I'm from, the US. How crazy is that? You speak this language? I speak this language. How crazy is that? You eat with forks?" I mean like, basic stuff, but like often defined by the novelty of our cultural distance. Huan-Huan was my first friend I made who was based on our similarities. He'd be my friend anywhere. And the next day after we met, we ended up hitchhiking together from Chongqing to Chengdu, and got stuck in Chengdu for like nine days because of these crazy rainstorms. We could have made it out, but it was just like we were having fun, we had nowhere to be, and we stayed in this hostel called "Xixi Wai Dao". West, west, outside island. And it was my time there, sort of back to this question of escaping the expat bubble, which I struggled with. It was my time there with a group of 20, 30 young people from all over the country. Who were either staying there for a week or months because of a new job or... But just like happy to be living. Like there's this vivaciousness, there is this thrill of being on the road. Day in, day out, sort of hanging out, eating, cooking, drinking, playing, talking about politics, sex, love. It was a level of intimacy and friendship that like, sometimes as an expat it's just hard to get when you're in your world in a Suzhou or Shanghai or even Beijing, or like. And so Chengdu do in a lot of ways was when I was deciding after that year where to end up I didn't like Suzhou, food's too sweet. And Chengdu was the place where I had like a group of young cool friends who would've been my friends back home and that was it. And so Chengdu has become this incredible brand. It's sort of, I think of Beijing as "The Capital of Political China", Shanghai is"The Capital of Global China", Shenzhen is "The Capital of Hardware China", Chengdu is "The Capital of the rest of China". Like what's cool in Chengdu emanates out to the rest of the country. The food as a brand, the language as a brand, the rap music culture as a brand, it's done a very good job of that. It was sort of luck as well as these rumors that this place would bubble up. But that's just where I had this great 20-30 group of young people who were kind of like vigilantes in the city. We were all not from there. So, when I first went there it had two subway lines, now it has around 12. The housing prices have doubled, and I think even doubled again since then. I could be wrong there. But last time I checked it quite severe. I think it's gone down since. It's a place that has kind of embodied the last. Let's call it eight years of kind of cool with China characteristics, this push away from first tier cities. This want to create a national culture, that isn't about nationalism, it's about sort of reclaiming parts of Chinese heritage and history that can be updated and tweaked to like integrate into a rap song or a fashion brand. While also integrating what's cool about global culture that people are certainly interested in. But are not defaulting to, which was the case in sort of the past generation. Now, it used to mean that being foreign was better. What Chengdu has kind of created in a local culture, to me really represents that shift to, you know, foreign doesn't immediately equate to better, there's aspects of foreign stuff we like. There's a lot about being Chinese that is just straight up cool. And young people in Chengdu have really created that modern culture for the whole country.

Rich Robinson:

Fantastic. What a great origin story, and I think it seems serendipitous, but it also seems to me that you kind of aligned your head and heart and gut with that city. And you really felt that there was a growth story and a culture story, and a good fit with your personality in that era. So, you know, I first went to Beijing in '83, but I moved there in '99, 2000. It was kind of toggling between Hong Kong and Beijing, and then I moved there full-time. And it was definitely a different era, and it was much more gritty and, you know, kind of aligned with my Boston upbringing. And I played basketball with Peter Hessler. There was a whole Journalist, a whole cabal of journalists that played hoops together. And I used to cover Peter and I read his book soon after, and all of his other books, and he's just a fantastic.

Zak Dychtwald:

I think he talked about basketball in Rivertown. Am I remembering this right? It's been a while.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed. Yeah.

Zak Dychtwald:

.Did it hold up? Was his crossover what he described?

Rich Robinson:

He does have a good crossover. I used to call "Carrie On" sometimes, and that caused a little bit of problem. But yeah, kind of like, you know, physically well matched, but he's got a great shot. And he did, you know. I was better at d, he was better at offense. So whatever but...

Zak Dychtwald:

Officially a side of that I have not heard about. So this is, and as somebody who used to, and still does to a certain extent. Pray at the Hessler altar when I was trying to write stuff.

Rich Robinson:

Still do. Yeah. Mm. Well, you know, I've spoken about it before, but two of my favorite things there is that he talked about running and there was a big carved stone, and he would see... it would kind of reveal itself to him as he learned more characters. And I've had that similar experience. And then, my favorite part of the book, my favorite part is something that we've all done and we're none of us are proud of, where we kind of, you know, China's just an amazing place, but also kind of a high stress place as well too. There can be a lot of confrontation and how he confronts this one guy in the town and has a fight with him and is just like, "Oh man. Like, I feel so embarrassed about it." But he wrote about it in the book and was very vulnerable at an early age, and I was just like, "Oh man. Yes. Like we've all done that." And it's like, I really respect him for revealing that.

Zak Dychtwald:

It's difficult for me to imagine. You know, in the same way that it's difficult for me to imagine being a college student in the US today or anywhere with social media, like I graduated and then Instagram really became a thing. Like, I'm very much of that 'cusp generation.' I can't imagine dating where like learning to date when there's Tinder. Like I can't imagine being in China pre-internet. Or you know, even early internet days, like when we... You know, my now wife you know, we talked a little bit about that at the beginning. The last time she was in China, there was not WeChat pay. There wasn't. And so like the way that people interact with money, debt, products, vendors, the speed at which they can make a consumer decision. You know, it's a lot easier when you have to pay for something, when it's just one click away.

Rich Robinson:

It's so frictionless.

Zak Dychtwald:

It's so frictionless. It's totally different. And so watching her like bumble around a subway and sort of be surprised when like, you know, the duck neck vendor, you can just, you know, "Sǎo mǎ zhīfù". Like, it's surreal. and so I look back at Peter Hessler's China, and it's difficult to imagine that his students are sort of middle aged now. It's not ancient history. It's not 60 years ago, it's not a hundred years ago. I talk with pe-. You know, I do a fair amount of speaking with folks in different industries. The travel industry is one of them. What I always have to remind people is the 'baby boomers' that they're bringing onto their cruises and bringing into their hotels. From China, if they're baby boomers, they've survived a famine that killed 45 million people. In 1990, the per capita GDP was 300 bucks. And so if there's some lack of acclimation to some of the finer touches of luxury cruising. Like that shouldn't be a surprise. You think it's ancient history and for most countries, it is. There aren't people who have lived in so many different phases of societal development who are still kicking around. And by the way, using WeChat Pay better than most Americans, by a long shot. So, you know, science fiction has offered a few funny lenses as I've thought about China. One of them of course, is like when you leave a first tier, second tier city and go into less developed places, you're spanning physical distance. You're also spanning developmental time. Often the last moments of development were a decade or two ago, and if it was a decade or two ago, then it's the equivalent of like 50, 60 years in another place. Also even within cities, you know, Qingdao's a really wonderful example. You know, it's like a tier 1.5 city. It's really emptied out the last three years as a lot of people have gone south for opportunities. But there's this city and a city kind of theorem that I think about. Thinking back to those, that funnel of development. You know, I think about a water moving through a field. There's some places where it cools and collects. There's other places where it flows really naturally. There's other places where it doesn't touch at all. And so you can be on a major modern thorofare in China with EVs zooming past with driverless cars being tested, with young people using, you know, mobile payment. Like it's nothing. And then, like two streets back, you could have a scene that could very easily be from the early 1980s or late 1980s in China. And that's fine too. There's like these different phases in China's development because of even disproportionate development within a city or like right next to another, they're a block away. And so, it's quite an exciting, it's like a really exciting place to be. Like, if you're someone who dislikes, noticing things.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. The old solve the future is already here to just not evenly distributed, but the past is still here as well too, and it's also very unevenly distributed. It's that's a a wide, wide range.

Zak Dychtwald:

That's one of those, you know, I've used that line to describe how, you know, there's aspects of what happens in China that are green housing, mobile first technology for the rest of the world, undeniably. The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed. You're totally right though that the past is also with us, it's also not evenly distributed, and I've never really thought about the other side of that coin.

Rich Robinson:

When I first, you know, I built a courtyard home in Beijing, but you know, in the outskirts and there were still sheep herders and horse-drawn carriages in the neighborhood, but it was, you know, it's still in the same district as the central business district. It was just in Guomao. It's you know, Chaoyang Qu, but you know, there's just on the edge and it's pretty fascinating that juxtaposition. So, can you peel back? Tell us more about your inspiration, your terrific inspiration for "Young China" and writing that book, and what led up to that and how you did the research?

Zak Dychtwald:

Yeah. Gosh. So, the book has been out five years now, which is crazy to think about. And when you write a book, like, especially when "Young China" first came out to me, I was really precious about it. Like it was my... I was 27. It sort of represented everything that I had to offer the world. The only time I reread it was when I had to record the audio book. Like, it's like the sort of listening to your own voice on a voicemail thing. Like, it's difficult. Now though that I have a little bit of distance. They're like, you know, they're different pha-. It's almost looking back at a different version of me that is different enough where I no longer have that sense of being precious about it. Look, when I was 24, 25, 26. It was so clear to me that there were these old, outdated stereotypes of China, that were ruining people's ability to understand the country. As well as this impulse to look at sort of two different versions of the country, either A - big government which is scary for just about everybody, not in China, and some within China. B - big economy, which depending on the month and the year, is either exciting or also scary. There was no ability to understand the people. As well as not just an inability to understand people. There is an impulse to assume that anyone who said anything that wasn't, we allowed to cuss here?

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. Let it rip.

Zak Dychtwald:

I wasn't liked f****d the government was brainwashed. Truthfully. Like, I had this conversation with this very promising young student and writer last night whose from China. And the diffiiculty of being from China in writing anything that is in essentially just, you know, give the expressions of a decident. There's a discount, sort of pegged on to their perspectives because there's a suspicion that they are in some ways be hold in to the CCP. And so, the more I read, and I was reading everything there was to be written about China at that time, the more I realized there was this version that I was seeing, feeling, experiencing. And they were just my friends that ought to be out in the world. And, you know, I'm from the Bay Area, so there's a certain amount of like startup speak that kind of got drilled into my head. If there's something that you want to exist that isn't yet, or hasn't yet, or hasn't been created yet, then you should make it. And I looked around and I was looking at the writing, and this is before Alec and Eric came out with books that were more about the post '80s generation and the post '90s. But there was this gap. And I also wanted to stay. This is the other thing that, you know, I can see much more clearly in retrospect. It's hard to justify to your family, parents, friends, professors who are like invested in you. Like, "What exactly are you doing in China?" And so when I started to imagine a book, it created this grander purpose that justified my staying there and also validated the type of research that I wanted to do. It gave me a cause for it. So, instead of just being sort of a weird 22 year old, taking hundreds of hours of train rides, which is what I did my first year, just outta curiosity, I suddenly had a book to research for. So I'm like, "Oh, gotta hit the road. Like, nothing I can do there." And it goes back to this rejection that a place should be defined by its extremes. You know, China is super rich, super poor. You know, you got the for I die kids, second generation wealthy driving Maseratis. You also have dog eating festivals in Gu Jo. You have a really restrictive government. You also have like incredible crime and graph that somehow still goes on underneath that. You know, ghost towns, but you also have these subways where people have to get shoved on. You know, for the vast majority of people, none of those are their reality. I wanted to write something really pedestrian. Something about average, something that was human, something that was relatable, and to the best of my ability, that's what "Young China" was. It was an attempt to capture the emerging identity of a generation who, you know, I call them the "Restless Generation." They are responsible for building China's modern sense of self. Nothing short of that. You know, the older generation was really working to get out of subsistence. You know, if you can imagine, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, water, shelter. Again, when the post '90s generation was born in 1990, per capita GDP was around $300. Not a wealthy nation. We forget how recently China was quite poor. And so for their parents, the decisions were mostly financial or mostly pulling themselves and their generation out of real poverty. This young generation, while there still is poverty is to a much greater extent approaching identity questions: "Who am I?""What do I stand for?""What will make me happy?","Is this apartment necessary?""How do I feel towards my parents?""Am I comfortable with the status quo?""What am I looking for in love?""Am I looking for love at all?""Can I have sex without feeling like a bad person?" These are identity questions and for anyone who has asked and answered identity questions. It's not always fun. You know, there's a lot of people who want to peg this generation as "The Optimistic Generation", "The Opportunity Generation". And they're usually selling something. There are elements of that, absolutely. And sort of the Cinderella story that this generation has lived through is unique in modern economics without any shadow of a doubt. And we could flesh that out with some numbers in a second. I think, especially with the theme of your podcast, it would make a lot of sense to do that. But there's also a lot of grind of, I think of it as two tectonic plates. You have tradition on one side, the sort of quasi mushy idea of what it's always meant to be Chinese; responsibility, studying hard, fair amount of pressure within the family, marriage, family itself. And then, the pressures of modernity, you know, urbanization. The need to get educated later into life. The need for women to be educated later into life and then also be told to get married at a young age, otherwise, they're the leftovers. Those two tectonic plates grinding against one another. This young generation is really at the middle of those, deciding where they fit together, you know, tradition and modernity. I don't think there's a more interesting thing happening in the world. Like, I know that global politics is fascinating, but for those people who are interested in people. This en mass large searching for self that's happening right now in China. I feel lucky to get to think about it pretty well every morning.

Rich Robinson:

Wow, what a terrific thing to have done. You really captured the zeitgeist. And yeah, I think it's terrific how you've categorized that generation that oh, yeah a lot of people do want to put them into a specific box for marketing purposes. But yeah, it's really important to understand that this identity, you know, and how important that really is, on an individual, but also in a collective, you know, countrywide and cultural basis, and I never really heard it framed like that before.

Zak Dychtwald:

There's a sudden-. there's this funny thing that happened when you write a book, Rich. And I didn't know this because I have never written a book. Haven't written once since. Writing is hard, which is that after you write it, you know, there's you're so close to it when write it. And then, afterwards, when the ideas kinda set in and then people push, pull, prod, dissect. You've kinda like read. Like you can connect dots that you didn't see when you were in it. And particularly with some of my career, like this weird thing happened, there was a couple years where I got flown around the world to talk to people about "China and Young China." And didn't expect it, didn't see it coming. Was very surprised. And then everywhere I went, you know, and I was on five continents in 2019. It was like, you know, which starts as a brag and ends as a cry for help. It was not... didn't have much of a life. But what happens is everyone asks, "Okay. What's the difference between"Young China" and young Mexico, young Brazil, young Nigeria, young Americans, young Brits, young Egyptians, everywhere?" And my first answer was like, "Well, I don't know. Like I'm not an expert in young Egyptians."" But what came to crystallize for me, and I think is really relevant for your audience, be they driving or in the bathroom, is the pace of change. You know, we all, especially your audiences, is familiar with the idea of "China Speed", right? And we can imagine those pictures of Shanghai, The Bund in 1990 where there's kind of nothing. And then, Shanghai, The Bund in 2015 where it looks like, you know, a Jetsons City. And we all go,"Wow, like 25 years. Isn't that incredible?" When we think about "China Speed," we think of buildings, we don't think about the psychology of China Speed. What living through that amount of change would do to your brain, would do to the way you see the world, your expectations towards money, love, governance, opportunity. And so when people ask me, "What's the critical difference?" I show them something called the "Live Change Index", which I created and tried to create to help people contextualize the amount of change.'Cause the amount of times people would be like, "Hey, like China, changes fast.""You know, Brooklyn changes pretty fast." or "You know, my hometown changes pretty fast." And it does and they do, but not like this. So, the Live Change Index measures per capita GDP increase over a lifetime. That's simple. The idea being that per capita GDP is probably the best single metric we have for quality of life. It's not perfect 'cause it doesn't capture wealth disparity when you're comparing global cohorts. It's pretty good. And so from 1990 to today, I'm born in 1990, in Berkeley, California. From 1990 to today, I, as a young American. Well, formerly young American still American, formerly young. I've watched her per capita GDP increased two and a half times in my lifetime, 2.5X. And so you can imagine that as, I don't know, maybe the quality of education was 2.5X better.

Rich Robinson:

So we were, talking about your"Live Change Index". Which I would love to be able to quote in the book that I write. I think it's a fantastic, like it's just graphically so powerful and it has data behind it. How incredibly.

Zak Dychtwald:

The visualization is awesome. I'm gonna send it over to you after this. Because like I said, otherwise, everyone in their mothers thinks, you know, we've also lived through a lot of change, and they're right, but it's less. So, I was, I was just talking about how as an American, in my lifetime, I've watched her per capita GDP increased two and a half times since 1990. Which by the way, is pretty good for a developed country. I want you to imagine that in concrete terms, if you can. So, maybe the education my parents could afford for me, two and a half times better or the trips we could take as a family two and a half times longer. You can make it cartoonish if you want. The hedges on my neighbor's yard, two and a half times higher, like whate-. Imagining in physical terms helps. My friend born in 1990, in China, that exact same year in their lifetime, they've watched their per capita GDP increase 33X. So, 2.5 US, 33 in China. Maybe it's just a developing country thing, right? Like it, you know, the US is a developed country. Obviously, it's not gonna be changing as fast. India, the other demographic giant that China's always compared to. 1990 to today, and by the way, in 1993, India's GDP per capita was still higher than that of China's.

Rich Robinson:

Wow.

Zak Dychtwald:

Very recently 1990 to today. China's per capita GDP, how much change that generation has lived through in their lifetime is around 5X.

Rich Robinson:

In India, yeah.

Zak Dychtwald:

So, 33 in China. 5 in India. Brazil is around 2.7. Germany, 1.9. When you look at the top 40 economies today, the top 40 largest economies today you'll notice a trend, which is the amount of change that this generation has lived through. And by the way, older generations have lived through in the past 30 years as well. They just weren't born in that year. The per capita GDP has only flipped several times. Everything is under 10X with the exception of one country, China. And so China speed definitely means the economy. You know, there's that famous number between 2011 and 2014, I believe. China poured more concrete than the US did in the 20th century. Great number, great cocktail fact. Everyone sort of leaves being,"Hey, I wish I was in the construction business when China was doing its thing." We overlook the psychology of China's speed. If you can imagine there's that great, I think it's a Kenyon College. Am I getting that might not be Kenyon. Graduation speech by David Foster Wallace. It's pretty, pretty, you know, I think he's been canceled a couple times since then, but it's a very good speech. I don't think it's Kenyon College, but he talks about the story of an older fish and two younger fish meeting in a fishbowl. Where the older fish sort of passes these two younger fish. The older fish goes, "You know, hey, the water's fine boys." And the two fish sort of nod and flutter on their way, and they flutter, they flutter, and then one fish turns the other fish and goes,"What the hell is water?" Right? We get used to the ecosystems that we're born in, that we grew up in, that we immerse ourselves in. And China's, you know, China's been a rushing river the last 30 years, and people have adapted around that. So, the speed of adaptation culturally, morally, technologically, you know, adapt, adapt, adapt has translated into adopt, adopt, adopt. Is just a degree faster in China than elsewhere. And I have this memory. I know you're in the startup world where I went down to Shenzhen and I think it was 2015 and there was this kid Yu Jiawen, who had gotten a lot of attention for going. He was like 24. He looked like he was a hundred pounds soaking wet. You know, he looked like he was 15. But he had a mouth on them and he went on a couple of reality shows and was like challenging the old style of Entrepreneur and Tech Founder in Shenzhen, and in China. And so I went down to interview. And you know, again, the things you can justify when you're writing a book. It's like, "Hey, I got it. Really important." And one of the things he described to me, his app was called "Chāojí kèchéng biǎo". Yeah. So basically, was like a social app for students. And so, you know, there's 11 million college graduates every year. And so the amount of college students on campuses in China is quite substantial. And so it would allow you to see who else is in your class. And it really became a dating app because like you could see so-and-so is in this class. So, I wanna be that at like, and he was very open about that. I remember going to interview him and he talks about the first time he ever encountered foreign investors. And what he said was,"Foreign investors came in and were like..." and looked at their work hours, looked at their work environment, looked at... I mean, he was working 80 hour weeks, you know, 996 was less work than what him and his team were used to, and what he told me was, "I never realized we were working so hard until you guys came and told us. I never realized what we were doing was unique until I learned that you guys were just chilling over there in Silicon Valley." It's relativity, and I talk about this in terms of China's culture around marriage, change, tech adoption. China's not sealed from the outside world, but at the end of the day, only 10% of the population has a passport and most foreigners don't come. And if they do, they're in Shanghai and Beijing. That's sort of it. And so relativity is really the environment around you, be it morally or in terms of work ethic. And so, the norms here have forced a pace of change, a pace of movement, a speed of really just a momentum, you know, "China Speed". It's in the title of your podcast. That is much more than buildings, it's personal, and it's shaped just about every aspect of this young generation's worldview, good and the bad.

Rich Robinson:

So yeah, I loved your story about that old saw about, you know, "What's water?" People talk about a frog being boiled in water, but at least it knows that it's in water. But a lot of people in China don't even know it. It's just Shì zhèyàng zé and you know, just move faster, adapt. I think that adaptability that you talked about, adapt and adopt, that's one thing, that it's not just about Jojo Leo, because people are like,"Well , speed of China, but of course, if you're everybody's working constantly, then you're just gonna have a faster pace." But it's, you know, that's it's multivariate. That's one thing about it. And just 'cause you're working more, I mean, the US has ridiculous work hours, but there's not that same level of adaptability that the China has. Even people that are on the wrong side of double nickels like me, they need to embrace WeChat and everything else. So, fantastic. What do you think are some of the other facts, some of those multivariate? Please.

Zak Dychtwald:

Well, so I mean, like I was gonna say, it's one thing, you know, work hours are long, and like yeah, there's a lot of output from China. But like, how do you explain 60 year olds using WeChat? And not just, and not like 60. And by the way, if you are, again, if you are 70 in China, you have lived through one of the harshest periods in modern history. Deep poverty, forced backwardness, during the cultural revolution. The opposite of being technologically savvy, so much so that people didn't, you know, you're talking about entering the "Iron Age" essentially. In relatively recent memory in a lifetime, in a generation. And I'm thinking, you know, obviously, specifically during the great leap forward and people smelting down there, or attempting to like, break down their hose and iron, and like failing and starving, and as being one aspect of that. So, you know, not technologically savvy and now you have massive, you know, you have 90% of the smartphone using population, using mobile payment in China. Compared with, you know, Apple Pay in the US there's about 27% monthly active users. Those aren't just young people in either place. You know, there's a fluency and willingness to use new stuff in China at every age group that you just do not see in other places. And by the way, the fear is also not just "I wanna stay ahead of things." It's also a fear that you'll get swept away if you don't. It's hard to be in a Chinese city without WeChat Pay anymore. You can't get a cab if you don't have Didi on your phone. Like that happened recently. That's one thing. But then if you also look towards like, education, you know, in 1999, China graduated 1 million college graduates, which was a major push from a decade before where, you know, you're talking about, I think it was the high tens of thousands in the early 1990s. This last year, China graduated 11 million college graduates. A massive shift around perceptions of the importance of education. Sex before marriage. You know, I was talking about morality a little bit and how that has been elastic. You're in 1989 I think it actually might be 1987. Only around 17%. No, excuse me, 11% of adults were having premarital sex. You know, sex was still equated with sin under the Mao Era. It wasn't religious. There wasn't sin per se. But a similar level

Rich Robinson 1 ZD:

there, there's a big

Rich Robinson:

There's a big clipboard.

Zak Dychtwald:

Social.

Rich Robinson:

Checking you out right?

Zak Dychtwald:

Disallowance of the activity.

Rich Robinson:

Kind of, it's pretty similar.

Zak Dychtwald 1:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, literally in a lot of them. That's the idea. Those numbers have more or less inverted. Now, it's around 89% in big cities with young people, in particular. And so people's willingness to integrate that new perspective in a lifetime equally fast urbanization. In 1990, you're talking about I think it's around 30% urbanization. Those numbers have completely inverted. Now, it's 70% urban. Which, you know, the cascading effects of way of life, and everything that goes along with that. We think of those shifts in China as being government-led and people just being sort of docile sheep within that shift. And yeah, there's a lot more opportunities in cities, but the people who are having to acclimate their brains around urban life, the costs, the opportunities, the food that come with that. By the way, chloric intake has doubled in the last 40 years, fully doubled. Those integrations are on a personal level, and so like tech is an obvious implication, consumption as well, obvious implication. It's one that people care about. It's one that HBR has me write about truthfully. It's one of those things with that impacts stock prices and so people care. But when you think about moral, ethical, you know, purpose of life questions, those have evolved at a similar speed. And so the question I always ask people is, I mean, "Have your perceptions of China kept pace?""Have they kept pace with it?" And not just China as a real estate market, and not just China as a place to sell Gucci stuff which, you know, it remains a phenomenal place for, Gucci Loaf for consumption. So there's that. But people, and people outside of Shanghai and Beijing. And it's a tough ask in some ways because people don't know where to look but it's also an essential. Essential to be able to say that you really understand China today, it's keeping pace not just within the country but outside of it, which is really hard.

Rich Robinson:

It is indeed hard and you know, I have now been in Bali for 3 and a half years and I still teach at Peking University, and I was back in Beijing last month. But, I'm a keen ongoing student and I have so many Chinese friends and so many foreigners who live there, but it's difficult for me to keep up with the pace and pulse, but there are consequences if we don't. And it's really important to do that. And man, that was really fantastic. Thank you so much, Zak. I love your thought process and the flag that you put in the sand around "Young China". I think it's really important work and I think there's still so much more for you to peel back with that and to help. That's the biggest story of our life, I think US, China and how that dance with the panda goes. I'm neither a panda slugger or panda hugger. I want to dance with the panda. And what you do is really important to help people stay in steps. So, thank you.

Zak Dychtwald:

Thank you. You know, thank you for your curiosity on this. When you dig deep into a topic, you always hope that people will notice it. But there's so many topics and there's so many things that people are asking us to care about every day. I think,. You're right in that the consequence of these things that we're looking at are quite massive. Finding ways to make it digestible, accessible, actionable for people, that's a big part of the job at this point. And so thanks for having me on.

Rich Robinson:

My pleasure. Thanks once again, Zak Dychtwald, everybody. All the best, my friend.