A．Nowadays, as China's middle class swells in number---and its people discover the pleasures and disappointments of a life spent pursuing material comfort-- there has come the emergence of a distinct counter-culture. In Chinese, they are the wenyi qingnian, or wenqing for short, literally meaning "culturedyouth". It's China's closest equivalent to the alternately beloved and criticized English word, "hipster".

B．What does a typical "cultured youth" look like? Baidu Baike, China's version of Wikipedia, contains an entry on the term that quotes the writer andmusician Guo Xiaohan: "I think I'm a wenyi qingnian, and a very typicalone. I like poetry, novels, indie music ( 独立音乐 ) , European cinema,taking pictures, writing blogs, cats, gardening, making dessert and designingenvironmentally friendly bags."

C．Spiritual at heart, yet living in a very material, money-driven modern society,wenqing are marked as highly individualistic, romantic, cultural connoisseurs(行家).

D．They are more likely to be middle-to-upper class citizens, and stand indeliberate contrast to their Louis Vuitton-bag toting, BMW-driving, nouveauriche ( 暴发户) counterparts. They are defined much less by what theyown, and much more by how they think. And as Faye Li, a 27-year-old NGOworker in Beijing, said with slight mockery, "They always like to be differentfrom everybody else."

E．Like hipsters, wenqing strongly resist labeling themselves as such. Theterm "cultured youth" can divide Chinese audiences, alternately attractingadmiration or mockery. A perfect example emerged on Sina Weibo withthis post entitled, "Shanghai 'cultured youth' girls aboard a subway readingpoetry".

F．The post features a video showing three women dressed in striped dresseswith tiny, feathered top hats pinned to their hair. On board a crowdedsubway carriage they read aloud a poem about nature. Some commenterscongratulated the performers, commending-them for their creativity anddaring. But others called the video "rubbish" or noted that there did not seemto be much difference between "cultured youth" and "dnmbass youth" whichwritten in Chinese Internet slang as "2B qingnian".

G．One Internet user condemned the three performers as inauthentic ( 不真实 的 ) , writing, "Wenqing doesn't mean going through the motions; it's aboutthe content, and even more about the feelings of the inner world. Go and livein the world of wenqing, and you'll realize it has nothing to do with age orgender." The commenter's earnestness is a cultural mark of these "culturedyouth".

H．A photo collage ( 拼贴 ) that has been reposted over 7,000 times on SinaWeibo may help to illuminate the precise differences between a "culturedyouth" and a "2B youth". It illustrates a number of day-to-day activities, suchas driving, writing and eating, but each is performed in three different styles:The ordinary way, the "cultured youth" way, and the "2B youth" way.

I．While meant to be humorous, it also keenly illustrates how the definitionof "cultured youth" diverges from that of a "2B youth". It also shows whatthe self-confessed "dumbasses" of China share in common with Americanhipsters, or at least with their counter-culture origins.

J．In the United States, hipsterism ( 嬉皮士文化 ) first grew out of theslacker ( 逃避工作者 ) era of the 1990s. Slackers were frustrated youths, stuck in low paid "McJobs" and pessimistic about their futures. They hadwitnessed the sophistication (老练) with which corporate America had somagnificently co-opted the values and alternative lifestyles of the hippies,protest culture and other counter-cultures of the previous three decades. Theirresponse was to stop creating new culture altogether, indeed, to stop believing in anything.

K．Of course, the adaptability of corporate America continues to prove itself, andin the last decade we have seen hipsterism well and truly enter the Americanmainstream. Where recycling ideas from the past or from the working classwas once a kind of anti-fashion, it is now fashion. And yet hipsterism hasretained a flavor--however empty--of rebellion.

L．These characteristics are common to China's "2B youth". They are youngmen and women who have nothing much going on. As the photo collage suggests, they like to engage in pointless and deliberately self-defeatingbehavior, all, it sometimes seems, for nothing more than the "lulz" ( 从别人 的痛苦中获得快乐).

M．Behind these counter-cultures lies a hard reality. A recently released PewGlobal Attitudes Survey showed that 81 percent of those polled in Chinaagreed with the following statement: "The rich just get richer while thepoor get poorer." And as Foreign Policy reported, the country's gender imbalance--120 boys for every 100 girls--has put serious pressure on the nation's bachelors. Those hunting for a bride have come to understand that they should come calling only when armed with an apartment. This, even though "the average property in a top-tier Chinese city now costs between 15 and 20 times the average annual salary".

N．In the face of such great social pressures, it's small wonder that some Chineseyouth have made giving up an art form and a point of pride. Terms once slung like stones--"2B qingnian," along with diaosi ( 屌丝 ) , meaning "loser"-have been reclaimed by their victims and are now employed in deliberate self-mockery. These words provide a sense of identity and belonging to young Chinese who feel that on the bitterly competitive playing field of Chinese society, they are not simply falling behind; they're altogether out of the race.

O．For the majority of young Chinese, the formula for success in their fast-rising,hard-charging society remains the same: Study hard, chase the big bucks,become "mortgage slaves", quickly get married, and have a kid. Then watchthe cycle repeat. But for the growing number who find these goals harderto achieve, embracing their outsider status might be the best--and perhapsonly--way forward.