May 13, 2024 I attended a TEDish event that was jointly sponsored by Hougongfang (厚工坊) and Fenghuang Media Shenzhen (凤凰网深圳). If you drink baijiu, then you’ve probably heard of Hougongfang, a high-end brand of Moutai from Wuyeshen (五叶神), which is based in Guangdong, but brews in Maotai. if you follow Shen Kong media, then you’ve clicked a Fenghuang post or two. The company is primarily state-owned and based in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, offering Mandarin and Cantonese language programming. It is registered in the Cayman Islands. The event theme was “厚浪” which is a homophone for 后浪 (waves or next wave) and also neatly reminds us of Moutai’s (Maotai’s) historical significance, which was consolidated during the Chinese civil war and especially pronounced (chez Shenzhen) during the 1990s and naughties, when deals were sealed with toasts and no one went home sober.

For the past three years (this was the fourth event), Hougongfang has been promoting “middle age day (中年节).” The event was filmed before a live audience to be broadcast on May 25, which is the day they’ve designated for the new holiday. I know, you’re probably thinking: didn’t China establish May 25 as University Mental Health Day (525心理健康节)? And the answer is yes. And to answer your unasked question: yes it explains so much about contemporary China when today’s middle-aged magnates are promoting their contributions to society and the value of their experience on a day that had been set aside to address the mental health of the country’s anxious, overworked and often suicidal college students.

Thoughts (not all of them generous because remind you of US boomers much) below:

Last week, I had tea with an old friend, who has been involved in Shenzhen urban planning since the early 1990s. The ostensible purpose of our meeting was to discuss early planning of the OCT for a project I’m working on, but the more interesting conversation meandered into stories about how Shenzhen used to be: the practical lack of oversight; the sense that one moved between construction sites, and; the banqueting. My friend summarized Shenzhen’s history in terms of his generation (he belongs to 60后 and is the quintessential target of this Second Wave push) — they have experienced everything contemporary China has to offer. When they were young, they witnessed (but were fortunately too young to participate in) the CR; during their college years, they led the intellectual questioning and experimentation of the 1980s; during the 90s and naughties, they ate and drank prodigiously, and; as China has become more conservative and the economy less bullish, they are eating and drinking in moderation, practicing yoga, reading the classics, and climbing mountains.

First thought about the Second Wave: Like US boomers, Second Wavers has benefited more than any other generation from from industrial urbanization and containerized world trade. They also assume that their wealth and success is a result of their personal prowess and savvy, rather than a result of economic restructuring. Some (like my friend) may be bit more conscious of how they have benefited from history, but overall, they are reluctant to leave the stage and give younger people a chance. Indeed, .now that they’re aging, the cohort (Boomers in the US / Second Wavers in China) that was all about youth taking over the world is now about “you’re only as old as you feel.” And, yes lots of investment in keeping fit, staying young and asserting their relevance.

Through the Second Wave and other events, Shenzhen’s 60s and 70s cohorts assert the value of their past and vigorously contemplating a place for themselves in the future. The first speaker, for example, Zhang Liang (张梁) was the first Chinese to complete the 14+7+2. He has climbed to the top of the world’s 14 8,000+ meter mountains, to the top of the highest mountain on every continent, and trekked to both the north and south poles. He began his sojourn from ordinary banker to adventurer circa 2000, when he joined Vanke founder Wang Shi and others from one of Shenzhen’s largest real estate companies on their climbing expeditions. The second speaker, Li Lei (李蕾) started her career as a broadcaster on CCTV and then around 40 (because middle-age starts earlier for women) moved to social media, where she reviews books. Her reading of The Little Prince reached 12 million readers, while The Handmaid’s Tale appealed to 4.6 million. The third speaker, Xiao Ma Song (小马宋) began his career in advertizing, eventually starting a strategic consulting company. The have worked with both domestic companies seeking to grow and foreign companies hoping to take root in China. The fourth speaker, Lu Tong (卢彤) is a vice president at Wuyeshen and the Executive Manager of Hougongfang. He seems to have been a SOE worker his entire career, and philanthropy like promoting Middle-Age Day seems to be his second career.

Each of the talks promoted a different understanding of how one’s second career might begin. Zhang Liang talked about “Letting Go and Climbing,” focusing on the importance of living to fight another day. Li Lei’s title was more explicit, “Embarking on a Second Life,” while Xiao Ma Song seems to be still going strong, “Eight Years in Business, Difficulties and Breakthroughs.” Lu Tong focused on the generational ambition of the middle-aged, “Next Wave ‘Ambition’.” If the titles seem familiar, it is no doubt because they echo both the language of early Reform and Opening Up (making breakthroughs, having personal ambition) and the rhetoric of older boomers: learn to let go, find your second life.

So a second thought about the Second Wave: Accumulated social, cultural and economic capital has facilitated their second careers and/or lifestyle changes. Like Boomers, Second Wavers present the next phase in their lives as a result of personal reflection and growth, as well as having a deep desire to help other. I don’t doubt their impulse to do good, but I do wonder at how they expect younger generations to volunteer, slow down and realize themselves in the absence of material stability. As in the US, the obliviousness of globalization’s beneficiaries to the lived realities of young people often comes of as glib and accusing, as if the precarity of contemporary urban life is young people’s fault.

Of course, given the way gender structured access to wealth during the boom years, most of the Second Wavers are older men and their wives. In fact, when Hougongfang first started promoting Middle-Age Day, it was explicitly about celebrating older men, in contrast to youth culture. In fact, Li Lei began her talk by saying how felicitous it was that she followed Zhang Liang: he was strong as steel, where she was more likely to yield to arduous situations; he was a man and she was a woman. A third thought: there is a gender ideology to this Second Wave that is still propping up traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity that is in interesting contrast to the way young Shenzheners are presenting and organizing their lives. Indeed, the larger numbers of young women who are choosing to remain single or not have children continues to vex Second Wavers who also want to hold their grandchildren, while foreign media continues to focus on the country’s demographic crisis.

I’m still thinking about how all this ties into new China dreaming, the aging population, and the recent exodus of young middle class Chinese to new destinations. But one thing that is clear: Second Wavers intend to lead the way forward.