Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the bleak interpretation of the future of the current young adult generation in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and beyond; and argues that such senses of despair are likely related to their class background and how they have been insulated from uncertainty and risks.

Paper long abstract:

In a 2018 music festival in Hong Kong, when Your Woman Sleep with Others, a Taiwanese band, sang their famous song, Teens Edge, the local audience cried on top of their lungs and sang together in Mandarin: "Give me a bottle of wine/Then give me a cigarette/Let's move on/I got plenty of time." The loud chorus, delirious excitement and touch of sorrow on the faces of this young crowd impressed me. Why were they so hopeless?

Your Woman Sleep with Others is one of the quickly rising groups in the Mandarin indie music scene that are labeled as voices of the Generation in Despair (Yanshidai). The lyrics of these bands often sarcastically depict a sense of hopelessness: there is no hope for a better future; nothing will change no matter how hard you try; just veg out. These bands often achieve immense popularity as the young adult audience believes that they "speak their hearts."

Strangely, these bands (and their fans) are not usually the most desperate group in their societies. Instead, they are often from a relatively stable middle-class background and have good educational capital. How exactly do they understand their future, for that understanding to lead to this sense of despair expressed through music? This paper aims to analyze this particularly bleak interpretation of the future and argues that such despairing perspective is likely intersecting with a class related culture that insulates and controls uncertainty. Is escaping a way to exercise agency?