Biao Xiang draws young Chinese listeners with talks on anxiety

About 500 people, most of them members of the Chinese diaspora, attended a recent talk by Biao Xiang in Singapore, the BBC reported. The 54-year-old anthropologist spoke in Mandarin for more than an hour, answered questions and was met afterwards by dozens of people seeking photographs. He has also spoken at Chinese universities, including Peking University, where a talk earlier this year was livestreamed after the auditorium filled up. [1]

A 23-year-old Chinese graduate told the BBC that the move from education into working life brought uncertainty, and that Xiang’s words made her feel understood. Xiang, who lives in Germany and directs the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, studies social change in China and elsewhere in Asia. [1]

He uses the term ‘floating’ for people who work relentlessly to stay afloat. He also argues that attention to oneself and to world events can crowd out ‘the nearby’: the people and places between those two scales. In his view, pressures linked to housing and competition in higher education have intensified anxiety. [1]