Linglei escape mainstream with no destination
By Hannah Beech (Time)
Updated: 2004-06-23 15:29

At least we dared to be different, we dared to dream. -MAN ZHOU, 20 The Tycoon

So today, China's rebel hacker is just another third-year computer-science student at Fudan University. His criticisms of school as a drain of creativity are a relic of the past. Since he'd never finished high school, Man had to get special permission from the Ministry of Education in Beijing to attend Fudan, an intricate ritual of obeisance that took nine months.

Still, there are vestiges of Man's former defiance. Although Fudan doesn't allow its students to run businesses without official permission, Man quietly operates a search-engine software firm on the side, under a pseudonym. Already, the company has offices in Bangkok and will soon open branches in Brazil, Japan and Vietnam.

But breaking the rules doesn't give Man many thrills anymore. "I have so much responsibility, so many employees who depend on me," he says, hunching his shoulders against the cold wind blowing through Fudan's campus. "I have no time to be a linglei anymore."

Man adjusts the scarf around his neck and announces that years of all-nighters are finally catching up with him: he has chronic bronchitis and migraine headaches. Man is only 20. Still, on good days, when he isn't worried about paychecks for his programmers in Bangkok or cramming for a college exam, he thinks back fondly on his days as a rebel.

"At least we dared to be different, we dared to dream," Man says, a little wistfully. "For a while, we allowed our true personalities to shine through."

Chun in Beijing knows that if she's going to keep it real, she needs more than big paychecks from publishing houses or the new Calvin Klein perfume. Maybe that's why she's slumming it with her punk friend Li in a shack off a dirt path stained with puddles of frozen urine.

Chun has a comfortable room back home in the military compound, but it's only among her punk-rocker friends, in a room with a bare lightbulb and a blanket pockmarked with cigarette burns, that she feels truly alive.

"We have to constantly challenge ourselves," she says. "Otherwise we'll lose our ability to think and create." Then she leans back on Li's leather-clad shoulder, and together they hum the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the U.K. Together, this pair of rebels without a cause has made a pact: may they never return to the mainstream, even though they have no idea where it is they want to go.

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