‘Dumpling’ protest about jobs sees 100,000 Chinese students bring highway to standstill

Telegraph ^ | 11 November 2024 | William Yang

[george76]

‘Night Riding Army’ flash mob causes chaos in an ancient capital and sparks complaints from locals..

More than 100,000 Chinese students took part in a 37-mile night-time bike ride on a quest for soup dumplings, bringing a main highway to a standstill.

The “Night Riding Army”, as some participants called it, rode for hours after a huge turnout for the rolling flash mob that had been gathering riders for months.

It was inspired by a viral craze of young Chinese people trying to travel as cheaply as possible in the face of high youth unemployment and scarce job prospects.

The “soft protest” movement was first set off in June when four female college students chronicled their ride on social media to try guantangbao, a type of soup dumpling.

...

Chinese authorities are now clamping down on the activity, imposing new traffic restrictions and controls on bike rental companies to prevent further chaos.

Footage from Friday night showed the blocked highway that links Zhengzhou, the largest city in Henan province, with Kaifeng, an ancient capital famed for its soup dumplings.

By Saturday, pictures showed thousands of the riders – waving the Chinese flag and singing the national anthem – had overrun the small tourist city, sparking complaints from locals.

“Last night’s ‘Night Riding Army’ was spectacular!” one rider posted. “Two lanes were opened, but that simply was not enough: The cycling army accounted for four!”

‘Much more than a bike ride’..

...

Liu Lulu, a student at Henan University, told China Daily: “People sang together and cheered for each other while climbing uphill together. I could feel the passion of the young people. And it was much more than a bike ride.”.

[telescope115]

Neat! I’ll have to look for it!

[SauronOfMordor]

The Party stays in power through the perception that it has the “mandate of heaven”.

That perception is dependent on people seeing a constant rise in the standard of living from generation to generation. The Chinese equivalent of the “American Dream “.

Take that away, and they face rebellion.

[PGR88]

One wonders how different the Tiananmen Square Demonstrations would have turned out had there been social media back then.

It certainly would have "exploded" immediately. I've met many "Gen-X" Chinese from Beijing who have said that by May, they were getting tired and started to go back to campus/home.

But it took 4-6 weeks for the news to filter out into the provinces and for students from distant cities to show up in Beijing. So non-locals were the vast majority of people at Tiananmen on June 4

I knew a female lawyer from Shanghai-area who was a student at the time, and travelled to Beijing in late May to join the protests. At the train station in the crush of people, she tripped, fell and knocked out 3 of her teeth. So she went to the hospital and then returned home. Otherwise, she would have been there on June 4.

[dfwgator]

It’s amazing that for the most part, it’s gone down the Memory Hole.