I’ve been afraid to revisit those cities that are the economic engines of the renewed China, afraid to be affronted by masses of Shanghai and Beijing yuppies shooting Starbucks doppio espressos before heading into an excessively air-conditioned office to sell questionable stocks to China’s "to be rich is glorious" new middle class, and to see them scarfing down KFC and Pizza Hut slices chased by supersized Coca-Colas for lunch.

This was not the case in 1983, of course, during my first visit to China, when Shanghai and Beijing were relatively low-rise, old-world city centers. Most of the young still dressed functionally and simply in post–Cultural Revolution blues, browns, and PLA greens. Women didn’t wear makeup and almost everyone’s face gave off a shiny, rosy glow, undoubtedly resulting from their highly physical lives of bicycling and walking everywhere, the traditional diet of rice or noodles with mostly vegetables, and a slower pace of living that notably included a lot of irritating boredom among China’s young adults.

But my nightmare scenario didn’t come to be. Underneath the Western embrace the young women and men whom I got to know this past December—the Chinese yuppies of Shanghai and Beijing—remain very much Chinese. Oh, the men comfortably wore their form-grabbing suits and J.Crew and Gap-style casuals, and the women coyly swung their long black hair behind their model-skinny frames as they clopped about on trendy knee-level, high-heel boots, their lumpy handbags holding their ringing cell phones.

They know that McDonald’s, KFC, and Pizza Hut are junk food, and knowing that, they’ll still eat it occasionally while basically sticking to Chinese restaurants (which are cheaper anyway). Do modern Chinese women cook anymore? More than half the patrons at any number of modern restaurants where I dined in the evening were women—often alone.

They all seem to work longer hours than Silicon Valley geeks over the five- to six-day workweek and still attend graduate-level courses on their one day off because, well, pick one of several reasons. To increase one’s competitiveness, for there are just too many people in China. Because they are proud of New China, of the recently completed African summit in Beijing, where China struck a New Deal of continental proportions with practically every African nation. Because of the 2008 Olympics, with its steel "bird’s nest" stadium and other eye-popping venues. Because that world-stage spotlight will be followed by the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. Because they feel secure of their place in the New China of today and tomorrow.

Mainly, I found that the young men and women who opened up to me are happy, healthy, in love with life, and confident of a bright future. And probably because of all this, they’re brimming with energy, and eager to suck up from me whatever they can about life in America, business, law, culture, how Chinese Americans are treated, and most of all, any spare time I may have to practice speaking American English with them.

They share some common background characteristics. All of them have selected working English names such as Stanley, Connee, Kevin, Lily, Sue; and then there’s a perspicacious, pixyish office manager who calls herself Rainbow. They are of the post-Cultural Revolution generation and range in age from the mid-20s to the mid-30s. They are graduates of a major Chinese college or university, and several are grad students, either full-time or on weekends. Every one of them was a sole child under China’s "one-child" planning policy and after a while I learned to stop asking about their brothers and sisters. The guys love Yao Ming and hate Shaq because he roughs up Yao Ming. They are more up on the Lakers, the Bulls, and the Heat than I am, and everyone loves Kobe.

Here are some thumbnails on my new friends, the yuppies of the New China:

Kevin

Kevin is in his mid-20s, with a wiry, athletic physique, and he dances up a storm at discos. He is fluent in English and German, the result of spending six months in Germany as a government intern for a representative from Bavaria. He works as a rep for a local machinery company and is planning to apply for grad school in America.

His parents are educators in the city of Tsingtao in the northeast of China, but because the Cultural Revolution interrupted his mother’s college education, her career stalled in a lower position. His father rose to the level of assistant vice-principal at the young age of 33, but because of his outspoken attitudes against corruption, never advanced past that. Now with the anti-corruption campaign, many of his former colleagues who enriched themselves through corruption are sleeping uneasily as Kevin’s father continues to live his simpler but worry-free life.

Kevin shared his shock that recently his dad gushed how proud he was of his accomplishments, the first time his father had ever expressed his love openly. Rare for a Chinese father, says Kevin.

Xiu-Chen

Kevin’s New Year’s date was tallish, svelte, well dressed, and fashionably shod with the just-belowthe- knee, high-heeled boots that everyone is wearing in Shanghai. Finishing an advanced degree in finances, she had spent the afternoon with Kevin discussing MBOs (or management buyouts, as she decoded for me). After dinner, we walked among a Times Square–like gathering of carefree, celebrating, and alcohol-free young adults, stretching from People’s Square through the pedestrian- only section of Nanjing Road and toward the riverbank of the Bund commercial zone.

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