When Zhou Liqi went viral on the Chinese internet for stealing scooters to protest lack of opportunity, he sparked a debate between the popular movement of “lying flat” and the state’s desire for “positive energy.” The state won.
Illustration by Dongyan Xu
Zhou Liqi (周立齐) grew up without the internet, or much of anything at all. His family was the poorest in a poor village. Their fortunes were tied to their crops, and when the weather brought rains or long, arid stretches, as it did frequently, their crops failed. Zhou was known as Ah San, or Number Three, because he had been born third in a string of brothers. Together, they all lived in a crumbling brick home with a dirt courtyard and a leaking roof in China’s southern Guangxi province.
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