A nice video, good job Loretta and Josh. I might make a suggestion however: I wouldn't equate 'fenqing' automatically with 'patriotic youth' and I think many commentators both inside and outside China do make this distinction. Loving one's country or being proud of China does not make one a 'fenqing', but when that 'love' for China takes on destructive forms--whether the verbal, physical or online harassment of alternative perspectives, that is an entirely different matter.

Mr. Wu seems like a nice young man. Those idiots who called in death threats against foreign media correspondents or placed bags of feces on the door of Grace Wang's parents' home...not so much.

Failed! Is this an interview on how well young Chinese master English or about their political view? If the latter is the purpose, why not let the man express in his native language?

The frustrated man who littered Tiananmen Square with papers LOST HIS DAUGHTER! The "patriotic youth" becomes aware of this fact and yet still finds enough "fenqing" to offer his 2 fen about the father's "deed".

Nice earrings on Loretta though.

This protesting man did a wrong deed and should be punished accordingly! Go China!

Wait... isn't the WSJ part of the biased Western media? Why are they interviewing someone who loves China? I don't understand... There must be some reason... Wait... Wait... Ow! My brain hurts, forget it. It doesn't matter what the reason is, I know they hate China.

Now let's see the People's Daily, beacon of objectivity, interview the Dalai Lama or displaced hutong dwellers.

another pointless interview by a clueless journalist...couldn't she have picked someone more inflammatory to interview (or worn earrings/radio antennas that don't look like they cost 10 rmb at hongqiao)? The kid didn't even have the common decency to scream "death to foreigners" into the camera! He was also smiling while giving his garbled discourse...how disgustingly un-thug/goon-like! At least his monotone voice confirms his robotic heritage. The interview also failed because there weren't any shots of him marching in sinisterly perfect columns with his robotic brethren, preparing for the day they will destroy the west!

What a grave disappointment to the anti-China forces in the west! These angry youth were supposed to rise up and overthrow the government but instead they support and love their country!

And who's boycotting the Olympics? 80+ heads of state attended the opening program, which also had the largest TV audience oohing and aahing over the spectacle. Guess we should plant more whispering campaigns about the robotic, facistic and intimidating quality of the Chinese performers.

The real heinous deed, is the clueless reporting and the pious comments made by the respondent.

No wars in China? Depends on your definition of the geographic boundaries, (let's not go there), but unarguably a suzerain the PRC is.

OK, no wars, how about climatic and ecological issues? Nothing? Shameful.

I am emphatically and sympathetically muted. So sad to see the youth of today, without real direction, nor desire, only 'spoon-fed reasoning'.

I appreciate that Ms. Chao was trying to add some complexity to the discourse on Chinese nationalism in the English-language media, but she failed. If the point was to choose someone to "represent" patriotic youth, this young man was a very poor choice. Obviously from the countryside, he had such a low level of political consciousness that he failed to see the seriousness and the tragedy involved in the man's protest over the allegedly unjust death of his daughter.He seemed to also perceive Ms. Chao as such an "other" that he insisted on speaking to her in his broken English. This was also a poor journalistic choice because it made him seem like even more of a "simpleton" than he probably in fact is. It would have been better to choose someone who could express more sophisticated views in Chinese.We really do not need more reports that portray Chinese youth as thoughtless and naive. It would be better to interview someone who is in fact a raging, unreasonable nationalist, or else someone who has more humane and complex views. These two groups are more representative of public opinion in China today.

NYT的这篇还是比较客观反映了中国人的复杂的爱国情结.无论角度,选材都比这个Loretta Chao强多了.link

Sorry to chime in so late on this one, but I feel compelled to offer a response to Jeremiah's thoughtful comment.

We struggled quite a bit on how to translate "fenqing." The literal translation, of course, is "angry youth." but the implications of that phrase in the current political climate, what with the death threats and all, we felt were problematic. As I understand it, "fenqing" is a label given to and adopted by a wide range of young people in China--some virulently anti-western, others merely "angry" at the position of their country in the global scheme of things--unified only in their love of country, or in other words, their patriotism.

We made a conscious decision not to use the more common translation, "nationalist youth." More than one Chinese acquaintance has corrected my use of "fenqing" in the pejorative nationalist sense by pointing out that Lu Xun counted himself a fenqing in his younger days. We felt "patriotic" was a value-neutral word Lu Xun would have gladly accepted.

Incidentally, Loretta Chao tried on several occasions to ask young Mr. Wu questions in Chinese. He refused to answer in kind.