Five people born in 1976

Southern People Weekly (南方人物周刊) is a magazine about people published by Southern Media Group. "Recording our fate" (纪录我们的命运) is the stated aim of this magazine.

The cover story of this week's issue features five people who were born in 1976. The generation of people born in the 1970s is gorwing up and becoming more and more important, so the editors chose five people to represent their lives, attitudes and values. 1976 is also a watershed year in China — it was the year Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai died and the end of the Cultural Revolution. These are the people profiled:

• Xu Zhiyuan (许知远), a graduate of Peking University, is the editor of City Magazine (生活), a frequent contributor to the excellent Mind Meters website, and owner of Beijing's One Way Street bookstore.

• Chai Jing (柴静) is a TV reporter for News Investigation, a news program on CCTV.

• Deng Yuqiang (邓裕强) is CEO of 3G.NET, a website for cell phones that does not appear to work.

• Xia Yu (夏雨) is an actor who first got famous for his role in Jiang Wen's classic film about unruly youngsters growing up in the Cultural Revolution in Beijing In the Heat of the Sun(阳光灿烂的日子).

• Wen Shiping (文仕萍) is a migrant worker at a construction company; he is the only ordinary person of the five.