Evan Osnost: The hardest part of the Chinese experience to square as an American is that there's this secret world. In Beijing there are these there are a few compounds and a few schools and everybody like knows each other and grows up together, he says. He writes about class and status and structure I'm always fascinated by that because it's kind of the the dark matter that drives a lot of our politics.
Evan Osnos is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury.
“I'm always trying to get inside a subculture. That's the thing that I think has been the most enduring, attractive element for me. Is there a world that has its own manners and vocabulary and internal rhythms and status structure? And who looks down on whom? And why? And who venerates whom? Who's a big deal in these worlds? And if I can get into that, it doesn't even really matter to me that much what the subculture is. I'm fascinated by trying to map that thing out.”
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