This volume investigates the Chinese Bildungsroman from the global sixties to the precarious present, and from intensely humanist dreams to dark visions of the end of the Anthropocene. Drawing on an exciting range of literary and cinematic perspectives on what it means to come of age in the Sinosphere, the contributors to this wide-ranging book explore adolescence as both a privately vivid time of life and a potent force for systemic change. ―Margaret Hillenbrand, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture, Oxford University,

A significant contribution to Sinophone and comparative studies, this interdisciplinary volume powerfully illustrates how Bildungsroman and coming-of-age narratives across literature and film confront historical trauma, ideological upheaval, environmental degradation, and global precarity. It offers a compelling reflection on adolescence as a site of resistance, remembrance, and reinvention―shedding new light on the culture and politics of growing up in a fractured, interconnected world. ―Weijie Song, Associate Professor in Chinese Literature, Rutgers University.

Andrea Riemenschnitter is professor em. of Modern Chinese Language and Literature, University of Zurich. Her most recent book is Sinophone Utopias. Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream (2023, co-ed.). She has published in Archiv Orientalni, AS, ICCC, Interventions, JMLC, MCLC, Monumenta Serica, etc. Kiu-wai Chu is Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities and Chinese Studies at Nanyang Technological University. He is a National Humanities Center Fellow 2022-23. His research focuses on environmental humanities, ecocriticism, and contemporary cinema and visual art in China and broader Asia. Mung Ting Chung is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Calgary. Her research interests include Hong Kong literature, Sinophone studies, and the cultural Cold War. Her first monograph, Writing Beyond Borders: Hong Kong Literary Production in the Early Cold War Era (tentative title), will be published by Brill.