When the subject of marriageable partners came up for the 1980 journalism students they argued that young couples should consider political compatibility in making the right choice in a mate. During the Cultural Revolution, some husbands and wives had betrayed each other, leading to exile, prison or worse, and families in ruin. But as I listened to these students, something else was already at play — the desires unleashed by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform (literal English translation from Chinese: opening and reform) policies. Young women in the 1980s were starting to judge an ideal husband prospect on whether he had, as the saying went, four things that went round: a watch, a washing machine, a sewing machine, and a cassette player. Three and a half decades later, the pressure for a potential groom is to have a job, a flat, a car, and savings. All of Ash’s male characters struggle with those material standards of success and desirability.

By far the most colorful stories in the book have to do with the cultural behavior of these six individuals and the trends that seduce or repel them. They are the first generation of netizens, gamers, cosplayers (yes, my senior comrades, look that up!), skateboarders, graffiti artists, tattoo boasters, punkers and rockers, barristas, fashionistas, and small-business owners. And it is here, in the cultural realm, that rebellion finds space. It may be in the rejection of being predictable “ant people,” college grads who commute like sardines long distances to work at underpaid jobs. They are mostly outsiders — not from Beijing — and live at the edges of the city.

The Chinese love for coining names is an insight into Mandarin culture — the delicious interplay of characters that are similar in design but with different tones imply different meanings. Ash tickles us with this new vocabulary. Those living in the windowless underground basement cubicles are called the “rat tribe.” There are also the “working grunt tribe” and “urged tribe” — the nine-to-fivers pressured into conformity — and the “bite the old tribe” living off mum and dad. All of this naming implies a critique. A consciousness of conformity versus nonconformity.

If the language offers up an ecology of resistance, the more profound venue of that rebellion exists online. “There was no justice but keyboard justice,” Ash claims, as at least one of his characters (Dahai) takes to the web with millions of other netizens to complain and protest corrupt cadres, environmental degradation, forced late-term abortions, or major infrastructure accidents that the Communist Party would like to literally bury. Ash argues that the underlying grievance of the netizen activists was social inequality and their anger at the riches being carted off by the party and business elites. For them, the system felt rigged.

Occasionally the online protest manifested itself physically in the streets. Usually only outside of Beijing — in the capital the consequences would be too serious. We learn that the only street protests permitted by the Communist Party are nationalistic outbursts, usually against Japan.

While it has been censored and blocked by an ever-tightening firewall, the creativity unleashed by this generation in couching politically forbidden references in a new vocabulary is mindbending.

Xi Jinping’s coming to power in 2013 put an end to much of the creative resistance in blogging by defanging Weibo and arresting those who used forbidden language. Then technology changed again. WeChat (like WhatsApp) became the new communication vehicle. More personal.

By far the most sophisticated exploration of political consciousness comes with Ash’s story of “Fred” (the English name for a daughter of a high party official who pursues a PhD in politics at Beijing Normal University). Through her evolution — which includes joining a campus Christian discussion group for a while — we see how ideology works. She leans toward different perspectives on campus: free-market neoliberalism, central authoritarian control, and Mao-era egalitarian idealism. When Fred does postgraduate work in the United States — to study the American constitution — she is attracted to some American values and legal protections, but she concludes that systems that work in the United States wouldn’t necessarily work in China. She, like the Communisty Party, fear they would lead to chaos. Perhaps more revealing is her conclusion that the US and China have much in common: “Both had a strong sense of exceptionalism. Both wanted to be number one. Both were obsessed by personal and national quests for money and power.”

If there is a frustration with the book and its gaggle of characters, it’s my desire for at least one of them to tap into the riskier territory of dissent. In the West, we hear about human rights lawyers who have been jailed, journalists who have lost their jobs or quit over government heavy-handed censorship, journals closed down, feminist activists who have been arrested for raising issues of women’s rights. None of Ash’s cast indicate any interest in these events.

Perhaps I only want one of Ash’s protagonists to acknowledge the courage and ideas of former generations of dissenters. When I arrived in Beijing, the democracy movement had just been crushed. Wei Jingsheng, the most eloquent voice of that movement, had just received a 15-year jail sentence for calling for democracy and referring to Deng Xiaoping as the new dictator. Artists were marching in the street for the right to free expression. Most of these actors were former Red Guards. Many participants in the Beijing Spring movement went on to lead or participate in the Tiananmen Square protests. They were part of a continuum from the student-led May Fourth Movement of 1919. Where is that impulse in China among the millenials? Or am I missing what Ash is trying to tell us with his selection?

The richness of Ash’s book is in the character development, the details of everyday life, dreams, frustrations, and contradictions of these particular individuals. Ash enters their worlds as a peer (he is their same age) and he’s a sensitive listener, reporter, and storyteller. Through this particular constellation of players, we sense that the fact that China is gaining strength in the world complicates their instincts for rebellion and resistance.