#GENERAL LIU RIFLE STORM DRIVERS#

At the Good Luck Marriage Introduction Agency, in a town a few hours' drive west from Liangyungang, two whiteboards mounted on the wall advertise the age, height, and income of available singles. These numbers work fine on the playground, but, for China's many match- making services, they may prove troublesome.

#GENERAL LIU RIFLE STORM DRIVERS#

The drivers of the cheerful little tanks circling an electric track: three and one.

The children running after kites adorned with Olympics mascots and China's Shenzhou VII spaceship: three and two. Near the ice-cream stand are a dozen sticky-faced kids, seven boys and five girls, feeding pigeons. One sunny Saturday morning at verdant Cangwu Park, I count six boys and three girls bouncing on the inflatable castle. According to the China Family Planning Association, it's the city in China with the most extreme gender ratio for children under four-163 boys for every 100 girls. Lianyungang, a booming port city in a Jiangsu province economic belt, is ground zero for some of these changes. The coming boom in restless young men promises to overhaul Chinese society in some potentially scary ways. But, in the process of plugging one hole, the government may have left another open. The one-child policy was instituted in an attempt to hamper the wild growth of the Chinese population. Eternally single men, by extension, maintain high levels of testosterone-a recipe for violent civil unrest.

A long-term study of Vietnam veterans in 1998 may explain exactly why: The subjects' testosterone levels, which are linked to aggression and violence, dropped when they married and increased when they divorced. The immigrants and westward migrants who shaped early America, Courtwright says, were largely young single men, who are- today as well as then-disproportionately responsible for drug abuse, looting, vandalism, and violent crime. Historian David Courtwright suggests in Violent Land that sexually segregated societies in the United States-frontier towns flush with unmarried men, immigrant ghettos in early twentieth-century cities, mining camps-are behind our propensity toward violence. In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People's Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society. The headline on a recent Shanghai Weekly article explains the games' appeal in unusually apt Chinglish: URBAN BATTLE: A VERY MAN ACTIVITY.īy the time these newborns reach puberty, war games may seem like a quaint relic. Still, the government can't seem to quash the urge among Chinese twentysomethings to unleash a few rounds. In a round-up last year, Beijing cops seized 3,400 guns and knives used in war games. Beijing periodically cracks down, and clubs sometimes disappear overnight. In gun-happy America, this hobby might not rise above the level of eccentricity but, in China, where most weapons are illegal, it requires a special degree of passion. Once outfitted, China's militiamen organize into clubs-Guangzhou Fight Men, Shanghai Band of Brothers, Tianjin Seals-and storm remote lots or abandoned warehouses, shooting at each other with pellets, to stage what they call 'war games.' The term belies the seriousness participants assign the activity: The more established clubs have dedicated battlegrounds whose surrounding trees are nailed with DANGER signs. For a few thousand yuan-a few hundred dollars-assault rifle-like air guns await in dirty back rooms, along with fatigues, bulletproof vests, kneepads, long underwear, camouflage t-shirts, rucksacks, bandoliers, helmets, helmet sleeves, walkie-talkies, and two-liter CamelBaks. Over the last decade, they cropped up in cities throughout China, tucked into raucous markets or along forgotten side streets, their interiors smelling of musty canvas and crammed with bounty for aspiring young soldiers: illicit weapons shops with names like ARMY GOODS STORE and GUNCOOL.

General liu rifle storm