The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 China 23I
n theory“The Bad Kids”, this summer’s most talked-about Chi-
nese television drama, is a thriller about a teacher turned mass
killer, matching wits with three plucky children in a quiet coastal
town. In practice, like all really successful horror stories, the 12-
part series is also a window onto things that frighten people in
their everyday lives. A case can be made that the drama—despite
its impressive body-count and inventive murder locations (a sea-
food buffet will never look the same again)—is really a meditation
about how hard it is to be a good parent, or a good person, in a soci-
ety that is as competitive, stressful and unequal as modern China.
In an era when entertainers are under ever-stricter orders to
promote “positive energy” and the joys of Communist Party rule,
that is quite a subversive theme. As a result, “The Bad Kids” offers a
case-study about how clever film-makers must operate in the Chi-
na of 2020. A sensitive, complex examination of the human condi-
tion, it is sprinkled with upbeat, censor-friendly details, some of
them jarringly at odds with the rest of the plot. The trade-offs have
worked. Official news outlets have praised the series. The Chinese
public, for their part, have also given it an exceptionally high score
of 8.9 out of 10 on Douban, a big online rating site.
Censorship-wise, it helps that the drama unfolds over the
course of a sweltering summer about 20 years ago, so that scenes
showing violent gangsters and loan sharks do not reflect on to-
day’s leaders. Indeed, it is possible to enjoy the show for its nostal-
gic recreation of a simpler China where childhood friends might
spend a hot night climbing rooftops or sharing lurid soft drinks
from glass bottles, rather than sitting in lonely silence as many
might now, gazing at smartphone screens. Some compromises are
easy to spot. Notably, the show depicts small-town policemen as
kindly paragons, bringing justice and comfort to the people of
Ningzhou, the fictional port where the killer works as a maths
teacher. Historians of corruption remember the era differently.
The drama is adapted from a novel by Zijin Chen, a dark study of
evil, both adult and juvenile. The screen version, made by iQiyi, a
Netflix-like streaming video company, depicts its three young he-
roes as mostly well-intentioned rebels, one of whom is tempted by
evil. The other two speak with a moral clarity that eludes many
adults in the show. Repeatedly, the murderous teacher plays on thepowerofeducation to change lives in China. He distracts a suspi-
cious policeman with advice about his daughter’s maths grades,
and offers free tutoring to the children who have rumbled him. His
youngest tormentor, a sweet-natured girl known as Pupu, sternly
replies: “Is school where you learned to kill people?”
In the book, the children are angry victims of adult betrayal,
ranging from sexual abuse to being disowned by a divorced father.
Two youths in the novel are the children of murderers, executed by
the state. The television drama offers a nuanced view of parent-
hood. Viewers see the flaws of a mother whom society might call a
model parent, pushing her clever son to study until his bedroom is
filled with academic trophies. He will have time for friends once
he has a good job, the mother snaps at a teacher concerned by her
son’s loneliness. Yet that mother is scared, not wicked. Divorced
from a cheating husband, she sees education as a way to armour
her son against a harsh world. “Promise you will be safe,” she tells
her child. They are the most loving words she utters.
One question comes up time and again: what does it mean to be
good? Scenes of supposed hospitality—banquets at which the
young are handed cash in red envelopes, or junior family members
are bullied to drink alcohol—are exposed as cold and empty. “A
man without ambition isn’t a man,” the maths teacher is told at a
dinner, as in-laws dissect his career prospects. The drama chal-
lenges the idea that respectability and virtue are earned by fulfill-
ing the family, social and professional obligations that cost ordin-
ary Chinese so much time and agony.Only connect
Even the law offers little help in defining virtue. “Whether your
dad is a good or a bad person is decided by a judge, not by you or
me,” a gruff policeman tells Yan Liang, a prisoner’s child. He is
proved wrong when Yan Liang’s father, a gangster sent to a mental
hospital with drug-induced brain damage, redeems himself with a
fleeting, almost miraculous proof of love for his son.
Several characters gain moral authority through such private
yet sincere acts of affection. Viewers mostly respect a police cap-
tain because they see his sweet, bantering-yet-supportive rela-
tionship with his daughter, not because he has stars on his epau-
lettes. Yan Liang, a ragged teenage runaway, steals a blanket for
Pupu and agonises aloud about following his father into criminal-
ity. When put to a life-and-death test, though, he does the right
thing. “I didn’t become a bad person,” he gasps with relief to the
gruff policeman who has become a mentor. It is a moving moment.
The censors’ hand can be felt soon afterwards, when Yan Liang
abruptly declares an ambition to join the police as an adult.
Devoted fans, including a Chinese-Canadian blogger about
television who uses the name AvenueX, suggest that attentive
viewers can see alternative endings hidden among the uplifting
patriotism. Notably, AvenueXpoints to clues that several charac-
ters die before the drama ends and should now be understood as
ghosts, visible only to those who care for them. Her arguments are
plausible, though the film-makers have rejected such theories.
Truth is a slippery concept in “The Bad Kids”. Many lies are told,
sometimes for selfish reasons, but also for fear of losing some-
thing precious. Truth-telling is at its most admirable when offered
as an act of love, for instance by a child who cannot bear the loneli-
ness of deceiving a parent for ever. This is a messy moral code, far
from the tidy, flag-waving pieties favoured by party chiefs. The
show’s popularity is cheering. In a China that rings with the din of
patronising, bossy propaganda, viewers crave a bit of messiness. 7Chaguan Lessons from a summer hit
A blood-drenched television thriller asks hard questions about right and wrong