The world was a radically different place after 1989. Political upheaval rocked China and Eastern Europe; the Berlin Wall came down; the Cold War ended; the spread of global capitalism and the invention of the Internet brought on a tidal wave of change that transformed human society. Now in their early twenties, the generation born after 1989 grew up in an era of unprecedented economic integration and revolutionary new technology; Douglas Coupland calls them "The Diamond Generation," for their many faces and for their purity of heart. This issue, we've given over the entire magazine to the poetry, fiction, and art of the post-Cold War generation, with stories by eight young Chinese authors—Guo Sheng, Li Yuan, Prussian Blue, Shui Gui, Yang Mu, Zhang Yusi, Zheng Zaihuan, and Zhou Kai—as well as Malaysian writer Ding Kaibin and Singaporean novelist Ho Rui An; art by Yuan Keru; and a tri-continental sampler of poetry by up-and-coming poets from the U.S., U.K., China, Spain, Mexico, Romania, Denmark, and the Netherlands, all of whose work appears here for the first time in Chinese. This issue's Peregrine presents their work in the original English or in English translation: poems by Rachael Allen, Gabby Bess, Harry Burke, Sophie Collins, Nanna Juul Lanng, Lieke Marsman, David Meza, Luna Miguel, Vlad Pojoga, Miguel Rual, Jacob Steinberg, and Yu Youyou, some appearing for the first time in English. Inspired by the 89plus Marathon launched by Chutzpah! guest editors Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist, this issue paints a collective portrait in miniature, grabs a small handful of the myriad uncut diamonds that lie scattered across the globe, waiting to be discovered.
