Newsweek and the Chinese fountain of youth

Newsweek has story Shanghaiist can relate to this week. It's called "The Drifter" and has a subhead "Young expats looking for adventure and opportunity are being drawn to China, where the economy is booming, rents are cheap and skills in short supply." The story tells us that "China seems to be awash in expats who seem content to drift from one job to another before landing something that catches their fancy." Who is the lead subject for this story? Jeremy Goldkorn, who is the main man behind Danwei.org. Here's what they say about him:

Jeremy Goldkorn spent six years hanging out in Beijing, drifting from job to job. He taught English for a while. He rode his bike through Tibet. For a year he worked at Beijing Scene, an entertainment magazine, until it was shut down a year later. He bounced between Beijing and Silicon Valley for a high-tech company, until it went belly up. By 2001, he had resettled in Beijing to start a bilingual entertainment magazine, which became Time Out, but quit after nearly a year “mostly because I wanted to do my own thing,” says Goldkorn, a 34 year-old South African. In 2002, Goldkorn helped start Standards Group, a Beijing advertising, Web-site and corporate video agency that now boasts lucrative blue-chip clients. “China is a superb place if you want to get your teeth into different types of creative work,” he says.

We're sure Goldkorn, like Shanghaiist, was excited to learn this bit of info: Newsweek thinks we're young! The title to the story's web page (it is a "WEB EXCLUSIVE") is "Why Young Expats are Heading to China." The age range of the people mentioned in the story is 29 to 40. Dreams really do come true in China!

Photo of Jeremy Goldkorn from Standards Group.