#phones

OP: We never found another phone this interesting after that. Let me show you the last glow of the millennium. (cr ETO数码)

When Chinese netizens talk about the millennium era, there’s always a lot of wistful reflection. In China, the so-called millennial generation (千禧一代qian xi yi dai)mostly refers to people born between 1985 and 1995. Their life experience differs greatly from Western Millennials, because China underwent lightning-fast leaps in society and technology while they were growing up. The shift hit them far harder on a personal level.

Specifically, their sense of time sets them apart from generations before and after. They spent their childhood fully immersed in the analog age—the kind of offline, street-side daily life you see in shows like Neighbour Ma Dajie. Back then, most families didn’t own computers or broadband. The urban-rural divide was massive. You waited for cartoons to air on fixed TV schedules, or bought DVDs if you didn’t want to wait. Music came from cassette tapes, CDs and MP3 players. Newspaper and magazines were the main sources of information. Waiting for things was simply normal.

Yet through their teens and young adulthood, they watched the digital explosion unfold right in front of them: the arrival of QQ, the rise of internet cafes, early blogs, campus forums and countless Flash mini-games. This shift didn’t creep up slowly; it was an abrupt jump. Their lifetimes span the full migration path of modern information civilization: physical books - television - desktop computers - the internet - smartphones - AI or LLM.

Within just over a decade, the world raced forward to mobile payments, global social platforms and e-commerce. Their formative years straddled two entirely separate worlds, two opposing rhythms of life, ways of socializing and accessing information. Both realities are etched into their memories, leaving them with two distinct ways of perceiving time.