** 32nd book of 2021: Pivotal Generation **
For most of the world’s and China’s history, generations didn’t matter. Sons and daughters adopted the class and profession of parents, and life meandered through time. But with the modernity encouraged under Deng’s reforms, generation has become destiny. Indeed, circumstances change fast enough that plans cannot even keep up with circumstances. (计划当不上变化 )
Any economist can tell you about the unprecedented growth that China has accomplished over the last 40 years, yet outside observers still seem to miss the yawning chasm rapid economic growth has brought between the young and old. This is where Young China excels: * His country was becoming more like Brave New World than 1984 […] A population numbed by materialistic pursuits, discouraged from individual thought and the drug soma. Money, materialism, lavishness, extravagance, they distracted people from the pursuit of truth and decency. * The name for Chinese melennials is the ‘strawberry generation’ a play on words for their inexperience with hardship (吃苦), which literally translates to ‘eating bitterness’. Like the baby boomers of the American 60’s who ended up deeply alienated from the greatest generation thanks to the unprecedented prosperity of the 40’s and 50’s, Chinese millennials grew up with prosperity as their birthright, and are now looking for more.
Also like boomers, the desires of the previous generation loom large. In the case of China, these desires bear down on the current generation with the combined weight of centuries of continuous cultural expectation. From birth, preparation for high school tests and further education is an industry and national pastime. Students adopt the *(题海战术) sea of questions strategy * in an attempt to get admitted to schools that admit fewer than 1% of applicants. To get married, the expectation for men is to own a car and then a house, which has led to astronomical real estate prices in even 4th tier cities. For women, marriage before the age of 30, but after completing studies is expected, lest the dreaded moniker of ‘leftover woman’ be applied. It is not surprising then that
- The freedom most young Chinese people craved was not liberation from an oppressive strict government, but rather freedom from an impossibly demanding set of cultural expectations, as well as the freedom to determine their own fate. *
In America, baby boomers completely reshaped the cultural landscape, and put limits on the cold war. In the Arab world, the ‘Facebook Generation’ brought about the Arab spring, only to watch such dreams crumble with the ensuing Arab winter. I expect China’s strawberry generation to be pivotal for the country, if not the world. Unfortunately most authors are more interested in cultural novelty, as * there’s something satisfying about cultural novelty that would be diminished by explanation. * Dychtwald doesn’t get all the details right, but this is a story that needs to be told outside of China, and I’m glad somebody is telling it.