Different Generation, Different Attitude

Published on by Yinglan

I hope you all are having a Happy New Year.

I just came back from a morning of festivities. We watched  the Rose Parade on TV and went out for morning tea, my aunt’s treat. Then we went to the Chinese Supermarket to pick up some things for our trip to Idaho tomorrow. Yay! Finally road trip! The best part, it’s just me and my mom. 🙂

As we made our way home, we laughed and gasped at my aunt and my retelling of my nightmare last night. Apparently, my aunt heard me screaming and thought I was watching the count-down. That’s ridiculous because it was 1:30 am. She was also kind of waiting for a loud thud which would indicates I fell off of the bed. Obviously that didn’t happen, otherwise, I would be seriously injured and not be sitting here typing.

I won’t be retelling my nightmare because it’s way way too silly, because of the laughter.

When at last I woke up this morning at 8, I went onto the browser to took a gander at the prompt today. Honestly, I don’t know if I can see myself in anyone else but me. I do, however, often wonder what I would be like if I am from my mom’s generation, the 1960’s. Would I grow up to be a hard-working person like her? Would I have a lot of permanent friends? Would I grow up to be a different person than I am now?

Lately, she has been repeating this phrase a lot (I won’t say it, it’s offensive) and it’s been really getting on my nerve because it hurts and very judgy. I mean, don’t judge people before you get to know them, right?

She seems to assume that everyone born in the 1990’s are lazy, not willing to work, and media and techno frenetic. That’s obviously not true. There are a lot of hard-working people that are born in 1990’s that are the opposite of those things.

So you can see it makes me wonder and a little curious, not about the media and the technology part but the hard working part.

Are people born before the 90’s harder workers than those born after the 90’s?

What do you think?

18 thoughts on “Different Generation, Different Attitude”

  1. Being an old person and having taught your mom’s generation and yours I’d have to quote Confucius, “Each generation is worse than the last” which is always the opinion of the older generations of the younger generations.

    In your mom’s case, however, she also grew up in a different China than even exists today. When she was 20 most south Chinese apartments didn’t even have their own toilets but shared a communal toilet at the end of the hall as well as sharing a communal shower (cold water). Most apartments were one room and many people did their cooking in the hallway on charcoal. I don’t know your mom’s circumstances, but it was a hard job every day just to acquire food for the day and that’s what most people did as most people didn’t have refrigerators, never mind boiling water to drink. Laundry was a nightmare, too, especially in the rainy season. Everyone worked hard most of the time just to manage daily life.

    I’d equate you and your mom to me and my mom, actually. She grew up on a farm in Montana during the 30s. Everything was hard work for them; that generation said of us that we were lazy and had had life handed to us. Well, they handed it to us out of their own memories of deprivation and because the US was prosperous much as China was a lot more prosperous in the 90s than the 60s. There’s a Chinese film I saw recently that really shows this — but, naturally, I can’t remember the name. It was beautiful and so true.

    Anyway, just some random thoughts…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I can’t argue with that. I actually lived in the same house my mom lived in as a child when my grandfather took care of me when I was in elementary school. It was disgusting, at least in my point of view and it often made me wonder how my mom and her three siblings survived here. I mean no bathroom. The toilet was the ground. It was bleh and I had no idea how my grandpa even took a shower.

      Then after I came America, my mom often told me about her childhood which naturally, made me more and more curious.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      3. I think her generation and mine in China are kind of lost generations. Kids born in the 50s and 60s grew up in very strange, very poor and often terrible times.

        Liked by 1 person

      4. We recently watched a documentary made “secretly” by the Italians in the late 1960s and the 1970s. The film documented the living conditions in China.

        Yes, the conditions were poor and terrible but at the same time, there was a kind of peace, happiness, and oblivion that are impossible to find nowadays. I said oblivion because the government’s kept the knowledge about the outside world from its citizens and controlled everything. So I guess everyone just thought the outside world is just the same.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. I don’t know … there was a lot of dissent but dissenters were killed. But I think you’re right. The media was/is very powerful. My students in China thought life in America was very dangerous. The Chinese news pretty much ONLY printed good news, so when my students read American newspapers which focus on bad news, they believed that they were reading America’s GOOD news. Many of them believed I came to China for my safety because in the US there was a murderer behind every bush. I think after the war thee was a lot of hope that Communism would really help the people (and it did, but not all by itself) — but the 60s… Because of the mistakes he’d made during the Great Leap Forward which led to famine and unemployment, Mao distracted the people with the “purification” of Chinese culture through violence and destruction and torture.

        In the 80s China was coming out of that but most people except small children had known those times. One man I met in Hainan who was an overseas Chinese from Malaysia, his parents had fled the Japanese, came back during the Great Leap Forward to help the people. When the Great Proletarian Cultural revolution came around, he was imprisoned and tortured because he had lived overseas and he spoke English. When he was released and “rehabilitated” he was given materials to build a house and the government asked him to teach English in the village. Just listening to him talk was like reading the most horrific history book imaginable. He would have returned to Malaysia if he had been able to, but he was not allowed, of course. The style of house on Hainan has characters in concrete on each side of the door. His characters said, “Self Reliance” which was a slogan of Chairman Mao during the cultural revolution meaning China would not depend on anyone, but he meant he would rely on himself. It was an affirmation of his identity and his being. He was a remarkable man.

        Ying Lan, in my garage I have a box of Chinese novels from the Cultural Revolution. Would you like them? I would send them to you. There is no reason for me to have them. I’ve read them and I’m not going to do anything with them and it would make me very happy to send them to you. Let me know.

        Liked by 1 person

      6. Hi, sorry it took me so long to reply to your comment. The internet connection had been slightly unstable at my mom’s friend’s house and every time when I’m just so happens to be at the computer, my mom called me.

        Anyway, I agree, I watched the Chinese News before and I’ve seen that it only reports good news. My mom often complains that the news in the US reports only the horrible things like murder and theft. She even laughed.

        About the books, I am sorry but my home is already filled with so much stuff. Some of our things are still in boxes somewhere and my mom’s complaining about the lack of storage so I cannot accept the books, sorry.

        Liked by 1 person

      9. Good idea! My house here is not just smaller than my house in California, it has less storage. Still, I brought less than half of my stuff when I moved out here. I’m glad I did that!

        Liked by 1 person

  2. This is what I think…yes, we were hard workers because we had to be. Our jobs were a lot harder to do and we didn’t have the modern conveniences, like dishwashers, in our homes. The generation after us are probably not as hard working because they were brilliant and invented the technologies that made work easier and for them to have the ability (and money) and time to play with computers, video games, etc. The question would be, work harder or work smarter? 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I have to agree that the past generations do not have the modern conveniences that we have. I wish so much that that is still that way today but unfortunately, the technology just gets better and better.

      It is also unfortunate that technology is taking away manual labor, hence my mom’s assumption about the 90’s generation. I believe my mom’s assumption was based on observation of my 17-year-old cousin because since he came, he’s been cooped down in the basement and not willing to perform any manual labor. Even just a couple days ago when we had to shovel snow, while I was busy shoveling the sidewalk, my cousin was just standing there, barely moving. So no, I don’t mean work smarter, I mean work harder as in manual labor.

      Thanks for reading and commenting.
      Yinglan

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      2. To be honest, this is my mom’s assumption, not mine. She got the idea when I was teaching english at the local private school. She’s like, “That’s why your generation is worse than mine.” So I’m just guessing who she’s basing it upon.

        Liked by 1 person

Anything you want to ask? Want to know?