Are you spoiled because you are an only child? In his eyes, China’s younger generation is “young and old.”[BOOK]

book cover

portrait of young people
By Peter Hessler
Translated by Park Gyeong-hwan and Yoon Young-soo
jar of writing

Author Peter Hessler conducted a survey among Chinese students in 2019. Should same-sex marriage be legalized? He was concerned that this might be an overly sensitive topic. However, the result was 79% in favor. It turns out that this is not controversial, let alone sensitive. He passed the same survey to his former students, who were the parents of this ‘Generation Xi’ and the ‘reform and open generation’ born in the 1970s. This time, 84% were against. In a country that has changed rapidly over the past 40 years, these two generations are living with completely different experiences and thoughts.

Graduates of Chongqing Postal University in Chongqing, China, wearing masks and attending the graduation ceremony in June 2022. [로이터=연합뉴스]

The author is an American born in 1969. In 1996, he came to China as a Peace Corps member and taught English for two years in the riverside city of Fuling. His first book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze River (2001), received favorable reviews as a masterpiece of non-fiction about modern China. While working as a journalist, he returned to Chengdu, China in 2019 and taught journalism at a university for two years. The result is this book. The original title is ‘Other Rivers: A Chinese Education.’ You can tell that it is a sequel to the first book, “River Town.” The meaning of the subtitle ‘Education in China’ is revealed at the end.

When the author describes a new generation, the life journeys of the students he taught 20 years ago are recalled and compared. This is not something that can be done through ordinary reporting. This is only possible when, like the author, you build relationships by staying in constant contact with students from 20 years ago. The emotions created by this depth of time in this book are amazing. However, the trend of the present and the past coming together is interrupted midway through the book. This is because of the major event called COVID-19.

Several stereotypes have been formed regarding China’s younger generation. Representative examples include having passionate nationalistic tendencies due to media control and strengthening ideological education, and being spoiled as an only child. Young people on the Internet who act like modern-day Red Guards are called small pinks. However, the author confesses that although he knows that there is such a thing as a small pink, he has not seen such a person among the students. The students I encountered were far from spoiled, let alone minor emperors.

Chinese fans at the youth soccer stadium in Qingdao, China, where a soccer match between China and Indonesia was held last October. [로이터=연합뉴스]

China’s Internet control is a fact. But it is also meaningless. VPNs that allow you to bypass Internet barriers are widely used, and universities even hand out VPN subscriptions to instructors (without which research would be impossible). The author does not defend the Chinese system. It just tells us that aspects of real life are a little different from what is said.

However, the author’s weakness may be in the repetition of ‘I know it exists’ and ‘It’s true, but’. The author is well aware of the lines drawn by the Chinese Communist Party and tries to stay away from them. However, despite such caution, a student appears who politically criticizes what he said during the lecture by posting it on the Internet. The author never finds out the identity of the student. At the end of two years, the university notifies the author that it has no intention of extending the contract.

One day, the author asked students to choose the character they most resonate with in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The person who got the most votes was old Benjamin, a cynical bystander. The author summarizes the characteristics of this generation with the term “young and old.” They do not like this system, but they accept it with indifference because they believe it is unchallengeable and that there is no alternative. “They are risk averse.” There were also students who did not look like young or old people. Appearing from the first page, this is a student who failed to register for the course but said he really wanted to audit it. She, who was unusually enterprising, sets out to report on a forbidden topic towards the end of the book, but is eventually called in and investigated. She sends a letter. He said he cried at that time, became a little more realistic, and seemed to have grown. That was ‘Chinese education’.

Kim Young-jun, former editorial director of Open Books