“We’d known each other three weeks when we went to get a wedding certificate,” says the woman, who will only give her name as Cheng. “We were married for six months. We got married in a hurry, and we got divorced in a hurry. It was like a war broke out; we argued, divorce was mentioned, so we got divorced.”

Sitting at an outdoor coffee shop, Cheng is eye-catching in brown shorts and knee-high black stiletto boots. She says she has thought a lot since her divorce. She partly blames it on belonging to the generation of spoiled singletons, known in China as the post-1980s generation.

“Marriage requires forgiveness, understanding, tolerance and compromise. Yet we post-’80s generation neglect this entirely. No one will compromise. We just argue. Of all my friends who are married, 100 percent are unhappy,” she says.

Li Xuefeng, a 31-year-old divorced man, has set up Happy Divorce Village, an online club for those whose marriages have failed. He says marriages often fall apart over little things, like who should do the cooking or laundry.

When asked whether the single-child generation is too selfish for marriage, her answer is telling.

“Next time I’ll look for a husband with siblings,” Cheng says.

Read more about the Me Generation and divorce in China via CDT.

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Post tags: divorce, marriage, me generation, one-child policy
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China’s youth can get a bad press. In most accounts, they are the “Little Emperors” or the “Me Generation”, the spoilt and apolitical offspring of one-child families who are interested in fast cars, video games and designer goods but little else. At the main Shanghai store of Louis Vuitton there is a queue to get in at weekends – young women wait patiently in the rope line, as if they were trying to get into the hottest new LA club.

Yet the Me Generation is beginning to show its teeth. Simmering discontent about soaring house prices and the recent wave of strikes at car plants and other factories both speak of the rising and sometimes frustrated expectations of younger Chinese, who want more from their lives than their parents could dream of. It is a phenomenon that could have all sorts of consequences for China’s future.

There are lots of good explanations for the strikes of the past two months, including low pay and a demographic shift that is reducing the number of young people entering the workforce. But there is also a generational shift at play. Chinese often talk about their capacity to chi ku, or “eat bitterness”, which helps explain their resilience amid the chaos and privations of the past century. But the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s has grown up among much wider prosperity, even in poor parts of the countryside.

Twenty years ago, the main goal of many migrant workers in city factories was to send money home to struggling village families. Now they see the factory as part of a personal project, a first step towards an urban life. Internet access has made them more worldly and since a labour law passed in 2008 they have a stronger sense of their rights.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: labor unrest, little emperor, me generation, one-child policy, strikes, youth culture
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Despite having a reputation in the West as trailblazing citizen journalists, many of China’s young bloggers are seen by Chinese as egocentric, showy and self-serving. Most come from the “me generation”, a derisive term for youths born after the nation began its strictly enforced one-child policy in 1979.

[...]Many bloggers from the “me generation” are just like Zola. They may appear rebellious, and committed to exposing scandals, but they do this mainly for self-satisfaction or fame. The majority of these bloggers are not politically adventurous, and most, like Zola, won’t criticize the communist authorities. In short, they are apolitical.

[...] A new craze among young Chinese bloggers is T-Shirts with “democracy” written across the top in bold red and white letters, but it is only for fun. These digital boys and girls are not really serious about their pursuit of so-called “democracy” in China. Otherwise, they might have thought of some better way of doing it. Some, probably from the slightly older generation, stay low key on the Internet, so it is meaningful when they do stand up and say something. But none of the “me generation” has experienced any of the recent traumas in Chinese history, so perhaps it is difficult for them to understand the feelings of people who have gone through those tragic events.

© dwang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cyberdissidents, me generation, netizens
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Until recently, the way Chinese artists got famous was to talk politics. The generation that grew up during the Cultural Revolution and the difficult years that followed was highly politicized and gained global recognition for its tongue-in-cheek images of Mao Zedong and Tiananmen Square, often rendered in eye-popping color. Wang Guangyi’s kitschy communist-style propaganda posters incorporated iconic consumer logos, such as Coca-Cola and Porsche, and Yue Minjun mocked the fast-changing world with his paintings of large-mouthed men grinning relentlessly.

Though still hot, those new-wave artists are giving way to a very different group: the “me-first” generation, whose members talk about each other and themselves. Born in the 1980s under China’s one-child policy, they were still children during Tiananmen and are much less interested in politics and far more concerned with individuality. Unlike their elders, who use art to criticize the growing commercialism and inequality of post-Mao China, the younger generation is a product of that rapid economic transformation. Their parents doted on them. They’ve been exposed to a broader range of media, including the Internet, videogames, Japanese manga and Korean soap operas. Coffee rather than tea drinkers, they are as comfortable listening to American rock and hip-hop as to Cantonese pop.

Their work reflects their experience, informed by global fashion, technology and media. What they lack in edginess they make up for in innovation and an openness to experimentation with new media, like video and electronic art.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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Images of angry Chinese students beating up Korean protesters in Seoul and attacking Carrefour supermarkets at home may well have been the last thing Bo Yang, the controversial author of The Ugly Chinaman, saw before he died on Tuesday in Taiwan at the age of 88.

Mr Bo, renowned for his criticism of what he dubbed Chinese cultural tendencies towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and intolerance, spent nine years in prison in Taiwan . But he saved his most scathing criticism for the Chinese Communist party, which he accused of drawing out the worst characteristics of the Chinese people.

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
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From Tudou.com:

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© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, Japan, me generation, Nanjing Massacre
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Ten months after they tied the knot, Li Lei and Wang Yang, both 20-something Chinese professionals, decided it was time to break up so they could spend more time with their lovers. They signed on the dotted line on their divorce paper less than 20 minutes after answering “no” to a few key questions — “Do you have kids?” and “Any disputes on property?”

China’s phenomenal economic growth has created a generation of “emperors” and “empresses”, the now-adult children of China’s one-child policy, who often put their needs before anything and anyone else. Experts say many of this generation are unable to sustain relationships, a result of being spoilt only children, doted on by parents and grandparents who catered to their every whim. [Full Text]

- Read more about China’s “Me” Generation, via Time Magazine.

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Post tags: divorce, lifestyle, me generation, youth culture
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