Haonan Kuang UWP22
Generally, it is defined by people that a generation is about 20 years. Therefore, as time goes by, different generations have their distinguishing lifestyles, goals, experiences and values based on backgrounds. My grandparents belong to the cultural revolution generation, my parents belong to the sandwich generation and I belong to the Me generation according to Chinese definition. Actually, I found it is true that our opinions toward things have differences. Among them all, I think the biggest changes are the values and lifestyles.
In my opinion, the value a person believes decides his or her lifestyle in a certain extent because a value is an orientation of choice based on cognition, understanding and judgment. Therefore, lifestyles reflect their values.
Almost every Chinese generation has been deeply influenced by the culture of Confucianism and Daoism. Most Chinese people believe they should be kind and justice, so it is the same value that is admitted by every generation. However, relying on their different background of society and policy, different generations have their unique lifestyles and values.
The lifestyles of the cultural revolution generation were very different from other generations’. Distribution system controlled their lifestyles mainly. And the principle of how to allocate was based on their location, seniority and ability. My grandparents were both successfully admitted into universities, which was very hard during their time. This made them to have better distributions than others who did not enter universities. After got into the distribution system, their lives had been set step by step. As a result, their values are struggling and steady since everything would follow a rational line once they get in there.
Comparing with the lifestyles of Me generation, they have much more freedom and choice so they are more “rebellious”. Everything is possible if you want to. They were born in the best period of China. As mentioned by Mary O’Hara-Devereaux in her article “China’s 5 generations: Diverging lifestyles,” “the astounding rapid economic growth of China to the world’s seconded largest economy, the diffusion of cell phones, manned space flight, the rise of social media…” Although Me generation has been always denounced because they like little emperors and empresses who have been spoiled wholly, problems are not formed by themselves, there are many effects that cause these problems. Among all the effects, the one-child-per-family policy in China raises the problem of lacking responsibility, forbearance and team spirit. My parents are eldest brother and eldest sister in families, which may cultivate them to be strong all the time. So, they had learnt to be responsible from a very young age because they have to. Therefore, their generations reached mental maturity in a much earlier age than Me generation. But I believe these problems will be solved little by little when Me generation adept to the society.
In fact, Me generation has their special values when people ignore their problems. Instead of the value like steady of the cultural revolution generation, they are more competitive and creative. Starting a business is very risky in the minds of older generations. However, the born of Internet has built a new world for younger generations to create their dreams. It is now very popular for the Me generation to open online stores by themselves. Even them failed sometimes, they have the ability to recover soon and chase for their aims and goals again and again. They have more courage of trying everything they want and taking the risk of failures.
To sum up, although all the generations have distinguishing problems, every generation takes over the world in turn. I believe that all the things are developing in a good tendency. And from all the differences of lifestyles and values, we could find that younger generations are much more energetic and hopeful. The more energetic people are, the better the future will be. Moreover, in a world with less restrain, the resistance from the outside world should be less too. Hence, facing the best world we have now, younger generations need to consider how to evolve better.
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