The gods and goddesses of the new China

The regulation of family size has not diminished the family honour system. The difference now, however, is the upholding of these traditions now devolves upon the single offspring of the modern family. Each single child from birth carries the weight of this burden.

The astounding and radical change in society that has led, in the last ten years, to a giant step from an agrarian to a capitalist society has resulted in disorientation for many families. Couples who started married life scratching a living in the village of their ancestors, now find themselves living in a Western-style apartment and driving a late model car to work. Elders can no longer advise or hand on learned wisdom as the sudden change has opened up chasms over which the generations cannot cross. Multi-story apartment blocks do not provide the support or security found in a small village where most people are bound together by family ties.

Marooned in apartments from which they can view their childhood being torn apart by wrecking balls and bulldozers, many parents now rely on their children to pull them across the great divide into the modern world.

The added expectation that their offspring will chart the shoals of this new society for parents often leads to a complete role reversal. I have, for instance, been to formal dinners and business functions where the teenage child of a wealthy business person attends as the spokesperson for the parent. These children often come to believe that it is upon them that the responsibility for a positive outcome rests.

In my classes students whose grandparents were illiterate and whose parents attended only rural elementary schools are expected to bring educational laurels to the family. Those whose interests or abilities do not fit them for academic life are nevertheless expected to graduate with high marks. No matter in what direction their skills lie they are all impelled to study in the direction their parents have chosen for them. Failure is the biggest shame they could bring upon their family. Mediocrity is not even contemplated. Life for these children is a serious responsibility.

Sympathetic to these parental goals and bound in their own culture of honour and "face", the schools and universities strive to turn out high achievers with the excellent grades that will attract a continuous supply of pupils from the best families. From primary school onwards students work diligently from early morning to late evening, living on-site in segregated dormitories. Anything that will detract them from serious study is frowned upon.

Even university students adhere to ten o’clock curfews. The penalties for exceeding curfew by even a few minutes are grave - those who miss curfew altogether are liable for expulsion. With the hopes and expectations of their entire family embedded in them it is not difficult to demand compliance to what Western students would consider draconian rules.

It is not therefore unusual for university students, on being asked about their plans after graduation, to preface their answers with “When I grow up I want to …”. It is not conceived as paradoxical that, bowed down under the weight of parental and family obligation, shouldering immense workloads and adult stress levels, these young adults are nevertheless treated as children by parents and faculty alike.

Treating them as children is perhaps understandable when parents will never have another child; it also helps to maintain school and university discipline. It further ensures that adults of 23 or 24 still giggle and scuffle about seating arrangements in class to segregate the genders; sex and bodily functions remain impenetrable mysteries; and no one questions the curfew rule.

It is, however, yet another pressure with which young adults contend: not having an understanding of the bodily changes they undergo, having no outlet for the sexual tensions and frustrations for which they have no language and uneducated about hormonal influences, many are emotional roller-coasters.

It is not at all uncommon for female students to break down at inopportune moments or for male students to engage in the kind of hysterical bouts of horseplay usually outgrown with sexual maturity. Many of them have confided that they feel frightened and anxious about their mental stability or that they feel there are two distinct people at war within their bodies.

They are anxious and emotionally confused and exhibit the kinds of symptoms which, in Western countries, would be associated with acute depression. These fears and burdens are all the more frightening for them in a society culturally restrained from free and open discussion of such matters.