3 things the West gets wrong about Chinese Millennials | Zak Dychtwald | TEDxQingboSt

[Applause] - sound good - yo watch it away Shanghai doing like a guru fishermen uyama Karen Yamaguchi Australian Donita da da da da GU hai ting man data items Angela g-wagen - wishin to guys here was I too much Jimmy Tony Anna as a tray can say what something upon your eyes this is for some yen - what a yogya gym teacher Huang job so a job Choi Jin Eon switch on guys yeah so I'm an American millennial JC guy I'm an American millennial um there's 80 million of us everyone else know who we are where we stand for who we're gonna vote for what we want to buy you know but again there's only 80 million of us there are over 400 million Chinese Millennials um China are number one on the other side young China also means an ancient culture reemerging as a modern nation reemerging with a modern identity in today's world young China when we think about young China we often don't consider who China is becoming who China is going to be and that's a mistake often we look at China we look at the past so first Who am I I'm sure you guys have realized by now that I'm actually not Chinese I first came to China in 2010 because I was a big fan of science fiction I figured I could study abroad I was at Columbia at the time figured I could go to Europe and study history or go to China and see where everyone was saying the future was happening now when you set it up like that it's a relatively easy decision I came here in 2012 I didn't speak Chinese I I came with the backpack I had an address of a hostel I didn't have a job I had nothing else and what I quickly found out was the China I was experiencing it was probably different than the China that was being described to me when the media describes China we usually describe sort of three versions first you have the government which is you know scary Jun first we have the government which is scary next we have the macroeconomics which is exciting and then whenever the media describes people it's usually one of extremes you know you have super rich super poor sort of a Maserati driving but people still eating dog eating dog meat eating population um you have what you have a ghost town where nobody lives or you have overpopulated subways in Beijing where people have to get pushed on we don't often talk about being normal the average so what I'm trying to do is help people outside of China understand what normal life is like here because this generation of young China is soon going to be the Pathfinders for the emerging China there will be guiding China's modern step on to the modern stage so again the question I want to ask everyone here is how well equipped do you think the world is to understand you Sunday via three points the first one is progress now everyone understands that China has changed very fast that China has progressed very fast but few people think about what that does to one's mindset how does a culture of rapid change shift the way you see the world there's an essential question that we don't think about with China often when we meet someone in China we ask where are you from you know Juan Chama cheating Beijing you know what have you we asked where you're from what we should be asking is when you're from China changes so fast that rather than which city are from north south east west whatever what era you're from what generation you're from is often your most defining characteristic this is my dad some song this is my dad in 1969 now in 1969 my dad was clearly a hippie and he was deciding whether or not he should go to a Woodstock Music Festival does everyone here know what Woodstock Music Festival is that's what's not so this is America in 1969 Woodstock was best known for three things first sex second drugs third rock and roll my dad's decision to go to Woodstock there's a lot of anthropological wrapping around that decision you know he probably had some disposable time he probably had disposable income he was probably rebelling against something right so you can learn a lot about somebody by their decision whether or not to go to Woodstock now this is a picture that one of my friends parents helped me choose in China this is China in 1969 this generation was best known for their ability to chew cool to eat bitter to do difficult things for long periods of time at the prospect of delayed gratification this generation was not thinking about sex drugs and rock and roll so I was born in 1990 this is Sean hi in 1990 my friends were born in Shanghai in 1990 this is the Shanghai they were born to this is Shanghai in 2015 and so we do a lot of talking where I'm from about generation gaps my generation is so different than my dad's generation you know Millennials versus boomers they're so different but in reality you know the 1969 2016 that's Coachella China doesn't have generation gaps China has generation goals we often don't think about what this cultural rapid change does to this generations mindset in fact we can quantify this so the per capita GDP is a pretty good metric for measuring the quality of a life right per capita GDP so I'm from the United States when I was born in 1990 since I was born to today our per capita GDP has increased has increased two and a half times in my lifetime which is pretty good which means that my parents could afford two and a half times better tutoring the trips that we took were maybe two and a half times longer the cars that my neighbor drove maybe two and a half times better in China if you were born in 1990 you've watched your per capita GDP increased 27 times maybe it's just a developing country thing right India five Germany 1.9 Brazil 3.2 in fact when you look at the entire world the top 70 performing economies in the world there is only one other country outside of China whose millennial generation has witnessed this much change and China still ranks number one by the way this is Vietnam an alternate title to the slide can be what's going on in Vietnam right that's like a lot going on what I'm trying to tell you now is that those of you sitting in this room and those of you outside of this room in China that the amount of change that you've seen in your lifetime is globally unique nowhere else in the world is like it and what I'm trying to tell everyone outside of this room when you look at Chinese Millennials when you look at Chinese young people and you just kind of want to treat them like you know American Millennials but with different haircuts we live different lives second point the project of childhood what is a childhood for you know there are a few stereotypes about Chinese kids little Emperor's shall indeed they are test monsters culture while they are insular and what else that there what what are some other stereotypes about Chinese kids often we underestimate this young generations ability to think innovatively right I'm gonna tell you a story about a young man named in 2013 I was a teacher this picture was actually taken exactly one year after I moved to China no exactly one year after I graduated from college and as a teacher you know if we think that young people in China particularly young kids are little Emperor's then I'm clearly the court jester in this metaphor right so this was this is kind of hard for me I was a teacher at a technology school at a school that also taught young people robotics so my class was full of six five year olds and jinhua was one of them I initially thought that general was gonna be spoiled but his class went on you know he was just a normal kid she was curious he was excited he worked well with others and it would have been an entirely normal class or if not for the fact that at the back of the classroom for those six children in the classroom there were 12 parents and 24 grandparents at a glass partition watching every twist of a microscope every punch of a keyboard after class I went out and I heard Jim bull on the side of the room crying I went over to see what's going on and I see around general is his grandparents are patting on the back and arguing his dad is looking confused on the side and his mom and his grandmother are showing him flashcards microscope amoeba keyboard there all the words that we learned that day in class I asked his mom you know what's going on I didn't assign any homework and she said general is gonna have to take the GAO cow the college entrance exam in 13 years I'm trying to give him the edge you know we had this idea of little emperors because of China's inverted demographic pyramid right we think of that system the four to one system for grandparents to parents one child as a funnel as a funnel for love for attention for resources in the West we don't also think about how this is also a funnel for pressure think about being a little jingle in the room with four grandparents two parents watching your every move all right that pressure is directed that study this is one of the other stereotypes right we have this idea that Chinese kids can only study that their insular that they only work amongst themselves but even that's changing what's so interesting about this young generation in China is that most of them can actually speak English I think we have this idea of China outside of China that this young generation has never been exposed to the outside world that the internet that they can't see beyond their world when in reality my friends in China are far more fluent in the outside world than we are in China you know I have firms who can quote Martin Luther King jr. and Barney from How I Met Your Mother in the same sentence there's a comfort and culture that there's a comfort in outside culture that frankly the West blacks in China in China one third of all study abroad students in the United States come from China currently it's a generation whose broadly exposed to the outside world this is an interesting line more to rip okuu okhla it means crossing the river by feeling the stones don't shopping said this to describe china's modern economy post 1980s this was china's way of dealing with the changes in the world it's a beautiful way of saying that i don't really know exactly what I'm doing you know my eyes are closed and I'm trying to cross the river of time and history feeling stone by stone find up trying to find steady purchase but it also embodies what's happened in China over these last few years there's a culture of such rapid change that this young generation if nothing else has learned to adapt this culture of incredible change means this young generation has to adapt adapt adapt and what that means is they also had to learn how to adopt there is this idea of Chinese young people that they're not innovative instead of asking is this young generation innovative we should be asking are they adaptive can they adapt to the modern world and I think looking here we can see we can again the stereotype is China innovative or not think about how much they've had to change think about how much you've had to change in your lifetime just to keep up with the times in China we say GOM bhishan ba ba ba ba the plans can't keep up with the changes because everything changes so fast in China this is one of the most adaptive generations in the world this is an interesting plant cultural gravity what do I mean by that well first I want to talk about pride this young generation is incredibly proud when I show this slide outside of China people usually tell me that they think that this generation of this group of young people the first thing that they think of is brainwashed seriously and then I tell them a story so in 1996 my friend Tom he was born in 1990 in Sichuan just outside of Chengdu and he tells me that the very first time he saw America was in 1996 at the Olympics this was the Olympics in Atlanta he went to his neighbor's house and his mom points the TV screen and says look there's America it's the greatest country in the world that year the United States won 44 gold medals in China 116 now in 1996 China was still a relatively poor country so 16 gold medals was already a coup for that group of people now he fasted at 2008 tom is now 18 he watched the Beijing Olympics the Beijing Olympics is now known as the greatest show that mankind has ever put on on earth in the history of our entire of the entire human species that year China won I believe 51 gold medals and the United States won 36 so how much is a gold medal worth not much but what about the price of pride this young generation has seen so much change in their lifetime you guys have seen so much evidence around you you know I think when we imagine China's rapid growth we've imagined something very abstract outside of China but when you're here it's hard not to imagine you know your uncle's your aunts working harder working harder so they can get a new apartment you've watched your city evolve around you it's a personal change we often think about something that's being pushed by the government not pushed by the people and if you've grown up here and time and a time and gun this is something that's been told to me if you've seen the change yourself it's a personal change and then something you can feel proud now that's not to say that this young generation doesn't have an understanding that there are flaws in China I actually wanna make that really clear a lot of people always ask me well China is clearly not perfect of course China is not perfect one of the interesting things because of this young generation is so exposed to the broader world there's more recognition that rather than believing that the West was as perfect as they were told when they were young increased exposure has actually led to less admiration for what they used to believe was the city on the hill young people who are beginning to recognize that okay China's not perfect but nobody's perfect nowhere it's perfect and at least they've been a part of creating something they can believe in the West we do something that I refer to as the Shanghai fallacy a lot of foreigners come to China they go to Shanghai to eat a steak right they have a glass of wine they look out on the Bund they speak with their english translator they go home and they think for China modernization means westernization in reality Shanghai is the least representative in China my last point comes to the idea of cultural gravity if Shanghai is the least representative in China if the rest of China is evolving in its own way that means that everyone here has a new question ask how does China want to impact the world you know since really the end of World War two since around 1945 as a country has modernized they typically westernized you know the United States in particular created a world system even if it's economic if it's government what-have-you they created a world system that has countries modernized they usually fall into our cultural gravity they fall into our orbit what's so interesting about China right now and particularly this young generation is they're so many people there's so much economic and political impact that China for the first time ever in the East can be a power for what's called Eastern ization China is becoming so strong that for the first time ever there's enough cultural gravity here that China can begin to impact the way that our world spins so the question I have for everyone here is what do you want to stand for when I give this speech or what I talk to people outside of China what they always ask me are what are chinese values what is this young generation believe in how are they gonna impact the world people don't know honestly people don't know and that's why a lot of people are scared so my question and my challenge for all of you is to start to think about that if China really is if Eastern ization really is going to be a process that begins that starts that starts to impact the rest of the world what do you want to scan for what do you want to represent and for the rest of the world again I'm going back to this original question how well-prepared are we to understand young China

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 119,935

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Change, Childhood, Mindfulness

Id: myChmWNbBQc

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019