An Insight Into The Effects Of Traditional And Modern Values Have On Chinese Students. In a space of little more than 60 years, a 5, 500 yer old culture has been all but dissembled; corevalues, traditions and lifestyle have been routed. The most obvious and important element of Chinese culture that has been fractured is the family unit. On the surface the ‘family’ is declared to be the center and heart of Chinese society; however, in reality the modern Chinese family is but a shadow of its past paradigm. The traditional family began to feel the strain in 1949, to fracture in the dreadful-decade of 1969 to 1979 and was finally shattered in 1979 with the double hit of the One Child Policy and the Open Door Policy. No one, at the time, could have possibly predicted or foreseen the cultural upheaval these policies would wrought on China; the former eliminated the large family demographic and the latter permitted not only financial development but foreign-cultural exports many of which are the antithesis of what past generations of Chinese had confronted. Never before has one country had to experience a cataclysmic social upheaval such as China has in the space of three decades; the upheaval is unique because it has concurrently affected three generations. It is the current school and university age Chinese that have to shoulder the dual burden of a longed for and evaporating traditional family structure on the one hand, and, on the other, nurture the future of this great nation. The post 1990's Chinese generation, in most cases, were raised in a household containing not only themselves and parents but also their grandparents. The grandparents are the last children of the Jia period, the traditional family unit: a family that had many members that not only included the grandparents, their children and grandchildren but also the wives of sons and their respective children; a patriarch, who had autocratic powers and controlled every element of the family; unquestioning loyalty and obedience to the family and its millennia old tradition of filial obligations, particularly in the rural areas of China; a unified and common family goal of enriching the family, all wealth earned by each family member belonged to the family. The onset of a communist regime in 1949, was the catalyst for the family-wealth of generations being stripped away for the alleged benefit of the whole. The usurping of wealth by the new socialorder, not only removed family assets, it removed a major adhesive element of the 'Jia': wealth creation. Despite the financial blow, the family-traditions of family-communal living and filialism were deep seated , the removal of wealth, although testing family unity, managed to subsist to the end of the 1970's and into the early 1980's. By the time of the Open Door Policy, the last of the 'jia' generations had their own children which are the parents of todays school and university age children. Todays parents with a weakened, but still strong 'jia' DNA strain, had the One Child Policy strapped to them-the 'jia' was finished-no more large families; and, in the early 1980's, no more wealthy families outside of a handful of government leaders who seemed immune to the sharedwealth ethos.

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Suddenly, in the mid to late 1980's 'greed was good'; making money was encouraged and where better to do it then in the large cities- the worlds largest human migration began, and to a lesser degree is still occurring...urbanisation! Parents from a rural heritage flooded into the cities on a scale never before evidenced. Millions of children were left with their grandparents; in many cases only seeing their parents once or twice a year, and then only for few days. The desire to accumulate wealth, for the first time in Chinese history, out shone the need to have children, so many young Chinese elected not to have children until they could financially afford them. 'Make money and get rich' became the catch cry of the generation that were to become the parents of todays student-class; it supplanted ancient family, community and social values -'greed was good'. By the mid-1990's many rural migrants were making good money; they were making more in month then they earned back on the farm in a year...China's Middle Class was being born! With money in the bank, Chinas emerging middle class members could afford what before would have been impossible. The most important requirement was to buy an apartment; next, to have a child, or if they had one reunite with it in their new city-apartment; then, relocate their parents (normally the husbands parents) to live with them and their child in the new apartment. The latter was partly motivated by a nearly forgotten filial responsibility, but more than that, by pragmatism; Chinese are among the most practical people in the world, having mum and dad live with the family was a proverbial 'win-win', or so they thought at the time, looking after the child gave the grandparents something to do while looking after the child while both parents work. And so here it begins! The biggest generational milieu of all time. Young modern children being raised by the last generation of the traditional 'Jia' era and financed by the 'greed is good' generation; a classic example of short term benefits creating long term problems. The Chinese school children, what I will refer to as the 'now generation', you and I deal with are being torn in two directions, the 'traditional' and the 'western'; the problem is further exasperated by a Chinese schooling system that has its roots in the Ming Dynasty and is at a loss on how to deal with the new Chinese generation. The 'now generation' are unique in China because they are the first generation in China that has never seen their parents work; the 'greed is good generation' , the parents invariably saw their own parents working, they saw the connection between working to make money. One of my young students recently described his parents as "walking ATM's,I ask they give"; the 'now generation' have only one responsibility; get good exam marks! The 'now generation', some of whom are described with that tired label of "little emperors", are lavished with total family attention. Under the Jia model, there were often many children, so attention was spread across many, not one; Chinese family 'love' is all consuming and demanding, with only one-child, that poor individual is submerged in well-meaning, but inevitably damaging, love from all members of the adult family; the child is pressured into accepting that they are the sole future of the family line and it's future income source. The family dream of a child that would gladly accept and carry the burden of the family future by exclusively focusing on his/her school work has been shattered by the western world; specifically, the internet.

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The Chinese 'now generation' is as computer savvy as any in the world; they are also the first Chinese generation that has the world at its beck and call with the click of a mouse. The internet showed them a world (America) that was everything that China was not; a world of fashion, glamor, freedom to disagree with parents and society, a world driven by materialism. Western values that were the opposite of the 'jia'; opposite to their grandparents, their day-by-day guardians and supposed mentors; computer games, the NBA, social media and youthful arrogance won out. The 'now generation' had the best of both cultures, western materialism and Chinese pandering; "if I want it, I tell them (parents) and I get it. If they hesitate, I show my displeasure, they relent and it is mine" is a paraphrase of the manipulative minds of the 'now generation'. If you visit China you will rarely hear a child cry, or if you do it is fleeting until the demand is fulfilled. The 'now generation' know nothing else, cry if you don't get it until you do. This placative response in engendered in todays high school and university students from birth; they understand no other way, to them it is as normal as eating and sleeping: it is not wrong, it is as it is. To expect a 'now generation' child that leaves China and enrols in a foreign school to flush a lifetime of conditioning down the drain and rapidly adopt a totally different behavioural mind set is futile and naive.

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