Recently, I’ve begun to think a lot
about young people in Shanghai, and in China in general. Last weekend I got the
chance to attend the X-games as well as some music festivals (the Midi music
festival and the Strawberry festival). The music and dancing were fun, but I
found myself mostly people watching. Like I have seen at most of the music
festivals I have been to in the US, teenagers and twenty-somethings dress to be
seen. At times it didn’t feel like I was in China at all, or at least the China
you think you’re in when you see high school students crowded together on the
sidewalk, each one dressed in the same white and red track-suit uniform. Instead,
I saw in their outfits more fun and individuality than I have ever seen before.
But one aspect that seemed purely “China” were the red scarves that many of
them wore at the music festivals, around their arms and around their necks, and
I didn’t have to look too far to find someone dawning a Mao-style hat with the
unmistakable red star sewn right above the rim.
I think that’s the most interesting
part about seeing so many young people gathered together in one place. The fact
that while there seems to be complete oblivion, there is also complete
awareness; a social awareness and a historical awareness. The Mao hats and red
scarves mixed with the wild ways that they dressed could be seen as the
contrast between suppression and freedom of expression. But at the same time,
those very scarves and hats unified them, each individual a part of a
generation different from the rest. I recently talked to my friend Jessie, who
is a student here at ECNU. She told me that the generation gap—between people
our age and the older generation of our parents—is growing, and there is a
clear clash between opinions and perspectives of both generations. I’m sure
that no parent in China would go to a music festival flaunting their red
scarves and Mao-attire. They were the generation who lived during Mao Zedong’s
reign and the immense limit of freedom under his Communist regime. They lived
through it all, so how could we, who did not live through that, possibly
understand all of the ingrained emotions and politics and nuances?
I did not grow up in China, and I
don’t know what it is to be young in China. But I think I understand what it is
to be a part of a generation where you feel both powerless and full of a
daunting responsibility; naive, but a historical conscience is embedded in
you. We are at that age when we are still young, where we are optimistic, but
this optimism is gradually being chipped away at to make way for cynicism. But
at the same time, I think this is what makes our generation unique. There are
responsibilities and challenges ahead of us; as the generation of our fathers
and mothers grow old, we must take their place, and maybe clean up the messes
that our leaders will have left for us. The future seems to be getting closer,
but perhaps that’s what makes being young—in China or in the US or anywhere
else—so exciting. We will be ready when the time comes, but for now, we can
keep dancing to the music.
