Grown-ups want in on all the fun
- Source: Global Times
- [09:05 June 01 2010]
- Comments
Baby Miguelin of Spain dons a traditional Chinese bib with a lucky pattern on it on Monday at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai ahead of International Children's Day Tuesday. Photo: CFP
By Chen Xiaoru
As schoolchildren citywide partake in planned activities for International Children's Day, young office workers are refusing to let their 9 to 5 responsibilities get in their way of playing like a kid Tuesday.
Determined to escape overtime hours at the office tonight, Zhu Xiaoming, 23, plans on celebrating his youth by ordering a kid's meal at KFC - and asking for the free toy included in the combo for children.
"I will continue to get myself a toy every June 1, no matter how old I get," said the local bank clerk. "It helps to keep me young at heart."
"I know it might sound childish, but being able to act like a kid once a year gives me a chance to forget about all my stress at work; and even if it's only for a day, it's nice to get a break from adult problems."
A product of the balinghou, or post-80s, Zhu is like many others of his generation, over-coddled by parents and grandparents since exiting the womb and anxious to skirt mounting pressures, according to a poll by China Job Online Corporation released Friday in the Henan Commerce Post.
Forty percent of the 2,000- plus respondents, many of whom were of the post-80s, said that they want to celebrate the youthful day, while over 10 percent admitted that they still do celebrate the holiday.
With the eldest of the Generation Y hovering around the age of 30 this year, and the youngest just starting their 20s, many are finding it tough to deal with the challenging realities involved in landing a decent job, paying off home loans and raising their own children, the study found.
As such, these grown-up children, considered spoilt, are interested in staying far removed from burdens inextricably linked to the modern fast-paced society, charging ahead at breakneck speeds, according to Yan Wenhua, a professor of psychology at East China Normal University.
"Families have become richer," she said. "Since the reforms and opening-up, the city has developed tremendously, and that has left children of the post-80s to feel like they do not need to grow up in a hurry, or shoulder the kind of responsibilities that their parents or grandparents did just to survive."
"The emergence of pop culture also encourages this generation to act the way they do," she added. "Reliving childhood memories is to some extent a good thing, but getting too carried away is also bad, and can be harmful to their ability to handle real life situations."
Yet, as the world marks the 85th International Children's Day, even wealthy post-80s-born like Gu Juhua - whose home boasts a television set in nearly every room - cannot help but feel nostalgic as the mother of a 4-year-old daughter realizes the world has become a very different place from the one she remembers when she was little.
"I still miss the old days when we would all gather in front of a tiny television, happily watching black and white pictures of the famous Hulu Brothers cartoon series," she said. "I may have more televisions now, but those happy times will never come back."
