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Liu Yuanju: Behind the hardship education is gratitude and guilt. This is a debt that Chinese generations cannot repay. The most concrete symbol is the pair of shoes that my father deliberately opened.

Text | FT Chinese columnist Liu Yuanju

I took a stroll after dinner and the child wanted to watch a movie, so we strolled into the cinema and watched "Catch the Doll".

I first learned about the movie "Catching Dolls" because of its name change, and later because of Lu Chuan's criticism. On July 17, a social platform account authenticated as "Lu Chuan" said that "Mahua's low-quality, highly alkaline comedy films dominate the Chinese film market, which is a cultural tragedy." The screenshot of his speech circulated online, sparking discussions among netizens. Later, Lu Chuan said that his account was stolen, but was quickly refuted by the platform. Lu Chuan should be referring to "Catching Dolls", but I think Lu Chuan's evaluation is generally good.

It is said that nowadays, screenwriters gather together to brainstorm and write a story that they think will be a hit. The source of "Catch the Doll" is very clear. First, it is the famous "The Truman Show". Truman grew up in a huge studio that was as big as a small town. He has been the protagonist of the documentary soap opera "The Truman Show" since he was a child, and the global audience has paid attention to him. Everyone around him is an actor. In the end, Truman discovered the truth and escaped from this fake world.

The Russian movie "Rich Second Generation" imitates the Truman Show. The second generation of rich people in Russia is domineering, and his father decides to educate his son in a different way. With his huge financial resources, he creates a 19th-century village. After waking up from a car accident, the second generation of rich people finds that they have "traveled" back to the 19th century and become slaves of a wealthy family. Then they experience hardships, taste the taste of life, and finally gain love and change their past. This film set a record for viewing in Russia and became the box office champion in 2019. It also has a Douban score of 7.5 in China.

In addition to these two movies, there is another famous joke: When I was having dinner yesterday, my father suddenly looked up and said to me, "I got you a piece of land today." I paused, and a long-held thought suddenly popped up! I knew that I was actually a hidden rich second generation! The previous poverty was just to train me! The time is finally ripe! They finally let me show my skills! I suppressed my excitement and asked in a calm and casual tone: "Oh, which piece of land?"... "SF Express".

With these two movies, a joke, and finally, the ups and downs of Chinese parents raising their children, several screenwriters brainstormed together and put together these plots, which are almost ready to come out: a rich man, in order to educate his children, decided to raise them in poverty, created a false environment of hardship, and let the children live a life like Truman.

Therefore, with so many imitations, the movie is not very creative. Moreover, compared with the relatively self-consistent logic of "The Truman Show" and "Rich Second Generation", "Catching Dolls" tells a story about an emperor and his wife using a golden pole, which is logically untenable.

University education has the function of learning knowledge, and also the function of social ranking. To obtain social ranking, you can then obtain a ticket to social advancement. Simply put, a job does not require the knowledge learned in university, but to get a job, you need a university diploma. For a wealthy family, the class is already established, and there are many channels to obtain the so-called business management knowledge, without having to squeeze through the single-plank bridge of the college entrance examination.

However, the movie is very good at playing with memes, one after another. It is very likely that just for the name "Ma Peter", the surnames of the father and son were set as Ma. These memes can indeed bring "laughs" and also bring box office. As of 12:21 on July 21, the box office of the movie "Catching Dolls" exceeded 1.4 billion, taking 5 days, 6 hours and 21 minutes, ranking first in the weekly mainland box office list, surpassing the 1.08 billion box office of "The Silence", and currently ranks first in the 2024 summer box office list. This is not surprising, after all, it is suitable for all ages.

Of course, this is a comedy movie, just laugh it off. It is true that the childishness and irrationality of the plot are not important. However, what is really important is the values ​​behind the plot.

At the end of the movie, the film reflects on deception and control, but it does not reflect on education through suffering.

Chinese people believe in suffering. As the saying goes, "When God gives a man a great task, he must first make his mind suffer, his muscles and bones tired, and his body hungry." Recently, Huang Renxun said this: If you grew up in a Chinese family, you may have experienced a lot of hardships and tribulations. And our culture has a significant feature - it enables people to endure long-term pain and hardship. In fact, the quality of being able to endure pain and hardship is called grit. And this has been recognized as one of the most critical traits of successful people. Huang Renxun also joked: Therefore, I hope that you will have enough opportunities to experience this kind of pain and challenges in your life.

Huang Renxun is a chip expert, but not an education expert. Huang Renxun was born in Taiwan, China. His father is a chemical engineer, his mother is a teacher, and he has an older brother. This is a middle-class family. The greatest hardship in his life may be that in 1972, his father moved to Thailand for work, and he and his brother were sent to live with relatives in the United States when he was 9 years old. Because of the financial difficulties of his relatives, he and his brother went to a rural boarding school in Kentucky and encountered challenges in economics and interpersonal relationships. But his success is just an individual case, just a survivor bias. An unfortunate childhood, even extreme economic poverty, will affect a child's life.

Scientists examined the DNA of 40 9-year-old boys from major cities in the United States and found that the telomeres of boys from families in poor environments were 19% shorter on average. Telomere length has always been considered a biomarker for chronic stress. This change means that the lives of these children may be relatively shortened. Childhood trauma may also lead to a person's long-term anxiety, depression, autism, self-deprecation and self-harm. These effects may last for decades or even a lifetime, and may cause problems in an individual's interpersonal relationships in adulthood, such as lack of security and difficulty in establishing stable interpersonal relationships. These are all things that should be avoided in order to become a healthy adult, a happy adult, and an adult who makes mature decisions.

At the end of the movie, the child finally broke free and engaged in his favorite long-distance running, but during the race, he couldn't help picking up bottles. To some extent, this is a reflection on suffering in the movie. But I think this strength is far from enough to make up for the positive and active description of the father's suffering education in the previous part.

The so-called suffering and challenges can be positive. Physical, learning, and interpersonal challenges and setbacks can all appear in normal life and become life wealth if they are properly dealt with. Even family financial poverty can be a positive challenge as long as there is love and reasonable responses.

But the child in the movie not only has to face manufactured poverty. More importantly, his father requires his son to show his poverty in public and accept humiliation from his classmates because of poverty. No matter how poor the family is, it is not bad for the money the child picks up from the bottles on the way home from school. This plot appears because the father regards showing suffering and accepting humiliation, this kind of negative suffering that comes from injustice and lacks the support of love, as the only way to a successful life.

Behind the hardship education is gratitude and guilt. This is a debt that Chinese generations cannot repay. The most concrete symbol is the pair of shoes that my father deliberately opened.

Why do Chinese people have this kind of education on suffering and gratitude? From the objective changes of the times, each generation has made great progress in technology and material compared to the previous generation. This contrast will form a kind of "envy, jealousy" and even "hatred" deep in the heart. Sometimes I sigh that my children are much better off than I was when I was a child, and my parents also sigh about me. Of course, I know that this generational gap in living standards is not caused by the efforts of parents to surpass the previous generation of parents, but by social and economic development. To a certain extent, in the final analysis, it is precisely due to the concept that "Chinese people should not suffer anymore."

From the perspective of China's family power structure, parents repeatedly saying "I sacrifice for you" is actually a form of PUA, which ultimately establishes control over their children. Just like in the movie, the father finally shouted "You feel that your life has been changed, and we have also been changed by you." This is not a healthy family intergenerational relationship.

However, the movie does not reflect on the issue of education based on suffering or intergenerational PUA, which will ultimately subtly influence countless Chinese parents.

When a person gets old, he or she will reconstruct and beautify his or her youth in memory. Therefore, many people will rationalize, beautify, and praise suffering, and regard suffering as a worthwhile effort and a necessary factor for success. Then, suffering will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It will happen again. For example, it is difficult for college students to find jobs now, and many people think that they should go to the countryside. When the rationality of this matter is recognized and even called for by the people, it is not a fantasy to happen again.

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