My grandfather has this complaint but from the other direction. When he was in government directly after the revolution, he and his comrades worked tirelessly, and he sees some government employees today who seem to be on their phones half the time instead of, idk, doing socialism harder, and and has thoughts.
And I’m like your experience of having to liberate China, rebuild the nation after said war and also WWII, rapidly industrialize, increase the life expectancy by over 20 years, educate the people, revolutionize culture, redistribute land, build roads, rail and dams, terraform large swathes of the country to combat the Gobi desert, etc etc. All while dealing with natural disasters, famine, western imperialism in Korea, the Sino Soviet split, etc etc. Your experience and the 25 year old watching Douyin on his phone’s experience is unlikely to be on the same level. It’s probably not time to have a struggle session about the clerk looking at his phone when there are no other people in the lobby (this was in a government building that does shenfenzhen ID, licenses, etc on a quiet afternoon with only 3 other people in the waiting area).
Calling the youth lazy and ignorant is a time-honored tradition. Doesn’t even matter what country you’re in, every place has it. My family members in North Africa all think that the “youngins” are the main reason why government bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace, and not the fact that most of the workforce is made up of unpaid interns who are 8 years out of university and slowly having the life sucked out of them.
My grandfather has this complaint but from the other direction. When he was in government directly after the revolution, he and his comrades worked tirelessly, and he sees some government employees today who seem to be on their phones half the time instead of, idk, doing socialism harder, and and has thoughts.
And I’m like your experience of having to liberate China, rebuild the nation after said war and also WWII, rapidly industrialize, increase the life expectancy by over 20 years, educate the people, revolutionize culture, redistribute land, build roads, rail and dams, terraform large swathes of the country to combat the Gobi desert, etc etc. All while dealing with natural disasters, famine, western imperialism in Korea, the Sino Soviet split, etc etc. Your experience and the 25 year old watching Douyin on his phone’s experience is unlikely to be on the same level. It’s probably not time to have a struggle session about the clerk looking at his phone when there are no other people in the lobby (this was in a government building that does shenfenzhen ID, licenses, etc on a quiet afternoon with only 3 other people in the waiting area).
Calling the youth lazy and ignorant is a time-honored tradition. Doesn’t even matter what country you’re in, every place has it. My family members in North Africa all think that the “youngins” are the main reason why government bureaucracy moves at a glacial pace, and not the fact that most of the workforce is made up of unpaid interns who are 8 years out of university and slowly having the life sucked out of them.
The unfortunate consequences of people having to use their phones for work while the older generations see them as toys