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> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school. Maybe the ti

by rdtsc 9y ago

> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school. Maybe the title should be "The Western Elite from a Chinese Elite Perspective". Surely sending kids to school to UK as plan B is not in the average Chinese family's abilities. Doesn't mean we should discount the article or its ideas but it's useful to keep the author's background in mind.

hollerith 9y ago
Also relevant is that fact that the article contains that statement, "I am the child of modest workers".
- vostok 9y ago
  I wouldn't blame the author for this. I have a similar background in many ways. It took me a long time and a good deal of luck to realize that I am not the child of modest workers.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    I agree, these judgements can only ever be made relative to one's own perspective. It's important not to take at face value someone else's notion of "modest worker", and even more important not to take your own notion at face value either.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    That's true certainly in my teens I wouldn't have thought that though I do come from a middle class back ground as would those went to public school instead of a comprehensive. I suppose it started to dawn on me when mum commented that if we had stayed in Birmingham they would have used my Grandfather (a headmaster) to try and pull strings to get me into Kings Edwards, BTW this is "the" King Edwards (JRR Tolkien's alma mata) that takes turn with the Oratory for the top school in the country.
- usaar333 9y ago
  > Yet I had to do it every day. At the end-of-year exam, I scored second from the bottom of the class—the same place where I began in first grade. But this time it was much harder to accept, after the glory I had enjoyed just one year earlier and the huge amount of effort I had put into studying this year. Finally, I threw in the towel, and asked my parents to send me abroad. Anywhere else on this earth would surely be better. Given his academic performance in his high school, it's unlikely he got a scholarship to a leading UK private high school (Hurtwood House checking his Linkedin). Parents who can afford to send their kid to an overseas high school that charges $40k/year are not modest by Developed country standards, much less Chinese, and even less so Hebeinese.
  - egor598 9y ago
    He doesn't say his parents were poor or blue-collar workers, he compares himself to a child of aristocrat. Context is everything. > He was a child of aristocrats; I am the child of modest workers. When a one-digit millionaire compares himself to a billionaire like Bill Gates, using "modest" to describe one's wealth would be appropriate in this context.
    - garmaine 9y ago
      Child of “modest workers” in a communist country can have different meaning. Maybe they’re party elites? We don’t know. Something just doesn’t add up though.
      - omginternets 9y ago
        He's using the word "modest" to mean "not particularly prestigious" as opposed to "poor".
      - 1wd 9y ago
        In another article he writes: "In China, where I was born, there are a lot of people who work much harder but could not enjoy similar results. The difference is that I was lucky enough to have had the chance to move abroad at a young age, thanks my parents. In other words, as Warren Buffett said, a large part of life is the lottery at birth." http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-oration http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-oration
- sAvi0r 9y ago
  I think the upper class/elite in China are pretty isolated from the rest of the people, and really don't realize how bad a lot of their countrymen have it. A good friend of mine is from Chengdu and for most of his life he thought he was just average - a guy whose parents sent him to the US for high school, pay ~30,000CAD/semester in tuition, bought him an X3 for his first car, etc.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Not to mention that china probably has internal differences than any other places. The biggest expensive cities are in league with NYC/SF/London, but there is still a large countryside that is "modest" and vast unpopulated area with noone or villages that are decades behind.
- eternalban 9y ago
  But were they Party members. And if yes, how high up?
roberthluo 9y ago
I agree with your statement, but if you turn around that logic, it is meaningless. Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society? Probably not, since they are unlikely to have experienced it. Only Western elites will have been likely to experience Chinese society. Obviously someone who will be published in a magazine is elite. I am willing to wager than all the other writers are 'elites' in some way. As societies, we don't really want to read about some Cantonese kid working after school at his parents restaurant for 6 hours a day. We want to see success! That is why we tunnel so heavily on Cambridge, Stanford, and Goldman Sachs. Do you really think he would have been given a voice on this magazine if he was not affiliated with those institutions?
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > We want to see success! We do, but this success is presented as if coming from an average Chinese experience. But it's very much not so. A lot of success to him came not just from pure hard work but because his family could afford to have "plan B" of sending him abroad. Like someone here on HN said it, it is not that the elites don't fail, they do, but after each failure they can just keep trying until they succeed. > Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society? I would love to actually. What would an American welder think about China or, maybe what they would think about how Chinese welders work and vice-versa. > As societies, we don't really want to read about some Cantonese kid working after school at his parents restaurant for 6 hours a day. No, but they would love to read about the Cantonese kid working after school and then based on his hard work end up at GS. The bottom line is growing in up in a family like it doesn't matter what country or culture you come from you already won the lottery. You can live in Venezuela or Africa and still take weekend flight to shop in New York. Your perspective is already very different.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I am the child of modest workers (my dad didn’t even have a bachelor degree) and have even experienced bankruptcy as a pre teen. I’m definitely not a western elite by background, but was able to experience Chinese society. Heck, there is a whole stereotype, not completely unjustified, of western losers coming to China to make a long term living as rockstar English teachers.
gajomi 9y ago
That change would be a good start. I enjoyed the article very much, but not at all because I thought it gave a balanced "Chinese perspective" on the Western elite. It read it as a story about a smart Chinese guy who was very focused on success in a narrow career track offering reflections about his awareness of limited experience. The part about the heart rate monitoring of his feelings serves as a good example... this is not a "Chinese" thing to do or even an elite Chinese thing. This guy is different ️.
walshemj 9y ago
From what I hear its now plan A to send your kids to British public and American private Schools as well as for the Russian elites. Its what I have been told happens in my home towns Public schools - one of Barack Obamas roomies at Harvard came from one of them. As suggested a in the UK Public School is what an American would call a private one ie one where rich people send there kids
- rsync 9y ago
  If you are from the UK, you should probably clarify what you mean by a "Public school" since a reader from the US probably interprets that differently than what you mean.
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    Well its simple. I, personally went to two public schools, both of which were in the private school sector. No, it isn't obvious. In the UK the prefix public and private are both synonymous for "fee paying" for schools. I went to a prep. school (9 to 13) and a public school (13+) after that. Both of which would be described as private schools.
- alva 9y ago
  Yup. A huge number of rich foreigners send their children to UK fee paying schools. Lots of Middle-Eastern, Russian and Chinese. Something like 15% of current world leaders were educated in the UK. Certainly caused some mumblings about the general character of some of the most prestigious institutions like Eton. It would be easy to put that simply down to xenophobia but there is a relative difference between the established culture and the new. British aristocratic elites are generally (and of course this is all relative) far poorer than the children of Oligarchs and party officials. Generally the attitude of the aristocratic Brits is to keep their head down and not be flashy, whereas some of their classmates literally have a private jet for their use on weekends.
sgt101 9y ago
Yes - the big surprise of the sudden high score in the high school test made me smile as well.

by rdtsc 9y ago

hollerith 9y ago

Also relevant is that fact that the article contains that statement, "I am the child of modest workers".

vostok 9y ago
I wouldn't blame the author for this. I have a similar background in many ways. It took me a long time and a good deal of luck to realize that I am not the child of modest workers.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  I agree, these judgements can only ever be made relative to one's own perspective. It's important not to take at face value someone else's notion of "modest worker", and even more important not to take your own notion at face value either.
- walshemj 9y ago
  That's true certainly in my teens I wouldn't have thought that though I do come from a middle class back ground as would those went to public school instead of a comprehensive. I suppose it started to dawn on me when mum commented that if we had stayed in Birmingham they would have used my Grandfather (a headmaster) to try and pull strings to get me into Kings Edwards, BTW this is "the" King Edwards (JRR Tolkien's alma mata) that takes turn with the Oratory for the top school in the country.
usaar333 9y ago
> Yet I had to do it every day. At the end-of-year exam, I scored second from the bottom of the class—the same place where I began in first grade. But this time it was much harder to accept, after the glory I had enjoyed just one year earlier and the huge amount of effort I had put into studying this year. Finally, I threw in the towel, and asked my parents to send me abroad. Anywhere else on this earth would surely be better. Given his academic performance in his high school, it's unlikely he got a scholarship to a leading UK private high school (Hurtwood House checking his Linkedin). Parents who can afford to send their kid to an overseas high school that charges $40k/year are not modest by Developed country standards, much less Chinese, and even less so Hebeinese.
- egor598 9y ago
  He doesn't say his parents were poor or blue-collar workers, he compares himself to a child of aristocrat. Context is everything. > He was a child of aristocrats; I am the child of modest workers. When a one-digit millionaire compares himself to a billionaire like Bill Gates, using "modest" to describe one's wealth would be appropriate in this context.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    Child of “modest workers” in a communist country can have different meaning. Maybe they’re party elites? We don’t know. Something just doesn’t add up though.
    - omginternets 9y ago
      He's using the word "modest" to mean "not particularly prestigious" as opposed to "poor".
    - 1wd 9y ago
      In another article he writes: "In China, where I was born, there are a lot of people who work much harder but could not enjoy similar results. The difference is that I was lucky enough to have had the chance to move abroad at a young age, thanks my parents. In other words, as Warren Buffett said, a large part of life is the lottery at birth." http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-oration http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-oration
sAvi0r 9y ago
I think the upper class/elite in China are pretty isolated from the rest of the people, and really don't realize how bad a lot of their countrymen have it. A good friend of mine is from Chengdu and for most of his life he thought he was just average - a guy whose parents sent him to the US for high school, pay ~30,000CAD/semester in tuition, bought him an X3 for his first car, etc.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Not to mention that china probably has internal differences than any other places. The biggest expensive cities are in league with NYC/SF/London, but there is still a large countryside that is "modest" and vast unpopulated area with noone or villages that are decades behind.
eternalban 9y ago
But were they Party members. And if yes, how high up?

roberthluo 9y ago

I agree with your statement, but if you turn around that logic, it is meaningless. Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society? Probably not, since they are unlikely to have experienced it. Only Western elites will have been likely to experience Chinese society. Obviously someone who will be published in a magazine is elite. I am willing to wager than all the other writers are 'elites' in some way. As societies, we don't really want to read about some Cantonese kid working after school at his parents restaurant for 6 hours a day. We want to see success! That is why we tunnel so heavily on Cambridge, Stanford, and Goldman Sachs. Do you really think he would have been given a voice on this magazine if he was not affiliated with those institutions?

rdtsc 9y ago
> We want to see success! We do, but this success is presented as if coming from an average Chinese experience. But it's very much not so. A lot of success to him came not just from pure hard work but because his family could afford to have "plan B" of sending him abroad. Like someone here on HN said it, it is not that the elites don't fail, they do, but after each failure they can just keep trying until they succeed. > Will you read about a blue collar worker's view on Chinese society? I would love to actually. What would an American welder think about China or, maybe what they would think about how Chinese welders work and vice-versa. > As societies, we don't really want to read about some Cantonese kid working after school at his parents restaurant for 6 hours a day. No, but they would love to read about the Cantonese kid working after school and then based on his hard work end up at GS. The bottom line is growing in up in a family like it doesn't matter what country or culture you come from you already won the lottery. You can live in Venezuela or Africa and still take weekend flight to shop in New York. Your perspective is already very different.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I am the child of modest workers (my dad didn’t even have a bachelor degree) and have even experienced bankruptcy as a pre teen. I’m definitely not a western elite by background, but was able to experience Chinese society. Heck, there is a whole stereotype, not completely unjustified, of western losers coming to China to make a long term living as rockstar English teachers.

gajomi 9y ago

That change would be a good start. I enjoyed the article very much, but not at all because I thought it gave a balanced "Chinese perspective" on the Western elite. It read it as a story about a smart Chinese guy who was very focused on success in a narrow career track offering reflections about his awareness of limited experience. The part about the heart rate monitoring of his feelings serves as a good example... this is not a "Chinese" thing to do or even an elite Chinese thing. This guy is different ️.

walshemj 9y ago

From what I hear its now plan A to send your kids to British public and American private Schools as well as for the Russian elites. Its what I have been told happens in my home towns Public schools - one of Barack Obamas roomies at Harvard came from one of them. As suggested a in the UK Public School is what an American would call a private one ie one where rich people send there kids

rsync 9y ago
If you are from the UK, you should probably clarify what you mean by a "Public school" since a reader from the US probably interprets that differently than what you mean.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Well its simple. I, personally went to two public schools, both of which were in the private school sector. No, it isn't obvious. In the UK the prefix public and private are both synonymous for "fee paying" for schools. I went to a prep. school (9 to 13) and a public school (13+) after that. Both of which would be described as private schools.
alva 9y ago
Yup. A huge number of rich foreigners send their children to UK fee paying schools. Lots of Middle-Eastern, Russian and Chinese. Something like 15% of current world leaders were educated in the UK. Certainly caused some mumblings about the general character of some of the most prestigious institutions like Eton. It would be easy to put that simply down to xenophobia but there is a relative difference between the established culture and the new. British aristocratic elites are generally (and of course this is all relative) far poorer than the children of Oligarchs and party officials. Generally the attitude of the aristocratic Brits is to keep their head down and not be flashy, whereas some of their classmates literally have a private jet for their use on weekends.

sgt101 9y ago

Yes - the big surprise of the sudden high score in the high school test made me smile as well.