Tiger Moms
Tiger Moms, Table Tennis, contributing to society and an movie recommedation.
There has been considerable attention for Lilian Zhang, the Chinese American Olympic Table tennis player. For those out of the loop, she has been a full time Table Tennis pro and a 4x Olympian. Her parents were in the news after a WSJ interview where it emerged that they’ve been trying to get her to stop playing Table Tennis and get a real job for more than a decade now.
The reaction from Western press has been predictable, instinctively siding with Zhang and deriding the parents for being overly controlling, short-sighted and blocking their child from following her passion.
Having discussed this quite a bit with a few Singaporean friends, I want to offer a more nuanced perspective. I am quite insecure about this, because commenting on cultural differences between East and West, inevitably requires commenting on Asian culture. As a Westerner in Asia, I’m always worried I get it wrong, or that I’m not ‘allowed’ to comment.
Anyway, over the years, I've come to realize that the emphasis on individual achievement and self-actualization is really the single biggest fundamental cultural difference between the West and the East. What I learned is that many Asian youths derive great meaning and purpose from fulfilling their obligations to satisfy their parents and contribute to their family’s enduring success.
A very recent Thai film about this topic is How to make millions before Grandma dies. If you haven't had the chance to watch it, I highly recommend it. My friend Antti has the best review:
I watched the Thai movie “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” at the cinema this weekend. It’s one of the most insightful pieces on Asian family life I’ve seen for quite some time (it reminded me of Ang Lee’s 1994 classic Eat, Drink, Man, Woman). This said as a foreigner, obviously.
While universally emotional, the beauty of this film lies in how deeply it resonated with the Asian audience members in particular (it was a diverse crowd). I’ve never heard so many people cry in the cinema – and that's what many other viewers have said all around Southeast Asia: it's a big tear-jerker.
The film’s focus on filial piety, family, intergenerational relationships, money, and making congee are not themes that would fly similarly in Europe, yet they are core elements in many Asian cultures.
The film has been a big box office success, grossing around $27 million and breaking records in several countries, including Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. It's an impressive number for a Thai language film.
I’d recommend this movie obviously to my friends who grew up in this part of the world, but especially to those who didn’t.
It's like a window to Asian value systems and packs a lot in two hours.
The emphasis here is mine. This 'filial piety' thing for me was, and still is, difficult to wrap my head around.
Filial piety is an awareness of repaying the burden borne by one's parents. As such, filial piety is done to reciprocate the care one's parents have given. However, it is also practiced because of an obligation towards one's ancestors.
All of this sounds terrible to Western ears. It seems like children are expected to unconditionally love, care for, and obey their parents. This is a reversal of the Western expectation set where parents are expected to unconditionally love and care for their children, as well as foster independence and self-reliance. As for obedience, the image of the ethical and successful rebel has been by far the most universal and important character arc in Western media since at least the 1950s (Rebel without a Cause, 1955). Values like courage, independence, and willingness to go against the grain are revered in the West. From a career perspective, the call to find your passion, chart your own path, and challenge the status quo are deeply ingrained in the West.
So it’s understandable that the story of Lily Zhang leads most Western commentators to instinctively side with Lily. But definitely I feel here in Singapore a majority of people at least are a lot more understanding of the parents’ perspective. Some of the comments I've heard (from young people, mind you) are in the vein of: her parents are right actually, ping pong is pointless, contributes nothing to her family, it's not a long-term career, how is she going to contribute after she's done with ping pong.
What would the reverse case look like? A Western person who has zero interest in standing out, or going on their 'own path', finding 'themselves', etc? Someone who does as told, contributes to society as a cog in the machine. How would we look at a person like that? Would we try to 'break them free'?
Another fun inversion is, to an Asian person, how does the obsession of Westerners with self-improvement and individual pathfinding look? Probably quite weird and ridiculous. Just get on with it, chop wood and carry water.
A lot things make more sense through this lens
Once I understood the difference between ‘individualist’ and ‘collectivist’ in more specific, real life terms, I started noticing the outcomes more and more.
From Venkatesh Rao, on the Ambani wedding:
Feels like in Asia ambitious entrepreneurs focus on building multi-generation empires that are more like family-owned nation states like Reliance. Innovation is a nice-to-have but not essential feature. Raw wealth-building and clan prestige matters more. Failsons are an existential worry. In the US ambitious entrepreneurs solve for single lifetime charismatic hero’s journey where innovation is necessary as proof-of-Chosen-Oneness. Future generations are not a priority. Failsons are disappointing but otherwise fine. Future generations are only expected to conspicuously consume not carry on legacy. The Ambani scion, despite looking like a sad nerd, has been groomed for power, not merely flashy cars etc.
One of the comments there:
success in the: east: obligation to contribute
west: liberation to break free
Not everything
writes makes sense to me, especially: “Future generations are only expected to conspicuously consume not carry on legacy.” That sounds like an outdated straw man representation of Western expectations of their kids. I would characterize it more as: “Be self-sufficient, in your own unique way."Authoritarian vs permissive parenting
Me and my partner have recently both read: The Battlehymn of the Tiger Mother, after my millennial Singaporean friends told me it's the most important parenting book to them. We have 2 young kids and we enjoyed reading a different perspective. It's absolutely insane though but we found it a good reference point to establish where the borders are. This comes after being a bit weirded out by a lot of leading parenting content originating in the US, like the Whole Brain Child. It felt wrong to me to affirm a child’s emotions no matter what. If you ask for a cup of milk and get a cup of milk, it is not acceptable to throw it on the floor. In fact, it is not even an acceptable emotional response to be angry for getting exactly what you asked for.
We’re settling on something that is now being called Authoritative Parenting, which is also how I was raised, in contrast with Permissive Parenting which was hip in the 2010s, and feels American to me, and Authoritarian Parenting (the Asian style). One of the things from Battlehymn that I found interesting was the utter dismissal of the Western habit of praising kids for the things they create no matter what. If two stripes on a paper are treated like a groundbreaking piece of art, that sets very low expectations. There is nothing wrong with expecting more from kids.