Virtual tiger moms
▶ Hit video game helps young players to understand Chinese way of parenting
A game called “Chinese Parents” has become viral because of its realistic elements
Players say the game makes them reflect on their relations with their parents and teaches them to understand their parents better
The parent-child relationship in Chinese society is blurred, with lots of crossover between the lives of a parent and his or her child
When Chen Guanwen played the video game “Chinese Parents” for the sixth time, his in-game character finally got a girlfriend during high school. Having spent two days and one night on the game, he was satisfied with this sixth “child” he has cultivated, since it feels like the character helped him to taste the puppy love that Chen’s parents forbade him.
“The reason why I played it six times comes from the failure of the chase in the game,” said Chen, 25, a legal assistant in Beijing. “In fact, I was playing the role of myself, not a parent.”
This video game has struck a chord in China. After the game was launched on September 29, it ascended to the top 10 within the first week on Steam China, a digital distribution platform for purchasing and playing video games.
The popularity of the game comes from the realistic portrayals of Chinese parents, who are typically strict and demanding. Yale law professor Amy Chua called their parenting style “tiger” parenting.
The producer of the game echoed these features, saying Chinese parents regard the academic record of their children as very important. Meanwhile, they are concerned with all other aspects of a child’s life.
“At the very beginning, we hoped ‘Chinese Parents’ could resonate among game players, together with some laughter,” the producer Yang Ge Yi Lang told the Global Times, noting he wanted the players to reflect on their relations with their parents after playing the game.
Game of life
In the game, a player plans the life of his or her son, from his birth to his marriage. (Unfortunately, due to the small size of the team, Yang said they only designed the game to simulate a boy’s life at the current stage.)
In addition to the exam-oriented education that most Chinese students are familiar with, there are many other scenarios happening in real life in the game. For example, players could ask their “son” to campaign to be class leaders or to “show off” his talent in front of relatives or friends of parents.
A 21-year-old player surnamed Ming told the Global Times that the funniest scenario in the game is the “red envelope fight.”
During every Spring Festival, relatives will give a red envelope full of money to children. In the game, the children have to refuse the red envelope politely at first and gave it back to the relatives. Then the relatives and the children will give the envelope to each other back and forth, again and again.
In the game, the player needs to control the tempo by clicking a button. Only the proper tempo can get the biggest amount of money in the red envelop. Otherwise, the money will be kept by the mother of the character in the game.
Many players who experienced the same situation many times in real life said this game was too real. “Even now, my mother ‘helps me to keep’ the money in the red envelopes,” Ming said.
Cruel to be kind
A 25-year-old interior designer based in East China’s Jiangsu Province told the Global Times he has played the game twice, representing two generations.
“Although I wanted to be a good parent in the second generation, I expected too much, since I thought the second generation should be more successful than the first,” he said. Although he wanted his grandchild to maintain his artistic accomplishments as well as keep a good academic record, the grandchild failed to enter a university in the end.
The game teaches him that there are many uncertainties while growing up, and parents may not always make the right decision.
Yang was hoping for this kind of reaction when he designed the game. His goal was to make children and their parents talk more.
“I used to have a bad temper when I was young. I feet regret about slamming the door on my parents when I was wrongly accused,” he said. Yang acknowledged it must have been very hurtful for his parents at the time, adding more communication between parents and children is needed in this fast-developing world.
In the comments section for the game online, many middle-school children complain about their treatment by their actual parents. Yang hopes the game can help these youngsters understand their parents better. As an adult, he is grateful for his mother’s strictness in
“My life shouldn’t be like this… I am grateful for this game to allow me to live again, to do something that I have missed and no courage to do.”
A player of the game “Chinese Parents” commented on Steam China, a digital distribution platform for purchasing and playing video games
his childhood. Compared with his mother, his father always played the role of a nice guy, caring more about his life rather than studies.
Yang said he understands why his mother forced him to study hard when he was in school, since his parents lived through the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) and know about the importance of education.
“But for the children born in 1980s and 1990s, we were born to take exams so we would love to try many interesting hobbies rather than study all the time,” Yang said.
Yang noted the generation gap may lead to an inappropriate way of parents expressing their love, but more understanding and communication should be given to parents.
It is notable that not only young people are interested in the game.
According to search engine statistics from Baidu, around 10 percent people who have searched the game are over 40 years old.
It seems some Chinese parents long for more understanding from their children.
Parent-child relationship
However, not all players blindly accepted that parents are always right. A player said he is grateful for the game because it let him experience the things he has never done.
“We live in the expectations of our parents and we don’t want to let them down. Their disappointing words would make us feel lost. However, in the end, we neither live the way they expected, nor the way we wanted,” he commented on Steam. “My life shouldn’t be like this… I am grateful for this game to allow me to live again, to do something that I have missed and no courage to do.”
Ming felt depressed after he lost the game because he put too much pressure on the in-game character who has social phobia and run away from home.
Compared with other countries’ parents, Chinese parents place their personal hopes on their children, said Chu Zhaohui, a research fellow at the National Institute of Education Sciences in Beijing.
“Usually, social elites share this mentality more compared with other social classes,” Chu noted. For instance, a farmer doesn’t want his child to be a farmer in this era, but an entrepreneur would hope his child takes over the family business.
That is why Chinese parents seem to be more demanding about academics and ignore the individuality of their children. The root of such a problem is how to recognize the parent-child relationship.
There is a cultural tie between Chinese parents’ fame and their children’s success, said Yin Fei, associate professor of Nanjing Normal University’s School of Education Science.
Yin added another feature of Chinese parents is that they regard children’s growth as their responsibility.
In China, the parents not only care about their children’s studies, job and marriage, but also offer support to buy a house for getting married, and taking care of their grandchildren.
The parent-child relationship in Chinese society is blurred, with lots of crossover between the lives of a parent and his or her child, according to Yin.
For instance, it is very common to introduce someone as “the child of …” when they are young in Chinese society, and “the parent of …” when they become old. Instead of labeling the person as a social individual, Chinese people tend to fuse their life with their parents’.
Both experts agreed gamers who don’t want their children to fail in the game reflect the anxiety of being parents in China. Just as some gamers were forced to take extra-curricular classes in their childhood, they ask their “children” in the game to do so in order to get them into distinguished universities.
“It is very obvious to see the desire and anxiety of the middle class after society develops. These people have established social resources after studying hard and working hard. Of course they want to maintain such resources and pass them to the next generation,” Yin told the Global Times. That’s why many parents are worried about tutoring their children and helping with their homework.
Earlier this month, a mother in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, suffered from acute cerebral infarction because her daughter didn’t do her homework carefully.
This reflects a problem of the lack of concepts of success in China’s society, according to Chu and Yin. Once Chinese parents understand not everyone is suitable to study and there are many ways to succeed, their anxiety will diminish.