Hi-tech gifts

Mums in China embrace a smarter life this Mother’s Day.

BEIJING: For the first time, instead of flowers, Bai Jiexin has bought her mum “something more practical” for Mother’s Day – an electric toothbrush.

“I hope it will help her enjoy a more high-quality life,” Bai said.

Bai does not worry about whether her mother, in her fifties, will accept the new device as she has been a technophile for the past 10 years and bought a Sony laptop online as early as 2007.

“Back then, the delivery service wasn’t so convenient. My mum had to travel more than 100km to get the laptop from the logistic station in another city,” she said.

Though Bai’s mother was different to her peer group 10 years ago, she is much less distinctive today, as more youths are taking their mothers into a new era through new gifts.

Entering the new century, more Chinese people began to celebrate Mother’s Day and flowers have long been the popular gift.

More people, however, have been buying electronics or smart devices for their mothers in recent years, making Mother’s Day a new entrance for middle-aged or elderly women to have a smarter and more convenient life.

“Bought the cleaning robot as a Mother’s Day gift – a little early, but it doesn’t matter as it frees Mum from the tiring cleaning work,” a shopper commented about a cleaning robot on China’s leading online retailer JD.com.

Both JD.com and its rival Tmall. com began their sales campaign days ahead of Mother’s Day, with colourful webpages advertising electronics such as smartphones, cleaning robots and smart televisions.

Physical stores have also been welcoming customers brimming with filial piety.

In an outlet of popular Chinese electronics brand Xiaomi near Xizhimen in downtown Beijing, the number of customers buying smart devices for their parents rose by about 30% in the last week, according to a salesman surnamed Fu.

Smartphones are the most popular choice. Most customers bought phones priced at less than 2,000 yuan (RM1,253), which can be used to surf the Internet and take photos, but are not too expensive.

As society undergoes huge chang- es brought about by new technology, the elderly, who used to think such devices were unnecessary, have changed their minds.

More than 10% of China’s online population was aged over 50 in 2017, said a report jointly released by Chinese Internet giant Tencent and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in March.

Bai is already mulling what to get for her mother, whom she describes as “a pioneer of her generation”, for Mother’s Day next year.

“I’m planning to buy something cooler for her,” she said. — Xinhua