China’s ‘Parachute Generation’ Grows Up

[Randy W]

Prior to the pandemic, tens of thousands of Chinese kids left home every year to attend high school in the United States. Was it worth it?

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China’s ‘Parachute Generation’ Grows Up
Prior to the pandemic, tens of thousands of Chinese kids left home every year to attend high school in the United States. Was it worth it?

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The school, which promised students a high-quality education grounded in conservative Christian values, was hostile to those who, like Wei, identified as LGBT. In contrast to the permissive attitudes toward sex and relationships depicted on American TV, Wei had to keep her relationship with her Chinese girlfriend secret or risk expulsion. The attitudes of her classmates and teachers were, in her words, “xenophobic.” At home, she struggled to adapt to living with an American family and did not feel safe around her host father.

 . . .

Although the report was designed to provide marketing advice, it nevertheless encapsulated two of the defining — and at first glance, mutually contradictory — traits of China’s parachute kids: Their growing nationalism and their appreciation for cosmopolitanism.

The 41 “parachute kids” I interviewed bore these contradictions out. Some were eager to integrate into a supposedly cosmopolitan American culture; others found their lives in America boring or were actively repulsed by the country’s high school culture. And a few, like Wei, realized that the liberal, open-minded America they were promised, whether in school brochures or on television, was far from guaranteed.

 . . .

The majority of my interviewees either moved back to China after graduation or expressed an intention to do so after getting their American university degree. Unlike earlier cohorts, who typically planned to work in the U.S. for a couple years before returning, the current generation seems less enchanted with the opportunities on offer in America.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Randy W (see edit history)