从一些外国人的角度看，中国的90后是叛逆而屈服的。他们渴望实现自我，又受困于家庭和社会的种种压力，最终陷入自我挣扎的漩涡。潮水就在那里，而弄潮儿，却已失去方向。

By Simina Mistreanu

Last week, I had lunch with one of my colleagues. She comes from a south China province. She moved to Beijing for college and stayed to work after graduation.

上周和一个同事吃饭，她是南方姑娘，来北京上学，毕业之后留下来工作。

Now she considers moving back to her hometown because her parents want her to get a stable job as a civil servant. She’s preparing to take the highly competitive civil service exam at the end of the month.

父母希望她回家考公务员，有一份稳定的工作。所以她在犹豫要不要回家。上个月底，她参加了竞争激烈的公务员考试。

The problem is she doesn’t really want to do it.

问题是，她并不想当公务员。

She has no passion for public service. But she is not very motivated to stay at her current job either, which is demanding and doesn’t fulfill her. She doesn’t like writing (which is true for so many journalists, but we do it anyway because the reporting experience, when done well, is worth it).

她对公共服务没有热忱，而现在繁重的工作又不适合她。她不喜欢写作（对很多记者来说这是真的，但是我们仍然在写。如果写出的文章很精彩，那就是值得的。）

What she is passionate about is ancient Chinese culture. She wanted to study archeology in college, but her father thought she should study English because it was the language of the future and would perhaps land her a stable job as a translator.

她真正感兴趣的是中国古代文学。在大学选专业的时候，她想读考古学，可她的爸爸认为她应该学英语，因为那是未来的语言，或许可以让女儿找到一份稳定的工作，比如翻译。

“I don’t even like English,” she tells me. “I like Chinese.”

“我其实不喜欢英语，”她告诉我，“我喜欢中文。”

Her story is all too common among young Chinese whose parents decide their children’s college majors, work fields, spouses, timing for children and so much more. It doesn’t matter much what children think or like or are passionate about. Parents – having been deprived of the chance to lead their own lives – are taking charge of their children’s.

她的故事对于很多中国年轻人来说真的太普遍了：父母决定孩子的大学专业，工作方向，配偶，生子等等人生规划。孩子真正喜欢的热爱的，一点也不重要。父母当年被剥夺了主宰自己人生的机会，现在也在剥夺着孩子的人生。

The culture expects children to acquiesce to their parents leading their lives, without resistance.

中国的文化里，孩子默认了父母可以主导他们的人生。

Later on, the same happens in relation to their bosses at the workplace and to the government.

同样的事情还发生在我的中国同事与领导的沟通中。

Another colleague once told me, “I have become used to accepting all the difficulties life brings me.”

另一个同事曾经跟我说，“我习惯了接收生活给予我的一切困难。”

This is all rooted in another concept of Chinese culture: the fixed self. You are born on a certain date, in a certain lunar phase in the calendar year, in a certain family. You are born to have a life that you have little or no control over.

这些轨迹。一切都被设定好了都植根于中国文化的另一层概念：既定的自我认知。在既定的时间，地点，家庭，你开始生活的，你生来如此。

During a recent panel discussion about Chinese movies going global, French film producer Isabelle Glachant highlighted the contrast between Western and Chinese storytelling in movies. In Western stories, she says, the character grows. The character faces a difficulty that changes him or her and eventually leads to a good or a bad ending.

在一场“中国电影走向世界”的专题讨论会上，法国电影制片人Isabelle Glachant指出了西方电影和中国电影叙事的不同之处。她说，在西方电影中，主人公的命运会有起伏：生活中遇到的各种困难会改变这个人的命运，甚至人生结局。

“In Chinese drama, the characters do not change because when you’re born, you’re born in a certain year, you have a certain blood type, you have a certain name, and you’re born to have that life,” she said.

“而中国电影里，主人公的人生很少有起伏，因为从出生起，他们的命运就被规定好了。”

I was reminded of Glachant’s idea when my colleague told me, over lunch, that she doesn’t talk back to her parents. Her younger sister stands up for herself, my colleague said, but she has a different personality.

当这个南方姑娘说，她不会反抗父母时，我突然想起了Glachant的话。但她还说，她的妹妹就有着不同的性格，勇于反抗。

“You know you can change, right?” I told my colleague.

我说：“你可以反抗的。”

Her eyes widened as she turned toward me. “Really? How?” she asked.

“真的吗？怎么反抗？”

Western culture abounds in so-called self-improvement books, classes and films. Some are more useless than others, but at their basis is the concept that the self can change. And why shouldn’t it?

西方文化囊括大量所谓的讲述自我修养的书籍、课程和电影。有些并没有什么用，但是它们有一个共有的观念：自我可以改变。

I first understood that deeply when after eight years of smoking, I tried to quit. I read Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking maybe 15 times before I finally understood how addiction affects the brain and stopped smoking for good. (It’s been three years since, and I haven’t given it a second thought.)

我第一次深刻领悟到这个观念是在八年前。那时，我正在尝试戒烟。我读了Allen Carr的《这书能让你戒烟》不下15次，才停止了抽烟。

Similarly, I think people can heal their emotional wounds, teach themselves to stand up for themselves and lead the life they want without constantly attracting and accepting constraints from the exterior world.

Growing the self can be part of the lifelong learning, discovery and sharing processes that we undertake as people. You do it by reading, meditating, talking to other people and through introspection. You do it with persistence, understanding, patience and love.

同样地，我认为人们可以自愈情感创伤，学会反抗，过自己想要的生活，没有必要受困于外界的种种限制。开拓自我是要用一生去学习的事。你可以通过读书、沉思、与别人交流、自我反省等方式做到。

Making people believe they have little control over their lives is, of course, not singular to Chinese culture. Religions encourage that dogmatic approach too, by painting the image of a scary, vengeful God instead of a nurturing and supporting universe. In my home country of Romania, many people think life is a series of struggles and sacrifices that only God has insights into.

让人们相信生活束手无策只在中国文化中见到。宗教用描绘一个令人害怕充满报复心的上帝来要求人们听从教导，而很少有宗教会宣扬宇宙的良善。在我的国家罗马尼亚，很多人相信，生活是只有上帝能看清的一系列的挣扎和牺牲。

Sometimes people are pushed into transforming themselves and taking control of their lives by difficult circumstances.

有时，人在极端的状况下会被逼做出各种转变。

A few years ago, I wrote a story about a woman who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

几年前，我写过一个被诊断乳腺癌的患者故事。

She was fighting the disease, but at the same time building a life and a self that she had postponed her entire adult life.

疾病斗争的同时，她也在努力塑造对自我和对生活的认知，这些，在她生病前都被忽略了。

Later, I wrote a story about a man who killed both his parents when he was 17, and spent 27 years in prison. There, through the aid of recovery programs (this was in America), he learned empathy and built the values he lacked as a teenager.

我也写过一个在17岁杀死母亲后在监狱待了27 年的美国男人的故事。通过监狱里的一些帮助项目，他学会了同理心，并建立了他在青少年时期所缺乏的一套价值体系。

And I recently learned that Oprah Winfrey, one of the strongest and most inspiring people in the world, had been abused as a teenager and gave birth to a child out of incest, who died shortly after. From there, she rebuilt herself into something wonderful.

奥普拉·温弗里，这个全世界最坚强最励志的人物之一，曾经在少年时期被虐待过，并且在乱伦的情况下生下一个孩子，这个孩子不幸夭折了，但从那里，她重新站了起来，重建了她的生活。

But many times, what we’re faced with is just a quiet heaviness and dissatisfaction with our daily lives. Growth can start from there too. How that would look against the backdrop of Chinese culture I’m curious to find out.

更多的时候，我们每天面对的可能只是沉重和不满，但成长也可以从那里开始。我很好奇，在中国文化背景下，这些成长会以什么样的方式展开。