"Phoenix Man" (凤凰男)
Most of you may have never heard of the phrase "phoenix man", or 凤凰男 in Chinese. It's a coined phrase that has been coined that has gained popularity in China in recent years. It is used to refer to men who grew up in rural areas but then got ahead in cities*1 by, for example, attending a good university or finding a decent job in cities*1. For your information, rurual areas are often associated with poverty and backwardness in China, not at all like the picturesque and platoral sense that usually surrounds the countryside in the western world. "Phoenix man" came from a Chinese saying "a sparrow which flies up to tall branches becomes a phoenix", which means that a person of inferior background makes a dramatic rise in social status.
It is said that the marriage between a "phoenix man" and a "peacock woman" (referring to a woman who grew up in cities 1*, enjoys an economically easy life and knows no hardship) causes myriads of problems, which are depicted by numerous TV series and voluminous reports on the Internet. One of these alleged problems is the lowering of living standards for the woman. As the phoenix man is the elite of his poor rural family (by family, it usually means an extended family which includes the families of his grandparents, uncles and aunts) and the successful product made at the price of his whole family (e.g. his siblings quit school and start working young to earn his tuition fees), he is imbued with a firing sense of responsibility towards his original family, which often overrides his devotion to his new family. He's likely to lend, and even give a large sum of money to, for example, to his younger brother for his wedding, or to his cousin to build a new house. For a peacock woman who was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth but just into a middle-class urban family, this enormous outpour of money innevitably gives rise to a very meager life, in which the pleasures that she took for granted before, like an occassional feast, shopping spree and traveling, become anything but possible.
Another problem of this kind of marriage lies in the conflicts between the living habits of the two social classes represented by the husband and wife. There's never a lack of stories about how the husband's parents don't flush the toilet when they come to the city to live with their son and daugher-in-law because they don't have such this kind of equitpment back in the village. A deeper and more fundamental kind of conflict is the collision of values.
(To be continued in the next entry)
<em>1* - to talk in abstract I would use 'grew up in the city'. </em>
"Phoenix Man" (凤凰男)
Most of you may have never heard of the phrase "phoenix man", or 凤凰男 in Chinese. It's a coined phrase that has gained popularity in China in recent years. It is used to refer to men who grew up in rural areas but then got ahead in cities by, for example, attending a good university or finding a decent job in cities. For your information, rurual areas are often associated with poverty and backwardness in China, not at all like the picturesque and platoral sense that usually surrounds the countryside in the western world. "Phoenix man" came from a Chinese saying "a sparrow which flies up to tall branches becomes a phoenix", which means that a person of inferior background makes a dramatic rise in social status.
It is said that the marriage between a "phoenix man" and a "peacock woman" (referring to a woman who grew up in cities, enjoys an economically easy life and knows no hardship) causes myriads of problems, which are depicted by numerous TV series and voluminous many reports on the Internet. One of these alleged problems is the lowering of living standards for the womaen. As the phoenix man is the elite of his poor rural family (by family, it usually means an extended family which includes the families of his grandparents, uncles and aunts) and the successful product supported/created made at the price cost of his whole family (e.g. his siblings quit school and start working young, in order to earn his tuition fees), he is imbued with a firing sense of responsibility towards his original family, which often overrides his devotion to his new family. He's likely to lend, and even give a large sum of money, for example, to his younger brother for his wedding, or to his cousin to build a new house. For a peacock woman who was not born with a silver spoon but just into a middle-class urban family, this enormous outpour of money innevitably gives rise to a very meager life, in which the pleasures that she took for granted before, like an occassional feast, shopping spree and traveling, become anything but possible.
Another problem of this kind of marriage lies in the conflicts between the living habits of the two social classes represented by the husband and wife. There's never lack of stories about how the husband's parents don't flush the toilet when they come to the city to live with their son and daugher-in-law because they don't have this such kind of equipment back in the village. A deeper and more fundamental kind of conflict is the collision of values.
(To be continued in the next entry)
(this is excellent - well done!)
