The New Year’s Eve dinner every year has become a traditional ceremony for the reunion of our relatives. Beijing News Data map
According to CCTV.com , on some social media platforms, "relatives" have become a hot topic again. Among them, there are also discussions on specific issues such as "moral kidnapping of relatives" and "what should be done if relatives don't borrow money" and so on. These topics have one thing in common, they all regard "relatives" as a negative existence, although it is full of prejudice.
This is not a new topic. In fact, at least 10 years ago, some online platforms had discussion groups related to "relatives", attracting a large number of netizens to participate in the discussion, and many complaints were made. Of course, everyone complained anonymously, and no one would send an open letter to their relatives.
This also makes people doubt that these people who complain about relatives online may be good kids in reality. They dare not have conflicts with relatives in person, so they secretly vented on the Internet.
No matter what, 10 years have passed, the media form has changed, from text-based to video-based, and topics like "relatives" are still enthusiastic. This shows that the current "new generation" is still facing the old problem:
The younger generation is walking out of the original family and social relationships and building their own new world in a new environment, which is also a process of recreating interpersonal relationships.
Every Spring Festival, people travel thousands of miles to rush home to reunite for the New Year, which also reflects the unbreakable psychological connection between people and their relatives. Photo by Wang Guibin, reporter of Beijing News
Leaving "relatives" is the beginning of interpersonal modernization
Since the 1990s, a large number of Chinese people have begun to leave their hometowns, study, work, leave their hometowns, and go to a new environment. This process is a process of "leaving relatives".
Every year during the Spring Festival travel rush, people carry large and small bags from a "family land" to celebrate the New Year, and go to have a brief relationship with relatives - it is also likely to be a confrontation.
This is actually the process of "social relations" moving towards "modernization". "Relatives" are always associated with their hometown and tradition. In the 1990s, they were mainly rural areas, and in the past 10 years, they were small cities.
Relatives are "parents' social relations", which are essentially a blood relationship. They are destined from the moment you are born, and you cannot choose or deny them. In the long traditional society, "relatives" are not only relationships, but also a solid community of interests. Only by mutual support between relatives can we maintain competitiveness in the agricultural society.
In traditional society, except for a very small number of people who have passed the exam or went out to do business, most of them live in fixed places all their lives, and "relative relationships" are also a highly unified value. Conflicts may arise between relatives, but when it comes to "external" it is another community of interests.
The biggest difference between "modernity" and tradition is to rebuild a person's social relationships. From the countryside to the city, we came from " acquaintance society " to the stranger society. Blood ties and relatives are the most important in traditional society, while in urban strangers society, people must rely on the law - a contractual relationship.
This becomes another reality. That is, even your neighbors in the same community or building have to rely on legal norms to maintain relationships, rather than "relatives". There is a classic analogy on the Internet, "Even a community security guard is stronger than a relative." This is of course a prejudice, but to some extent, it can also illustrate the characteristics of this new type of social relationship. The security guard will not care about whether you get married and have children like relatives, and there is a high probability that you will not borrow money from you. However, he is different from a pure stranger.
Community security guards will greet you like an acquaintance, and sometimes they will help you open the door or get a courier. This makes you feel warm, a superficial, superficial and cute warmth that will not put you in any psychological burden.
This seems to be the sense of boundaries between people, and it seems to be the modernization of interpersonal relationships.
Beijing Garden Expo People who participated in the "Lugou Xiaoyue" Poetry Festival. Mid-Autumn Reunion actually contains the bloody recognition among relatives.Photo by Tao Ran, Beijing News reporter
The psychological connection between us and relatives cannot be broken
If you feel warm about the enthusiasm of the community security guards beyond strangers, it means that you still long for a deep connection in your heart: Can you be deeper, just like your second uncle or aunt, but don’t interfere with my life?
's ambiguous sense of boundaries is the duality of "new urban people". Those who complain about relatives actually desire connections in their hearts. What they desire is the connection between "less intervention" and "less kidnapping".
But in reality, you are not determined enough. If you can't do it, you can't just go away and don't go home during the Spring Festival. There are no relatives' phone numbers on your mobile phone, and you can't quit any "family group" named after the words "big family" and "family family", and you can't work alone in the city.
Because, humans are always emotional animals. A person often has more contact with relatives in his childhood, and has already been "embedded" with each other without realizing it. How easy is it to completely separate?
In fact, with the popularity of social media, more people are reconstructing relatives. Among the people I have come into contact with, more and more friends with "family groups". When people complain about the inconsistent views of the family group, often tearing or even blocking each other, they actually show a certain recognition of the family group.
Therefore, we are willing to continue to stay in the family group, and even if we don’t speak, we will not quit the group easily. The existence of this family and relative group seems to indicate that we are not completely "modern" in social relations. But this is not necessarily a bad thing.
People living in cities often complain about "urban indifference" when enjoying the ease of the "contractual" stranger society. This is actually a bit of a complaint about the wrong person. What is indifferent is not the city, but the "people" themselves. In a deeper sense, indifference is not the "others", but precisely oneself.
So we went to look for similar types, to find interest groups or make appointments for dinner and drinks. And whenever this is the "sense of boundaries" we claim to care about becomes ambiguous again.
So, is there a possibility of "recreating" relationship? Second uncle or aunt just think they are the previous generation that should be alienated. So, is there any possibility of "common progress" for my cousin? Is it possible to combine "contract" and "blood relationship" together?
For example, starting a business with brothers and sisters may be one of the most difficult things in the world, but I know there are still many successful examples in reality.
After all, although some people say that relatives are "not good" anymore, we cannot really live alone in this world. Therefore, giving warmth to strangers and distance to relatives is not easy, but it is also a psychological connection that is worth our serious attempt.
Written by Zhang Feng (columnist)
Editing / He Rui
Proofreading / Wu Xingfa
