What's the right amount of suffering?
Chinese culture loves morality tales about the necessity of suffering. In the West, we don't even like to acknowledge its existence
My parents accidentally introduced me to a Chinese reality TV show called 笑声传奇, which roughly translates to “legends of laughter”. The format is that industry veterans of comedy - famous xiangsheng (standup) or xiaoping (sketch) performers - are pitted against incumbent talent to produce standup pieces or skits, and the audience votes on a winner. There is much didactic back-and-forth about the nature of comedy and talent, the value of hard work and perseverance, how the times are changing, and the importance of encouraging the next generation. The younger folks are always deferential, grateful for the opportunity, and hungry for public approval. It is, in a nutshell, extremely Chinese.
Anyone who has ever watched the 春节联欢晚会 (China’s annual state-sponsored Chinese New Year gala and variety show) will be familiar with the format.1 After all the witty jokes, there is always some kind of deep morality tale about the necessity of suffering. It is almost always about returning to “the family” in some way. A busy father, finally coming home from work to spend time with his son. A city-dwelling family, putting the stresses of modern life aside to reconnect with their parents back in the village. The host asks everyone in the audience to call their mom. The camera pans to a famous celebrity in tears.
You can always tell when the morality tale starts: the music literally changes to something dramatic in minor key. The pathos is slathered on like wallpaper paste.
Over the course of chopping vegetables for dinner, I was minorly flabbergasted by the high-production value emotional rollercoaster that this show was putting on. By the time I had peeled all my carrots, the skits had already spanned more difficult topics than a normal person gets through in three years of therapy. A Taiwanese pop star on his way to a concert gets waylaid by a girl who is about to jump off a building. He catches her and asks her to imagine passing the 8th floor and seeing a couple arguing. Passing the 7th floor and seeing a man eating dinner by himself. Passing the 6th floor and seeing someone staring at a pile of collection letters. Passing the 5th floor and realizing it’s too late to change her mind. (“谁过的容易啊？” “Who has it easy among us?”) They succeed at hauling her back over the edge as the skit ends.
Another one features an elderly woman, played by industry titan Cai Ming 蔡明 (think of her as a Chinese Meryl Streep for comedy - that level of stature), saying goodbye to a toddler before she heads back to her home village. She refers to herself as 奶奶，implying that she is this child’s grandmother - until a surprise plot twist at the end reveals that she is, in fact, a nanny who has been hired by a wealthy city family. Her biological son and grandchild are still back in the village, presumably just as illiterate as her. The child has a brand new set of medical bills that her son can’t afford to pay, so she decides to stay in the city for one more year. She has been living for years in a stranger’s home in the city, taking care of a strange’s child, in order to care for her own. She gives a devastating speech about motherhood being synonymous with sacrifice. There isn’t a dry eye in the audience:
At worst, this uniquely Chinese brand of suffering could be called toxic positivity of a different kind. If Western psychology is generally characterized by an inability to sit comfortably with pathos because we’re so busy drowning it in yoga pants and good vibes on Instagram2 (à la Brave New World), then Chinese psychology could be accused of not only sitting in it, but actively wearing it with a perverse sort of quiet pride. It is a sort of gentle glorification, as if to suggest that such profound and painful sacrifice is a sure sign that we are living virtuous and worthwhile lives.
Neither of these seem quite right.3
#154
In an annoyingly effective example of adapting to another country’s culture, this Peppa Pig commercial absolutely nailed the format in 2019:
When was the last time you saw a realistic depiction of depression in a North American TV show? As in, saw it depicted as anything more than a temporary low on Joseph Campbell’s hero arc? A weak blip of negative feeling, so easily overwhelmed by the brute force that is Overcoming Adversity™?
Suffering may be an inevitable fact of life, but it is also sometimes caused by negligence and poor quality of thought. Sometimes, the environment is dysfunctional, even if you’re compounding the issue by making bad choices yourself.
Parents can be clueless and emotionally unskilled; yelling at them doesn’t help. Governments allow their own hubris to result in harm to citizens; burning down the Capitol doesn’t actually make things better. Don’t get me started on how Maoist communism killed 36 million people, and the CCP still can’t come to terms with this in any sensible way over half a century later (as evidenced by banning the book linked above). Yes, suffering is an inevitable fact of life - but it is also sometimes the result of a fucked up system that really, really needs to be table-flipped.