Helpless China's post-70s generation: a hard generation

To say that the achievements of modern China are obvious to all. Her development is inseparable from the arduous struggle of generations of people. Among them, the biggest contributor is China's post-70s generation.

The post-70s generation is the group of people born between 1970 and 1979. The oldest is 53 years old, and the youngest stepped into the age of confusion a few years ago. Now, they are the main force in the pillars of China.

40 to 50 years old is when a person's ability, fame, status and power in society are all at their peak. They look bright and beautiful, but in fact they are the hardest people.

Just like the TV series "The World of Man", it is about such a group of people who have worked hard, worked hard and struggled, and depicted the great changes in Chinese society and the bitterness of the people's lives from multiple angles, in multiple directions and at multiple levels.

Just as the so-called no struggle has no achievements, no failures can not succeed, behind their success, is countless bitterness and sweat.

They raised the sails of the times, and at the same time, they were also strangled by the sail rope handles.

01 The newborn post-70s: the main force of reform and opening up

Ten years after the 70s, the state carried out the reform of the college entrance examination.

At that time, the college entrance examination topics were not too difficult to compare with now, but compared with the education level at that time and the allocation of resources throughout the country, the difficulty of the college entrance examination and the fierce degree of competition, it was not an exaggeration to say that "thousands of troops and horses crossed the single wooden bridge".

Those who were able to enter the university at that time were the pride of their families and villages. When I went outside, someone said, "This is a college student in our village!" ”

The university degree at that time was much more valuable and more authentic than it is now. The author's junior high school math teacher is also a post-70s specialist, but her level is not inferior to that of current graduate students and master's students.

Because academic qualifications are indeed rare, college students at that time were directly assigned jobs by the state, which was equivalent to having an iron rice bowl. Such a high treatment also proves the high gold content of the university and the fierce competition in the college entrance examination.

In 1989, China implemented the policy of reform and opening up, when the earliest batch of post-70s, just 20 years old, so they went abroad to see the outside world as the deputies of those predecessors who went abroad to investigate.

Everything in the foreign country shocked Chinese, who had just come out of the enclosure, and a man took a small leaflet from the airport back home while he was at the airport, only because he had never seen such a thing before. Seeing that foreign countries are prosperous because of opening up, the post-70s generation has become the main force to resolutely promote the reform and opening up policy.

They work hard to learn knowledge, build a modern knowledge system, catch up with the wave of globalization, and integrate China into the world through the efforts of a generation.

While absorbing and learning from foreign advanced development technologies, they are also very patriotic. Foreign forces repeatedly threw olive branches at them and tried to attract them with generous treatment, but the patriotic post-70s refused.

They work hard to do their jobs and build their hometowns.

As China connects with the world, soaring prices follow. A lot of people here will be very impressed. A few decades ago, people's wages were only a dozen yuan, a few tens of yuan, which was enough to support a family.

As prices soared, the currency began to depreciate rapidly. In the past, "ten thousand yuan household" was synonymous with affluence in the minds of the toiling masses, but in the current 2022, ten thousand yuan is nothing at all.

Big aside, a new version of an Apple phone is enough to spend all of them, or even not enough. Money is becoming less and less valuable, and the post-70s generation is growing up in this era of soaring prices.

Wages are obviously growing at a slower rate than prices are soaring. There is not much money in hand, but also to face the increasing cost of living, had to continue to work a few more jobs, the hardships of survival can be imagined.

02 The post-70s who worked hard to build away from home

After the reform and opening up, in order to earn money, many young people left their hometowns to work in Guangdong, Shanghai and other places to participate in China's construction.

These young people are the 70s generation. Because of their hard work and hard work, the tall buildings of big cities have risen one after another.

They are the first batch of "migrant workers", entering the city with dreams and contributing their own beam of light to the city.

Now when I go to see the construction site, most of them are in their forties and fifties and the 70s. They are hard-working and can do a lot of hard work.

Now many people say that young people can't suffer hardships, and they are compared with these post-70s generations. In fact, for young people, it is not difficult to feel the hardships of the post-70s.

Post-90s and post-00s, their parents, are the generation of post-70s, feel the hardships of their parents, isn't it easy? The post-70s in the city need to leave early and return late, and they also have to work overtime regularly.

Those who enter the city as "migrant workers" have a harder life. Under the headlights on the construction site, they work and build day and night. The post-70s who are sticking to the countryside are also running their family's farmland, going out to do two odd jobs in their spare time, and busy with their livelihood.

Since compulsory education had not yet been implemented at that time, those who could rely on their own learning talents and efforts were undoubtedly a minority to be admitted to universities.

Cities can earn more money, so more people choose to become "migrant workers" at various construction sites.

But those who got a college degree and rose to prominence in the city didn't get long.

Soon, the trend of state-owned enterprise restructuring came, and many post-70s who worked in state-owned enterprises seemed to be holding iron rice bowls, and a large number of layoffs were laid off overnight, and they had to enter the market to start a business.

The hardships of entrepreneurship are something that everyone can anticipate. Some smart and lucky people have achieved good results in the entrepreneurial process, while most people have not had a satisfactory life.

The income from selling vegetable stalls is obviously not as stable and easy as working in state-owned enterprises. However, the post-70s generation has been constantly fighting with life in order to survive, and has never given up.

In fact, if it is only like this, it will not make our strong post-70s succumb.

However, the blessings are incomparable, the misfortune is not alone, and the post-70s who began to feed the next generation soon ushered in two new problems: the upbringing of children and the rise in housing prices.

It is different from the current late marriage and late birth.

At that time, when they entered the 30s, most of the post-70s had already established a family, and the raising and education of children had become a big problem.

In the past, to have children, they only needed to add an extra pair of dishes and chopsticks to the family, so a family could have six or seven children, and the post-70s grew up in such a "free range" way, so they knew that such a method was no longer suitable for society.

The cost of parenting and education is very high, and no one wants to let their children lose at the starting line. In this way, the post-70s generation has been saddled with heavy pressure to raise children.

The cost of various cram classes and interest classes overwhelmed them.

Even more shocking is the soaring housing prices.

House price growth has actually begun since the beginning of reform and opening up. As the country becomes more and more open, those coastal trading cities such as Guangdong, Zhuhai, Shenzhen, and Beijing have soared.

Later, a considerable part of the government's revenue came from land, and real estate developers and speculators made a lot of money.

So did this wealth come out of thin air?

Of course not, the wool is out of the sheep, and the house has always been just needed. Although the post-70s generation is the main force of the new era, the young age is also affected by the old era.

They are not like the young people of today. I thought it was okay to rent, but I thought I had to try to have a house. This mentality also allowed real estate developers to grasp it, so house prices rose more unscrupulously.

The burden on the post-70s body is also getting heavier and heavier.

03 Everything for the kids

Now, the post-70s generation is forty or fifty years old, and their children have begun to step into society. These young people are also very bitter, their wages are increasing slowly, and prices and house prices are soaring too fast.

After the middle-aged 70s, just after fighting for their own lives, they have to help their children. In the current economic situation, most young people want to buy a house, and it is simply a fantasy to rely on their own income.

According to statistics, taking Shanghai as an example, if an ordinary family wants to buy a house of about 80 square meters in Shanghai, it needs three generations of savings to afford it.

House prices in other places are not as high as in Shanghai, and they are not low.

Let your children earn a house? Almost impossible.

In the past, we could still hear the word "nibbling on the old", and society scorned this kind of young people who "nibbled on the old".

But now it seems that no one mentions the old age, why?

Because today's young people are "nibbling on the old", there are very few who do not "nibble on the old", which has become a social phenomenon.

In the future, after the children have a family and hold their grandchildren, they will also help their children with their children.

When stepping into the information age, the receptivity of the post-70s is significantly lower than that of the post-90s and post-00s young people.

At present, WeChat Pay and Alipay payment are popular, and there are not a few post-70s who will not operate smart phones.

And since the epidemic, we have to show the health code and the itinerary code when we travel, otherwise we can't go anywhere, which is more difficult to live in a large number of post-70s.

They were once the main force of reform and opening up, but now they are unable to keep up with the pace of the times. The variety of electronic devices in the city has dazzled the post-70s generation.

They try to learn, but they are not familiar with these things and they are too old to learn. In this fast-growing society, the post-70s generation only hopes that it can run slower.

Chinese births continue to decline, and the aging crisis facing the mainland is becoming more and more serious. In the future, in an increasingly aging society, it will be more and more difficult for the post-70s to survive.

In fact, the mainland has already entered an aging society in 1999, and in 2021, the net growth of Chinese population is only more than 400,000 people. Experts predict that this could be the last year of population growth on the mainland.

The severe ageing crisis will overwhelm public systems and distribute pensions more and more. In the future, the problem of post-70s pension is also a big problem that needs to be solved urgently.

If the population power of national development is insufficient, the cost of pensions will inevitably decrease. The call for "delayed retirement" is now underway, requiring people who can retire at age 60 to retire until they are 65.

The post-70s have struggled all their lives, and when they are old, they have to give themselves a pension, which is really a hard and bitter generation!

summary

The post-70s generation has caught up with the wind of China's progress, and they have just come out of society and encountered the great opportunity of reform and opening up.

Opportunities and risks coexist, and the post-70s generation has exhausted all their strength to seize opportunities and avoid risks, creating one "myth" after another in the construction of new China.

They faced the challenge of rising prices and rising house prices, fought hard, and fulfilled the mission of their generation well. And they also have something that they can't do:

Now they have a hard time keeping up with the times.

A variety of electronic products, two-dimensional codes, apps, etc. make the post-70s dazzling. At the same time, as house prices gradually rise and the cost of living rises, the post-70s generation has to provide financial help for their children.

When you are young, you help the elderly, and when you are old, you help your children.

With the aging of the society more and more serious, the future of the pension resources will gradually decrease, the policy of delaying retirement has also made the post-70s from youth to old age, has been working. Hard-working post-70s, hard-working generation!