Have you heard of this stereotype that Chinese people like e think the stereotype is true in a way that we talk about money more openly?

Yes.

And e like my money.

E wish it could be more.

But the majority off the overview would be yes.

Money is very important.

The cultural stereotype of Chinese people being obsessed with money.

It's so pervasive that it was a central joke in a stand up routine.

The comedian Ronnie Chang is Chinese.

People love money.

We love that Chinese people fucking love money.

Okay?

You think rappers love money?

Your we love money more than anyone.

This is why Chinese a Siri's Where Ready banking common stereotypes about Chinese people on Google search at the time, the trope of the frugal Chinese family has even made it to sitcoms.

You've got a dishwasher this whole time.

Why haven't we been using it?

Because this family doesn't believe in dishwashers.

Who was there when we moved in?

We'll never use it.

Chinese parents have been known to push the Children into certain career paths.

Engineer, doctor, lawyer, boring jobs, but very stable and choose life partners based on income level.

Theo dating market, not now on the market like open dating corner.

She's talking about parks in China, where parents try to find partners for their kids, where you list out all the criteria like age, Uh, what university?

And for guys, If you have house, they will say, Oh, I have one house in the same Trojan high.

So these air, like a plus plus plus like people will think you have a house thing.

My daughter.

I will have more sense of security thistles.

Sarah Jane Hall.

She wants an etiquette school for rich ladies in China.

I actually awesome.

My students who are well off Chinese way.

Absolutely.

It's true.

So where there's a cultural obsession with fortune come from Reason one.

Today's China rules from poverty in just one generation.

Most of our parents, their generations, their parents, generations they didn't live through a very, um, smooth life.

They overcame a lot of hardship we could not imagine, um, from our perspective because we never really experienced that.

In the 19 sixties, China's leader, Mao Zedong, sought to rid the country of capitalist influences as part of a power grab.

What followed was a chaotic decade called the Cultural Revolution, when people were encouraged to turn in any one day suspect did off harboring Capitalist also called N C revolutionary ideas.

This left the Chinese economy in ruins, and by 1976 1 3rd of the rural population was living below the poverty line.

Deng Xiaoping, a senior Communist official, rose to power after Mao's death and start to pull the country out of poverty.

Don't jumping a very famous line get rich quick?

China's economy was unshackled, going from essentially plan to market economy In just a few decades, China became home to the second highest millionaire population in the world.

Average millionaires in China.

It's such seven years old, big government, extreme poverty.

They just want to spoil everybody around them and make sure that their own Children never suffer in that way.

As a result, the stereotype changed from a lot of saving money to that are spending it.

The country's booming private wealth helped remove social taboos around openly discussing money.

Talk about money.

I like my family is very important.

When I first went to China, when I sit on the bus and people start chat with me and the first question.

Waas.

So where you from?

On the second question is, what do you do?

And the third question is how much a month, either you're a doll chance.

But the Chinese obsession with fortune runs deep and has been part of the culture for a long time, from red envelopes to go to everything.

Two.

Loving the number eight because it rhymes a fortune from dumplings that look like ingots to worshiping the god of wealth.

Yes, Chinese people have been loving money for a long, long time.

Which brings us to a reason Number two value system.

China has religious traditions that associate money with circumstance.

The more money you have, the more fortunate you are.

Some places have very strong religious cultures where, you know, being interested in material things is really considered to be bad.

There's something in Chinese religion which is actually the opposite.

In Buddhism, there's the concept of karma.

Being born into a rich family means that you're a good person in your previous life.

In Taoism, there's a God of wealth.

Chechen.

Yeah, All right.

So you literally you want money?

You go and pray to God of wealth.

Go, go and ask for money.

So naturally, in a value system that prizes money, people will want to maximize their earning potential.

And if the god of wealth needs a little more persuading, there's actually someone you can call E O E Things and the Dawn Tyler, are you trying a legal phone booth?

Uh, E O E.

Finally, our last reason why Chinese people became enamored with money is because of the country's long history of trade.

Doing business deal with money investing.

Consuming all this kind of thing is nothing new in Chinese culture.

China has had a highly commercialized society for thousands of years.

When the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang, took power in 221 b.

C.

He established a monetary system later during the Western Han Dynasty.

About 2200 years ago, foreign trade began in China with the creation of the Silk Road, the capital, Changan became a cosmopolitan city, with traders and merchants coming from all parts of the world by the Tang Dynasty.

During the seventh century, the population of foreign merchants in Changan had outnumbered the local population.

So at the time when everywhere else in the world was still, uh, economically backwards.

This was really the center of the world economy.

And when carrying around coins grew too cumbersome, merchants began living them behind with trusted agents who had record on paper how much money was deposited.

That was the beginning of paper banknotes and Chinese people's love affair with them.

When people talk about now how the consumer culture has influenced people under capitalism over a few generations, Okay, but in China, it's not been a few generations.

It's literally been 1000 years, yes.