Lost and found student in UK serves as a lesson in filial sensibility

A 27-year-old Chinese women studying in the United Kingdom was feared to be missing, after losing touch with her parents for 19 days. The parents were rightly alarmed, which, as it turned out, was unnecessary.

Following an investigation by the Chinese General Consulate in Edinburgh, Scotland in the UK, the woman was found safe and sound. She had turned off her mobile phone while preparing for a doctoral program.

A notice issued by the consulate, after confirming her safety, also reminded that Chinese living or studying overseas, while being alert to their own safety, should "maintain regular contact with parents and relatives at home," with necessary updates about their whereabouts and their changed conditions.

While such deep concentration on the part of the woman in this age of hyperconnectivity is admirable, it does say something about proper awareness, or lack of, about parents' expectations in the age of instant communication.

The ubiquity of social media tools today suggests we tend to have very low tolerance for suspense or uncertainty. Our heightened expectations for immediacy in communication means that failure to get a timely response can often lead to disquietude, unease, or alarm.

Adult daughters should normally know enough about the emotional and psychological needs of their parents to foresee that a prolonged silence of 19 days today might elicit alarm.

At least this would be true of most Chinese parents today.

If the daughter finds the cacophony of myriads social media tools disruptive or coercive – as they often are – a sensible child should at least leave a message beforehand, warning her parents of a period of silence. Failure to do this suggests an insensitivity bordering on callousness.

Unlike parents in the West, who tend to adopt a more laissez-faire attitude toward adult children, Chinese parents' care for their children extends well into their adulthood. They are generally expected to take care of the life of their grandchildren at the early age.

Unfortunately, this solicitude is not generally returned by the children.

Some criticize Chinese parents as patrimonial, who would usually dictate their children's life in a high-handed manner.

Partly as a result, after suffering long years of control in the form of nagging, lecturing, and censuring, the children who taste the freedom of independent life (even if they are still financially dependent) would sometimes demonstrate a strong volition to keep communications with their parents to a minimum. In these circumstances, although parents continue to have the urge to reach out to the children, their goodwill is not always acknowledged, leave alone reciprocated.

As someone observed cynically, there is a world of difference between parental feelings for children, and children's attitudes toward their parents.

I have heard many lighthearted jokes about the circumstances in which children studying abroad would attempt communications with their parents, if at all: When they need money, and even then the communication is usually couched curtly in the form of a demand.