Strawberry tribe, moonlight clan: China's youths have many nicknames — and they reveal a massive socio-economic gap between generations

• A variety of nicknames, like "moonlight tribe" and "strawberry generation," emerged for young people in China in the early 2000s.
• The nicknames generally describe younger generations as weak-willed and a burden to their parents.
• They show the gulf between the environments in which China's older and younger generations grew up.

"Strawberry tribe," "moonlight tribe," "elder-gnawing tribe."

These are a few of the most popular and enduring generational labels used to describe young people in China, and, to some extent, Taiwan. And they all have a common theme: They describe younger generations as weak-willed, spoiled, and a burden to their parents.

Just like a strawberry, which is easily bruised, the phrase "strawberry tribe" — or cao mei zu (草莓族) in Mandarin — is used to label the younger generation as fragile and incapable of withstanding pressure.

The term is widely believed to have been coined in the 1993 book "Office Story" by Taiwanese author Weng Jing-yu. While the label is most frequently used in Taiwan, it's also tossed around in countries with a significant ethnic Chinese population, like Singapore.

"Elder-gnawing tribe," or ken lao zu (啃老族) in Mandarin, is used to describe those who rely on their parents for financial support. It's similar to the English NEET, short for "Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training."

But "moonlight tribe" is the term most commonly used in China. A pun on the Mandarin word yue (月), which means moon or month, and guang (光) meaning light or empty, the label describes those who empty their funds and have no savings by the end of the month.

A gulf between China's generations

These labels, which emerged along a rise in internet culture in the early 2000s, show the gulf between the environments in which China's older and younger generations grew up, Justine Rochot, a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, told Insider. Rochot studies the sociology of aging and retirement in the Sinophone world.

Born in the early years of Maoist China in the 195os, the older generation of parents grew up during the cultural revolution. They faced hardships such as poor access to quality education but, thanks to the early marketization of the housing market and a strong saving culture, many managed to buy property in the 1990s, said Rochot.

On the other hand, their children and grandchildren were born in an era of economic reform, with greater access to education and a highly materialist culture, Rochot said.

"But despite this, these individuals — as well as the ones who followed them in the 2000s — found themselves coming of age in an era of high inflation, of income stagnation, job pressure, and concurrence, and therefore heavily dependent on the financial help of their parents in order to access to property or jobs," Rochot said.

The disconnect between generations also comes with dependency

The term "moonlight tribe" is meaningless in an economy where many people struggle to keep up, according to people posting on Weibo, China's top social media platform.

"Feels like now 'moonlight tribe' has already faded out of the buzzword market. After all, many people have to pay out of their own pocket to survive on top of working a month's job," one post reads. 

"I think the environment in the past was much better than it is now. Then, there were still people scolding the 'moonlight tribe,' scolding the 'elder-gnawing tribe.' But now nobody's saying anything anymore, because everyone's 'moonlight' and 'elder-gnawing,'" another Weibo post reads.

Rochot told Insider that this phenomenon of generation labeling exists in the context of a "paradoxically high intergenerational dependency, especially financially," in China.

"A lot of older people know that they might need to depend on their only child's help and support when they grow older, they also see helping them access property or helping them in other ways as a way to create future reciprocity," she said.

And, in contrast with the idea that young people are "elder-gnawing," research tends to show older parents using the support they give their children as a way to deepen the relationships with their children, Rochot said.

The gap is widening, and youths are throwing up their hands

Though cynical generation nicknames have been around for ages as part of the universal "kids these days" phenomenon, the tendency has been particularly reinforced in the 20th and 21st centuries, Rochot said.

"The intense pace of social change which characterized the past decades has highly strengthened the gap of experiences separating different cohorts worldwide, along with wars, changing ideologies, the rise of capitalism as well as the diffusion of social media and new technology," she said.

These differences make it hard for generations to empathize with one another, leading to the recent explosion of generational labeling worldwide, Rochot said.

Chinese youths' reception to these generational labels is also noteworthy.

Instead of retaliating with a clapback phrase like "OK, boomer," Chinese millennials and Gen Z have been reclaiming these negative labels by "lying flat" and "letting it rot."