Traditionally, the Chinese tend to behave according to their status, not their age. For example, someone aged 18, especially if a woman, will behave almost child-like if still at school, more grown-up if already in paid employment, certainly even more grown-up if married, and finally, definitely very much more grown-up if she’s a mother. It may not be conscious role-playing, but it is not “acting your age”, it is “acting according to your status”.
I did some supply teaching at age 18 while waiting for my ‘A’ level results to come through from Cambridge (Cambridge Overseas Examination Syndicate). My students were 14, only four years younger than I, but I had to act authoritatively, whilst only a few months back, when I was still at school, I was “the naughtiest girl in the school”, playing all sorts of tricks on people.
At the end of the first term, I left that temporary post to go and do a secretarial course. My students bought me farewell presents, little knick-knacks that children of that age like. In return, I took them out to an open air food stall, sitting down for shaved ice (heaped over sweet mashed red beans and dowsed with multi-coloured syrup and condensed milk), paying for all 30 of them. Very grown-up.
(Singapore, 1973)
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