Few things are more pathetic than spoiled children struggling to make it on their own, but somewhere in Chongqing, China, a 23-year-old kid (not a man) named Chen Dong is crying on doorsteps “sad-eyed and defeated,” asking everyone from bank tellers to police officers to lend him money after his parents cut him off.
A total stranger to the art of begging, he’s resorted to asking bank tellers to borrow money, because, you know, money must come from banks and stuff.
“I asked my parents to send me some money, but there was no balance on my debit card when I checked the ATM … I started wandering in front of the bank. Then when I mustered up some courage, I approached one of the bank employees inside, asking him if he could lend me some money for dinner.”
A bank manager became concerned, thinking the kid was in trouble because he didn’t look homeless, so he called the police to help.
“He doesn’t look like a beggar because his clothes are pretty neat … Since no one was going to give him any money, he walked out. I could see he looked pretty down. I guessed he might be in some sort of trouble, so I called our local police officer Huang Hai for help.”
Chen, from Hubei province, got himself in this position after completing vocational college three years ago. He lived at home and did nothing with his life while his parents supported him financially. When his parents got fed up, a fight ensued and Chen ran away to Chongqing to find a job, presumably.
“My parents stopped supporting me because I didn’t take their advice. They even cut off my allowance, so I had to came here for work,” he explained to the police before asking them for money to buy dinner.
Officer Huang called the boy’s mother, but she refused to take the call — Chen’s older brother answered instead, and he laid down some cold, hard truth.
“Chen Dong graduated from a higher vocational college three years ago but was doing nothing at home. He got financial support from our parents instead of getting himself a job … We just want to leave him out in society. A grown man with a healthy body should learn to earn his own living expenses.”
Jiang Hua, a marriage and family guidance specialist in Chongqing, weighed in with her opinion on the case: Chen’s pathetic behavior is a result of him being spoiled as a kid. According to the
Shanghaiist, she explains:
“To suddenly stop ‘feeding’ him is an immature solution for his parents … Forcing their kid to live independently without communicating with him and getting to know his own thoughts cannot solve the actual problem here.”
While we all love to hate on rich kids who don’t understand or can’t survive in the real world, we technically can’t hold him fully responsible. Chen’s parents, who enabled this behavior by spoiling him instead of teaching him how to survive and make something of himself, are also part of the problem. Sadly for them, responsibility isn’t taught with a firm backhand slap.
Don’t be a “Dong” and learn to hustle without the help of rich parents because they won’t bail you out forever. As Kanye West once said, “You gotta do something man your ass is grown.”
