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May 11, 2016

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Home » Opinion » Foreign Views

Invention helps an octogenarian stay relevant

By Kunal Sinha | May 11, 2016, Wednesday | Print Edition

Eight-five year old Ding Bingcai is the archetypal Chinese grandpa. Growing up in a village in Fujian province, having survived famine, the civil war, living through the “cultural revolution” and then reform era, one would expect him to be sitting on a rattan chair sipping tea and playing a game of mahjong with his surviving neighbors.

But no! One fine day, he decided to indulge one of his ten grandchildren, the fashion photographer Ding Guoliang. The younger Ding dressed up his grandfather in blue, green and mulberry suits, tartan bow ties, made him don fedoras and designer glasses, and shot him in Xiamen’s streets and cafes.

The result was a visually stunning, culturally disruptive series of images that rapidly began buzzing on WeChat and Weibo. A new fashion icon was born: China’s coolest grandpa. It’s important that he has a sense of existence and that people pay attention to him, says the younger Ding, adding, “I want my grandpa to feel that he is useful.”

In an industry where age is considered a handicap, the sheer audacity of this reinvention suggests that the creative spirit in China has taken a bold new turn. More significantly, it suggests that embracing change and living it is not a value that is confined to the younger generation: savvy, saucy seniors need not be an oxymoron.

Grandpa Ding is not alone.

In a different way, but getting a similar jaw-dropping reaction from China’s netizens, is Liang Yuxiang, a sixty-one year old race car driver from Chengdu, in Sichuan Province. While his chosen profession by itself is daring, his physical persona, splashed all over social media, is even more so. He poses bare-chested in faded jeans, with rippling six-pack abs and V-lines, displaying a physique and attitude that would be the envy of many twenty-five year olds. He goes on to list his exploits: participating in the Taklamakan Rally, driving from Chengdu to Rome, and zipping around Taiwan. Significantly younger than Grandpa Ding, he prefers to be called Uncle.

It is remarkable how China’s seniors have used the very tools and means which they’ve been derided for not being smart about, to send a powerful message out to the post 80s and post 90s generation: We’re doing okay! We’ve found new passions while you struggle to compete and get ahead!

Creativity and passion

But don’t jump to the conclusion that they’re going to cast aside their mahjong tiles and make a beeline to the nearest H&M store.

Deep down, it is really about reinvention and relevance.

To stay ahead of the curve today, every individual has no option but to reinvent herself or himself. By acquiring new skills and applying them to new situations. By discovering, nurturing and enhancing new facets of one’s persona.

Thanks to social media, there is plenty to be inspired by. But it is an individual’s creativity and passion that will make the chosen persona stand out and be valued, whether it is in personal relationships, or the workplace.

Businesses and brands need to recognize this imperative.

Job definitions can no longer be static; valuable employees should be allowed to carve out their own paths in organizations, or else they will leave. It’s the combination of the need for homeowners to use property to hedge their income in an uncertain world, and the desire for travelers to experience the world like a local that gave birth to Airbnb.

As many firms face challenges to growth across markets, it is indeed both prudent and necessary to explore if their current relationships with customers need a healthy dose of reinvention.

Kunal Sinha has over 25 years of unearthing and commenting on consumer and cultural trends, and helping companies profit from them. Based in Shanghai for nearly a decade, he is the author of two books about creativity in business and has taught at some leading business schools.

Foreign Views


 

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