The rise of the internet and the globalized city has made it seem as if there are really only two cultural values in the world - the traditional values of the rural lifestyle and the urban values of commerce that dominate the modern cities. Generally speaking, people tend to consider these as a one-way trend as older, more traditional people stay in the rural areas and die off and younger, more modern people move to the cities and push progress and change. By comparing two short stories such as "Souvenirs" by Leila Aboulela and "An Internet Baby" by Xiaolu Guo, it is possible to see that while values seem to shift and change a lot, the fundamental building block remains the same from generation to generation and from rural to urban while what is different exists in specific cultural definitions of what that fundamental value is.
On the surface, both stories demonstrate differences in values between traditional values and the values of urban life. Most of the time, these shifting values are seen as the older generation clings to tradition and the younger generation embraces, sometimes simply by necessity, the new. For example, it appears Yassir's mother is being too harsh in her refusal to fully acknowledge Yassir's marriage to Emma in "Souvenir." "'Your wife - what's her name?' was how his mother referred to Emma. She would not say Emma's name" (158). Yassir knows this is his mother's way of showing that she did not approve of this 'pretend' marriage he has, even though he has been married for five years, now has a three-year-old daughter, and thinks of Emma as "Unbroken land after the sea. Real life after the straight lines of the oil-rig. A kind of freedom" (158). Clearly, Yassir's marriage is not a 'pretend' marriage in his heart so it is surprising that she continues to hope he could "just leave Emma and leave the child, come home, and those five years would have been just an aberration, time forgotten" (159). In other words, give up on trying to reach a better life for everyone in his family and return to the village and life he'd grown up in. In the same way, it seems harsh that the village Yuli and Weiming come from would "do everything they could to keep the child" in spite of the fact that Yuli would lose any chance to "get her diploma and start a career in a big city" (349). The village sounds fairly similar to Yassir's village in that it is very poor, "where the only income is from growing chili peppers" (159) and thus represents traditional values. Also like Yassir, Yuli would be expected to give up on her attempt to provide her family with a better life and the couple return to the village.
However, a closer look at the stories reveals how traditional values are also the driving force behind the younger characters' actions. In "Souvenir," Yassir went to a hard life in Aberdeen working on the oil rigs in order to find a better life as he was expected to do. His traditional role in the family is seen when he first arrives and packs fresh straw around the air cooling unit of his mother's house so that it runs better; however, it is also shown in his attempts to buy his mother and sister a new car to replace the old one that is breaking down on them. "He had suggested to his mother and Manaal that he should buy them a new one. Indeed this had been one of the topics of his stay - a new car - the house needs fixing - parts of the garden wall are crumbing away - why don't you get out of this dump and move to a new house?" (164), but the women will not allow him to help them with these things. Yassir went away so that he could make enough money to help his family improve their fortunes, fulfilling his family duty. It was Emma's necklace, written in Arabic, that first attracted him to her because he was homesick in Aberdeen. In "An Internet Baby," Yuri worries about fulfilling her duty to her parents and her village. Although she recognizes that a boy child would be fought for, she also knows that her family has made a significant investment in her education and she owes it to them to succeed, something she will never do if her pregnancy is discovered. "She would certainly be expessed and lose all the time and money she and her parents have invested to get her where she is: on the way to some better life" (349). Her boyfriend, Weiming, works two jobs and barely has time to sleep trying to help Yuri succeed at the same time that he sends money back home. It is his traditional duty to help the family and he honors it without complaint, yet to fulfill this duty, "he has to work like a donkey. A donkey can sleep while standing still, and Weiming has to learn to do that too" (350). Like Yassir, both of these young people show that their decisions are strongly influenced by their concern to fulfill traditional values which can only be done by chasing modern goals that take them away from the family unit.
Just as the younger character's actions demonstrate support for traditional values, a push toward progress is also a value shown within the older generations. The promise of Yassir's life is sharply contrasted with the promise of his sister's life as reflected in the joke between them, that "there is no one on the horizon yet" (164). Manaal's response to Yassir's assertion that "Every university graduate is abroad, making money so that he can come back and marry a pretty girl like you" (164) brings attention to the fact that Yassir himself had gone off and married a girl from far away. This little interaction reveals that the traditional values can only survive by letting go of them. Only by letting go of the traditional lifestyle she has in Africa and going away can Manaal expect to find anyone on the horizon, even if she is looking for an eligible man from her own village. This is also the case in "An Internet Baby" since Yuri's parents have purposely made an investment in Yuri's education in the hopes of sending her forward into a better life. In doing this, the family is sending a message that the traditional values are shifting somewhat in order to acknowledge that girl children can be held equally responsible in supporting their families as boy children. While little more is shown of Yuri and Weiming's village family, the story also shows other people of the older generations embracing progress. Yuri has just become familiar with computer technology, having just learned it in college (350), but the couple receives a few responses from people older than they are who apparently have no trouble using the internet to find what they want.
In the end, both stories show that both groups of people - the older and the younger, the traditional and the modern - ultimately share the same abiding value. Where the stories differ is in defining what that value is. Yassir, the younger and the modern, comes up against his mother's traditional and older disapproval of his wedding. He discovers through his sister that it is because he did not care for his mother's feelings and created a disconnection between them. His choice of wife means the family will never have the kind of close relationship his mother dreamed of, but this is more because of Emma's attitude than his mother who shows the pictures he sends her and buys things for the baby. This realization comes upon him slowly as he thinks about Emma's refusal to come with him for a visit, compares that to Zahra's father, "a man who was able to draw his foreign wife to Islam, and Yassir attributed to him qualities of strength and confidence" (163), and finally realizes that "from this part of the world Emma wanted malleable pieces, not the random whole" (166). At the same time, he is also realizing that he wants family togetherness, too, as he begins to feel "himself dispensable, he thought they could manage without him. They did just that when he was off-shore" (162). His daughter Samia is growing and changing without him and he feels he has lost a connection with her just as his mother feels she has lost her connection with him.
This same kind of surprising realization that everyone is sharing the same basic value is also found in "An Internet Baby" as everyone is focused on the financial welfare of the group. This is very clear when looking at Yuri and Weiming who decide to sell their baby to the highest bidder. Even while feeding her baby, Yuri is worried that "if the baby doesn't go soon, she'll miss her end-of-term exam, then she won't get her diploma" (351) and Weiming's primary concern in choosing parents for the unwanted child is how much they can pay. However, this same attitude can be discovered in an analysis of the actions of the village in which Yuri and Weiming are only valued by how much they can help the people back home. Weiming is expected to continue to help no matter what it costs him in physical and emotional distress and Yuri is an investment toward the future. Even the couple that comes to buy the baby is more focused on the investment value than more abstract values. "In turn, both the wife and the husband thoroughly check him, studying him like a pair of newly made shoes" (353). As they make the exchange, all four of the adults on the scene are so concerned with the business transaction that no one pays attention to the baby, allowing him to fall into the water and drown.
Although each of these short stories depict very different plots and characters, they both tell a story about our perception of shifting values. Both stories set up the idea that there is a great deal of difference between the traditional values usually held by older people and the modern values embraced by younger people. However, they also both question whether such a perception is true. In each story, the younger, more modern characters are shown to be driven by traditional values while the older characters are seen to embrace the modern age. As the plots develop and the characters begin to learn something through their experience, both stories reveal the idea that older and younger, traditional and modern, tend to share the same underlying value. Where these values differ, as these two stories show, is in how each culture defines their underlying value. Within Aboulela's story, this underlying value is shown to be family togetherness. This does not necessarily mean a close physical interaction, but instead refers to a close emotional connection. Guo's story, however, shows that greater worth is placed on the investment, ensuring that full value has been received in exchange for effort or financial expenditure. While it may be true that values shift, this shift occurs more culture by culture than it does generation to generation or even rural lifestyle to urban lifestyle.
References
Aboulela, L. (2009). "Souvenirs." Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing. R. Stillman (Ed.). New York: Penguin, pp. 157-72.
Guo, Xiaolu. (2009). "An Internet Baby." Freedom: A Collection of Short Fiction Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Key Porter Books, pp. 349-54.
