Values and anger
Wang Zhengyu, 33, who has worked as a middle school teacher for eight years, began to think about the rising issues of rage and short tempers after finding his students are getting more and more irritable.
"Not only the children, but Chinese people as a whole are becoming angrier and in less control of negative emotions," he said.
Wang believes that women and men handle rage in different ways. "When a woman loses control, she will do things like jumping out of a moving car or inflicting injury on herself, like cutting her wrists. But men are more likely to be a danger to other people and public safety, especially in a road rage." He is especially worried after reading so many news stories about how people lose control and get into physical altercations or have extreme reactions, often in public places.
According to a July 7 report by news portal sina.com, a father in Hunan Province threw his 2-month-old son onto the ground, who later died at the hospital. The incident occurred because of how angry he became while fighting with his wife over trivial matters. In a rage, the father first smashed his own phone, then grabbed the baby and threw him on the ground.
Sun said the number of cases he handled that were related to emotion control is rising in recent years. She added that although the emotions are generated by thinking patterns, an ability to control one's temper is rooted in one's personal quality, and morals.
"Traditional Chinese values, like Confucianism, tell people to hold their temper, but it's a pity that it is losing popularity in China now," she said.
Wang Junxiu, a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in a 2015 report on the academy's website, Chinese Social Sciences Net, that Chinese people's social values have changed over recent years, and the changes have led to many negative effects in society.
"Chinese society is becoming more complicated, and people are also becoming more complicated and diversified in character, but they lack common values," said Wang Junxiu. "Take how we view rights for example, everyone has different beliefs about their rights, and they put their own interests over interests of others, which is becoming increasingly obvious in China."
Sun said the fact that the post-80s generation becoming the pillar of strength in society attributes to the temper-related social effects.
She said the most active groups in Chinese society are people in their mid-30s, born in the 1980s, a period of profound social reforms and great changes.
"The post-80s generation caught up with the economical development period, and the family planning policy, so the only child is often spoiled and has a bad temper," she said.
Gaining control
As for how to control one's emotions, Sun suggested that people keep a record of times when they lose control, and find out the triggers that cause them to react that way to negative emotions.
Sun said emotions are endless and can not always be suppressed, so the only way to control them is to accept them. "Only by exploring the details of negative emotions and where they come from, can a person know where and how it will affect them."
The ability of emotion control can also be cultivated from birth since childhood values can go through one's entire life. Sun said that the crying and temper tantrums that children use when their needs are not met can be seen as failure to control their emotions.
"Parents should let children know the correct and reasonable thinking pattern and response to the situation," Sun said.
However, if someone loses their temper and feels like hurting themselves or others, they may be suffering from certain mental disorders, and Sun suggest they should seek out professional help from a psychologist.
"After the news of the tiger zone attack, my boyfriend often reminds me to control my temper," Fang said. "And I realized that it is ok to have emotions and be in a bad mood, but I also need to strengthen the ability to control how I react to them."
