Taiwan's 5th to 9th Grade Generations: 30 Years of 'Strawberry' Insults Swapped Three Batches of People; What Slanted Was the Escalator Beneath Their Feet

30-Second Overview: Taiwanese people use "which grade" (based on the Republic of China calendar) to identify themselves, taking the tens digit of their birth year: the 5th grade refers to those born in ROC years 50–59 (1961–1970), extending all the way to the 9th grade (2001–2010). The term "Strawberry Generation," which has been used as an insult for thirty years, was first printed in 1993, targeting the then-twenty-something, now fifty-something 5th graders¹; it then passed down to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. The people being criticized have changed several times, but the label has not changed a single character. What has actually moved between these five generations is the "escalator" beneath their feet, symbolizing "hard work pays off": it slowed down around 2002, when real wages decoupled from productivity²; its entrance was simultaneously raised by housing prices, with Taipei's price-to-income ratio rising from 6.4 times in 2004 to 15.41 times in 2025³; and then it split into two paths—the one relying solely on salaries has nearly stopped, while the one relying on parents' down payments is still moving. This article aims to deconstruct this label.

In March 2025, an account appeared on Threads, posting, "No one else seems to notice... it seems like it's about to shut down again." This was the server of the 7th graders' youth, MySpace (WuMing XiaoZhan), which had already shut down in late 2013⁴. Under the 10,000 likes, the comments were all "Give me back my account" and "But we've all forgotten our passwords."

This was an entire generation liking a piece of space that only they could enter, while others could not press in. Every generation has such a place: the 5th graders' candy shops, the 7th graders' MySpace, the 9th graders' TikTok. The true boundary of generations is drawn there: not in values, but in the lack of a shared login screen.

Paradoxically, the word that causes the fiercest arguments between these five generations has referred to different batches of people over the past thirty years, yet the word itself has not changed a single character.

One Word, Insulted for Thirty Years, Swapped Three Batches of People

In the early 1990s, workplace consultant Weng Jingyu wrote a book titled Office Stories, where the term "Strawberry Generation" was first printed. She was not criticizing today's young people, but rather the batch that had just entered the office, in their twenties at the time—those born in the 1960s, now in their fifties, who love reminiscing about Datong Puppets and Yakult in Facebook groups¹.

Wikipedia's entry records this migration line clearly: "Strawberry Generation" originally referred to Taiwanese people born in the 1960s, commonly known as the 5th graders; subsequently, the mainstream perception shifted downward, broadly referring to young people from the 7th grade onwards¹. A term originally used to insult a specific batch of twenty-something young people has, thirty years later, become a general term for "anyone younger than me whom I find annoying." The label is not describing a specific generation; the label is describing the act of being "young," and youth is a moving target.

The trajectory of this moving target can almost serve as an abridged history of Taiwan's generations. In 1993, it insulted the 5th graders; in the 2000s, the mainstream label stuck to the 7th graders; in 2008, during the "Wild Strawberry Movement," the criticized 7th-grade students干脆 (simply) turned the insult around and claimed it as the name of their movement⁵; in 2012, Vision magazine, in collaboration with Yahoo and MySpace, conducted a "New Nine Clans of Youth" survey, where 1,129 young people aged 20–35 voted for the "label they most wanted to be vindicated," with Strawberry Generation ranking first at 16.5%, followed by Neet (NEET) and Phubbers (Head-down tribe)⁶; by the 2020s, this hat had moved down to the Z generation, landing on the 9th graders.

Moreover, this term holds up legally. In a lawsuit, the Taiwan High Court determined that "Strawberry Generation" refers to "young, inexperienced people who cannot withstand setbacks," classifying it as a derogatory term¹. That is, this is a word recognized by the court as belittling, yet over thirty years, it has been used by the older generation as the most convenient tool to comment on the younger generation, passed down repeatedly.

Throw the ball back: Everyone who wants to say "young people today are just strawberries" should remember that the word originally insulted, likely, the twenty-something you were back then.

No Shared Childhood: From Candy Shops to TikTok

If there is truly a wall between generations, that wall is built from childhood. Laying out the childhoods of these five generations, you will notice a quiet thing: they hardly have anything in common that they remember.

The childhoods of the 5th and 6th graders were in candy shops. Datong Puppets, launched in 1969, were given as a gift for purchasing NT$10,000 worth of appliances; that red-clad doll placed in the living room was proof of a family climbing from laborers into the middle class⁷; Yakult set up a factory in Taiwan in 1964, costing two dollars a bottle, delivered door-to-door by "Yakult Moms" carrying cooling boxes⁸; the way home from school featured Wangzi Noodles, Kexue Noodles, Wangzai Biscuits, and marbles. Turning on the TV, Huang Junxiong's puppet show Cloud State Grand Confucian aired on TTV in 1970, with Shi Yanshan fighting for 583 episodes, achieving a 97% rating, so popular it was banned in 1974 on the grounds of "hindering farmers' work schedules"⁹.

Five-pack Yakult, a signature drink of the 5th and 6th graders' candy shops and grocery stores. Photo: kxz Chen, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The 7th graders' youth changed interfaces. Pagers (BB Call) peaked in 1999, with over four million households in Taiwan¹⁰; couples used numbers to convey affection, with 520 and 1314 flashing on small screens; after going online, the "ding-dong" sound of Yahoo Instant Messenger, the "deng-deng-deng" of MSN going online, and MySpace blogs and photo albums formed a set of codes only they knew⁴. In 1997, Tamagotchis debuted, sold out in a high-end department store in Kaohsiung, with one resold for 1,500 yuan; students focused on feeding electronic pets in class, leading the then-Minister of Education to half-jokingly suggest setting up a "chicken farm" in schools to raise them together¹¹.

Digital pagers (BB Call) of the 1990s, the communication tool used by 7th graders to send "520" and "1314". Photo: Solomon203, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

By the 8th grade, the stage was PTT and Facebook. In 2009, Happy Farm had everyone asking, "Did you steal vegetables today?" The 9th grade is entirely immersed in algorithms: IG, TikTok, Xiaohongshu, Dcard. What changed is not just the platform, but the viewing method itself: for the 5th graders, a whole street watched the same Cloud State Grand Confucian at night; for the 9th graders, one person scrolls a short video that an algorithm feeds only to them.

📝 Curator's Note
We are accustomed to explaining generational gaps with "value differences": the older generation loves to strive, the younger generation loves to lie flat. But the truth may be more physical: they never watched the same screen together. Collective memory requires the premise of "collective," and over these forty years from candy shops to segmented algorithms, Taiwan's media has fragmented from "the whole village surrounding one TV" to "each person with a phone only for themselves." Ultimately, they did not grow up in the same room. Nostalgia is therefore each nostalgic in their own way: the server you like, others cannot enter.

This is why nostalgia is so marketable in Taiwan, yet so segmented. A 2018 nostalgia snack survey collected 1,523 questionnaires, with the highest participation from 7th graders, accounting for 38.2%; the top votes were tin-can fruit candy, Morinaga Milk Candy, Wangzi Noodles, Kexue Noodles, Qiqi Milk Powder, each precisely corresponding to a specific generation's way home from school¹².

Every Generation is Someone Else's Guinea Pig

If childhoods are lived separately, one thing is unavoidable for all five generations: every generation is treated as the first guinea pig for a system reform.

The education system changes almost every decade. The 5th and 6th graders went through the Joint College Entrance Examination (Joint Exam), with high school joint admissions from 1958 to 2000, and the university joint exam until 2001, determining fate in one test. The 7th graders faced three consecutive education reforms: starting in 1996, primary schools implemented "Constructivist Math," requiring kids to relearn arithmetic through understanding; scholars later statistics showed this experiment made nearly 1.8 million primary school students guinea pigs¹³; in 2001, the Nine-Year Integrated Curriculum went into effect, the Junior High School Entrance Exam replaced the Joint Exam, and textbooks changed from "one syllabus, one book" to "one syllabus, multiple books." The 8th graders encountered the 2012-Year National High School Education and the Joint Assessment in 2014; the 9th graders faced the 108 Curriculum implemented in 2019. No generation used the same rules as the previous one.

Military service is also a moving line, and the direction of movement is counter-intuitive. Early conscripts served two to three years, then it shortened continuously; by late 2013, conscripts born after ROC year 83 (1994) only needed to serve four months of military training¹⁴. It looked like a downhill slope getting shorter, but then it flipped back up. The Ministry of the Interior stipulates that conscripts born after January 1, 2005 (ROC year 94), will resume serving one year of active duty¹⁴. In other words, the batch born after 2005 in the 9th grade serves eight months more than the 8th-grade seniors who served only four months of military training; this is the first "extension" of compulsory service in seventy years.

Overlaying these system lines reveals a sharper question: Every reform is theoretically designed to educate the next generation better and secure national defense more firmly. But from the perspective of the reformed, it feels more like: the experiments designed by the older generation are borne by the results of the younger generation. And the designers of the experiments often do not have to be the guinea pigs themselves.

The Slowing Escalator

Up to this point, the accusation of "Strawberry Generation" actually hides an unspoken premise: young people cannot climb up because they are not hardworking enough. But if we shift the lens from "people" to "the escalator beneath their feet," we see a completely different thing.

First, look at salaries. Research from the Academia Sinica indicates that before 2002, Taiwan's real output per hour (productivity) and real wages climbed together step by step; after 2002, these two lines separated, productivity continued to rise, but wages froze. Economist Yang Tzu-ting explains: "The fact that producer prices are getting lower and consumer prices are getting higher is the main cause of real wage growth lagging behind real GDP growth"². During the same period, the share of labor compensation in GDP slid from about 51% in 1990 to around 43% in 2024². The cake got bigger, but the slice given to workers got thinner.

Next, look at housing. This is where the escalator truly steepens. The national mortgage burden rate rose from 21.7% in 2005 to 46.62% in 2024, meaning a family must dedicate nearly half its income to mortgage payments³. The price-to-income ratio is more direct: nationally it rose from 8.2 times in 2014 to 9.89 times in Q1 2025, while Taipei soared from 6.4 times in 2004 to 15.41 times in Q1 2025, higher than London or New York³. In plain terms: in Taipei, a family must not eat or drink for fifteen years to afford a house.

Dense apartment blocks in Tamsui, New Taipei, a typical face of urbanized housing in Taiwan. Photo: HC Lin, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

資料來源：NCCU Real Estate Research Center (Compiled from Ministry of the Interior Real Estate Information Platform)

Thus, the same effort cannot reach the same position. The data from the Taiwan Social Change Basic Survey of the Academia Sinica best illustrates this: the homeownership rate for the 31–40 age group was over 60% in 1996, but dropped to only about 25% by 2021³. The age of first-time homebuyers also shifted back by five years, from early thirties to early forties. A 5th grader might already have their own house at thirty; an 8th grader at thirty is likely still calculating the down payment.

This is also the consensus in academia. Sociologists Chang Yi-chun and Lin Tsung-hung published research in the Taiwan Journal of Sociology in 2020 explicitly stating: "The baby boom generation born before 1972 enjoyed income advantages brought by economic growth, while the young generation born after 1978 generally has lower incomes"¹⁵. In another interview, Lin Tsung-hung spoke more plainly: "Every economic depression in human history creates a traumatized generation... The generation most impacted is those born after 1975, who came of age around 2000"¹⁶, which corresponds exactly to the 7th grade.

💡 Did You Know?
Blaming young people entirely for "not being able to climb up" was debunked back in 2005. A 2005 Taipei Times report cited experts pointing out that "Strawberry Generation is a myth," citing that Taiwanese laborers have some of the longest working hours globally, yet salaries have not adjusted for years¹⁷. That is, the accusation of "young people are not durable" contradicts the fact of "Taiwanese labor hours are extremely long" from the very beginning.

The Escalator Didn't Stop, It Split Into Two

However, saying "the escalator stopped, so young people all cannot afford houses" is also wrong; this is also a form of laziness. The truth is more nuanced and more cruel: the escalator did not stop; it split into two.

Indeed, some 8th graders bought houses. But looking closely, those who could buy mostly relied on parents' down payments: down payments of millions were covered by elders, inheritance or gifts bridging the gap that salaries could not. In contrast, among all young people aged 20–30 nationwide, only 0.89% can afford a house relying on their own strength³. In other words, those who can board that still-moving escalator swipe their parents' cards.

This is why "generation" is a good entry point but cannot be the endpoint. Lin Tsung-hung himself connects the generational issue back to class distribution: within the same generation, those who inherit capital and those who only have a salary are on two completely different escalators; this intra-generational gap may be larger than the gap between generations. How deep is the impact of family background on the next generation's wealth? A 2024 study published in Labour Economics estimates Taiwan's intergenerational wealth correlation coefficient is about 0.40 for sons and 0.30 for daughters, and the stronger the wealth at the top, the stronger the transmission¹⁸.

The salary line is not all black. Nominal salaries have slowly recovered since 2017, and real total salaries in 2024 even increased by 2.16% year-on-year, a rare positive growth after years of stagnation². But this is at most stopping the fall; it cannot make up for the fifteen years of loss from 2002 to 2017. It is like the escalator started moving again, but the building is already much higher than before.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint
The framework of "Generational War" itself has been questioned by many. Chuck Collins, an inequality researcher from the US, said very directly: "We're not suffering through a generational war. We're continuing to live through a clash of economic classes."¹⁹ His point is that opposing young people and the elderly obscures the true fault line: that line is drawn between those with capital and those without, having little to do with whether one was born in 1970 or 1990. Putting this sentence back into Taiwan holds equally true: within the same grade, the gap may be larger than between grades.

From Martial Law Kids to Sliding on TikTok Saying "I Don't Want to Be Unified"

Another real fault line between generations is the answer to the question "Who am I?" And this fault line, scholars generally believe, is chiseled out by shared "events," having little to do with whether a generation is inherently so.

The National Chengchi University Election Research Center has long tracked Taiwanese identity: the percentage identifying as Taiwanese rose from 17.6% in 1992 to a high of 67% in 2020, and was 61.7% in 2023; simultaneously, the percentage identifying as Chinese dropped to 2.4% in 2023²⁰. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey echoes this trend, specifically highlighting the younger end: "Adults in Taiwan under the age of 35 are especially likely to identify as solely Taiwanese (83%)"²¹.

This identity curve is often simplified into "Natural Independence Generation is inherently independent." But the academic view is more cautious. Multiple researchers point out that the dominant factor here is what scholars call the "period effect," meaning democratization, the 2014 Sunflower Movement, and other shared "events" reshaped the identities of various generations. The answer is chiseled by the era, never in anyone's genes. Scholar Shen Wei-jie, researching Natural Independence, stated clearly in her master's thesis: "Natural Independence is not natural, but formed later; Natural Independence is also not traditional nationalist Taiwan independence, but rather anti-China"²².

On March 30, 2014, the anti-ECFA march filled Kweilin Street in Taipei; the Sunflower Movement is called the peak of the "Natural Independence Generation" going to the streets. Photo: tenz1225, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

For the 9th grade, things present an interesting tension. This generation grew up sliding on TikTok and browsing Xiaohongshu, using simplified characters, chasing mainland variety shows and internet slang, culturally closer to the other side of the strait than ever before; but politically, they are the generation native to a democratic system, most intuitively repulsed by "being unified." Taiwan Doublethink Lab's 2025 observation points out that middle schoolers' TikTok usage rate reached 57.87% and high schoolers 50.73%²³, but cultural proximity has not automatically translated into political shift.

📝 Curator's Note
The seemingly contradictory combination of "culturally pro-China, politically anti-China" is precisely where Taiwan.md should not draw conclusions for readers. A 9th grader loving mainland short videos while supporting Taiwan maintaining the status quo may not seem contradictory to them at all, because cultural consumption and national identity are two different things. What can be done here is to honestly lay out the tensions seen by NCCU Election Research Center, Pew, Shen Wei-jie, and Taiwan Doublethink Lab, letting readers see how complex this generation is, and putting aside the hats of "pro-China" or "anti-China." Labeling the next generation is exactly what this entire article aims to deconstruct.

Strawberries Didn't Get Softer, The Ground Got Slanted

Stacking five birth certificates together, you see a quiet thing. The 5th graders born in 1963 had 427,212 classmates entering this world; the 9th graders born in 2010 had only 166,886, less than 40% of the 5th grade peak, missing over 200,000 people²⁴.

Fewer people, the cake didn't get bigger, buildings got higher. On this terrain, subsequent generations using the same effort cannot reach the positions previous generations reached. This is not because strawberries got softer, but because the ground beneath their feet got slanted, and slanted unevenly: some have a slope paved by parents beneath their feet, others have only a nearly vertical wall.

"Grade" is ultimately just an entry point. It is useful because it helps us see how the escalator gets steeper year by year; it should not be the endpoint because what determines whether a person can climb up is often whether the escalator beneath their feet connects to a salary or inheritance, and this crack is drawn within every grade. Pew Research Center even announced in 2023 that it would use generational labels less in reporting, because many differences attributed to "generations" actually stem from demographic characteristics themselves²⁵. Even the institution that first popularized generational classification has started calling a halt to this tool.

✦ So, the next time you want to say "young people today are just strawberries," think about one thing: the word originally insulted, likely, the twenty-something you were. And what truly changed over these thirty years is the escalator you stepped onto back then, which was still moving, then slowed down, got steeper, and finally split into two. The MySpace line "No one else seems to notice me" resonated with an entire generation because every generation has a piece of youth only they own, which others cannot enter, and the rent for that piece of youth gets more expensive generation by generation.

Further Reading:

• Taiwan's Slash Generation — The survival math of 7th and 8th graders splitting one salary into three jobs under a low-wage structure
• Taiwanese Youth's Career Lost — Spending sixteen years in school, the most common question on graduation day is "I don't know what I want to do"
• Taiwan's Low Birth Rate Crisis — Birth numbers crashed from 420,000 to 160,000, how the cake gets smaller year by year
• Taiwan Unification-Independence Spectrum — The full picture of the identity watershed, from "Who am I" to "Where to go"
• MySpace (WuMing XiaoZhan) — The digital server of 7th graders' youth, shut down in 2013, appeared again on Threads in 2025

Image Sources

This article uses 5 Creative Commons licensed images, all cached in public/article-images/society/ to avoid hotlinking to source servers:

• Taiwanese Puppet (hero) — Photo: Wang Yu Ching / Office of the President, 2023, CC BY 2.0
• Yakult — Photo: kxz Chen, 2012, CC BY-SA 2.0
• 1990s Digital Pager — Photo: Solomon203, CC BY-SA 3.0
• 2014 Sunflower Anti-ECFA March — Photo: tenz1225, 2014, CC BY-SA 2.0
• New Taipei Tamsui Residential Building Cluster — Photo: HC Lin, 2023, CC BY 2.0

References