It was five days before Spring Festival, but at one Beijing chain restaurant, a whole section of the staff was nowhere to be found. “The ‘post-90s’ workers have all gone home—only post-70s and post-80s ‘aunties’ will work during the holidays,” the cashier, a woman in her 30s, explained self-deprecatingly.

Not every demographic hankers after an apartment in a first-tier city or international travel. But for China’s jiulinghou workers, the “generation gap” is not just a first-world problem. “My parents are farmers…all they want for me is to learn a trade, get a 9-to-5 job in the local prefectural city, and visit home a few times a week,” scoffs Wang Qunhong, a 28-year-old Ningbo saleswoman originally from Jiangxi province. “I preferred to do something with more money and more freedom.”

The stereotypes can cut both ways. Song Yi, documentary filmmaker on Beijing’s post-90s migrant workers, says the group faces the same condemnations as middle class millennials: “Old workers say young workers can’t ‘eat bitterness.’”