It's pretty common for folks to look back at earlier times with nostalgia. The food was better then, neighbors talked more, there was mystery at the edges of the world. People throughout history have often turned toward the past, believing the earlier ways were better… seeing their own age as decadent or cheap, like a world that's given up something important with the passing of the generations.
The ones who've shaped the last century seem hell-bent on doing away with that perspective, and with the veneration of tradition. They want to put forth modernity as the ideal, to strip the past of its lofty place in the human imagination.
It's been a brutal century so far. A time of destruction and oppression across the planet. Modernity is not all bad, but I wonder where it's leading us. What will the world look like after another century of "progress?"
The new government in Anchuria is very modern. Nostalgia is frowned at or mocked outright. Now the country is all about free markets and the flow of money, about joyless efficiency and success at the expense of everyone else.
The people who come out on top in a system like this are not the ones who'll miss the things getting lost along the way...the feeling of home, the appreciation of beauty, good conversation, taking time to write love poems, passing down old recipes, and so on.
While those who remember how Anchuria used to be are an unsatisfied, unempowered majority at the edge of depression.