Thursday is the annual Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. This traditional American festival is a time for people to gather for family reunions, carve a big oven-roasted turkey and go shopping on what are known here as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. More importantly, it is a time for people to express thanks to family and friends.

In China, this foreign holiday is now increasingly used by businesses to promote sales and by young people to have a good time.

When Thanksgiving Day started about 400 years ago in the US, it was really meant to celebrate the first harvest in the New World by European colonists and to express thanks to the Native Americans who helped them survive the difficult time with food and farming skills. Yet the appalling treatment of the indigenous peoples in the past and their situation in the country today show these people have not received the kind of gratitude they rightly deserved.

In China, we have also seen a fast decline in people's sense of gratitude in recent decades. It seems that everyone thinks that society owes him or her something, and he or she owes society nothing. Even the country's rich and powerful, who have benefited the most from China's 30 years of economic boom, seem to believe they have been treated unfairly by the society. This is simply outrageous.

In the meantime, many of our younger generation have lost our traditional values. Many of them are not treating their parents and grandparents with gratitude after their parents and grandparents have done everything they could for them.

In recent years, maltreatment of parents has made frequent headlines. Just a month ago, Liao Tianye, a public servant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, shocked the nation when he beat his parents. Such incidents have caused many to ask how much the Confucian tradition of filial piety still exists in our society.

Today, more Chinese are complaining that their compatriots have become increasingly indifferent and less helpful to each other, another reflection of the lack of gratitude in the society.

However, I do see a ray of hope in the growing charitable and voluntary activities. That spirit was most evident in 2008 when the whole nation united to help the victims of the devastating Sichuan earthquake.

In another example, thousands of primary and middle school students around the nation washed their mother's feet, reducing many of the mothers to tears at this unexpected tribute.

Some people, such as Professor Meng Man of Minzu University of China have called such activities "foolish" and "feudal", but I would argue that such acts are extremely necessary today for the younger generation - usually little emperors or empresses at home - to learn how to do something in return for their parents.

But of course, it is not just children who need to learn to show gratitude. Our government officials should feel thankful for the taxpayers who underwrite their paychecks. The business people, whether their firms are State-owned, foreign-funded or private, should feel thankful for their employees and the country that enable them to make their profits.

Even on a much larger scale, China as a nation should feel thankful for the relatively peaceful world in the past decades that has provided an environment conducive to its rapid economic growth. Even the two biggest economies, China and the US, should feel thankful to each other for choosing a path of engagement and cooperation in the past decades. Both have benefited enormously from the cooperation.

A sense of gratitude is essential for building a harmonious society and a harmonious world. It makes your own life and everyone else's life better.

The author, based in New York, is deputy editor of China Daily US edition. Email: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/25/2011 page8)