Almost two decades ago I started dating this Chinese girl who had relatively recently come over from mainland, yet in the space of 5 years after arriving managed to leave an abusive home situation, find work as a medical interpreter ( and thereby secure her own work visa to stay in this country) and save up a down payment for a modest house.

She told me at the time, which I thought was some sort of amusing misunderstanding about language, that I was "homeless boy" - because I lived in an _apartment_. And thus that she needed to help me get into a house (hint hint) so that I could stop being homeless and be a "man."

I had never heard the word homeless used this way before, but as the years went by I began to understand that it was not a mistake at all but a very particular attitude about what constitutes being settled down and stable in one's life and that I, despite whatever other qualities I had that appealed to her, was unacceptably immature and reckless in this department.

Much later on I discovered that for various reasons, there's a certain generation of Chinese immigrants that as a cohort correspond roughly to our late gen Xers/early millenials, who broadly seem to share this point of view.