verywhere in Asia, preparations are reaching fever pitch for the ushering in of the new millennium. From Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur to Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex, the fireworks will be brilliant, the spectacle surely momentous. For many Asian countries, the massive millennial celebrations are to be coming out parties – a means of demonstrating that they have indeed "caught up" with the West and that the next millennium will be the Asian Millennium.

But have things really changed for Asia? Does this latest generation of 16- to 26-year olds, known as the Millennium Generation, truly represent a break from an underwhelming past? Will they manage to cast off restrictive traditions and outdated customs that seem to constantly undermine any progress that is made? Two anecdotes in particular reveal my mixed feelings for Asia's future.

Her name is Meelika and she is a sophisticated 23-year-old professional from Nepal currently living in Hong Kong. She is the roommate of one of my colleagues over the summer and we end up hanging out quite a bit. Meelika is very westernized: She speaks flawless English, dresses in the latest fashions and shoots a mean game of pool. Talking to her, I think to myself that she represents the new face of Asia – the ones who will lead the charge into the next century. I gradually get to know her better.

One day she lets it slip out. "You know Steve, I am married."

That's funny, I know she doesn't live with her husband, because I have been to her shared apartment. This is the first inkling I have gotten that she is anything but an unattached single woman.

"He lives in Dubai. We've been married a year."

That seems odd; you'd expect that a newlywed couple would at least try to live on the same continent.

"Since the marriage, we've probably spent a total of a week together."

And then it hits me. She is a product of an arranged marriage.

This beautiful, well-educated professional Nepalese woman is still a prisoner of her country's traditions.

"I do not much care for him but I have a duty to my parents. My respect for them forced me to go along with their decision and the marriage," she tells me. And so she is stuck in a loveless marriage to a stranger she barely knows who is working 3,000 miles away in Dubai. She tells me she is to put her burgeoning career on hold and join him in six months.

On the flip side of the coin is Mack. I meet her in Thailand – she works in the Bangkok guesthouse where I am staying. She is an outgoing and friendly person, not as westernized or sophisticated as Meelika, but then she comes from much different circumstances. Mack, who is 26, is actually from Laos. Her family immigrated to Thailand to seek better opportunities. They are rice farmers and own a small plot of land in the poor northeast province of Isan.

She tells me that when she was 16 she dropped out of high school and entered a monastery for five years, "according to my parents' wishes." After that experience, she came to the guesthouse, where she has been for the last six years. Work can be dreary, but she takes it all in stride. One of her prouder moments at the guesthouse was the time she organized all the workers in order to get one full day off per week.

"For three years, we only had one afternoon a week off. Finally, I told the owner that we would not take it anymore and deserved to get a full day – after much persuasion, he gave it to us." Mack has big plans. She tells me that she has saved 100,000 baht, the equivalent of $25,000, with plans to start her own guesthouse with the money.

Despite not having completed schooling, she seems to have broken the cycle of poverty and illiteracy in her family.

Who knows what sort of mark the Millennium Generation will have in Asia? Perhaps the Asian Millennium is all hype and hyperbole. Or maybe the Millennium Generation will break with tradition, take matters into their own hands and change the face of the continent.

(Steven Feldstein, a columnist from Bloomington, Ind., is a politics major. He can be reached at feldsten@princeton.edu.)