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AS an old saying goes, “Home is where the heart is.” So even if your home goes through changes, as long as there is love it will be there. I was born in a very small village with only a few households along the coastal area of northern Jiangsu Province, at the end of 1969. Over the 40 years of my life I have experienced many changes, moving from deep in the countryside, to a larger village, then a small town and finally a city, eventually settling down in Beijing.
From Many to One
One might consider my family a big one, as I was the youngest of five brothers; but families of this size were not uncommon for rural areas in the past. My eldest sister-in-law has six brothers and sisters of her own; my second sister-in-law has seven; my third, five; my fourth, nine; and my wife’s three siblings made up what was considered a small family.
After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, medical conditions began improving across the nation, and infant mortality rates dropped considerably. During those relatively peaceful periods most families would have anywhere from five to eight children. Sometimes families might consist of up to five generations living under one roof.
Every yearmy brothers and I do our best to bring our wives and children back home to celebrate the Spring Festival with our parents. In the Chinese tradition, we consider our parents’ family as the full family, and our separate satellites just a small part of it.
If expanding broods are in step with that tempo, my extended family should have nearly 40 members by now. However, we have only made it to 17. Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has implemented a family-planning policy, advocating one child per couple and this has been followed rather strictly in urban areas. Those of my age group now, for the most part anyway, have a three-member family. I expect that my extended family will shrink to a 5-member one 20 years from now by the time I become a grandfather.
These days most Chinese couples tend to have only one child what with the fast paced lifestyles and the spiraling costs for rearing children. Now one-child families have even started to emerge in rural areas, though most rural families like to have at least two kids. In urban areas, where couples are busy just trying to make a living a new breed has surfaced, affectionately known as DINK’s (Double Income No Kids).
My son, like many other city kids, is an only child. These kids generally lack the ability to share and often behave in a self-centered way. This has triggered deep concerns in parents like me. In order to cultivate our children’s social skills, my friends and I often organize family parties on weekends, aimed at creating opportunities for our kids to learn to cooperate and work together with others. The technology world has caught up with websites set up to serve as middlemen to bring “only-children” in the same age group and with similar personalities into contact with each other. They help parents design activities for them too.
From Thatched House to Apartment
Along with the changes our generation saw in family structures and economic standings, a natural evolution occurred in how and where we live. For example,the house where I was born was a simple 20-to-30-square-meter thatched house. The walls were constructed of bamboo stalks stuck together with mud; the floors were just rammed earth; and the roof was covered with straw. It was not until the 1980s that a brick house replaced our birth home.
In 1971, my family moved to a village called “Sili” in suburban Lianyungang City in Jiangsu Province, which at the time was one of the few wealthy villages in China. Most villagers there had built their own brick homes through financial assistance of the village.
Our house was built with the help of a construction team during the farming off-season. The workers were all farmers from neighboring villages. Its size and style conformed to the village’s strict standards and regulations. Its layout was typical of a three-bedroom, one-story house seen in rural areas. The central room served as both the living room and the dining room, the floor of which was paved with tiles. The room on the east side was the bedroom for my parents and the two rooms on the west side were the bedrooms for my brothers and I. The area of the three bedrooms was all around 15 square meters. Moving into such a house made us feel as though we were living in luxury.
In 1979, my family moved again from Sili Village to Jinping Town, which was 10 kilometers away. Our household registration was transferred to an urban status because of the transfer of my father’s work. The old house in Sili Village was sold to a local villager, and in 2005 demolished and replaced by a brand-new three-story house. By that time about half the households in the village had built such freestanding houses.
In Jinping Town, my father worked in the local government. Based on family size, the government alloted us three principal rooms and a side room in a barrack-like residential compound. After living there for six years, my parents and I moved again into an apartment in a storied dwelling in Lianyungang City. Very few people would be so privileged to live in an apartment in those days, so a senior high school student by then, I was a little excited about that. By that time my first and second elder brothers were married and had been assigned their own living quarters. My third and fourth elder brothers were living in their company dormitories.
Based on the number of my family members still living at home, the government then allocated us a 34-square-meter, two-bedroom apartment. In 1989 just before my father’s retirement, the government assigned him a 100-square-meter, two-story house. A few years later as housing reforms were carried out, the government sold the house to my father at the extremely low price of RMB 25,000 as a reward for his 40 years of service.
Today all of my elder brothers have their own apartments. I’ve also bought an allocated apartment in Beijing. Although it is only 57 square meters in size, I am content with it because it is not easy to buy one in such a convenient location in Beijing at price so far below the market.
From Fetching Water to
Buying Water
Life in the countryside where I grew up was quite different from my urban life now. The facilities in our homes have undergone many changes. When I was a child my family raised pigs – a rural tradition dating back thousands of years. In fact the Chinese character “家” for “home” is an associative compound. The upper part of the character means “house” and the lower part, “pig.” This may illustrate the swine’s connection to the home and China’s agrarian background.
Almost every household in our village raised at least one or two pigs. We fed them with grass and leftovers; the pigs usually were not very fat and grew very slowly. They were sold at the end of the year to supplement the family income. This was also the main source of pork supplies to urban areas. People also reared hens, but for their eggs rather than for their meat. In the past rural residents earned very little money, so most households could afford to eat meat only during important festivals. Usually they only had vegetables from their gardens to live on. Even a simple fried egg or stewed Tofu would be considered a high-grade treatment for guests. It was only during the Spring Festival or when some important guests arrived that villagers were willing to cook one of their hens. Last year I returned to visit my rural hometown and found that most households had given up raising pigs and hens due to the high cost and the bad odor involved. Large animal farms have replaced these individual operations.
The way a kitchen or bathroom is set up differs greatly between rural and urban areas. In rural homes, kitchens are sometimes separated from the living area. When it rained or snowed we would have to use an umbrella to carry dishes from the kitchen to the living room. The separation of kitchen and living room spaces was good for fire prevention and also saved the other rooms from being tainted by the fumes. We cooked on an old-fashioned mud stove heated with firewood.
After moving to the town, we began to use a coal stove, which required us to store briquettes. In order to save the RMB 0.5 per month on transportation costs, we would borrow a push cart and carry them directly from the coal factory. It was only after we moved into the apartment in the city that we finally had a self-contained kitchen and the dining room, and began to use a gas stove for cooking. But during that time not many people had access to gas, and there were only a few gas supply facilities. We would store the gas in a tin cylinder and had to carry it to the gas station for refilling when it was used up. It wasn’t until the 1990s that gas pipelines were available in our community. Now even in rural areas, farmers have said farewell to firewood and have started to use gas or methane.
As for the bathrooms back in the countryside, every household had to build a kind of outhouse or pit latrine behind their homes. Indoor plumbing was still unknown, but villagers found ways to use the waste as fertilizer for their farmland. We were more environmentally friendly in those days even without being aware of it. We still didn’t have a self-contained toilet even after moving to the town. Over 100 households in the neighborhood had to share a horrible smelling public pit latrine. Imagine having to use the toilet on an extremely cold winter night or having to wait in a long queue on a busy morning. It wasn’t until 1985 that my family moved into an apartment in the city, and we finally had our own self-contained toilet.
Water in those days had to be fetched from the nearby river. The labor-intensive life of the countryside made having strong sons important. Luckily there were five boys in my family. I remember the large vat in the doorway of every home used to store water for daily use. Moving to the town allowed us to use running water for the first time. However, it was only a faucet attached to a pipe on the side of the road, shared by over 30 neighboring households. The water fees were covered by each household calculated based on their family size. During the cold winters, the faucet would often freeze. All that changed after we moved to our apartment in the city with indoor plumbing equipped with an expensive water purifier, and bottled drinking water delivered directly to the home.
From Political Icons to
Authentic Art
Another element in our homes that has changed with times would be how our homes are decorated. Back in our small rural home in those days we normally hung a large portrait of an important leader like Mao Zedong or Hua Guofeng. We would also maybe hang awards and certificates that my brothers or I had received or some revolutionary-themed pictures. In the past, the newlyweds without much money would simply cover their walls with old newspapers.
When the reform and opening-up policies kicked in, traditional images returned to the walls of homes along with paper-cuts or calligraphy. Now people in China have more disposable income, allowing them to arrange their homes beyond just basic practical needs. In my apartment in Beijing, I have three paintings and some calligraphy hanging on my walls which were gifts from my artist friends. In addition, I love to collect things in my travels and brought back two oil paintings from Mexico and a metal mask purchased in Spain. We may live in different times now, but our homes have made the journey with us. I look forward to imagining what my son’s home will look like 40 years from now.
From Many to One
One might consider my family a big one, as I was the youngest of five brothers; but families of this size were not uncommon for rural areas in the past. My eldest sister-in-law has six brothers and sisters of her own; my second sister-in-law has seven; my third, five; my fourth, nine; and my wife’s three siblings made up what was considered a small family.
After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, medical conditions began improving across the nation, and infant mortality rates dropped considerably. During those relatively peaceful periods most families would have anywhere from five to eight children. Sometimes families might consist of up to five generations living under one roof.
Every yearmy brothers and I do our best to bring our wives and children back home to celebrate the Spring Festival with our parents. In the Chinese tradition, we consider our parents’ family as the full family, and our separate satellites just a small part of it.
If expanding broods are in step with that tempo, my extended family should have nearly 40 members by now. However, we have only made it to 17. Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has implemented a family-planning policy, advocating one child per couple and this has been followed rather strictly in urban areas. Those of my age group now, for the most part anyway, have a three-member family. I expect that my extended family will shrink to a 5-member one 20 years from now by the time I become a grandfather.
These days most Chinese couples tend to have only one child what with the fast paced lifestyles and the spiraling costs for rearing children. Now one-child families have even started to emerge in rural areas, though most rural families like to have at least two kids. In urban areas, where couples are busy just trying to make a living a new breed has surfaced, affectionately known as DINK’s (Double Income No Kids).
My son, like many other city kids, is an only child. These kids generally lack the ability to share and often behave in a self-centered way. This has triggered deep concerns in parents like me. In order to cultivate our children’s social skills, my friends and I often organize family parties on weekends, aimed at creating opportunities for our kids to learn to cooperate and work together with others. The technology world has caught up with websites set up to serve as middlemen to bring “only-children” in the same age group and with similar personalities into contact with each other. They help parents design activities for them too.
From Thatched House to Apartment
Along with the changes our generation saw in family structures and economic standings, a natural evolution occurred in how and where we live. For example,the house where I was born was a simple 20-to-30-square-meter thatched house. The walls were constructed of bamboo stalks stuck together with mud; the floors were just rammed earth; and the roof was covered with straw. It was not until the 1980s that a brick house replaced our birth home.
In 1971, my family moved to a village called “Sili” in suburban Lianyungang City in Jiangsu Province, which at the time was one of the few wealthy villages in China. Most villagers there had built their own brick homes through financial assistance of the village.
Our house was built with the help of a construction team during the farming off-season. The workers were all farmers from neighboring villages. Its size and style conformed to the village’s strict standards and regulations. Its layout was typical of a three-bedroom, one-story house seen in rural areas. The central room served as both the living room and the dining room, the floor of which was paved with tiles. The room on the east side was the bedroom for my parents and the two rooms on the west side were the bedrooms for my brothers and I. The area of the three bedrooms was all around 15 square meters. Moving into such a house made us feel as though we were living in luxury.
In 1979, my family moved again from Sili Village to Jinping Town, which was 10 kilometers away. Our household registration was transferred to an urban status because of the transfer of my father’s work. The old house in Sili Village was sold to a local villager, and in 2005 demolished and replaced by a brand-new three-story house. By that time about half the households in the village had built such freestanding houses.
In Jinping Town, my father worked in the local government. Based on family size, the government alloted us three principal rooms and a side room in a barrack-like residential compound. After living there for six years, my parents and I moved again into an apartment in a storied dwelling in Lianyungang City. Very few people would be so privileged to live in an apartment in those days, so a senior high school student by then, I was a little excited about that. By that time my first and second elder brothers were married and had been assigned their own living quarters. My third and fourth elder brothers were living in their company dormitories.
Based on the number of my family members still living at home, the government then allocated us a 34-square-meter, two-bedroom apartment. In 1989 just before my father’s retirement, the government assigned him a 100-square-meter, two-story house. A few years later as housing reforms were carried out, the government sold the house to my father at the extremely low price of RMB 25,000 as a reward for his 40 years of service.
Today all of my elder brothers have their own apartments. I’ve also bought an allocated apartment in Beijing. Although it is only 57 square meters in size, I am content with it because it is not easy to buy one in such a convenient location in Beijing at price so far below the market.
From Fetching Water to
Buying Water
Life in the countryside where I grew up was quite different from my urban life now. The facilities in our homes have undergone many changes. When I was a child my family raised pigs – a rural tradition dating back thousands of years. In fact the Chinese character “家” for “home” is an associative compound. The upper part of the character means “house” and the lower part, “pig.” This may illustrate the swine’s connection to the home and China’s agrarian background.
Almost every household in our village raised at least one or two pigs. We fed them with grass and leftovers; the pigs usually were not very fat and grew very slowly. They were sold at the end of the year to supplement the family income. This was also the main source of pork supplies to urban areas. People also reared hens, but for their eggs rather than for their meat. In the past rural residents earned very little money, so most households could afford to eat meat only during important festivals. Usually they only had vegetables from their gardens to live on. Even a simple fried egg or stewed Tofu would be considered a high-grade treatment for guests. It was only during the Spring Festival or when some important guests arrived that villagers were willing to cook one of their hens. Last year I returned to visit my rural hometown and found that most households had given up raising pigs and hens due to the high cost and the bad odor involved. Large animal farms have replaced these individual operations.
The way a kitchen or bathroom is set up differs greatly between rural and urban areas. In rural homes, kitchens are sometimes separated from the living area. When it rained or snowed we would have to use an umbrella to carry dishes from the kitchen to the living room. The separation of kitchen and living room spaces was good for fire prevention and also saved the other rooms from being tainted by the fumes. We cooked on an old-fashioned mud stove heated with firewood.
After moving to the town, we began to use a coal stove, which required us to store briquettes. In order to save the RMB 0.5 per month on transportation costs, we would borrow a push cart and carry them directly from the coal factory. It was only after we moved into the apartment in the city that we finally had a self-contained kitchen and the dining room, and began to use a gas stove for cooking. But during that time not many people had access to gas, and there were only a few gas supply facilities. We would store the gas in a tin cylinder and had to carry it to the gas station for refilling when it was used up. It wasn’t until the 1990s that gas pipelines were available in our community. Now even in rural areas, farmers have said farewell to firewood and have started to use gas or methane.
As for the bathrooms back in the countryside, every household had to build a kind of outhouse or pit latrine behind their homes. Indoor plumbing was still unknown, but villagers found ways to use the waste as fertilizer for their farmland. We were more environmentally friendly in those days even without being aware of it. We still didn’t have a self-contained toilet even after moving to the town. Over 100 households in the neighborhood had to share a horrible smelling public pit latrine. Imagine having to use the toilet on an extremely cold winter night or having to wait in a long queue on a busy morning. It wasn’t until 1985 that my family moved into an apartment in the city, and we finally had our own self-contained toilet.
Water in those days had to be fetched from the nearby river. The labor-intensive life of the countryside made having strong sons important. Luckily there were five boys in my family. I remember the large vat in the doorway of every home used to store water for daily use. Moving to the town allowed us to use running water for the first time. However, it was only a faucet attached to a pipe on the side of the road, shared by over 30 neighboring households. The water fees were covered by each household calculated based on their family size. During the cold winters, the faucet would often freeze. All that changed after we moved to our apartment in the city with indoor plumbing equipped with an expensive water purifier, and bottled drinking water delivered directly to the home.
From Political Icons to
Authentic Art
Another element in our homes that has changed with times would be how our homes are decorated. Back in our small rural home in those days we normally hung a large portrait of an important leader like Mao Zedong or Hua Guofeng. We would also maybe hang awards and certificates that my brothers or I had received or some revolutionary-themed pictures. In the past, the newlyweds without much money would simply cover their walls with old newspapers.
When the reform and opening-up policies kicked in, traditional images returned to the walls of homes along with paper-cuts or calligraphy. Now people in China have more disposable income, allowing them to arrange their homes beyond just basic practical needs. In my apartment in Beijing, I have three paintings and some calligraphy hanging on my walls which were gifts from my artist friends. In addition, I love to collect things in my travels and brought back two oil paintings from Mexico and a metal mask purchased in Spain. We may live in different times now, but our homes have made the journey with us. I look forward to imagining what my son’s home will look like 40 years from now.