Chinese traditionally stay home with all the four generations of
the family to celebrate the Lunar
New Year, but the stereotyped lifestyle is making way for
diverse modern celebrations in the world's most populous nation,
where families are smaller.
Shortly after his marriage, 24-year-old Yang Xincheng began to
worry where he and his bride should spend the Chinese New Year's
Eve. According to the Chinese custom, the couple should watch the
new year in with the bridegroom's family, but the two did not have
the heart to leave the bride's parents alone either, because both
are the only child in their respective homes.
The three families eventually agreed to dine out together on New
Year's eve, and the young couple spent the rest of the holidays on
sightseeing tours away from home.
The number of one-child couples is soaring these days as the
country's first one-child generation born in the late 1970s have
come of age for marriage. Experts say families with at least one
spouse being the only child will top 10 million in the coming
decade.
As a result, the average size of Chinese families is shrinking.
The 2000 national census shows a Chinese family has 3.6 members on
average, down from the 3.97 reported in 1990 and 4.43 in 1982.
Nuclear families with only parents and one child are mushrooming
and are soon to make the majority of Chinese families.
Under such circumstances it's even harder for young couples to
decide whether to celebrate the biggest family holiday with the
husband's parents or the wife's.
"The Chinese Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, originated in
the centuries-old agricultural society and was therefore based on
male chauvinism, which was why young couples traditionally stay
with the husband's parents for the holiday," said Li Xiaoyun, a
Beijing-based sociologist. "But modernity is rapidly taking over
traditions."
Even the elderly parents, particularly those in cities, are more
tolerant of their children's absence even on the most festive
occasion of the year.
Following China's reform and opening up in the late 1970s, the
young people are more eager to leave home for more personal
development opportunities. "The younger generation of today are
more independent and prefer living on their own to enjoy life and
avoid conflicts of ideas with the elders."
Even the traditional exchange of visits between friends and
relatives is out of favor with many young people, who resort to
text messages via cell phones or Internet or phone calls to convey
their New Year greetings.
Beijing Mobile handled more than one billion outgoing short
messages on Tuesday's Lunar New Year's Eve alone -- and the company
estimated more than 10 billion text messages would be sent over the
week-long holidays that end on Feb. 16, up 200 million from last
year.
Short message service has become a major industry in China with
more than 330 million mobile phone users sending 217.7 billion text
messages last year.
High technologies have made it possible for parents to see their
children on the computer screen and hear their voices -- even if
they're half a world away. But a big family dinner at least on the
New Year's Eve still tops the agenda of many Chinese, particularly
rural residents.
"It's difficult to get a train ticket from Beijing to my home
province during the pre-holiday passenger rush, but I have to go
home even if I have to sit, or stand, through the journey," said
Huang Yongfa, 31, a construction subcontractor from the eastern
Anhui Province. "The Spring Festival is a special occasion for
family reunions."
Huang, who had to stay up at the railway station to get a ticket
early in February, said the several hundred rural workers that
worked for him had all gone home in the three weeks before the
Chinese New Year. "It may be an ordinary week-long holiday for the
city people, but for us it's different. We all value the occasion
for a big family reunion."
As the Chinese proverb goes, with elderly parents at home, a
filial son must not travel far. As millions of people make their
annual exodus from cities to their home provinces for the Chinese
New Year, an increasing number of urban nuclear families also hit
the rails -- but to places far away from home, and for holiday.
"Modernity may bring convulsive changes to our life, but family
love must not fade away," said Dong Hairu, a veteran professor in
Beijing. For most parents who are getting on in years, the best
gift is still a dinner with all their children, said
Dong.??
(Xinhua News Agency February 13, 2005)