Looking over salary records kept by his family over the last half century is a pleasurable pastime for Zhang, a retiree of Shenyang's Peking Opera Theatre.
Zhang noticed how his monthly salary increased significantly during the past decades, from 25 yuan (US$3) in 1961 to 103 yuan (US$12) in 1987 and finally to 1,000 yuan (US$120) in 1998, the year he retired.
The records are part of the financial archives of Zhang's family.
Like Zhang, 11,136 families in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, began building family archives in 2002, with the support of the local government.
Zhang's family documents are contained in 30 boxes and are divided into 13 categories, including home history, credentials, diaries, financial sheets and photos.
Documents related to the growth and development of the family and family members take up the majority of family archives, said Xu Fang, head of Shenyang's archives bureau.
In Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, a middle-aged couple have been collecting "growing-up" records for their son, who loves practicing calligraphy and has won some awards.
From the works, certificates and photos in his archive, the couple said, their son could retrace all the steps of his life when he grows up.
Health, finance and marriage records have also appeared in thousands of families, with the methods of archiving varying from photos to floppy discs.
Family archives can enrich State archive resources and some rare ones can fill the gaps in State archives, said Yang Jibo, a senior official with the State Archives Administration of China.
Rare photos of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping found in the family archive of a Shenyang household were claimed to never have been seen by the public. These photos were taken by one of the family's late members who had once served as bodyguard for the two Chinese leaders, according to the family.
"Family archives play an important role in witnessing changes in social history.
"Zhang's salary sheets are a good example, serving as a microcosm of China's economic development," added Xu.
"Our family's house archive recorded the changing size of our living quarters," said a man surnamed Song, an employee of a subdistrict office. "At first we shared a flat with others, then we had a 30-square-metre room, then a 60-square-metre house, and now we live in a big house of 100 square meters."
The rise and fall of natural gas prices is another major item in Song's family finance archives. "Now we don't use natural gas so much, but electricity consumption has increased a great deal," said Song.
(Xinhua News Agency May 27, 2003)
