Lifestyles “My parents wrote to me from China two years ago and said that they had moved to a new apartment with four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a dining room, and a storage room. The size of the living area is about 82.5 square meters. The apartment also has two balconies. Hot water is available twenty-four hours a day, and there is a gas stove for cooking. My mother said that we could have our own rooms if we came home. It is very convenient.

Mr. Nanlin Peng City: Kunming Province: Yunnan Birth: April 18, 1960 Map of China (29KB JPG)

“My parents wrote to me from China two years ago and said that they had moved to a new apartment with four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a dining room, and a storage room. The size of the living area is about 82.5 square meters. The apartment also has two balconies. Hot water is available twenty-four hours a day, and there is a gas stove for cooking. My mother said that we could have our own rooms if we came home. It is very convenient.

“This letter reminded me of my family’s living conditions in the 1970s. I remember my mother taught in a middle school at that time. My younger brother, my grandmother and I lived with my mother. My father, who worked away from home, came home only on weekends. All three generations lived in one room, and we used to have two bunk-beds. We did not have a kitchen. We cooked outside under the eaves or under an umbrella if it rained. We used to use a portable stove. The fuel materials that we used were coal, firewood, dry tree branches and leaves. Sometimes, after school, my brother and I had to pick up dry eucalyptus branches and tree leaves.

“Tap water was not available at home. All the teachers and students shared a water well. We had to fetch water every day. We did not have a bathroom in the apartment. All the teachers and students had to share a public shower room and five public lavatories on campus.

“In the mid-1980s, I got a chance to go back to visit the middle school which I attended while living with my parents, my brother and my grandmother. I saw several new six- and seven-story buildings on the grounds -- each with new apartments of three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. When I told my parents, my mother said, ‘We could be living in the same kind of apartment if I still worked there.’

“Another decade has now passed. My grandmother has passed away. Both my brother and I have grown up and left home. My mother says that, thanks to the reforms, their living conditions after retirement are now the best in their lives.

“I called my parents recently, and I was told, ‘People are being encouraged to buy the apartments or houses in which they live. A housing reform is underway.’ I asked my parents, ‘If you pay for the apartment, can you really own it, and can you sell it if necessary?’ My mother said, ‘Who knows?’ Anyway, changes are taking place in China as time goes on.