Family Matters

This is the last entry in the ‘interesting things we learned in the first week in China’ series….

Family Matters

I have heard that the Chinese concept of family is different that ours in the US, but there are a couple of examples that I thought were interesting… one is interesting, and one is sad.

Interesting: Our landlord Nancy was talking about how long they would stay in Shanghai. She commented that they would stay until their son, George, went to University in the US, then they would go live wherever he is going to college. Her comment was that she needed to take care of him until he found a wife. I think we – in the US – have the same general concept, but the veracity with which the 2 cultures apply the concept of ‘taking care of’ seems to differ.

Sad: This is one of those situations that we in the US would feel sad about, but was told to us so matter of factly, that you wonder if the person telling you feels it’s a situation worth being sad about at all. A mother was telling us that she and her husband had an 18 month old son. They live and work in Shanghai, and the son is staying with her mother in law in Nanjing – a 2 hour train ride, or 3 hour car ride away. They get to see each other once per month. Stephanie and I could just not imagine this… It seemed that these people both made a decent wage – both were college educated. When we talked with her in a little more detail, she explained that Shanghai is an expensive city, so supporting the child in the city and paying for daycare is unreasonable. The other interesting thing, was this woman’s (and I assume the whole families) concept of her mother-in-law’s job. It was first to raise her child, then it was to take care of him until he was married, and then it was to take care of his children (or in reality, ‘child’ given current Chinese law). What a great concept of family support, just too bad your little boy is 2-3 hours away.