My Time in China: Family in China

Most of you probably know about the one child policy in China. Because of the growing population, families are only allowed to have one child. However, there are some exceptions. 1) If you are a minority- not Han Chinese 2) If you live in the country-side 3) If you are rich enough to pay for a second child 4) If you hide your second child from the government-not the best way, but it's better than aborting the child.

Because of this, most Chinese my age don't have many cousins. They probably have a few aunts and uncles, but each one probably only has one child. They are shocked to hear that I have 18 cousins and flabbergasted when I tell them my mom has 100! They also don't have many or any siblings, but for some reason they always talk about their brother and/or sister. Hmm... how does that work?

It's their cousins! Family here is very close. Everyone lives in the same town, probably in the same area, maybe even the same house. (Although as always, there are many exceptions). Being in Bella's hometown, I got to see first hand how close family is here. We went to so many relatives homes and by the end of the three days I felt like her cousins were my cousins. We were in the country, but the homes were still right next to each other. Children walk easily from home to home. Your cousin lives 4 minutes away walking. At one place we were at the grandparents lived in one part of the house, the uncle and his family lived in the other part (I'll show a picture).

I think it's amazing how close Chinese are to their family. They help each other with no question, they work together, they have each others' back. Most can't fathom the idea of nursing homes. You just don't do that.

Sorry, these pictures aren't in a very good order, hard to organize sometimes.