As usual,we get reunited andhave dinner together on theSpring Festival. It was nice. Maybe I am not the "under thespotlight" this year, which means they don't show so much concernson my career and relationship issues, I was allowed to sit asideand observed this family, my family...I realised it is quite atypical Chinese one.
UncleHong's family is a typical woman-dominate one. She is the breadwinner while he stays home and takes care the family, so obviouslyshe's the boss, and you could hear her talking about her familyissues, bla bla bla...Uncle was once such a confident and even abit conceited man, now he just sat therechockingby her words without saying a word...thepoor guy...
Uncle Ming's family seems to beaquiteenviable one here, a couple who issuccessfully doing handicraft business in several cities inGuangdong, anda son who is now a collegestudent--a pretty smart guy… You can sense they are the "boss" inthe big family. They are good people though.
My Mum is the only daughter of my grand parents. She and my Dadcomposed a rather common family in China. Also,I have to sayneither of themis smart person, but I am surethey're the most grounded and honest people here.
UncleTong's family...oh really a sad story...Aunt Yue said she wanted togo the U.S., so he said, go! She went there by the labor exportingapproach. She's now quite a successful business woman and finallyremarried another Chinese guy there. What about him? He gotaddicted to alcohol and passed awaytwo yearsago...Yunow mainly relied on the money she sendsback to maintain his life...He is sitting opposed to me, he is justfour months older than me, but looks much older. His fingers aretainted by cigarettes and he has already got a beer belly…
UncleKong is just sitting near me. His skin is quite dark, not thehealthy color as the one you get sun tan, it is because he got adisease. You can see he rethinks a bit every time when he raiseshis chopsticks. His story is not a nice one either…He was aconstructor, and a rather diligent one--for which Mum always saidhe was most like my grandpa,who was an engineer. However, his bodywas obviously“overused” by him and unfortunately he got a chronickidney disease. Now his family gets social welfare to live a not sodecent life…Obviously he is not favored byGod…
The storyof Uncle Li’s family is the not so noteworthy. Simply I can put itthis way: a lazy and dishonest man plus a lazy and not so smartwoman means a pathetic family. I simply don’t like them so much.There is a well-known saying by Lu xun, the famous writer, “besympathetic with his sufferings be infuriated at hisindifference”…Fortunatlyitseems they began to consider setting good samples for their 10years old son.
Manyu, one of my roommatesaid her dream was to work hard and buy another nice house for hisfamily. Frankly with GZ’s crazy hosing price, I don’t think I canafford it, no matter how hard I work or even by other means even Idon't understand why the Chinese are so crazy about buying a house,they can just ownfor 70 years top, which means bythe time you finish paying your installment loans, it would bealmost the time you give back your house to the goverment…bubbles,bubbles, bubbles…and I don’t hope them blast either haha …but atleast I hope we can live a simple healthy happy life. I am not toogreedy right??
Actually I don’t even knowwhy I write this, probably just I am reading a novel about thefamily life in India and trigger my thoughts here…