That PhD Life: This one is for my Mom Part III- More Kitchens!

Kitchens again! Noticing a theme? I mentioned in an earlier post that I would upload pictures of a wealthy family's kitchen in a demonstration of China's insane diversity and the rich-poor gap. I promised and I shall deliver. As a reminder to all my readers, and myself, China is an incredibly diverse place and these kitchens are not meant to represent an entire group of people. China's diversity is apparent in more ways that just it's 55 ethnic minorities. Geographic region plays a huge role, the most well-known being the east-west development gap. As I've discovered in my research in Old Nanjing, however, an entirely different way of thinking and way of life can be discovered within the so-called "neglected" or "backward" (not my words!) parts of urban areas in the east as well, even in Jiangsu, one of the wealthiest provinces in China. Anyway, point being, these kitchens are not representative of all Chinese families, just a select few.

The pictures of the nice kitchen are from a penthouse apartment of one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Nanjing. Every Saturday I do a language exchange (2 hours of Chinese and 2 hours of English) with a 13-year old boy at this ridiculous apartment. He goes to the Nanjing Foreign Language School, which is considered the best middle school in Nanjing. Here is a picture of the school notebook he uses:

I love his notebook because it captures the conflict that China has found itself to be in: torn between the old and the new, the domestic and the foreign, Chinese and international. As it is an official "Nanjing Foreign Language School" notebook, it encapsulates the feelings of so many of the students planning to go abroad for college: How should I be open to foreign things, ideas, and cultures, while maintaining a Chinese identity? How does a country and its people develop its economy and raise its standard of living without sacrificing its people? I also thought of my own research topic- How have Chinese people maintained their "Chinese soul", that is, their sense of identity and cultural traditions amongst such rapid change? How has urban housing redevelopment and structural change (homes to apartments) changed social and cultural behaviors?

Anyway, he and I have a lot of fun, mostly because his English is so good. We've had philosophical discussions about aliens and their existence ("What about the Transformers?"), as well as about God and its existence. We had a particularly good time last week when I used an ESL activity I'd found on the Internet. You ask, "Grandma is going on a train trip. She is coming to visit you. In her bag, she has..." and then you list something she has in her bag for every letter of the alphabet. Here is his list:

I don't know if you guys can see, but some of his more hilarious entries were: Lung, Neptune, Obama, Planet, and Volcano. Every time he wrote something ridiculous, I would say, "Really? Can you fit that in a bag?" and he would just collapse in a fit of giggles.

Here are pictures of his ridiculous kitchen (I say ridiculous because these kitchens are so rare in China, from my experience only the wealthiest families, like the kids I tutored last year, have kitchens like this. I say this and yet, kitchens like this are pretty common in the US, I think.... what a world we live in):

The washing machine is in the kitchen. I've seen a lot of kitchens like this, including my own, in China.

To give you an idea of the kind of Chinese family we're talking about, their house cost 3 million RMB. That's about five times more than an average house costs in Nanjing (the average is about 700,000-900,000 RMB). Also, thankfully, Chinese people are extremely open about their household finances, which makes my research a lot easier. This family has a monthly household income of 10,000 RMB. The average monthly salary for a Chinese household in Nanjing, however, is around 3,000-4,000 RMB. The residents of Old Nanjing, however, make between 500-1,000 RMB a month. And just for fun and contrast, here are some kitchens from Old Nanjing:

This is Lao Tai's kitchen, she cooks here every day while tending to business in her shop. The circular tube in the bottom left-hand corner is her wood stove.