Shen Jian- A Portrait of Life in Old Nanjing

Shen Jian is a shy, soft-spoken, and serious 42-year-old Old Nanjingese (laochengnanren) who speaks carefully and deliberately. He likes to talk politics with me after he's had a few drinks, especially about US-China relations, the global economy, and whether or not our two countries will be going to war anytime soon. He fervently insists that I tell people in the United States about the warm hospitality of the Chinese people and report that Chinese people are friendly and welcoming. In this way, he says, our two countries can have better a better bilateral relationship. He insists that even though the US government has a bad habit of bullying China, the Chinese people do not want to go to war and want peace more than anything.

Shen Jian's father, stepmother, and 96-year-old grandfather live a few houses down from me on Horse Drink Alley in Old Nanjing. His grandfather, father, stepmother, son, step-niece, him, and I often eat lunch together on Sundays. That is four generations of Shens all in one room. I also celebrated Christmas with his family.

Shen Jian's father, Shen Zhongqi, sits and chats about political economy with a neighbor in the alley across from his house, while the caged birds chirp behind them.

Celebrating Christmas with the Shens. From left to right: Katie, the step-niece, Shen Zhongqi, the father, James, the son, Grandpa Shen, the 96-year-old grandfather, and Yang Shuxia, the stepmother.

One of the many reasons why Shen Jian's perspective is very important because he lived in Old Nanjing for 30 years, but his immediate family now lives in a high-rise, so he has personally witnessed the differences between the two environments. When we chat, his 9-year old son, James, likes to sit at the table and listen intently, always trying to be as mature and adult-like as possible by contributing to the conversation whenever he can. It's very cute.

James playing across the alley from his house

Map of his house:

Mapping domestic spaces can give you guys an illustration of daily life. Maps can represent many facets of society and culture, including separations of clean and dirty (toilet is in the kitchen), relationships between generations, and extended kinship ties. Notice that they have a toilet, but no shower. Most houses have one or the other. 

Katie and a neighborhood friend playing in front of the Shen residence.

Uncle Shen is pictured in the center, holding the bowl and chopsticks. His 96-year-old grandfather is on the right, his bed in the background (see domestic space map).

Here is his story, told in his own words: 

My name is Shen Jian, but you can call me Uncle Shen. I was born in 1969. My birthplace and hometown is Old Nanjing. I lived in this very house with my parents and grandparents for 30 years, from the day I was born until I got married about 12 years ago.

The most beautiful memory I have from my childhood was spending time with my parents when they came back home once a week. My grandparents raised me, you know, because my parents worked in a town far away from Nanjing. That town is several kilometers away; you can probably get there in less than 2 hours by bus nowadays, but during that time, we didn't have cars. There weren't any vehicles; we had no means of transportation. We didn't have busses or public transportation or highways or anything like that. You had to take the train. So it was a very happy time when my parents came home. Things were so different back then; the standard of living was significantly inferior than it is now, you know.

When I was a kid, reading books was my hobby. Life was so different then. Life was very monotonous and boring, not rich and abundant like it is now. Kids nowadays take dance classes and study English, but we didn't have such things, so I just read books. I loved reading books. 

When I was little, my favorite neighbor was a classmate of mine. Actually, we never went to school together. He is two years younger than me. He was my childhood companion; we grew up together and did everything together. He was like a brother to me. The thing we did the most together? Just hanging out and chatting, communicating everything to each other. He lived across the alley from me, but his house was demolished several years ago for the middle school. We rarely get together nowadays. He's married too now, with a kid. He also works outside of Nanjing, so the opportunities to get together are few and far between. I can't really remember anything in particular that we did together when we were kids, except that he was my best friend.

Growing up in Old Nanjing at that time was different than it is now. When I was young, all of the neighborhood kids hung out in one big group, playing games together. It was a different time with a different way of thinking. For example, older kids would always bring younger kids along to play and help watch them for the parents or grandparents. That was a really happy time for us kids. But kids don't play like that nowadays. The reason is because interpersonal relationships have changed. Families aren't familiar with each other anymore, and there's a huge gulf (gehe) between people. There's misunderstanding between families now, it's not like it used to be, when everyone understood each other very well, the neighbors were very kind and friendly to each other, just like you would be with your own blood relatives. Now there's a distance separating people, just like a big gap of misunderstanding, and there's nothing to talk about amongst each other anymore.

These days I don't read so many books like I used to. These days, my favorite things to do are pay attention to the stock market and the economy, watch the news, and surf the Internet. But mostly I'm busy working as a car salesman in the northeast of China, in Shandong Province about 400 miles north of Nanjing. Of course I didn't choose this job per say, I mean what else would I do? There's nothing I can do about it (meibanfa). But I do like this job because the salary is better than other jobs for which I am qualified (I graduated from college). I earn about 70,000 yuan a year ($11,000). This is slightly above average, as in China the average yearly salary is about 65,000 yuan a year ($10,200). Also, you get to meet all different kinds of people in this line of work, so I do enjoy that part. I live in Shandong Province with my work unit in an apartment that the company provides us. I come home to Nanjing once a month and usually stay for about a week. My wife and my son live in the Rain Flower District of Nanjing. We don't have our own house though; we rent a very small 1-bedroom apartment in a high-rise.

My greatest wish for the future is to be able to buy a bigger house. I'd like to make enough money to have my own house, not rent someone else's house. My biggest hope for my kid's future is that he gets good grades and that he goes to college. My dream is for him to go abroad and study in a foreign country.

You know my grandfather here sitting on the bed behind us; he is 96 years old and can't walk on his own or talk in coherent sentences. Besides, he doesn't have any teeth so it's hard to understand what he says. If he could talk, and if you could understand him, he could tell you so many stories about Old Nanjing. He raised me, you know. When I was growing up, he told me about his experience with the Nanjing Massacre, when the Japanese invaded in December of 1937 and killed 300,000 people. This is Nanjing's history, Old Nanjing's history. He always expressed incredible appreciation for Americans, because they set up an international safe zone on the Nanjing University campus. A lot of Nanjingese went there for protection, including my grandfather and grandmother, who were newly weds at the time. There was one American woman who made a very deep impression on my grandfather. If she and the other foreigners hadn't saved him, he wouldn't exist today. Unfortunately, after she returned to the States, my grandfather got word that she committed suicide.

My grandfather is a representative of the real Nanjingese. Old Nanjing, located in the southern part of the city, is the real Nanjing; the people from here have been here for several generations. After the Kuomintang (KMT- the party led by Chiang Kai-shek) left Nanjing for Taiwan, the communists, aka the northerners, set up work units and schools in the communist style in the northern part of Nanjing. Those people now call themselves Nanjingese. But in reality, they are not truly Nanjingese. They even speak a different dialect in the neighborhoods in the northern half of Nanjing. The people from Old Nanjing, the ones from my grandfather's generation, are the genuine Nanjingese. They are the ones who speak the Old Nanjingese dialect. The people of Old Nanjing are the ones who already had been living in Nanjing for several generations when the communists took over in the 1949. But in the northern part of the city, those are people who moved to Nanjing during the Mao-era. The true Nanjingese are the people who experienced the Nanjing Massacre, again, like my grandfather. It's a pity that most of the true Nanjingese from that generation have died or have been demolished or moved away.

If I had the choice, that is, if my conditions (taojian) were good enough and I had enough money to buy a house with more than one bedroom, then I definitely would not be willing to live in Old Nanjing. If I had the money, I would take the opportunity to live in a nice house in a high-rise. But otherwise, living in Old Nanjing isn't a bad choice if you don't have a lot of money.

To me, Old Nanjing is incredibly significant. It's invaluable. I was born here and I grew up here. I lived here for half of my life! Of course I could never forget this place, I have so many memories that have made a very deep impression on my life and myself. Because, like I just said, I've been here since I was born in 1969! We had a really big family at that time. We had 3 generations living in one room: my grandparents, my parents, and me, an only child. My mother died was I was very young, and my father remarried Yang Shuxia, my stepmother, later. I don't call her "mother." I call her "auntie."  I have a stepbrother, and now a step-niece, from that marriage too.

The reason Old Nanjing and this home is so significant to me is because the people of my father's elder generation (fubei) lived here. Our family had a very exciting and happy thing happen to us. In Chinese, it's called danchuan, which means to only have one son for every generation. In 5 generations, all of us only had one son. My grandparents had 4 kids, but only one son. Some had daughters, but all of us only had one son. I'm an only child. And I had 1 son too, so the Shen family name is carried through us, and we've all lived here in this house. It's a very special thing when the family name can be passed on through one son for several generations. He can pass on the family name (jiazu). My son is the fifth generation. Because this house has a long history with my family, it's very significant to me and to us.

Old Nanjing is special because it's different from every other place in the world. It doesn't look modern. Nowadays we have the gated residential compounds (xiaoqu) and the high-rise apartment complexes. In the high-rise, people from all over China live there, and they're not familiar with one another, they don't get to know one another. But on this street here, Horse Drink Alley, let me tell you, originally there were so many neighbors, much more than there are now since the school was built and the houses were demolished. Anyway, we had a lot of neighbors and all of us were very familiar with one another and our relationships were deeply harmonious. It was just like our family's relationship with you, Sarah. You could say we all considered each other blood relatives, even though we were actually just neighbors.

This is what makes Old Nanjing special; the neighbors treat each other like they are family. These days, if you live in a gated, high-rise apartment complex, you will not see this type of relationship among neighbors. More and more people are living single lives these days. One family is from one place, the next family is from another place and everyone is a stranger. Everyone is just preoccupied with work and their own life.

I care deeply about this neighborhood. I care about what its future spatial plan will look like, and how the construction will be carried out. I care about how the layout will be preserved and how the conditions and environment of the residents of Old Nanjing will be changed.

If this house is demolished, I'll really miss this place. It all just depends on how the government can preserve Old Nanjing pattern, how they preserve the style. It all depends on the government (kan zhengfu), how they go about it, especially in terms of demolition and compensation. You know the area in every family's house in this neighborhood isn't big; the area by square meter isn't big, so if they're demolished, then their new house will certainly be bigger and their surroundings (huanjing) will change. From a human perspective, you shouldn't change someone's life environment (shenghuo huanjing). But the reality is that their lives will definitely change after demolition. Perhaps their life environment will not necessarily change dramatically, but there is a high probability that you will live in an apartment with a bunch of strangers, and you will come across the problems of having misunderstandings and a big gulf with your neighbors. You won't have neighbors that act as your relatives anymore. Nobody will bow their head, say hello, or even acknowledge your presence anymore. If you move to another place, a strange, unfamiliar place, it will take several years before you can become familiar with your neighbors and have the same kind of life environment. So there are good things and bad things about being demolished. The thinking (xiangfa) of Old Nanjing residents is really complicated, and everyone is feeling very confused. They are faced with a dilemma (jiujie); they feel caught in the middle, stuck between a rock and a hard place. 

I want you to understand something very important. Environment and area by square meter are two completely different things. When the residents' homes are demolished, the area of their home will increase and they will have a bigger house. Maybe instead of one bedroom, they will have two bedrooms. But this does not necessarily mean that they will obtain a better living environment. This all depends on whether or not the government carries out this job with care. If they carry out the job with care, then they can preserve the Old Nanjing style, and preserve the residents' original life environment. On the other hand, if they completely demolish the whole neighborhood and build a big high-rise mansion (dasha), well then that's just what the government will do. There's no standard. But according to the residents of Old Nanjing, they will not be willing to allow this to happen. Again, like I said, maybe the total square meters of their home will be bigger, but they cannot get used to that (shenme dou bu shiying).

Anyway, there is no way to finish everything I want to say; I could talk for days (kending shuobuwan). 

Note: I use the Latin alphabet romanization of the Chinese language in instances where I think a Chinese speaker will be able to understand the meaning a little better.  

Chinese word of the day: 

拆迁 – chai1 qian1 - literally "to tear open and move," aka to demolish old buildings and relocate the inhabitants.