top of page

Cultural highlights  Chinese Family 

Family size

In the past, Chinese family used to live with three or four generations in one 

house. However, this situation has changed since the beginning of the 20th

century. Nowadays small families made up of parents and unmarried children .

And now it's still common to see the three generations live together. 

​

One-child policy

It was initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the Chinese government and the 

purpose of it was to reduce the enormous population(it reached to 1 billion in the late 1970s) and downsize the number of people to three in each family. 

It was announced in late 2015 that the program was to end in early 2016, all families would be allowed to have two children.

​

​

​

​

Addressing family members 

In the traditional Chinese family, the younger generations are not allowed to call the older members by their given names but use forms of address. 

​

The forms of the address used are similar as the way used in Vietnam and Korea, more complicated than those used in Western countries. 

For example, in China, the father's older brothers are called bó bo 大伯

and the younger brothers are called shū shu 叔叔. All mother's brothers are called jiù jiu舅舅. 

​

​

Elder brother are called gē ge哥哥 and the elder sisters are called jiě jie 姐姐. 

If there is more than one elder sister or sister, an order title is added before the address, for example, 

bottom of page