Revealing China through my life

The Chinese lifestyle is undergoing changes. The “three highs” -- high blood pressure, high blood fat (hyperlipemia) and high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) -- are becoming health issues in China. These diseases are all related to unhealthy diets and lack of exercise.

Not long ago, these terms were foreign to most Chinese. They were referred to as "disease of the rich" and were associated with the USA and Europe, where people had lots of food and where obesity was becoming a serious issue.

The economic boom in China has greatly improved the lives of the Chinese people. But, I still remember times when we did not have enough food to eat. While the rapid pace of development may have made it easier to forget those times, the memory is still recent and vivid to me.

China to me is more a personal feeling than a subject for study. Indeed, I have always felt that my life is a mirror of China.

Hunger, revolution and isolation

One day in 1960, my father was sent to hospital. He was suffering from serious malnutrition at the age of 29. With his height of 175 cm, he weighed less than 50 kg. Millions of people in China were reported to have died of malnutrition that year. China had experienced its worst famine in recent memory.

Because of this, the government had to implement a food distribution system which was in place from 1955 until 1993. In 1960, the food distribution system in China was based on a quota system. According to one's age, gender, job and so on, each citizen was assigned a certain amount of food. A special food quota certificate was invented. The smallest certificate was equivalent to about 50g of food. Whenever a person buys food, he had to pay not only with money, but show the food quota certificate as well.

I came to this world in that same year. My father gave quite a big part of his food quota to my mother to make sure that she would get ‘enough’ nutrition during her pregnancy. This was to ensure that she would give birth to a healthy baby. As a result, I weighed around 4kg at birth while my father ended up in hospital.

The name that I was given somehow reflects this experience. My father named me ‘Yinong’ when he returned from hospital. It means ‘is also a farmer’ in Chinese. He wanted me to always remember that farming is the most fundamental part of us and appreciate farmers for their work of raising crops for the rest of us. Probably, he also secretly wanted me to become a farmer, so that I would always have enough food.

At home, I was called "little fatty." With the love of my parents, I grew up very healthily during those special years. In my memories, though, my father has always been skinny.

An extra egg for lunch

Back then, my parents were working as college teachers. By any of today's standards, they had rather good jobs. However, I and my two sisters still got involved in getting "extra food" for our home. Like most ordinary Chinese people living in that time, we were very creative in developing our own "food supply system."

We lived in an apartment at a beautiful campus of Beijing Teachers’ College. The campus was located in the western suburbs of Beijing and was surrounded by farming fields (Then. Now it is surrounded by roads and buildings). Our family of five shared an apartment that was around 45 square meters. It had two rooms, a kitchen and a toilet, on the third floor.

Just like most of families in that time, we converted our apartment into a "farmer's house." The entire balcony was re-arranged in order to get enough room for domestic animals. My parents managed to build a huge henhouse on the right side of the balcony and big huts by the window for rabbits. At one time we had more than 15 hens and 10 rabbits! Unlike today, when all we hear about is ‘bird flu’ and that we should keep away from birds, back then we didn't even know anything like the bird flu existed. And that was probably lucky, considering we practically lived together with the hens.

I was in kindergarten until I was 6 years old. The kindergarten had very strict rules concerning food and my parents had to give quite a large share of my food quota so that I could get fed. However, the kindergarten food was neither enough nor delicious. My parents had to invite the teachers to our place for a private dinner and ask the teachers to allow them to deliver some additional food to me. I don't remember much of it now, except for one thing: eggs. Everyday, I got one egg for lunch from my parents. Receiving those eggs made me so happy and proud that I often shouted ‘My dad brought me a big egg’ so that everyone would hear about what I got. I really benefited from our own food supply system.

My parents are very proud that they managed to raise so many hens and rabbits during that special time in China when the food supplies were so limited. They know, as well as I, that because of those hens and rabbits their children got enough nutrition and could grow up healthily. They have sacrificed themselves so much for me and my two sisters in so many other ways. As long as I remember, in the most difficult times, my parents have always eaten very little and they always said to me and my sisters "I am full, you eat more."

I have witnessed the great changes in China. Having grown up in China in the 60's, I feel that I am part of the changes and have benefited greatly from everything that has taken place. But I don't want to forget that of the 1.3 billion people in China, a lot are still living in rural areas under rather poor conditions. There are still millions of Chinese living in absolute poverty.

My wish for the future is for there to be no parent in China, or in the rest of the world, who will have to lie to their children by saying "I am full, you eat more." People often say that history repeats itself. I would like to reveal the history of China through my life, so we could all look back and learn from the hard times, while we draw strength and find hope in the good times.