Cultural tips

Family
The Ancient Traditional Family

Among Chinese traditional conventions, the extended family enjoys the greatest esteem. It involves parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren, that is called "four generations under one roof" or "a family with five generations together". On the other hand, breaking up the family and living apart is regarded as disgrace. Such kind of family system is the patriarchy, in a family the sense of hierarchy is strict, and the parents are definitely superior over the family affairs, the junior usually has no voice and power to make a decision.

"养儿防老"(yǎng ér fáng lǎo, raising sons to support one in one's old age) is a pattern of providing for the aged in Chinese traditional family. The parents bear sons and daughters and bring them up. When they were in the old age, children should take the obligation to provide for parents, showing the filial piety.

The Modern Chinese Family

Since 20th century, especially, the year of 1949, Chinese family has gotten great change. The modern Chinese family pattern varies, and it develops mainly towards small-size and direct line. Nowadays, no matter city or country , the small-sized family has become the young man's first choice. Most of the families in the town consist of couple and one or two children, while in country the extended families are still superior with three or more than three generations.

Chinese have the tradition that respect the elder and care the younger all through the ages. However, in the modern society, people still get close relationships, though many families no longer live together with two generations. There's legal provision that adults must take the obligation to provide for the elder. And also Chinese people hold a strong feeling of family relationship, they contact each other quite frequently, not only between parents and children, but also among the brothers and sisters, the uncles and nephews. People experience the warmth deeply that comes from the family.

Family Tree
Family tree is the Chinese peculiar cultural heritage, is one of the three important elements(the China's history, the local gazette and a clan's genealogy) which are significant humanism data. Family tree, also known as Zu Pu, is a record of a clan's history and lineage, and the important feature's deeds in the form of table.

The family tree contains three sections: the first part is the hereditary diagram, one that is used to illustrate someone's genealogy, finding which Dynasty he belongs to and who the father is; the second part is the main body that is edited by everyone's order listed in the hereditary diagram. And it introduces one's name, seniority among brothers and sisters, epoch, official, title, age, death date, posthumous title and marriage etc. Those kind of introductory words from 50 words most to 2 or 3 words least, actually is a biography; the third part is the appendix.

While writing family trees, some of them are defined clearly the generation orders of family hereditary' name. In advance, the name should be determined and the generation should be clear. That is called "Arranging order", in fact, it means that one should be given the order by generation. In Chinese history, the men are regarded as superior to women. So a man's given name must adopt a certain character that is fixed in advance, and this character should be placed in the middle or end of his name. Perhaps, it's not exactly the same of each generation, but there's something accepted through common practice.

Nationality
China is a united multi-nationality country, consisting of 56 nationalities. Han nationality has a large population, making 91.59% of the whole population, and it is the chief member of the People Republic of China. She was mixed together with ancient Hua Xia nationality and the other nationalities for a long time. In the course of her development, she got the scale thanks to the consistent fusing with every minority nationalities, distributing over the most parts of China. Besides, there're thousands upon thousands people live scattered among the world.

The other 55 nationalities are called the minority nationality. They totally have a population of about 106,43 millions people, making the 8.41% of the whole population. Although their population is small, they cover a wide area which takes half or 60% of the whole nation's area. They are: Mongol (měng gǔ zú), Hui (huí zú), Tibetan (zàng zú), Uighur (wéi wú ěr zú), Miao (miáo zú) (Hmong), Yi (yí zú), Zhuang (zhuàng zú), Buyi (bù yī zú), Korean (cháo xiǎn zú), Manchu (mǎn zú), Dong (dòng zú), Bai (bái zú), Tujia (tǔ jiā zú), Hani (hā ní zú), Kazakh (hā sà kè zú), Dai (dǎi zú), Lisu (lì sù zú), Wa (wǎ zú), She (shē zú), Gaoshan (gāo shān zú), Lahu (lā hù zú), Shui (shuǐ zú), Dongxiang (dōng xiāng zú), Naxi (nà xī zú), Jingpo (jǐng pō zú), Kirghiz (kē ěr kè zī zú), Tu (tǔ zú), Daur (dá wò ěr zú), Mulam (mù lǎo zú), Qiang (qiāng zú), Blang (bù lǎng zú), Salar (sǎ lá zú), Maonan (mào nán zú), Gelao (gē lǎo zú), Xibe (xí bó zú), Achang (ā chāng zú), Pumi (pǔ mǐ zú), Tajik (tǎ jí kè zú), Nu (nù zú), Russian (é luó sī zú), Uzbek (wū zī bié kè zú), Yao (yáo zú), Li (lí zú), Evenks (è wēn kè zú), De'ang (dé áng zú), Bonan (bǎo ān zú), Yugur (yù gù zú), Gin (jīng zú), Tatar (tǎ tǎ ěr zú), Drung (dú lóng zú), Oroqin (è lún chūn zú), Hezhen (hè zhé zú), Menba (mén bā zú), Jino (jīn uò zú), Lhoba (luò bā zú). In the west-south of China, there're more than 20 minority nationalities, each of them has a long history and forms a distinguished nationality culture and custom. Every year there're more than a thousand nationality festivals, most of them hold in the early Spring, Autumn and Winter.

Han has its own language and characters—Chinese, which is the commonly used language in China, and also one in the world. Among 55 minority nationalities, Hui and Man use Chinese, while the other 53 nationalities use their own nationality language; of them, 21 nationalities have characters, using 27 kinds.