MD 2009

At Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in ChinaAt Home in China

Family life is very important for most Chinese people. Grandparents often live with or near their families and help to look after their grandchildren while their parents are at work.

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Most children start school when they are six. Their school day begins at eight in the morning and ends at four in the afternoon.

These children’s school is inside a cave!

All children have to work hard at school.Sa

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Many schools have ten minutes of exercise before lessons begin.Sa

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Where do all these children and their families live?

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In China the cities are very crowded so most city people live in small flats in skyscraper blocks. They are very tall buildings!Some factories, companies and schools provide homes for their workers.

What do you think it’s like living there?Sa

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Lots of people live in these flats.

If you look carefully you can see that each apartment has an air-conditioning unit on the wall.

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In old city centres, houses were traditionally built around courtyards leading off narrow lanes (hutongshutongshutongshutongs). They can still be seen in Beijing.

This traditional house in Beijing is built around a courtyard. It’s more than 300 years old.

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Each siheyuan has four rooms around a central courtyard. All the windows and doors face into the courtyard to protect them from the harsh winter winds and dust storms that happen in the spring. Long ago the four rooms were lived in by one family but now many families could live in one siheyuan.

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Some Siheyuans are very modern inside but outside, many look like they are falling down.

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A pile of coal ‘cakes’ for burning on fires.

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These homes are in the old city of Lijiang.

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Homes alongside the Homes alongside the Homes alongside the Homes alongside the canals incanals incanals incanals in LijiangLijiangLijiangLijiang....

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In the past, there were really two kinds of houses in China – poor people’s houses and rich people’s houses.

Poor people’s houses were usually just one room and made of mud bricks with a thatched roof. Rich people’s houses were much bigger.

These houses were built for factory workers by their bosses. The workers pay rent to the bosses.

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This is a house made of bricks.

In the country, most houses are single storey and are built from mud, clay, bricks or stone.

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These are houses made made of mud. They are built in areas where there is little rain.

They might be made of mud but there is a satellite dish and a TV on the roof.Sa

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These mud bricks are drying in the sun.

It is hardly surprising that when there is an earthquake, the mud houses crumble to nothing.

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These old houses in the countryside in south China are built from the local stone.

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In places where there are floods, homes are built up on platforms to keep them dry. This is an old house that was built along the river banks. Sa

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These Chinese houses are on stilts.

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These houses are very old but people still live there.

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Millions of people in China live in cave homes. Caves are cool in summer and usually warmer in winter but they are very dark inside and don’t have much ventilation.

Modern caves have been much improved and now have windows, skylights and better ventilation.

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Cave homes

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