Our next trip was to Changsha in Hunan Province . Very Hot! But it was great spending time with Cynthia’s parents asnd seeing Cynthia’s new flat.
Cynthia’s father is Dean of the English Department at a university in Changsha. He and his wife graciously let me stay in their home and fed me great spicy meals. I have no statistics but by my observation, most Chinese families living in a city, will live in flats. Sort of like our version of a condo. They own the flat/apartment but not the land. Cynthia’s parents flat was on the 4th floor (really 5th) had 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, living rm, dining rm, and kitchen. Their building complex was built by their university, so it houses mostly university workers. It had a play area and a guard and gate around the whole complex. I think it is common for companies to build apartment complexes for their workers to buy. It appears that most of the residents living in city apartment complexes contain very job/class homogeneous grouping. Again I have no hard facts -just observations. I haven’t seen any suburbs or neighborhoods yet. There are single family homes in the country but they are usually 4 or 5 stories tall with 3 to 4 generations living in them.
