Learning Chinese: culture — Unit 6

The dialogue of Unit 6 is about the family. It is an opportunity to discover the central place of the family in Chinese culture, the richness of Chinese family vocabulary and the system for numbering brothers and sisters.

1. The Chinese family: a pillar of society

In China, the family (家 jiā) is much more than a group of people living under the same roof. It forms the foundation of social organization, a direct legacy of Confucian thought which places filial piety (孝 xiào) at the summit of the virtues.

Traditionally, several generations lived together under the same roof: grandparents, parents, children and sometimes uncles and aunts. Today, in big cities, nuclear families (parents + child) have become the norm, but family ties remain extremely strong. It is very common for grandparents to look after the grandchildren while the parents work.

The one-child policy (独生子女政策 dúshēng zǐnǚ zhèngcè), in force from 1979 to 2015, profoundly transformed the Chinese family structure. For more than thirty years, most urban families had only one child. Since 2016, the policy has been relaxed to allow two then three children, but habits have changed and many young couples choose to have only one child.

2. The richness of Chinese family vocabulary

Chinese has a family vocabulary of great precision. Where English uses a single word — "uncle", "aunt", "cousin" — Chinese systematically distinguishes:

  • whether the person is on the paternal side or maternal ;
  • whether they are older or younger than the relevant parent.

For example, for "uncle":

This precision reflects the importance of hierarchy and lineage in Chinese culture. Knowing exactly what tie links two people makes it possible to determine the obligations of respect and solidarity between them.

3. 大姐, 二姐… : numbering the brothers and sisters

In a Chinese family, brothers and sisters are often designated by their rank among the siblings. The ordinal number is placed before the kinship term:

Note that for the first one, we use 大 dà (big) and not 一 yī (one). Then we use the numbers: 二 (second), 三 (third), etc. For the last-born, we often use 小 xiǎo (little).

In the unit's dialogue, Bai Xue has an elder brother (哥哥 gēge), an elder sister (姐姐 jiějie) and two younger sisters (两个妹妹 liǎng gè mèimei). In China, one could address the two younger sisters by calling them 大妹 dàmèi (the older of the younger sisters) and 小妹 xiǎomèi (the youngest).

This numbering system is still very much alive in China, especially in family and rural contexts. It expresses the respect for the hierarchy of age, a central value of Chinese culture.