Changes Of Social Life About Rural North China During The 60 Years Since The Founding Of PRC

Historic changes has happened in the social life of Liangshan county during the sixty years since PRC, such as changes happened in the people's clothing, diets, housing, transports, wedding or funeral, religions, festivals, recreational activities and so on. Especially since our reform and opening to the world, the social life has been changing fast.People's clothing has changed from the traditional to modern, from vegetation to variety with obvious multistage. Among the former thirty years, people dressed in very plain and monotonous clothes with poor level of modernization. People even had insufficient clothing while facing the hard times. And the clothing changed slowly. Among the later thirty years, modernization of clothing speeded up rapidly. People dressed more and more voluptuous and diverse. The clothing was getting fashionable, diverse, individualbe and post-modern day by day. Nowadays, people's clothing has been changed faster and faster with shorter and shorter epidemic period. People match their dress free, pursue the new and beautiful to show themselves. People's clothing is in the trend of getting innovative, free-pursuing, beautiful and health-care based on the traditional one.People's diets has also changed heavily, especially after the institution of the household contract resposibility system. Before this, people had a hard life without sufficient food, they had bland diet but just could barely feed themselves. In the year of poor crop, people had to allay their hunger with those which could be eaten. More unfortunately, they even had nothing to keep off hunger, and always died of cholera. After that, staple and non-staple food were becoming more and more abundant, and people's life gradually improved. They had a lot of feeding up with more and more non-staple food. The rural people, who has pursued not only nutrition but also good health, has incresed their consumption of meat, eggs and dairy products steadily. And their diets has transferred from extensive to nutritious type and became modern day by day, although this, they has not given up the traditional one.People's housing has turned upside down in the blink of an eye, from single-storey house to two or more storeys, from civil structure to reinforced concrete one, from the dark wet and narrow place to the bright clean and spacious one, and became more and more humanized, comfortable and modern. After the institution of the household contract resposibility system, the income of farmers was continuously growing. With the social economy developing rapidly, more and more famers became rich and began to rebuilt their houses. A wave of building house has emerged in the countryside, and the dark sleazy single-storey house has been replaced by bright spacious brick one. In the recent years, the housing conditions has stepped to a higer level in the countryside with the increasing living space and index of the pleasant living place. And the housing has developed in the direction of making building.The transports in countryside has changed rapidly and made historic leap from the traditional to the modern, such as from the dirt to the macadam and then the asphalt road; from traditional carts to modern tractor, agricultural three-wheeled bike and truck; from bike to motorbike, electric bike and then bus. At the same time, customs of people's travel has changed substantially too, especially after the institution of the household contract resposibility system. Traffic tools people used are becoming modern and dynamic day by day. In recent years, the traffic in countryside has become unprecedented convinient and made historic leap with the emerging of the asphalt road, bus and car.The long-standing customs of the wedding or funeral transferred form generation to generation has continued to change obviously. Since the new China, people broke away the superstitions vigorously and advocated to change the prevailing habits and customs. The nuptial customs has changed enormously, such as customs of the marriage contract, marriage, wedding reception, divorce, remarriage and so on. Traditional customs in the funeral rite has changed continually too, especially since the overall exercise of cremation in Liangshan county from February,1978. New funeral system has been enforced, burial—the old way to bury has not been allowed, and extravagance and waste has been opposed. The funeral system transferred for thousands of years has changed greatly, but the road to change was tortuous. Since 1980s, traditional customs of the wedding and funeral has been returning and the wave of great extravagance and waste has become popular again.Traditional festival transferred form generation to generation has changed enormously in the course of the history of men, such as Spring Festival, the Lantern Festival, Tomb Sweeping day, Dragon Boat festival and Mid-Autumn festival and so on. Since the first founding of our country, tradition festival of our country among the people ceremonious had returned gradually. But in the later time, great efforts were made in reforming the social customs, blind faith was broken down, some movements such as "The Great Leap Forward" and "four clean-ups" caused serious consequences for the traditional festivals. Since the reform and opening, traditional festivals has been back with more and more rich content. Nowadays, many traditional festivals are becoming blurred again with people's modernized lifestyle and the deep effects of the western holidays.People's religions are numerous and complicated, such as the worship of Ghosts and Gods, Taoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Christianity, the attendence in the reactionary secret societies, evil cults and so on. From the new China to the reform and opening, people have made great efforts in reforming the prevailing habits and customs and breaking away the superstitions. Especially during the periods of "four clean-ups" and "cultural revolution", "four olds" was did away, superstitious activities in the countryside were hard hit, religious toleration was restricted and even came to a standstill. Since the refrom and opening, people has been given the right to have religions, then the superstitious activities has emerged again, temples has been rebuilt, Catholicism and Christianity has spreaded rapidly, and evil cults soared to heights on one occasion.Since the new China, various entertainment activities has been developed gradually, such as the traditional drama, Wushu and lion dance. The modern movie found their way into the villiages in 1955 and became the new form of entertainment and medium for people. The entertainment activities were constantly enriching and developing and came to the climax in 1958. But during the periods of "four clean-ups" and "culture revolution", the "four olds" was did away, lots of traditional entertainment activities were banned, and only eight modles of drama could be seen. Since the reform and opening, traditional entertainment activities had been back and become more and more rich. And the recreational activities for peasants were crowned by The Folk Arts Fair unceasingly. But nowadays, cultural and recreational programs, sports in the coutryside fall behind economic development seriously and are in urgent improvement.The traditional has been lessen in the chess with the modern which has been added. The folk local knowledge and the state ideology have been shaped and constructed each other. And all of these constitute the vivid contents of the social life of Liangshan county during the sixty years since the founding of PRC, and push chops and changes of social life constantly.