Eating together

To eat toghther as a family has important values in China. For in China, people value family relationships a lot. It is appreciated that people spend times with families and friends as groups. Individualism works in China, but not a whole lot. At dinner time, around new year and big holidays, you can always see families spend time together, having big family meals with hot pot and other delicious food. Like the picture in page 224 in our textbook, in China also, the elderlys sit at the end of the table to indicate their importance in the family relationship. I think the reason why groupism is valued so much is because that the entire social structure forces youngsters to get help from the elderlys. For example, when people are in highschool and college their parents have the full responsibilities to pay for their full tuitions. When people reach adulthood, sometimes they rely on the whole family's decision to make bigger changes in their lives, for example, buy a bigger house. Right now the housing market is very expensive, being that it costs almost 1,000,000 to buy a house, and many people in China choose not to borrow money from the banks to make their monthly payment about their houses and stuff.
People like to share hot pot together, go out and have dinner just after like a day at work or for lunch. At meal time they can always talk about family businesses, jokes to each other, just having a good time at meal time. I love eating together in China.