My uncle drank three times a day, and often got up at noon, and his wife and children hid in the county seat during the New Year and did not come back 

Qi Yan | Lecturer, School of Social and Political Science, Anhui University

1. A family that is not reunited

When I went home for the Chinese New Year, I wanted to go to my cousin's house, so I asked my mother if my cousin and aunt had come back. My mother told me that my aunt, cousin, and cousin did not come back this year, and it seemed that they would not go home for Chinese New Year's Eve. Since my cousin wasn't at home, I dismissed the idea of visiting the house.

When I heard the news that my aunt, cousin, and cousin were not going back to their hometown for the New Year, I felt that this was unexpected. If you don't go home, your aunt, cousin and cousin can have a comfortable Spring Festival in the county, and if you go home and face your uncle who is addicted to drinking, you may have to have a quarrelsome and angry Spring Festival.

I also don't know when my uncle's drinking addiction began. But since my uncle became addicted to drinking, the family relationship began to be strained, so much so that it came to the current situation.

I have the impression that my uncle used to be a person who paid great attention to his personal image, would tidy up and tidy, and was also a father who cared very much about his children. When I was in high school, my cousin and I were in the same high school, and my cousin was one level above me, and my cousin and I often met together in the car to go to school. Every time my cousin left home, my uncle would prepare some of my own dishes for my cousin, and he was a very caring father.

The change in the uncle's family happened when my cousin was in college. My cousin also has a real brother, who is my cousin. My cousin caught a cold a few months ago and became deaf due to improper medication by the doctor. Because he couldn't hear, he couldn't learn to speak, and when he grew up, his cousin became deaf and mute. Although his cousin was deaf and mute, he received a full primary and secondary education in a special education school and went to university. My cousin has been working diligently since graduation and is fully capable of supporting himself. The cousin's cousin was two or three years old, and when the cousin entered the marriageable age, the uncle and aunt began to worry about the cousin's marriage. At that time, my aunt's family did not have much savings, so my aunt borrowed all her brothers and sisters from her mother's family and spent more than 100,000 yuan to build a new house in the village as a new house for her cousin's marriage. When the house was built, it was also when my cousin was in college.

After the house was completed, the family owed more than 100,000 debts, and the aunt was very stressed, so she discussed with her uncle to go out to work to pay off the debt, but the uncle was unwilling to go out, so the aunt went out by herself. My aunt has a low level of education, and she also does very hard physical work when she goes out to work, such as cleaning in hospitals, hotels and other places. Relying on hardships and frugality, my aunt spent a few years slowly paying off the debts she owed when building the house.

After graduating from college, my cousin returned to her hometown to work. At first, the salary was very low, but fortunately, the company provided room and board, and the price in the county was not high, and my cousin slowly began to save some savings. During this period, my cousin also worked in a factory in the county, and his work was serious and steadfast, the company provided accommodation, and my cousin was able to save some money. During this period, my aunt was still working in other places.

When my aunt wasn't around, my cousin took on the responsibility of caring for my cousin. Ask someone to help introduce the cousin to the object, take the cousin to a blind date, etc. After seeing that it has become a trend for young people to get married and buy a house, my cousin began to inquire about the housing in the county seat, and thought of buying a house for my cousin in the county seat, so as to increase the chances of my cousin getting married. When she found out about a two-bedroom apartment with a good price, my cousin decisively contacted my aunt, and my cousin, cousin and aunt put together their savings to pay a down payment on the house. It has been at least seven or eight years since I bought a house, and now the mortgage has been paid off. My aunt also came back from other places a few years ago and went to work in the county seat. Now my cousin, cousin and aunt live in the house in the county seat.

After my aunt went out to work, my uncle was engaged in agricultural production at home, planting leeks in the spring and cleaning up the orchard in the summer and autumn. The leek field and orchard area are not large, and my uncle can do it alone. But my uncle had a habit of drinking a little wine every day. When my aunt is at home, she will restrain a little bit by nagging. After my aunt went out to work, there was no one to restrain her, and my uncle drank three meals a day, and getting drunk became a common thing, and he often got up at noon, cooked some food, drank some wine, and then went to work in the fields, and it was already afternoon. There is a saying in the countryside of my hometown, "people are diligent and not lazy", which means that if people are diligent, the yield on the land will be high. In such a state as my uncle, the yield of the land is not good. Whether it is leeks or apples, the quality is not good, which affects the selling price. As a result, it was difficult for my uncle to earn a decent income from agricultural production. And because of smoking and drinking, it is difficult to save much money. Even so, the uncle was reluctant to go out and persisted until now.

2. Family development pressure and family crisis

In my hometown, it seems to be common for men in the village to drink a little at every meal. I have the impression that my great-grandfathers and grandparents would drink a few glasses of wine at every meal, and my great-grandmothers and grandmothers would not only not discourage them, but even prepared special snacks for them. But in my parents' generation, things started to change. This generation of men followed the habit of drinking a little wine at every meal after marriage, but this custom no longer has legitimacy in the family, and when the wine cup is served, it is the time when the wife of the family begins to criticize her husband for drinking. In order not to quarrel, many men have gradually changed the habit of drinking alcohol at every meal, drinking once a few days, or only drinking during the New Year's holidays. The husband stopped drinking, and family quarrels decreased a lot. Husbands who have not broken their drinking habits, or even married men who are becoming more and more addicted to drinking, will face a serious relationship crisis in their families.

The reason for this change has a lot to do with the times in which my parents lived and the pressure of family development. I am a post-90s generation, my great-grandparents are post-20s in the 20th century, and my grandparents are post-30s and post-40s in the 20th century. After these two generations get married and start a family, the pressure on family development is to raise children and help them get married. That is, what we call the task of simple family reproduction. In the youth and prime of life of these two generations, my hometown has always been a typical agrarian society, and agricultural production is the main mode of livelihood and the main source of family income. Agricultural production is characterized by seasonality and timeliness, with each crop having a specific season of season, and a specific time of day during the season. For example, in the busy season of summer farming, there are two busiest times of the day, one is just bright to more than ten o'clock at noon, and the other is from four or five o'clock to seven or eight o'clock in the afternoon, because this is the time of the day when the temperature is relatively low, and the crops will not be hot from the sun, and it is not easy to suffer from heat stroke and will not hurt the crops when they go to the field for agricultural work. This seasonal and seasonal nature of agriculture makes farmers have a lot of leisure time. Rural men who drink a little wine but do not get drunk during the leisure time of the day do not fall asleep, which does not affect the fact that they continue to work on the farm after waking up. The wives of the family will not interfere with drinking.

By the time my parents' generation, that is, the generation born around the 60s, the family livelihood model, family reproduction tasks and family development pressures they faced after they got married have changed greatly. In the 80s, many township enterprises were built in the hometown township, from small brick factories to various plastic processing factories, and in the 90s, the village began to grow mulberry trees, and raising silkworms and selling silkworm cocoons became a very important sideline income for local rural families. The household model during this period was a "half-farming, half-sided" model. In addition to the traditional cultivation of food crops, family members also engage in side jobs, with men working in brick factories and women raising silkworms during the non-grain season. The work in the brick factory is very hard, and it is also difficult to be careless because of a certain amount of danger. Therefore, if men drink and sleep during the day, it will affect their work. The manual labor of silkworm raising is very intensive, especially in the later ten days, men are also required to participate in the labor of silkworm raising, and if men drink and sleep, it will also affect this labor. Whether it is factory labor or breeding labor, there is a conflict with men's habit of drinking often, and in labor conflicts, family conflicts and drinking habits, some men have made adjustments and changed their drinking habits.

The task of family reproduction is also changing in this generation, from the original simple family reproduction to the expanded family reproduction. At the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, building a house in the countryside could help a son get married. But towards the end of the first decade, buying a wedding house in the county has become more and more necessary for marriage. It costs more than 100,000 yuan to build a house in the countryside, and a down payment of 200,000 yuan to buy a house in the county seat. Because of the strict implementation of the family planning policy in my hometown, about one-quarter to one-third of the households in my hometown village are exclusively women. Although these families do not face the same pressure of having to buy a house as families with sons, they also have the pressure of saving for their daughters to dowry. On the one hand, the hometown has always had a tradition of preparing a dowry for her daughter, and on the other hand, it is more important that when you are old and need your daughter to support her for the elderly, you must support your daughter when she gets married and after marriage, and it is more supportive than traditional marriage customs. For example, when the daughter gets married, she will marry some money, or undertake the decoration of the wedding room, or accompany the wedding car, etc.

The family planning policy has also profoundly changed the concept of education in the rural areas of my hometown. Due to the early and strict implementation of the family planning policy in my hometown, since the post-80s, local families generally have 1~2 children. Families attach great importance to their children's education, and instead of the previous practice of skewing towards boys in the era of multiple children, they are investing in boys and girls equally. The effect of education investment has been revealed, and a positive feedback has been formed in the villages, bringing more attention and investment in education from village families. Since the post-80s generation, education has become a rigid expense for families. As competition for education becomes more fierce and the number of years of education increases, so does the pressure on families to invest in education.

With the gradual increase in the difficulty of family reproduction and the increase in the pressure of family development. The post-60s generation is also constantly adjusting the family planning model. From the eighties and nineties and continued into the first decade of the 21st century, the "part-time work and half-work" began to become "part-time work and half-farming" (mainly based on the income of migrant workers, supplemented by agricultural income) towards the end of the first decade. Many families have started to work outside the home for a long time (there have been migrant workers before, but mainly for short periods of time during the winter slack). ）。 Those who remain in the villages also grow crops with labour-intensive cash crops as a source of income. In some families, the husband and wife go out to work together for a long time, while in some families, the husband goes to work in other places, and the wife finds a factory or family workshop in the county, or finds some odd jobs. The pace of labor-intensive cash crop cultivation is no smaller than that in a factory, and it is necessary to work in the fields all day long. Working in a factory or doing odd jobs also follows the time rhythm of industrial society. The rhythm of everyone's life should be arranged according to this rhythm.

Under such a rhythm of production and life, the habit of drinking has become a very serious "bad habit". Because drinking alcohol can affect work, delay things, and easily cause traffic accidents. All these are not conducive to the economic accumulation of the family, will slow down the progress of the completion of the task of family reproduction, and will affect the development of the family. Not only do women see drinking as a bad habit, but the men in the village no longer see drinking as a masculine thing, but also as a "bad habit". Men have not quit drinking, but they have controlled the frequency and amount of alcohol they drink, and have a few drinks at family and friend gatherings and during the New Year's holidays, but they are no longer as drunk or drunk as often as before.

My uncle, as a post-60s generation, and my children, as people born at the end of the post-80s, are the generation that has experienced the changes in the reproduction tasks of local rural families and the increasing pressure on family development. My aunt, cousin and cousin are keenly aware of the changes of the times and are constantly looking for ways to change the family's livelihood and strengthen the family's synergy. For example, my aunt started to work outside when she was forty or fifty years old, trying to accumulate resources for getting married, such as buying a house for my cousin in the county seat, trying to improve her personal ability and saving income, such as my aunt still continues to work in the county, and my cousin keeps taking various certificates to improve herself. My uncle, on the other hand, did not adjust himself to increase his ability to obtain economic income and did not integrate into the direction of strengthening the family cohesion, because he followed the habits of his previous generation of men, and the tension with family members and the emergence of family crises became inevitable.