”Life changes too much. 50 years ago, there were no such things like private cars or High-speed rail or theme park.” When I chat with my grandfather, there are always sentences like that. Apparently, life has a vast difference between 50 years ago and now, especially in transportation, education and entertainment. Firstly, transportation changed dramatically during last 50 years. The length of railway lines and road lines in service enlarged quickly. For example, the railway lines length was 33.9 thousand Km in total in 1960, and it sharply increased to 111.8 thousand Km in total in 2014. Similarly, the length of road lines was 519.5 thousand Km in 1960, then it grew as fast as railway lines’ length. In 2014, the road length reached to 4463.9 thousand Km according the data from National Bureau of Statistics of China. This development made people travel easily and efficiently, the most important result is it connected many places that had been isolated for many years and brought enormous economic income for those places. Furthermore, there are more choices to go to another place. For instance, the structure of transportation has been optimized. In the first several years of China’s founding, almost all kinds of transport depended on the railway, the percentage of it could reach to 90%. However, the railway passenger turnover percentage has declined to 36%, and the road passenger turnover has grown to 55%, is the ship passenger turnover number as the same as the railway. So we are have multiple choices to go wherever we want to go. For instance, before the Tibetan railway was completed, we couldn’t go to Tibet by train, we had to drove almost two weeks to get there. So, think about the situation before the Tibetan road completed. On one hand, the development of transportation is a benefit for us, thanks to high speed transportation, we can eat the fresh fruit come from thousands miles away. On the other hand, it cause serious traffic congestion. For example, “From October 2010 to September 2013, a total of 48,325 crashes were collected in the three-year period.”1 Secondly, the education in China grew so fast in the last 50 years. First of all, the school number grow vastly. For instance, there were 1289 high schools in 1960, but in 2014, the number of high school had increase to 2529. Therefore, we are seeing a nearly threefold increase in the school number in the past 50 years. Likewise, the private schools developing so fast. There is the case of Hong Kong’s private school development. The Education Commission Report No. 3, published in 1988, recommended the establishment of “a strong, independent private sector” (Education Commission,1988, p. 53). The report indicated that these private schools would become “a genuine alternative to the public sector” and would be “counted as part of the long term supply of school places” (Education Commission, 1988, p. 53).2 The figure below shows the changes in the number of private schools during 1958-1990. So, we can see the number of private schools in Hong Kong increased vastly between 1958 and 1991 from about 60,000 to 440,000. Finally, the way people in China relax has VF OR JUST REMOVE GET changed. In the past, people in China had few ways to relax. In the 1950s, the most popular entertainments for Chinese people included fireworks displays, art shows, and public gatherings. People received inspiration and feel great joy among the cheering crowds. Yangge performance and stilt walking became popular shows. “Chinese people liked to immerse themselves among the carnival groups, in which they experience an inspiring spirit of unity.”3 So, according to this, Chinese people like stayed together and celebrated their festivals. However, people want to know more about entertainment. For example, 50 years ago, there were no magazines about tourism and travel. As my grandfather said, books were the scarce resources that normal people couldn’t have. According to my grandfather’s memory, there were books just about Quotations Form Chairman Mao Tsetung. But now, we have a great many of books or magazines about entertainment. The table below shows the details about the magazine and journals numbers now. In addition, people want to spend more money on entertainment. The table below shows the data of the nonproductive expenditure per people annual. We can see the entertainment and education spending is 499.39 yuan in grand average in 1998. Then, we can see the increase between these two tables. The entertainment and education expenditure rose rapidly from 499.39 Yuan to 1535.9 Yuan during that period. It indicates that people in China spent more money on entertainment.
In conclusion, although China developed so fast, it has many serious questions, for instance, traffic congestion. In last 50 years, China made a vast progress, it changed a lot in many ways, especially in transportation, education and entertainment. So, maybe it is the time to slow down and face the problems. Furthermore, China might slow down the pace and just has some modifications in the next 50 years, but China will never stop. Reference: 1. Smyth, R., Mishra, V., & Qian, X. (2008). The Environment and Well-Being in Urban China. Ecological Economics, 68(1/2), 547-555. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.05.017 2. Alan C.K. Cheung , E. Vance Randall , Man Kwan Tam , "The development of local private primary and secondary schooling in Hong Kong, 1841-2012", International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 30 Iss: 6, pp.826 – 847 3. http://www.china.org.cn/video/2009-09/26/content_18605271.htm 4. Zhong, L., Wu, B., & Morrison, A. M. (2015). Research on China's Tourism: A 35-Year Review and Authorship Analysis. International Journal Of Tourism Research, 17(1), 25-34. doi:10.1002/jtr.1962 5. http://www.stats.gov.cn/yearbook/indexC.htm 6. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2015/indexch.htm
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