Show notes
How do the elderly live in big cities like Shanghai? This week’s episode touches on problems facing families in China today through a discussion of the wildly popular Life is a Long Quiet River (2022) with my good friend Li Xiang (李翔）and his wife Wang Ting （王婷).Audio TranscriptJane: [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome back to that Chinese show. Today i’m going to sit down with my good friend Li Xiang and his wife Qing and we’re going to talk about a new urban drama called Xinju (心居). It’s very popular in China right now and the English translation on that is Life is a Long Quiet River.Xiang: Okay. Hi, Jane, thanks for your invitation today. So I’m pleasure to show my opinion about this show. I come from Wei Feng. My parents live always in Shandong. So now I live in Arras near Paris with my wife. Jane: Great. Well Qing why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself too Ting: Okay. So Thanks for your invitation. I’m glad to see you today. I was a student in France. So we have met in Paris and we get together and we get married. Now we have a [Jane: Oh, well, thank you for making time. I’m sure you’re very busy with your daughter. And where are you from in China Qing? Ting: I come from the same state as Xiang. Xiang: We found it’s about nine million population, so it’s not a so big city, like Beijing, like Shanghai . Jane: Well, it’s bigger in Paris, but mid-sized for China. Okay. Well, let’s get into our show. So we’re looking at a family drama that I am very much enjoying. I have to say. So. Last week we looked at how Hao Hao shuo hua, which is a romantic comedy. This is more, I mean, there are love stories in this show, but it’s more of a family drama and it basically follows the adventures of the Gu family. So what I’d like to do is just get into some of the themes. This is a spoiler free review. So we’re not going to talk about plot details, but we are going to talk about some of these themes.So one of the themes [Ting: Well it, it is now a real problem in China because how to explain that many years ago in the generation of our parents or even before. The first time when young couple to get married it’s a wife lives with the other family’s his husband, [Jane: That is actually a part of the show. The daughter-in-law. Takes care of her in-laws and she, she feels like this is a very strong duty that she has. I mean, she really views this as her job. And I think for Western audiences, this is a bit strange because she, is an incredibly devoted, even though they’re not always that nice to her.Ting: Well, it, yes, it is another problem because before it is like that we like live together with all the families. We feel happy and for example the grandparents well, take care of the children of their children. How to say that Jane: Right they provide the childcare for the younger children, such as yourself, but things are obviously not like that anymore. In China, you have a lot of people who have moved [Xiang: So from my grandparents. So it’s my parents take care to my grandparents.Jane: Okay. So if you project this a few decades later who do you think will take care of your parents? Are you planning to go back to China or how will this work? Xiang: Exactly. So this is our project in about 20 years, because now, my parents. is in good health Okay. So now we don’t need to take care every day, but now for the Chinese young people, we need the work hard to have a good job. Jane: So if you just take France for an example, you know, there, there is a very highly developed childcare system that is subsidized by the state. And you [Xiang: I think this is good question, because now the government of China develop system for— Ting: Taking care of the old people. It is really a big social problem now in China, because for example, our generation for every family, we can have just one child. Jane: So this is something you think in the years to come, the Chinese government is going to put in place more measures for the elderly population, because it is rising [Xiang: I think this is depend of the city. Because in the big city, like Beijing and Shanghai. The young people come from another province not was born in this city.Jane: That brings me to another question in the series and that is how competitive and brutal the workplace is. The way that it is presented in the series, you basically can be fired for, for almost anything. There is even one of the characters is like, oh, Shanghai is like this, you’ve got to stand tall in Shanghai. You know, it’s really presented as a battle that if you come to Shanghai, you have to be ready to try these very underhanded tactics. There are characters who do things that are very shady, but they’re presented as people just trying survive. Hi. Hello. Hi baby. [Ting: I think in the biggest cities. Yes. Because for example, former students who have graduated from the universities it’s based on the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and they have two choices. They will stay or they will get back to join the families, to live their parents and for the students, they have lived normally in this big city, for four years, They like, the city, it is more developed than his original city. And they choose to stay in the big city and the big city that’s the pressure is very, very high. Jane: The competition really is that brutal. Ting: In the big city I think yes. Jane: [ So I I’d like to move on to another theme that is in the within the show and that is the delivery person the whole culture surrounding, you know, what the Chinese call, “wai mai” (外卖）, you know, “song wai mai” (送外卖） and the character xiao qin the daughter-in-law, who becomes a delivery girl. You know, this is, it’s so much more developed in China and obviously you can have anything delivered almost, even though that’s coming to the West. So could you talk to us about the delivery culture in China and how big a part does it play in everybody’s lives? Ting: [Jane: Tao Bao, well, I remember when I left China, the day that I left China, I actually had a bag delivered to my apartment in less than two hours. I realized I didn’t, I needed another bag. And this was in 2012. So this gives you an idea of how developed this is. I ordered a bag on Tao Bao and said, I need it. Now I’m leaving for the airport. And the guy was like, “xing xing [And I thought he’ll never arrive in time, but yeah, 15 minutes later, he was at the gate of our apartment, which I was just floored. I realized I could never have had that kind of. In Paris. So I want to thank you all for joining me. Our conversation was cut a little bit short with Xiang and Qing because they had to go take care of their daughter. But I think we touched on a lot of interesting issues and I really hope this inspires you to go take a look at this series Life is a long quiet river. All 35 episodes are available on YouTube with English subtitles. So I hope you like what you’ve heard. If you have tune in with us next week, we’re going to shift gears pretty radically. We’re going to go and look at a historical drama this time. Now it’s one that’s just come out. Not going to give away any spoilers, but I’m also going to be interviewing a good friend of mine who was my former student and who lives in Beijing [
