I was born in the full swing of the Culture Revolution and grew up in
70’s communist China. In those days, under the communist party’s rule,
people were organised into “Units” – schools, factories, hospitals were
all such “Units”. My father was a middle school teacher, so he and his
family, my grandma, my mother, my sister and myself, lived in a
dormitory which was part of the school.
It was a three-story block, each floor had 20 rooms along either side of
a long corridor. Each room was literally a room with four walls, without
a toilet, bathroom or kitchen, not even a washbasin. Stair landings on
each floor were communal cooking areas. Bathrooms and toilets were
separate outbuildings.
Our family lived on the top floor. In winter, the temperatures hovered
around freezing. In order to wash ourselves with warm water, we needed
to heat up water in a big pan on a coal burning stove in the communal
cooking area, carry the hot water down four flights of stairs and then
to the ground floor outbuilding bathrooms.
The communal toilet was located in the backyard, which was even further.
I remember once I woke up in the middle of the night and desperately
needed to go to the toilet, so I ran along the corridor in pitch black
and nearly fell down from the top floor landing because the railing was
broken at the time. I was only stopped by my sixth sense.
The living environment was certainly not comfortable but it was a happy
place for me as a little boy as there were around twenty young kids in
our dormitory block. We always had someone of a similar age to play
with. Every day after school, younger kids like me were always hanging
out in front of the building. Some older kids would come to join us
after they had finished their homework and housework.
Male, aged around 50, Southern China
August 2020
"Secret Garden 1"