Society and Life

Keeping the dream alive in my 'little white house'

By Sun Shangwu (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 10:09

For many young college graduates before the 1990s, tongzilou was an important word in their vocabulary. It referred to the low-rise apartment buildings with long central corridors, communal toilets and cooking facilities at one end.

Various working units - government departments or State-owned companies - assigned a small room to their newly employed staff in such buildings for accommodation. They lived in tongzilou for years due to the serious housing shortage then.

In China Daily's compound, there was a two-story building painted in white. It was nicknamed the "little white house". Many young reporters and editors, including myself, started journalistic careers from this "white house".

I lived at the east end of the building with a 50-meter-long and 1-meter-wide central corridor. A common kitchen and toilets were located at the other end. There was a public phone in the corridor, just beside my door, and it was the only telecommunication facility for nearly 20 households in this building.

The public kitchen quickly became the area for residents to show off their cooking skills. The smell of cooking permeating through the corridor could tell you who was cooking, because people from different places usually had their own favorite dishes.

Maintaining privacy was very difficult. Visiting friends of the opposite sex would become the stuff of rumors among residents, most of whom were new graduates.

A year after joining China Daily's newsroom (about the same time spent living in the "white house"), I was assigned in 1994 to cover the national conference on housing reform, which focused on encouraging people to buy houses in the market.

Housing reform had started across the country for some time, but the process was slow because of the complex issues involved.

But in 1994, the authorities seemed to have finally determined to implement the reform. From the documents of the conference, I found that the government had introduced a formula to decide the price that each house purchaser should pay.

It took into consideration the purchasers' age and work experience. The older you were (or longer you worked), the less you paid.

To facilitate the reform, the central government set up a nationwide public housing fund in 1996 for each employee to encourage them to buy houses in the market. In 1998, the country stopped the allocation of welfare housing nationwide.

The change shocked the people: People realized they had to pay for their houses. Although market prices at that time were as little as less than 1,000 yuan for one square meter in Beijing, people's monthly salaries were also as low as several hundred yuan.

The new housing policy in 1998, when the government announced the end of the free welfare housing policy, still gave some preferential treatments for senior staff. The policy was interpreted as a "new practice for new staff, and old practice for senior staff".

The old practice meant that senior staff who started to work before 1998 would enjoy preferential prices in the market, while the new practice meant that new staff should pay market prices for homes.

The reform allowed me to buy a small apartment at a reasonable price, finally saying farewell to the "little white house".

Sun Shangwu is assistant editor-in-chief and China news editor of China Daily.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page8)