STORY BY KARA SPAK | Daily Herald Staff Writer
PHOTOS BY PATRICK KUNZER | Daily Herald Photographer

Ying Ming Wang, right, toasts his family in China and his two sisters in America during the family’s weekly Saturday lunch together at a dumpling restaurant in Tianjin.

TIANJIN - The Wangs burst onto the street like a gang of superheroes, springing their steps and strutting their stuff, smiling all the way to the dumpling house.

They parade in a dull rainbow of beige, black and blue coats, carrying bottles of wine and the liquor known as shaojiu.

Five siblings and their mother weave in a pack down a street of dirty pink- and red-brick high-rise buildings, through trees robbed by winter of their leaves, their gray trunks painted white.

The Wang siblings, seven in all including two in America, share a first name - Ying - meaning hero.

"We live up to the name," said Ying Yong Wang, 43, a surgeon and one of the identical twins comprising the youngest of the pack. "Every time we fight, we never lose because we are a big group."

The strength they find in their numbers, though, will end with them. Following a strict population control policy adopted in the late 1970s, the seven adult Wang siblings are all married, but none are parents to a boisterous clan. With the exception of one who chose not to have children, six Wang siblings each have only one child.

Despite the dramatic cultural shift imposed by the communist government's population control policy, family remains the bedrock for the Wangs and most Chinese, even outside of China.

The eldest Wang daughter, Ying Xia, settled in New York City. The second child, Ying Ying Wang, became one of the nearly 52,000 Chinese the U.S. Census Bureau says now live in Chicago and the suburbs. Ying Ying Wang and her husband, Gang Li, came searching for greater choices for their only daughter, 22-year-old Jiaxi Li, and now live in unincorporated McHenry County.

The Wangs put family first, even as its very structure changes around them.

They live the concept of xiao (pronounced schow), a deep respect and devotion toward elders, including parents and grandparents. Xiao is the respect that is deeper than love described first by Confucius more than 2,400 years ago. Xiao has stayed strong in the Wang and other Chinese families for centuries.

As children, they shared a single bedroom - all seven of them crammed onto a few mattresses. They didn't fight over the bathroom because their home - though quite luxurious by Chinese standards - didn't have one.

As adults, they now share weekly lunches out with their mother, talking about their father, who died in 2001. They talk, too, about the two siblings who no longer live near their childhood home by the Hai River. And their focus often is on the next generation - their only children who are expected to succeed.

The rule

Being one of seven children wasn't anything unusual when the Wang family was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.

Chinese leader Mao Zedong encouraged mothers to have five children, boys and girls who could become soldiers and help protect China against perceived American threats.

"The mother who had five kids would be called a hero," surgeon Ying Yong said, laughing. "My mother was not a hero because she had two more."

Ying Ming Wang, left, and his sister, Ying Ping Wang, far right, walk with their mother and an in-law to lunch in Tianjin, a weekly ritual that helps keep family members close.

Twenty seven years ago, with Mao dead and the population exploding, the government changed the meaning of state hero, setting sweeping reproduction restrictions.

Couples were limited to one child each or forced to pay a steep fine, a penalty which today costs as much as $1,000 - nearly the entire $1,290 average income last year in China.

As a result, the majority of Chinese under 27 are only children, an incredible shift in the social structure of China, where big families were common for centuries.

Some believe Chinese are having fewer children not as a result of government restrictions but because of better economic opportunities. Incomes are rising, as are chances for career advancement.

"We felt the big change of China, and the family felt the change," said Lianhui Li, whose son is married to one of the Wang sisters. "Of course, the family continues to change. It will be better."

Along with xiao, what also has not changed in Chinese culture is the long-held notion that parents work so every son can be a dragon, someone successful and powerful.

Every daughter, the saying goes, should be a phoenix, a symbol traditionally associated with the empress in Imperial China, where the emperor was said to hold the dragon throne.

Today, with fewer children in each family, parents are working harder than ever to ensure their child has every opportunity to succeed, to blossom into that dragon or phoenix.

"You only have one child," said Ying Ping Wang, one of the Wang siblings. "You have bigger, harder, stronger expectations on the kid. There is more pressure."

Xiao

At Tan Jian Yuan, Tianjin's red-lantern decorated dumpling house restaurant, five Wang siblings, their mother and in-law Lianhui Li sit on seats covered in gold brocade around a round table holding a lazy Susan nearly as big as the table top.

The food spins around and around during lunch, offering different tastes with every turn.

The drinks come out, too - sweet Chinese red wine and shaojiu, a potent Chinese spirit that warms going down.

"He jiu!" cries out Ying Ming, the 43-year-old twin of surgeon Ying Yong, the two babies of the family. "Drink your house!"

Ying Ming is the family's best drinker, they joke, though Ying Qi, the family's fifth, nearly can match him drink for drink.

"Drinking is part of life," said Ying Qi. "Even when the Chinese couldn't feed themselves, they still had alcohol, tea. They would gather."

The 76-year-old Wang matriarch, Huiming Ruan, is the kind of mother who does kung fu, not tai chi, Ying Ming jokes. Like an elder in a traditional Chinese family, Huiming lives with her daughter Ying Ping.

Traditional Chinese families used to fit as many as five generations in a single household.

Those days are ending, her son Ying Qi said. There is more exposure to life outside China, and the Chinese culture is reacting to it.

"There is a big generation gap," he said. "Now they've got so much bigger media. When we grew up, we had only radio. There was no Internet, no TV channels. We were brainwashed.

"When we were little, it was hard to go out, hard to have a lunch or dinner like this," he said.

Discipline was a priority, and money was very tight.

"Our parents said stop, stop, stop," he said. "Now kids have better choices."

Children might have better choices, but still not as many as they do in America. Parents in China feel more pressure than ever to help them succeed.

"Even if they have only one child, parents feel like they spend more energy on that kid than our parents on seven kids," Ying Qi said.

"When we were little, our mom was only concerned about feeding the kids, getting them to school," Ying Ping added. "Now parents have a better view of the future, bigger expectations."

Still, xiao, or filial piety, remains.

"Back in old China, the rulers promoted xiao," Ying Ming said. "It means respect to your parents, respect to your family, respect to your boss. That comes from Confucius. That's why the Chinese people really are about their family. That's part of the old culture."

The sacrifices

Ying Yong Wang's 16-year-old daughter Ruizhe Wang wakes at 6 a.m. daily and is in the car heading to school a half-hour later.

She returns at 6 p.m. after a day packed with studying. There are no extracurricular activities or sports. After dinner and a half-hour break, she studies until 10:30 p.m.

"Chinese kids have no fun," her father said.

Ruizhe is preparing for gaokao, the college entrance exam, the annual chance for Chinese children to improve their fates.

The entrance exam will open doors - or close them, depending on your score - to the best colleges and the most popular majors there.

It's a one-chance shot to improve your fate in life, a chance for a poor student in rural China to have access to some of the country's best universities. But it's also a chance for smart kids who are bad test-takers to land in an undesirable school or to not go to college at all.

It's a pressure-filled, two-day test that almost 8 million students participate in annually after spending their entire childhood preparing for it.

U.S. children, Ying Ming said, have more choices. They have down time. They can take a few years off before going to college if they choose, and they have more options about where to go and what to study.

"(Chinese) parents." Ying Ping said, "are fighting against the system to carve out space where kids are kids."

Continue:
• Family first
• Pressure fierce on China's children
• In China, more than one child isn't a choice
• China: Soup to nuts