User study on family communication in China

Family is a core element of society. The development of economics and the transformation of cultures in mainland China bring new challenges to family communications. To understand current practices and the needs of family communication in mainland China, we studied 27 rural and urban families with ethnographic methods. We summarized the main family structures for rural and urban families and also found three main family communication problems: emotional communication, the education of children and elder support. These three problems exist in both rural and urban areas, but in different forms. Two concepts, an emotional poster in village and a learning community based on family/village clan, were designed and presented to address the problems.