A couple pose for a picture in Zhejiang Province during Spring Festival 2015. Photo: CFP

A grandfather watches his grandson carry two baskets. Photo: CFP

Leaving her hometown this past Spring Festival, 33-year-old Guo Xin felt for the first time the deep changes that are taking place in this small city in northern Shanxi Province. Studying and working in different big cities over the past 10 years, Guo would visit the town several times a year, yet she never noticed any major changes except for the demolition of some old buildings and the appearance of some new ones.

But returning to the town over the recent Spring Festival, everything she heard or saw made her realize that the hometown that was her home until high school graduation and was still in her heart after she left was turning into a different place altogether.

"I'm not talking about physical changes, but the way people think. This changing mind-set is making me nostalgic for how things were when I was little," said Guo.

Nostalgic debate

After the recent Spring Festival, Wang Leiguang, a doctoral candidate at Shanghai University, published an article online called Diary on Returning Home, in which he described the disconnect he felt after returning home over the holidays to discover an urbanized village that was increasingly unlike the place he grew up. The article immediately won the sympathy of young people across the nation who found themselves feeling a similar lost relationship with the small towns of their youth as rural China rushes towards urbanization. 

Unlike others who took part in this hot online debate, Guo discovered that it wasn't the physical changes her hometown had undergone that made her feel disconnected so much as the way people thought and treated each other.

"Changes to how towns and villages look, or more materialistic changes to how people live shouldn't be the reason we lose our connections with our hometown," said Guo. "Everyone has the right to purse higher standards of life.

"For me, though, it's people's changing mindsets and their relationships with each other that are changing the way we see our familiar hometowns," Guo told the Global Times.

Changing landscape

Currently China has set its sights on reaching a more than 50 percent nationwide urbanization rate by the end of 2015, while some areas such as those around Beijing, Tianjin and throughout Hebei Province, this target is 70 percent by 2020. With this impetus, the entire nation has mobilized fleets of bulldozers and other construction equipment to change the face of the country, especially in small cities and towns adjacent to rural areas.

However, just like Guo describes, no matter how many new buildings sprout up or other changes to the landscape occur, these are really just surface changes. What has actually led to people's lost connection with their hometowns is the changing face of human relationships and social changes that are happening in rural areas - changes that have come about due to influences by the country's overall macro-policies.

Over the past two years, the implementation of a series of iron-handed measures to phase out pollution causing production combined with continual anti-corruption campaigns, areas like Shanxi, a resource heavy area and hot bed of corruption for years, have been reshaped on many levels.

Eight months after being laid off from his coal mining job, Guo's 30-year-old cousin Qiao Kai's tendency to stay at home all the time finally exploded into a conflict with his father, as the elder Qiao has criticized the younger for not actively looking for new employment and losing his girlfriend at such an age. Unwillingly placed in this situation eight months ago, Qiao is also filled with frustration.

An exemplary role model for his sisters and brothers since he was little, Qiao was hired by a local major coal mining operation immediately after graduation - a job that came with an enviable and ample salary. But after the issuance of government policy aimed at pollution producing industries, his company's coal production operations came to an end.

"I pretty much turned down every invitation I received for parties and get-togethers during this Spring Festival," said Qiao. "I know I'm not the only one either. There are actually many other people like me who are unemployed due to the overall environment. Luckily, I'm not too old so still have lots of opportunities ahead."

Employment in the area is very family orientated, one of the main reasons why so much of the corruption the government has uncovered has involved entire families. Guo's brother-in-law, a 40-year-old, was also left unemployed last year after his electric power plant was shut down for using highly polluting coal as fuel. "The factory could have applied for time to upgrade its production, but its leaders were brought up on corruption charges, leaving many workers at his age unemployed," explained Guo.

While Spring Festival in China is pretty much another name for "reunion," for Guo some of these family get-togethers this year were quite different from previous years. "Besides several of my relatives, some of my friends who choose to enter their parents' companies such as the local branch of the State Grid after graduation are not really in the mood to party," said Guo. "From the start, they entered those companies for their enviable benefits and high bonuses (acquired through their monopolistic positions in the industry), but now that privilege has been scaled down or totally removed (thanks to the anti-corruption campaigns)."

Back to simpler times

Though not attending as many gatherings as previous years this past Spring Festival, Guo feels that people's relationships with each other has become simpler and that gathering for a meal is not the tiring task it once was.

"For a long time people would boast about their big salaries at monopolistic companies and compare each other's financial situations at our gatherings, but this time when I sat down with my friends and family, we talked more about each other's lives. That shows care and underscores what 'reunion' truly means," said Guo.

For years the bureaucratic atmosphere and nepotism in her small town made Guo believe that her decision to settle in a big city was the right choice.

But now, she sees those once simple relations returning. "For those of us that settled in big cities, what we miss about our hometown is really this type of simple and unsophisticated relationship with each other. Big cities are too complicated," said Guo.