The upcoming Spring Festival traditionally means a happy get-together with family members for Chinese people. But for a newly-married couple like Sun Qijie and Wu Yonghua it means 4,000 km of travel and shuttling between three cities in the space of seven days.

Sun and Wu have been together for five years. Classmates at Peking University and employed by the same company based in south China's Hainan Province after graduation, they spent their previous Spring Festivals separately because both are the only child in their families.

But after tying the knot in November 2006, things are different this year.

The Spring Festival means a big family reunion on New Year's Eve.

The question is: With which family should the young couple spend New Year's Eve.

"We discussed the question before getting married and came to an agreement with each other and with our parents," said 26-year-old Sun.

They will spend New Year's Eve at the wife's hometown in southeastern China's Fujian Province and on Feb. 19, the second day of the Lunar New Year holiday, they will go to Zhejiang Province to spend the rest of the holiday with Sun's parents. Next year, they will repeat the operation in the other direction, making Zhejiang their first port of call.

"Fortunately, our parents are considerate and supportive," he said.

However, not all parents are so understanding.

On Tsinghua University's online forum, a 28-year-old civil servant who identified herself as Ada Zhang asked desperately: "My husband's grandma and my own grandma are both ill and they both want us to go home during Spring Festival. What should I do?"

Zhang said she had already quarreled with her husband several times because he insisted Zhang accompany him.

Nearly 100 netizens took part in the discussion. Most of them said Zhang should go back to her hometown in northwestern Shaanxi Province, but she finally chose to disappoint her parents, as her husband's grandma is more seriously ill.

More importantly, "his parents kept asking him to bring me back with him and I don't want to hurt my husband's feelings and our marriage for this," she said.

Other couples have run into difficulties over the same question.

Many wives have to spend the holiday apart from their husbands because the two families on both sides want them back and neither is willing to compromise.

Tradition stipulates that a wife should spend Spring Festival at her husband's home. Prior to the 1990s, most Chinese families could spend New Year's Eve with at least one of their children.

However, the "only-child generation" who now have their own families have complicated things. The parents often feel lonely and unhappy during the family reunion if their only child can not be with them.

China introduced the family planning policy in the 1970s to curb rapid population growth. It has helped reduce the country's population by more than 400 million, according to official statistics.

Chinese families have been shrinking in size ever since. In 1982, a family had 4.4 people on average, but the number fell to 4 in 1990 and is now down to 3.6.

It is estimated that seven out of ten couples in Beijing and Shanghai will be "only children" couples by the year 2035.

Xia Xueluan, a professor with the Department of Sociology at Peking University, said the problems faced by some from only-child families about which side to spend the festival with may reflect a self-centered upbringing and an inability to deal with family relations.

Xia said such couples have to learn to be tolerant with each other and get along well with their spouse's family members when they visit their homes, showing "practical filial piety".

"What to do and how to behave in their parents-in-laws' homes are more important than where to go," Xia said.

Xia said the economic and emotional burdens on adults such as Sun Qijie and Wu Yonghua, who treat each other and their families equally, are heavier than before because they have more family members to support.

"But they don't really need to tire themselves out so much. They can show their filial piety in daily life, with a letter or a phone call," he said.

Wu Yonghua said that they intend to invite their parents to spend the Spring Festivals with them in Hainan after they move into their new apartment in 2009.

However, she is already worried that this is not an ideal solution because their parents are not accustomed to life far from their hometowns and their relatives and friends.

She said she would definitely enjoy Spring Festival more if she had a brother or sister.

"We've decided to have two children of our own," she said. Chinese law has already granted the country's only-child couples the right to do so.

(Xinhua News Agency February 16, 2007)