Bunkers to Castles

AS one’s circumstances change, so often does taste. The home, and ideas on how we should shape this most intimate of surroundings, have passed through some very diverse and interesting phases in modern day China.

The Satisfaction of DIY

Like most urban youth, Zhong Li has bought an apartment by saving a little and borrowing some. At age 31 marriage plans are not far off for this white-collar employee of a foreign enterprise. Eight years of steady effort have earned him a comfortable and cozy home, and much of that effort was “hands-on.”

When real estate markets are booming, as they are now in China, interior decoration teams are in high demand, and so the quality of the work varies greatly. Zhong Li did not trust the migrant workers waiting to be hired at the roadside daily, and chose a professional decoration company. Several rounds of difficult negotiations ensued,the young couple driving a hard bargain as if dealing with a vegetable vender at the morning fair. Finally they cut a deal in the range they had planned beforehand.

Over the next few days, Zhong Li and his bride-to-be Cai Xianxian rearranged their life around their home decoration marathon. Hours of their spare time were spent in interior decoration supermarkets and building materials stores. Once they found the items they desired, they would ask for a business card, write down the price, and begin comparing the quotes of different suppliers.

Before deciding to do their own interior decor, they picked up some “tricks” of the trade known to interior decorators and accessed through the public media or through Zhong’s friends. Zhong Li and his fiancée agreed that one of them would always act as supervisor, keeping vigilance in the dusty rooms. Every tile and wood board was put into place under his or her watchful eye.

The interior decoration in fact lasted several months. “Finishing an interior is very tiring and energy-consuming,” summarized Cai Xianxian. “But my home is really adorable. Improving living conditions is not only a material need, but also a spiritual pursuit.”

The satisfied couple began to carry forward the “do-it-yourself” spirit: assembling furniture purchased from Ikea, grinding their own coffee beans, singing karaoke on their hi-fi set, and cooking home made dishes…

Investing so much of themselves in their home, and taking such pleasure in it, the young couple continue to do their best to meet all their own needs in life.

As Good as It Gets

At the couple’s wedding Zhong Li’s father Zhong Mengqin recalled bringing home his newborn baby three decades before. At that time, the Zhongs lived in an apartment assigned by the workplace. The decor was as simple as a cement floor and whitewashed walls. “Nowadays home decoration is quite different. A cement floor is seldom seen. The floor base is covered with either wood flooring or ceramic tiles.”

Since the homes were undecorated, people paid more attention to furniture. “It was difficult to buy furniture then. Sometimes you could only get a hold of furnishings through ‘back door' relations. Most people hired carpenters to make furniture.”

“My wedding and reception were held at home,” continued Zhong Mengqin. Nearly 40 years ago, on the wall of the bridal chamber hung a portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong. On an old desk passed on by their workplace were plastic statues of Chairman Mao, thermos bottles and wash basins. “These were all gifts from my colleagues and friends,” he explained. “The wardrobe was the most eye-catching thing we owned. It was made by an elder of my clan, and pyrographed with floral patterns and varnished. Our double bed was bought on sale. At the wedding, my bride and I wore new clothes no different from our ordinary wardrobe. But each of us wore a big red flower on our breast.” As the wedding ceremony began, the newlyweds bowed to a portrait of Chairman Mao.

Later, they bought an iron bookshelf for several yuan, and asked a relative to make a five-drawer chest inlaid with a glass mirror. “They were durable and practical, without any aesthetic value,” said Zhong Mengqin.

In the early 1980s Zhong Mengqin was assigned a previously occupied apartment from their workplace. “My wife and I whitewashed the walls, and painted the lower potion of the wall green. I asked someone to install a toilet and a shower nozzle. I also installed some electrical sockets and bought some new furniture. That was as fashionable as interior decoration got,” said Zhong Mengqin. At that time, people were content with having their own apartment, as only a small number of senior employees would be assigned one. Numerous young newlyweds often had to live with their parents in quarters of no more than a few dozen square meters.

Home Decoration Fever

Gradual improvement in people’s incomes and living conditions turned the attention of the relatively prosperous to feathering their nests. Only six years later, Zhong Mengqin was assigned a bigger apartment, and by then they could afford a fashionable home makeover. “My wife and I both felt excited about our new home and lit up with determination for this to be the ‘last interior decoration adventure of our lifetime’,” he recalled.

In the beginning, people’s understanding of interior decoration was limited to what they saw in foreign home decor magazines and their experience of well furnished public buildings. “Quite a number of neighbors and colleagues thought that home decoration meant painting or wallpapering the rooms. They may have preferred European or Japanese styles, but many blended in Chinese characteristics,” said Zhong Mengqin. He remembered clearly that most people emphasized the maximized utilization of every inch of their precious space. Therefore, in addition to moldings on ceilings, they often had built-in cabinets that crowned the top part of an entire wall.

Those who got rich earlier than others tended to decorate their homes in a Western style. No matter the size of their rooms, they used Roman columns and complicated ceilings. Ordinary families, on the other hand, usually used paint instead of limewater on the walls. They also tended to use untreated wood to frame doors and windows and to build windowsills. Aluminum alloy doors and windows combined with this “natural look” became a fad for interiors. In new, build-it-quick residential neighborhoods the fixtures, appointments and colors were depressingly uniform. Some people began to register weariness over the monotony on offer, and came to realize that what was good for others may not suit them at all.

This was the 1990s scenario for home decoration, when the concept entered the popular vocabulary, however naive the public’s understanding of it was. At the extreme end we saw extravagant home settings, and personalized interior designs that accommodate special needs. The pendulum of interior decoration swung faithfully with the extraordinary changes of the times.

New Trend: Simple and Savvy

Nowadays, home decoration is not merely a fad, or a personal statement; it is part of life C improving the quality of one’s surroundings, satisfying aesthetic needs, and making a more comfortable and cozy home.

After a decade-long “explosion” of fancy home decoration, more and more people are opting for simplicity, avoiding complicated, hard-to-care-for decor. People have realized the freshness of a design and its color scheme keeps two to three years at best. By adopting minimalism, they can redecorate their home when, and for as long as, they feel like it.

A designer with a prominent home decoration company cited some examples. In the past, many customers demanded the home entertainment systems be backgrounded with elaborate wall treatments. Now most customers want simple television background walls, some even say that a layer of wallpaper is enough. Most families still want a mark of individuality to avoid similarities with others. In building materials, all customers demand quality C “green” or pollution-free C and economy. “Design concepts must be diversified, and combine different elements according to customers’ requirements, to convey a sense of the new and unique.”

Many people agree that home decoration is more demanding than in the past, for both interior design companies and their customers. “One of the important reasons is that people are paying closer attention to personalization,” said an expert with the Environmental Protection Committee of the Beijing Municipal Construction Decoration Association. Everyone expects their style and taste to be different from what’s out there. This has increased the difficulty of satisfying customers. To ensure that critical difference, many people have to spend more time visiting building material markets, hunting down ideal materials and fixtures.

To balance this obsession with unique appearances, an “intelligent lifestyle” is being popularized, such as the so-called “smart house” features of central air-conditioning, remote-controlled doors and windows, touch-sensor kitchens, thermostated bathrooms, and massage bathtubs. Life’s needs are answered by every article and feature of the home. The demands for creature comforts are growing, as proper companions to aesthetically driven features and values.

People have always enjoyed the pleasure of beautifying the home, and cotton on to new ways of doing it, such as DIY, group purchases, and even placing orders for building materials on the Internet.

From the characterless bunkers of old, to an eclectic panorama of styles, and finally a return to near-austerity, changing tastes seem to work in a cycle. Chinese people have had quite a spin on the interior decoration train lately.