I still remember a text I learned in middle school, A Bowl of Plain Noddles, which is a touching and warm story about a mother and her two sons sharing a bowl of plain noddles with each other. What I have experienced is similar to this story. By committing the true story to paper now, I’d like to make a reflection on people’s sense of happiness under the background of China’s rapid economic development since the beginning of the reform and opening-up policy in the 1970s.

In the early years of the reform and opening-up, people led an extremely poor life in villages in southwestern Shandong Province, with eggs being very valuable. When it was a child’s birthday, the only thing he could get is a hard-boiled egg according to the custom. We ate only one egg a year, so the egg left me such a deep and beautiful impression.

At that time, there were eight people in our family: my grandparents, my parents, my three siblings and I. We lived on a small patch of land which was only more than 10 mu, amounting to about two acres. Any child in the family could get a boiled egg in his birthday, and the other three just looked eagerly at him while he was eating the egg, with their mouths watering. As the saying goes, the poor man’s child shares the household burden. Any of us who got the egg would split it into several pieces and share them with the others. My father was sad upon seeing this, so he asked my mother to boil four eggs at a time so that each child could get one. From then on, I could have four eggs a year. However, the conflict was not settled. My elder brother and I thought of our aged grandparents, so we insisted on giving our eggs to them, yet only to result in nonstop offering, declining and sharing again. My father had to ask my mother to boil six eggs at a time. But the conflict still wasn’t settled, for my brother and I felt that our parents were suffering hardships and insisted on giving our eggs to them. Therefore, my father had to ask my mother to boil eight eggs at a time. From then on, everyone in our family could have four eggs per year. I still keep this memory in my mind, and whenever I think of how we developed from one egg to eight eggs, I would have mixed feelings: happiness, warmth, sadness, and tears.

This is a true story, a portrayal and a miniature of numerous families in rural areas in China during the early years of the reform and opening-up. In 1980, GDP per capita in China was only 250 US dollars; 34 years later, in 2014, China turned into the second largest economy in the world, with a GDP per capita of 7589 US dollars. As the “economic miracle” was being created, the majority of Chinese people began to live in abundance, without the poverty and bitterness in this story any more. Therefore, if we make a vertical comparison, every Chinese is a beneficiary of the reform and opening-up policy and we should have a high sense of happiness in the dramatic development. However, when we observe it carefully, we can find that such sense of happiness doesn’t exist in every person. More people prefer to make a horizontal comparison, that is, a comparison between themselves and others. As the saying goes, comparisons are odious. The more you compare yourself with others, the more you may feel yourself being wronged or unfairly treated. Therefore, it is popular that many people lead an abundant life while they always complain bitterly about the life.

We should not be overcritical by demanding that China should have perfectly solved all the problems in only 30 years. Although by a horizontal comparison we can still find many problems existing in China, with some still being rather serious, we can see the achievements and progress through a vertical comparison. At the state level, we still need to keep a high economic growth rate and give top priority to economic development so as to ensure a final fulfillment of the objectives of the three-step development strategy put forward by Deng Xiaoping and make sure that China will become a moderately developed country by 2050. As long as we can keep an average annual economic growth rate of 6.5%, China will become a moderately developed country in 15 years, with its GDP per capita reaching 15,000 US dollars. At the same time, since China has laid a solid economic foundation and is ready for an economic transformation, we need to shift the development goals from simply pursuing a high GDP to the three-dimensional objective of economic growth, environmental friendliness, and social equity so as to make a sustainable development and promote Human Development Index (HDI). In this way, people’s sense of happiness will continue to rise.

The story of one egg to eight eggs is a life experience and also a kind of inspiration from life. It tells us that we should be optimistic about the dramatic changes and progress China has had and firmly believe that an even better China is coming towards us.

Note: The author is an Eastern Scholar, a professor with Department of Public Administration in School of Economics and Management (SEM) at Tongji University and the Tongji University Sustainable Development and New-type Urbanization Think Tank (TJ-SDUTT). This article first appeared in Xinmin Evening News on the following website: https://xmwb.xinmin.cn/html/2016-04/09/content_2_1.htm.