Global Market Surferby INTAGE Inc

[China: World Residence Tour] The entrance and refrigerator are the key to understand how do Chinese households use living room

• Release date: Nov 16, 2020
• Update date: Sep 05, 2025
• 14681 Views

• Usage and altitude
• Consumer Electronics
• Furniture and home furnishings
• China
• Culture/Habit

In the last issues, we introduced how Chinese people actually use their kitchen, bathrooms, and toilets. This time we would like to introduce the differences in the use of living and dining room while comparing that in Japan. Since a living room or dining room is a place where the family gathers and guests are invited, by making an in-depth comparison of those rooms, we will be able to have a better understanding for the life style of Chinese people.

Entrance doesn't stand out itself

Before introducing the living room and dining room, let's start with the entrance. You may be wondering why explanation of the entrance comes first prior to that of the living room, but the fact is that the differences in room layouts between Japan and China are already clearly visible from the entrance. The figure below is a layout diagram of a typical apartment-type home in Japan and Shanghai. In Japan, it is common to reach the living or dining room from the entrance via a passageway. But in China, the entrance is directly connected to the living room (as shown on the right) especially in properties built a while ago. Having a passageway or door between the entrance and living/dining room can play a big role in protecting privacy of dwellers, but it seems that for Chinese people privacy used to be not that a big issue back then.

Typical layout of an apartment building in Japan (left) and China (right)
（Source：Consumer database (Consumer Life Panorama)） 

Also, other differences can be found when comparing the both pictures. In Japan, there is a little step at the entrance and a shoe box or shoe closet is installed on the wall of the dirt floor. Since Japanese people have a long tradition of taking off their shoes when entering a room, this space clearly draws the boundary between the outside and inside of the house and it helps prevent dust coming from outside. On the other hand, in China, taking off their shoes when entering a room had not been customary for a long time. Family members and guests generally didn’t take off their shoes at the entrance and there was no need to have a space like the dirt floor in Japan. However, recently the situation has changed. Many people have been choosing more urbanized life styles, and more people are now living in apartment-type home without their shoes on.
As a result, shoe storage has become an issue. Households that have enough indoor space often put a shoe box or shoe racks near the entrance, but in the old apartments, some people end up putting mats on the hallway where usually a common element of the building and put shoe racks next to the mats.

The entrance of a Japanese home (left) and the entrance of a Chinese home (right)
（Source：Consumer database (Consumer Life Panorama)）

Chinese people’s lifestyles as seen through the location of refrigerators

The previous article regarding Chinese kitchen showed that how Chinese people insist on the importance of closed kitchens even if they sacrifice the kitchen space. After all, the refrigerators often get kicked out of the kitchen. However, some people put the refrigerator in the living room or dining room even if there is enough space in the kitchen. Why? That is because Chinese people use their refrigerator differently depending on their lifestyle. Generally, the following factors are taken into consideration when deciding a location of the refrigerator: "(1) Is there enough space and where is it?", "(2) Who will use it?", and "(3) What will it be used for?
They can be categorized as follows.

1. Households that prepare their own meals frequently. The housemaker of the households mainly uses the refrigerator:

In such households, the refrigerator is often placed in the kitchen. In the refrigerator, ingredients and seasonings are the main and dominant items. However, if there is not enough space in the kitchen, they have no choice but to place the refrigerator in the living room. This usually results in a poor flow line for cooking.

2. Households that do not cook their own meals frequently. The refrigerator is used by all family members:

In such households, the refrigerator is placed near the living room, where the flow of traffic is most concentrated, in order to accommodate the use of each family member. The refrigerator is often placed near the sofa where the family gathers the most, or near the dining table.

A refrigerator placed in the living/dining room
（Source：Consumer database (Consumer Life Panorama)） 

The use of the refrigerator varies from household to household. For example, it could be used for keeping women's skin care products cold, or it could store a lot of beer and drinks if there are more men in the household.

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  Author profile

  Mr. Yang Yan

  A Chinese researcher living in Japan, sharing the life styles of consumers overseas, mainly in China. At his parent’s house, a fridge is placed in their kitchen. Most of the time his mother takes control over what to put in the fridge.

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  Editor profile

  Mr. Yusuke Tatsuda

  He is in charge of creating the Global Market Surfer website, and recently he has been working from home, setting up a monitor in his dining room.