With the development of urbanization, more and more laborers left the local countryside and went into cities seeking jobs. So it is regular to see that many children live far away from their parents. Some people may feel helpless and expect for family meals. Yet, I believe it is not necessary for people to have regular family meals together but use diverse approaches to keep in touch.

First, it is too hard to balance each member’s schedule in a family to have a family meal time. Everyone has personal rules of daily life due to different occupational requirements. For example, students always get up early and study till night, saving time from lunches and suppers to relax more. And office clerks might work overtime for urgent tasks or go out to join social dinners. But the old have more free time and pay more attention to health so that they often eat dinners and go to bed early. If we asked everyone to have family meals, none wouldn’t feel reluctant. Thus the regular family meals become a burden and lose their meaning.

Additionally, there are varieties of tools using for keeping in touch with families. Advanced internet allows us communicating with anyone you want immediately. For instance, I have a video call with my parents every night through WeChat every day. We share our daily lives including food, work and study, emotion, interesting news and so on. When I first leave home to study in a university, nothing can be compared with the warmness that these video calls bring to me. As a consequence, I get closer to my parents even though we don’t take meals together.

In a word, I suppose that the conflict schedules make us be hard to take family meals together, but we can still use new technology to contact with families.