In a seeming blink of an eye, our three-week China vacation is rapidly nearing its conclusion. Tomorrow will be our last day in my hometown, Guangzhou, after which we will spend two days in Hong Kong before heading home in America. For the first 13 days of our trip, we saw the must-see sights in China as we traveled from one tourist hot spot to the next with our tour group, but in many ways, it wasn’t until after we landed in Guangzhou on December 31 that we really saw how the people of China live.

We’ve spent a lot of time the last five days visiting my extensive network of relatives. During these visits, we saw neither the glamorous neons nor the awe-inspiring historic landmarks, but were treated to an eye-opening experience all the same. We saw how the average Chinese family lives. In general, they live in small quarters. All of the homes we visited are not much bigger than the living and dining rooms of the average American house. Every square inch is maximized in functionality. Tiny bathrooms doubled as shower stalls, balconies are turned into kitchens, and kitchens converted into extra bedrooms. A coffee table can be pulled from one corner of a small living room to another to serve as the dining table. Bathrooms are not one square millimeter bigger than they need to be in order to serve their purpose. There are no garages, basements, attics, or crawlspaces to store useless junk. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much, if any, useless junk lying around these homes.

We have an amazing view of the Pearl River from our hotel room. As I sit in front of the window gazing at the silhouettes of countless residential highrises in the background of the river’s brightly lit bank, I can’t help but think about the way the families that occupy each of the tiny, innumerable flickers of light in those buildings live. Then I think about the way we live in America, and I can’t help but feel a bit ashamed about my plans to move out of my “small” single-family home of 1,100 square feet in a couple years and into a bigger house more suitable for raising a family. In China — which contains a quarter of the world’s population — that’s enough space for at least two families. In America, that feels like barely enough space for a family of two. It also makes me want to clean out some of the useless junk sitting around in my garage when I get home.