Xinhua Headlines: Past and present: 40 years of change in the lives of the Chinese people

The upper part of this combo photo taken in 1981 shows a photo of Liu Yu with her parents in Guiping of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The lower part of the combo photo taken by Fang Zhe on Dec. 3, 2018 shows 37-year-old Liu Yu and her husband arranging festival decorations at their restaurant in Shanghai, east China. Liu went to France to study dance in 2003. She returned to China with her French husband and their children in 2012 and began running their restaurant in Shanghai. (Xinhua)