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Flow into eternity: patriarchy, marriage and socialism in a north China village

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Flow into eternity: patriarchy, marriage and socialism in a north China village

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Content FLOW INTO ETERNITY:
PATRIARCHY, MARRIAGE AND SOCIALISM
IN A NORTH CHINA VILLAGE

by

Zhifang Song

_____________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ANTHROPOLOGY)

December 2008

Copyright 2008 Zhifang Song

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

While working on my dissertation, many people gave me precious help, without which
the completion of this dissertation would have been impossible. I would like to recognize
and gave my thanks to them.

My thanks should first go to people in Song Family Village in China. During my
fieldwork, many villagers gave me many kinds of help. Several villagers were especially
good informants for me. It is a pity that I could not reveal their names for privacy
considerations. But I still want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped me
during my fieldwork.

Back in the United States, my greatest gratitude should go to the three professors on my
dissertation committee: Professor Gary Seaman, Professor Eugene Cooper and Professor
John Wills. As my academic advisor and dissertation committee chair, Professor Seaman
gave me much more help than an academic advisor would normally do. Through the
years of my study at University of Southern California (USC), he has always been the one
I can rely on for support and encouragement. He helped me secure the necessary funding
for my field research. The film project I worked with him helped me a lot to formulate
many of the ideas in my dissertation. He read several drafts of my dissertation. His
detailed comments, suggestions and numerous grammatical corrections enabled me to

iii

greatly improve my dissertation. Through the years, what he gave me went much beyond
academic help. When I first arrived at the United States, it was he who picked me up at
the airport and accommodated me at his house for the first few days. He and his wife Ann
gave me the precious help that I needed desperately as a new comer to a foreign land. I
also cannot forget the great time we had when my family was invited to join his family
for Christmas. These were but a few examples of the help that he and his family gave to
my family and me. I would like to extend thanks to him and his family on behalf of my
whole family.

While at USC, I took many courses with Professor Cooper. His courses “Theories of
Anthropology” and “Ethnography on China” gave me a solid foundation to start my
research. I am also thankful to him for allowing me to take directed researches with him
in “Economic Anthropology” and “Theory of Kinship”, for which the Department of
Anthropology did not offer graduate courses. These two directed researches were very
important in my preparation for my fieldwork and dissertation. His encouragements
always gave me confidence in my research. I would also highly appreciate his helpful
suggestion for my dissertation. Finally, I would also like to thank him and his wife for the
well-prepared food and tea that my wife and I enjoyed at his home.

I came to know Professor Wills when I took a course in Chinese history with him. I was
fascinated with his teaching and research. When I was to form my qualifying examination
committee, I asked him if he could sit on my committee. I was so glad that he agreed. I

iv

am especially grateful to him for his agreement to stay on my committee after his
retirement. Whenever I hesitantly disturbed his retired life with my requests for help, I
always found my requests received with welcome. His comments and critics helped a lot
to improve my dissertation. Besides the academic help he gave me, I am also very
grateful to him for recruiting me as his teaching assistant in fall 2001. At that time, my
son had just been born and the salary I got as a teaching assistant at the Department of
Anthropology was not enough for my family to make the ends meet. I needed badly some
extra income. This second teaching assistantship provided a great financial help to us.

Through the years at USC, many other professors in anthropology and other departments
also gave me precious help. When I took courses with Professors Craig Stanford, Janet
Hoskins, Dorinne Connor and Andrei Simic in the first two years at USC, their kindness
helped me a lot to overcome the cultural shock and adapt to the new learning
environment. Professors Andrei Simic and Erin Moore sat on my qualifying examination
committee. Their instructions and suggestion were also essential to my degree progress. I
also highly appreciate the help I received from Professor Lanita Jacobs-Huey both while I
worked as a teaching assistant for her and after that. Thanks to Professor Chris Boem
who allowed us to use his office as the editing lab for our ethnographic films. Professors
Craig Stanford and Nancy Lutkehaus, as the department chairs, and Professor Janet
Hoskins, as the graduate advisor, gave me help in securing fellowships for my last stage
of dissertation writing.

v

While studying at USC, the support from the staff at the Department of Anthropology
was indispensable. I would like to express my gratitude to all the staff members for their
help. Rita Jones, in particular, should be recognized for her generous help to me. As an
international student, I had to go through numerous administrative procedures and do a
great amount of paperwork from time to time. All of them were completed with her help.
I am also grateful to Dennis Miranda for his help with equipment for both teaching and
research.

My thanks should also go to many of my graduate colleagues at Department of
Anthropology of USC. Their friendship and help made my life at USC a happy
experience. When I just arrived at USC, the graduate students at the department threw a
welcome party for us new students. I could still remember their kindness to me. Gaelyn
Aguilar came to pick me up. Throughout the party, she introduced me to all other
students. Such help made my first days at USC much easier. Both as Chinese, Shih-Ching
Chiu and I became good friends not long after I came to USC. A great amount of
information about the department, the university and life at Los Angeles was obtained
from her. Steve Rousso-Schindler is the one I am particularly grateful to. During the past
five years when we worked together on our film projects, we were not only colleagues
but also great friends. His friendship, suggestion and information were a great help to me
in completing my dissertation.

vi

Always standing behind me during the years while I studied at USC were my wife, my
parents-in-law and my parents. Without their help, support and encouragement, it would
have been impossible for me to go through the long journey towards the completion of
my dissertation. My wife abandoned her job at China and accompanied me through the
first years of poverty in the United States. In the last several years, she became the major
breadwinner of my family. Besides her support for my study, a precious gift she gave me
was our lovely son. This gift made my life much more meaningful.

I owe a lot to my parents-in-law in these years. They provided financial, moral and
physical support for us during the hardest time of my study in the United States. After my
son was born, they helped us to take care of the baby. That enabled me to continue my
study and my wife to study for her master’s degree. Without their selfless help, it would
have been impossible for me to finish my dissertation.

My parents have always been behind me with their support, understanding and
encouragement, without which it would have been impossible for me to climb all the
ladders of my academic career and rise from a village boy to a Ph.D. from a prestigious
university in the United States. They always encouraged me to do my best in my
academic endeavor.

I would also like to thank College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Department of
Anthropology and Center for Visual Anthropology of USC for the financial support

vii

throughout the years while I pursued my Ph.D. The teaching assistantship, fellowship and
other funding opportunities they provided enabled me to devote the past years to my
study and research.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

LIST OF FIGURES xi

ABSTRACT xii

INTRODUCTION
REVOLUTION, REFORM AND MARRIAGE 1
1. Why Study Marriage? 1
2. My Fieldwork 3
3. Patriarchy and the Traditional Chinese Family 11
4. Revolution and Family Reform 22
5. The Communist Victory and China under Mao 33
Land Reform 33
The Collectivization Movement 36
The Great Leap Forward and the Famine 38
The Cultural Revolution 41
6. Marriage Practice under Mao 44
The 1950 Marriage Law and its Implementation 44
The Socialist State, the Collectivization and the Power Relation in Family 47
Freedom of Marriage under Socialism 49
Marriage Transactions 50
Political Status and Marriage 53
Family Reform Uncompleted? 54
7. Marriage Practices in the Post-Mao Reform 56
Revolution Ended: Post-Mao Reform 56
Power Relation in Family 57
Freedom of Marriage 60
Marriage Transactions 62
8. My Analytical Framework 63

CHAPTER TWO
SONG FAMILY VILLAGE 76
1. Physical Settings 76
2. The Lineage and its History 84
3. Political Economy before the Communist rule 96
4. The Japanese Invasion and the Expansion of the Communist Influence 100
5. The Power Structure under the Communist rule 107

ix

6. The Ecology and Economy 111
Climate, Water Resources and Irrigation 111
Land Tenure 120
Crops and Cropping 123
Technology in Village Life 130
Roads and Transportation 133
Agricultural and Non-Agricultural Incomes 135
Villagers and the Market 139

CHAPTER THREE
TRADITIONAL FAMILY AND MARRIAGE
IN SONG FAMILY VILLAGE 147
1. The Early History of a Traditional Family 147
2. Sons and Daughters: Different Life Careers 151
3. Who Can Inherit: Unequal Rights of Sons and Daughters 156
4. Everyone was Expected to Marry 160
5. Marriage by the Order of Parents and Words of Go-betweens 167
6. The Matching Windows and Doors 173
7. Gain at a Boy’s Marriage and Loss at a Daughter’s Marriage 178
8. His Marriage and Her Marriage 185
9. Living in a Patriarchal Family 193
10. Conclusion 205

CHAPTER FOUR
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN A NEW SOCIETY 209
1. The Land Reform in the Village 209
2. Marriage transactions After the Land Reform 215
3. The 1950 Marriage Law and its Implementation 218
4. The Impact of the Marriage Law on the Village 221
5. Collectivization, Widow Remarriage and Romance 226
6. Conclusion 234

CHAPTER FIVE
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD AND THE
“SWEET POTATO MARRIAGE” 237
1. Introduction: “Dried Sweet Potato Brides” 237
2. The Great Leap Forward: the Cause of the Famine 239
3. The Great Leap Forward in Song Family Village 247
Exaggeration of Output 247
“Iron and Steel Drive” 249
The People’s Commune 252
Liberating Women from Housework 255
Work for the Commune 257

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4. The famine and the Sweet potatoes 260
5. Dried Sweet Potatoes in Exchange for Brides 264
6. Conclusion 272

CHAPTER SIX
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE EXCHANGE MARRIAGE 275
1. The Cultural Revolution and Bad Class Families 275
Persecutions of Bad Class Families 275
No Social Mobility for Bad Class Children 282
Bad Class Sons Unable to Marry 287
2. The Exchange Marriage 291
Huanqin: Direct Exchange Marriage 291
Zhuangqin: Exchange Marriage among Multiple Families 294
Exchange Marriage between Different Generations 301
Good Class Families Also Adopted Exchange Marriages 305
3. Conclusion 308

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE POST-MAO REFORM, PSEUDODOWRY MARRIAGE
AND VICTIMIZED PARENTS 312
1. The New Prosperity 312
2. Marriage transactions in the Reform Era 313
Inflation in Marriage transactions 313
Brideprice and Pseudodowry 318
Housing Becomes an Important Part of Marriage Agreement 319
Heavy Burden on Parents 321
3. Working Hard for Sons’ Marriages 324
4. Marriage, Family Division and Lost Parental Authority 339
5. Conclusion 352

CONCLUSION
STATE, TRADITION AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION 354
1. The Socialist State, Marriage Practice and Patriarchy 354
2. Patriarchy and Habitus: Continuity and Changes 361
3. The Tradition and Social Transformation 367

GLOSSARY 370

REFERENCES 374

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 China and Hebei Province 74

Figure 2 Song Family Village in Hebei Provine 75

Figure 3 Song Family Village and Vicinity 77

Figure 4 The Flat Plan of Song Family Village 79

Figure 5 The Flat Plan of an Old House in Song Family Village 81

Figure 6 The Flat Plan of a New House in Song Family Village 83

Figure 7 The Relationship of the Ancestral Temples in Song Family Village 87

Figure 8 The Structure of a Minimal Segment in Song Family Village 92

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation studies changes in marriage practice in a North China village through
decades of the Communist rule. Using Bourdieu’s model of “practice” theory,
particularly the notion of “habitus”, I see these changes as a result of the interactions
between the socialist state and the Chinese patriarchal familial ideal, the core of which is
the necessity of perpetuating the patrilineal family line. This patriarchal ideal, embodied
as the habitus of villagers and persisting through the decades of the Communist rule,
generated, through the agency of the villagers, different marriage practices under
different social conditions.

The social reform projects in the first few years after the Communist Party came to power,
such as the Land Reform, the promulgation and implementation of the 1950 Marriage
Law, and the Collectivization Movement, all brought about some changes in marriage
and family in the village, even though some of the changes were not intended by the
Communist Party. Three types of marriage practice in the subsequent years are the focus
of this dissertation: the sweet potato marriage in the early 1960s, when the famine caused
by the Great Leap Forward forced many families to sell their daughters for food; the
exchange marriage during the Cultural Revolution, when people swapped their daughters
as brides for their sons; the pseudodowry marriage during the Post-Mao reform era, when
families in the village have to provide enormous amount of bridal gifts for their sons’

xiii

marriages. These marriage practices show that even though the Communist Party had the
liberation of women as one of its political agenda, the deep penetration of the Communist
state into the village community during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural
Revolution subjected women to more patriarchal oppression. In contrast, the retreat of the
Communist state from village life during the post-Mao reform has weakened parents’
patriarchal power and empowered young women and men, due to the parents’ adherence
to the patriarchal ideal of perpectuating their family lines. Patriarchs are victimized by
their own patriarchal ideal.

1

INTRODUCTION
REVOLUTION, REFORM AND MARRIAGE

1. Why Study Marriage?
When I was in my late twenties, my parents got more and more worried about my
marriage. I remember once when my mother visited me at the university where I was
teaching, she asked almost all my friends she saw to help me find a wife. For years, my
marriage had become my parents’ major concern. Yet, since I was living away from them,
there was nothing they could do but urge me to find a wife whenever I visited them.

My marriage was not only the concern of my parents. Even my distant relatives living in
my native village showed their concern whenever they had the chance. From year to year
when I occasionally paid a visit to my native village, one embarrassment I was sure to
encounter was that they would ask me whether I had got married or not. Whenever I said
no, they would give me long exhortations on why I needed to get married as soon as
possible. I remember once when a distant aunt of mine heard the regular “no” from my
mouth, her immediate response was, “Shame on you! You should have got married a long
time ago. Look at your peers in the village. Most of them have already had two children!”

Living far away from the village, I had few occasions to experience the embarrassment.
But my parents, living closer to the village, were frequently confronted by relatives and

2

friends with the problem of my marriage. Even though my parents were much more
liberal than most of my distant relatives, they could still feel the social pressure these
relatives imposed on them. For these relatives, my marriage was not my personal matter.
It was a family matter. My parents should not trust it to me. It was my parents’ duty to
get me married as soon as possible. As I was not yet married in my late twenties, it was
my parents, more than me, to be blamed.

Fortunately I met my dear wife who gave me the chance to get married when I turned 30.
My parents finally no longer needed to face the embarrassment again. They could
proudly tell relatives and friends that I had already married. For the first Chinese New
Year after my marriage, my parents intentionally moved back to my native village in
spite of all the inconveniences caused by having to clean the long deserted house. My
wife and I had to follow them back to the village too. On the New Year’s Day, my father
ordered me to take my wife around to kowtow to all senior relatives.
1
For years since
then, my wife has been complaining about having to kowtow to people she never knew.
But I understood my father’s motives. Taking my wife and me back to my native village
was a declaration to the relatives that they had finally completed their most important
task in their life: getting me, their only son, married.

1
It is a custom in my village for the married juniors to kowtow to senior relatives during the Chinese New
Year holiday to show their respect for the latter. It is an important way for people to reconfirm their
relationship. Refusing to kowtow to a senior is often a gesture that the two parties are on very bad terms
with each other.

3

This experience of mine was only one example of how important a son’s marriage was to
Chinese parents. Brought up in the village, I saw brides taken in and daughters married
out during my childhood. There were many chances for me to overhear adults discussing
and commenting on marriages. Such early experience gave me a rough picture of the
importance of marriage in village life. This was why I chose marriage as the major theme
of my research. Given the importance of marriage in village life, I hope by studying how
marriage practices have evolved during the past decades, my research could shed light on
the way the village tradition has been reproduced and transformed in response to the
social, economic and political changes initiated by the state. Specifically, my research
was motivated by the following questions:
a. How have parents adapted to the social, economic and political changes to fulfill
their traditional duty of getting their sons married?
b. How has patriarchal authority of parents been affected by social, economic and
political changes as well as strategies parents took in getting their sons married?

2. My Fieldwork
The major part of my fieldwork was conducted from Aug. 2002 to May 2003 in my
native village, Song Family Village of Hebei Province in North China. Most of my data
were collected during this period. After that I made four short trips back, during which I
followed up the developments of events of my interest and clarified some problems that I

4

failed to understand in my major fieldwork. While analyzing my data and writing my
research, I often called back to the village when I needed to clarify information.

I grew up in this village until I was 12 years old, when I left the village for school at a
nearby town. After that, my education and work took me further and further away from
my native village, first to a nearby city, then to the provincial capital and then to Beijing.
Finally I came to study at the University of Southern California in the United States.

My fieldwork was the first time in more than twenty years for me to stay in the village for
a long time. I spent the first few days of my fieldwork getting around the village. People
were surprised to see me back. I had to spend a lot of time explaining to them that I was
back to study the marriage customs in the village.

I found that many things had changed beyond recognition. Since I left for my schooling
at 12, I had never observed the village so thoroughly. One change I immediately noticed
was the numerous new houses added to the outskirts of the village. These new houses
formed several new streets, extending the village in all directions and at least tripling its
size. The paved road to the north that used to be fairly far from the village was now
almost part of the village, lined with new shops and factories. But the most noticeable
change was in the people. Many people did not know me, nor did I know them. I could
still recognize men older than or of similar age to me. But I did not know many women in
the village, since most of them married into this village after I had already left. During

5

the first days of my return to the village, I was frequently asked by little children where I
was from and who I was looking for when I walked around.

To get familiar with the people, I borrowed the household registration roster from one
village official. I soon found that the information it provided was disappointing. Many
women who were married into this village were not on the list while many daughters who
had married out of the village were still there. Disappointed, I tried to collect my own
population data. I hired two women to do that for me, asking them to record demographic
information from household to household. I thought this was an easy job, but I soon
found I was wrong. One day, one of the women came over to me and said, “I can’t do this
for you because many people in my neighborhood refused to let me record their family
information. They were afraid their unregistered children might be found out by the
government.” I had not expected this, but I understood their worries. The family planning
policy was still being implemented. If their unregistered children were found out, they
would be in great trouble. When the other woman also expressed a similar concern, I
thought I needed to stop the effort in order to avoid souring my relationship with my
fellow villagers.

I was more fortunate than most ethnographers in that I did not need to negotiate a living
space in the field. My family still owned a house in the village. I bought a gas bottle and
a stove for cooking and then I was ready to do my fieldwork. What made it more
convenient was that one of my distant cousins was living in one of the rooms in my house

6

temporarily, because his own house had been pulled down for reconstruction in
preparation for one of his sons’ marriage. As a father of three sons of marriageable age,
he was an ideal informant for me about the current marriage customs.

My data were collected mainly in two ways. One was the direct observation of events.
The other was by conducting informal interviews. In the village, I tried to participate in
all events. I was surprised to find that the village that had been quiet and boring in my
memory turned out to be so eventful. Once I was away from the village for several days.
When I got back to the village, I heard the sound of gongs coming out from the center of
the village. When I reached the scene, I found a big crowd gathered there. In the middle
of the crowd were several men holding a man on a leash. This man wore a fur coat inside
out. His face was decorated like a donkey. When the people holding him said, “roll over,”
he would roll over on the ground just as a donkey would do. After repeating it several
times, he was allowed to get up. The crowd moved on accompanied by the sound of the
gong. I asked several people what was happening. They said it was part of “he xi.”
Literally meaning “drink to the happiness,” it is a ritual to congratulate a family for the
birth of a son. This man’s brother’s wife had given birth to a son several days ago. The
day before, the little baby’s father and grandfather had already been tied up and made fun
of in this way but this uncle escaped. Today people finally caught him. Making fun of the
males in this family was not to humiliate them. It was a traditional way to show
congratulations to a family who had a son or grandson. But not every family who had a
son would be treated that way. Only a well-respected family would receive this honor.

7

The grandmother of the baby had been serving the village as a midwife for decades.
People did this to show their respect and gratitude to her. Of course people were
supposed to present gifts to the family and the family would in turn treat people to a feast.

I followed the crowd to the house of the family. In the middle of the courtyard, tables had
already been set up. Food was being served. Two men were sitting at a table close to the
gate, collecting gifts from people. Seeing this, I also presented 5 yuan
2
, the amount most
people gave, and sat at one of the tables waiting for the food.

This was only one example of what could happen in the village. While in the village, I
kept a close watch on what marriage related events were happening so that I would not
miss them. I found many events that I had never heard of before. Some were traditional
events revived after I left the village, but others were newly invented events. These
events were good opportunities for me to know the villagers better and learn of the local
customs.

Most of my data came out of my informal interviews with villagers. At the beginning of
my fieldwork, I made plans of whom I needed to see at which time and on which topic. I
found that these plans could seldom be fulfilled because it was impossible for me to ask
people to adjust to my time. It happened quite often that the person I wanted to see did

2
Yuan is a unit of Renminbi (RMB), the official currency of the People’s Republic of China, which
equaled to about 0.12 USD at the time of my fieldwork.

8

not have time. Gradually I learned to make plans that were not so specific. I always kept
in mind several things I wanted to know. In chatting with people, I tried to insert my
questions into those chats. I followed people to their fields, helping them with their farm
work. At the same time I could have the chances to tap information I needed.

There was a heavy snow that winter, driving the temperature very low. There was no
heating in my room except for my gas stove. While I stayed in my room, I would turn on
my gas stove, which drove away the coldness soon. But the temperature soon fell to the
original point after I turned it off. Unable to stand the cold, I borrowed an electric heater
from my sister. Its power was only enough to heat the air close to it. But that was enough
for me to stay in my room writing my notes. At night, I dared not keep the electric heater
on because I was afraid the aged cables in my house might melt from the power needed
for the heater. Every morning when I woke up, I found the water I left in the basin in my
room frozen into solid ice.

But the snow and the cold weather provided a good window of opportunity for my
fieldwork. With the heavy snow and the extremely cold whether, it was almost
impossible for villagers to work outside. People had to find some work that they could do
inside at home. This gave me the chance to corner people that I wanted to talk to.

The two months around the Chinese New Year were the most fruitful time for me. Many
villagers, who had been working at construction sites around the country, came back

9

home for the holiday. The village was full of young people, most of who had been away
for most of the year. That gave me excellent chances to interview them. This period was
also the most eventful time of the year. Most weddings were held before the Chinese
New Year while most engagement ceremonies happened not long after the holiday. There
were many temple fairs in this and the neighboring villages. Since it was the slack season,
most people had the time for such events. During this period, I was busy attending the
events in the village in the day and chatting with people in the evening. Late at night was
the time for me to note down the information I had gathered.

As a native anthropologist, I enjoyed the convenience as an insider in my field site. I did
not need to spend time acquiring the language. Much less time was needed to build up
rapport, since I already knew many people in the village and many people knew me or at
least knew of me. I also had already been armed with the basic information about the
social life in my field before I started my fieldwork. But working as a native
anthropologist also posed a challenge to me. Just because I was working within my own
culture, there might be the risk for me to take many things for granted. In this way, many
important social and cultural phenomena might be neglected. To overcome the
“ethnographic blindness” caused by my cultural familiarity, I had to “find the unfamiliar
within the familiar,” to quote Goldschmit (1995: 18).

In looking for “the unfamiliar in the familiar,” “the unfamiliar” not only refers to what
the anthropologist is unfamiliar with, but also refers to what the audience is unfamiliar

10

with. This is even more important for me because as a student in the US, an important
part of the prospective audience of my work would be westerners. I have to be alert that I
would not assume so much in my research as to neglect the information that my western
audience might want to and need to know, even though such information might be too
familiar to me.

In this respect, I have benefited a lot from my film making work. Since I finished my
major fieldwork in 2003, I have been working on ethnographic films based on my
fieldwork under the supervision of my advisor Professor Gary Seaman. In my follow-up
trips to my field, Professor Seaman and I took enormous amount of footage, out of which
four films have been made, with one covering a similar theme as my dissertation. In this
process, Professor Seaman and Mr. Steven Schindler, who has been our major editor,
often alerted me when I assumed too much in my formulation of ideas. They could often
give me better idea about what the western audience might need to know and want to
know about my work.

My students in the course Anthropology 263: Exploring Cultures through Films also gave
me precious feedbacks on my research. In making our films, we often showed our drafts
to the students in that course to see whether the major points in the films were well
presented. Since my dissertation is closely related with my films, the students’ responses
not only helped us to improve our films, but also gave me a better understanding of the

11

needs of the potential audience of my research and helped me to improve my ways of
presenting my ideas.

3. Patriarchy and the Traditional Chinese Family
“Patriarchy” is defined in A Dictionary of Sociology (Scott et al. 2005: 482), as:
Literally ‘rule of the father’; the term was originally used to describe social systems
based on the authority of male heads of household. It has now acquired a more
general usage, especially in some feminist theories, where it has come to mean male
domination in general.

Weber was one of the earliest scholars who used the concept of patriarchy in social
science research. He used this concept in a sense close to its original meaning. “The roots
of patriarchal domination grow out of the master’s authority over his household” (Weber
1968: 1006). In this sense, the patriarchal domination exists not only along the gender
line, but also along the generational line. In other words, all other members in a
household, male and female, were subject to the authority of the household master. Of
course, those under the authority of the household masters were not all on equal terms in
power. All men were dominant over women. Junior members were dominated by senior
members.

Since the 1970s, “patriarchy” has become a key concept in the feminist literature. Mainly
concerned with the inequality between men and women, radical feminists in their
researches “developed the element of the domination of women by men” but “paid less
attention to the issue of how man dominated each other” (Walby 1989: 214). As a result,

12

patriarchy experienced a change from a notion denoting the inequality along both gender
and generational lines to one only denoting the inequality along the generational line.
Typical of this trend is Walby’s definition of “patriarchy” as “a system of social
structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women” (1989:
214).

Although such a definition turned the notion of patriarchy into an important analytical
tool in revealing gender inequality in many aspects of social life, it weakened its ability to
characterize power relations within traditional family systems. Although inequality in
gender was an important feature of a patriarchal family, other inequalities were no less
important in upholding such a patriarchal institution. Take the traditional Chinese family
as an example. The family head had absolute authority not only over female members of
his family but also over other male members who were junior to him in age and
generation. Thus, not only females but other males than the patriarch himself were also
subject to patriarchal domination. Furthermore, females were not on equal terms in power
among themselves. The wife of the family head was often only second to him in power
and authority. In a traditional Chinese patriarchal family, there was often a division of
labor between the family head and his wife. While the family head was often responsible
for affairs outside home, such as farming, business and interactions with outsiders, the
management of the domestic space was normally trusted to his wife. As a result, even
though the family head had the ultimate power over all the members of the family, no
matter males or females, his wife often enjoyed much power over the juniors, especially

13

over her daughters-in-law. In talking about patriarchy in Chinese family, only covering
the inequality in gender is not enough to reveal the whole picture of the power structure.
Thus, I will define patriarchy as a social structure that enables seniors and males to
dominate over juniors and females. This definition fits in better with the power
relationship in the traditional Chinese family. Not only did the family head have authority
over other family members, his wife was also empowered to dominate over the junior
members of the family. Controlling junior members’ marriages was an important aspect
of this authority and domination.

By “the traditional Chinese family” I refer to the familial system and practices prior to
the changes brought about by the 20
th
century revolution, industrialization and
urbanization. In Mainland China, I mainly refer to the familial system and practices
before the land reform led by the Chinese Communist Party, which in many places
happened after 1950, but in other places started as early as 1946. Outside Mainland China,
it refers to the familial system and practice prior to extensive industrialization and
urbanization.

Traditional family life in China, in both customary practice and legal system, was
historically predicated on principles of patrilineal descent, patrilocal residence, and
patriarchal authority. Patrilineal descent was important in determining filiations, that is,
to what family group a given individual belonged. A woman at marriage was expected to
transfer her primary family loyalty to the family of her husband. Her children belonged to

14

her husband’s family. Another important aspect of patrilineal descent was that family
properties were inherited only by male descendants. Female descendants normally did not
have the right to inherit.
3

By patrilocal residence, it was the husband and his family who “received” a bride from
some other family. That is, it was overwhelmingly the women who moved to the
husband’s home and not vice versa. The effect of this residence rule was to give the
husband’s family a great deal of authority over the bride, isolated as she was from her
own kin and acquaintances.

Patriarchy in the traditional Chinese family was legitimated by Confucianism, which had
provided the guiding principles and norms for life in traditional Chinese society in the
last two thousand years. The Confucian idea of “the three cardinal guides and five
constant virtues” (san gang wu chang)
4
required that juniors be obedient and submissive
to seniors and females to males. Filial piety was a principle no Chinese dared to defy. It
required the junior to be unconditionally obedient to the seniors. A woman was supposed

3
Kathryn Bernhardt (1999) in her book Women and Property in China, 960-1949 gave a detailed account
of women’s property rights in traditional times in China.

4
The three cardinal guides: the ruler guides the subject, the father guides the son, and the husband guides
the wife. The five constant virtues refer to benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and fidelity.
These principles were key to the social order promoted by neo-Confucian scholars such as Zhu Xi (1130-
1200), whose ideas had a great influence on scholarship and social life in later imperial China.

15

to follow the principle of “three obeyings” (san cong)
5
(Baker 1979: 24). Throughout her
life, she was supposed to remain dependent on men: first her father, then her husband and
in her old age her son. The worst role for a woman was as a new bride. She occupied the
lowest position in a family (Fei 1939: 49-50). Submissive to nearly everyone, she had no
right of redress in face of any mistreatment, particularly from her mother-in-law (Fei
1939: 49), who was often delegated with patriarch power over her daughter-in-law.

One of the core values of the Chinese patriarchal family system was the necessity to
perpetuate the patrilineal family line. For a traditional Chinese family, the ultimate goal
of family life was to make sure that the patrilineal family line would continue forever.
The four Chinese characters “yuan yuan liu chang” on a placard hung on the gate of one
of the ancestral temples in Song Family Village expresses just such a hope.
6
For the
Chinese, the ancestors were not regarded as having disappeared with their death but were
seen as continuing to exist and to claim filial piety and nurturing care from their
descendants. The welfare of these ancestors in the afterlife was the responsibility of the
descendants, who had to perform the various rites of “ancestor worship” at the intervals
prescribed by the cycles of the calendar. Without male offspring, the line of descent
would be terminated and there would be no one to take care of the ancestors. As Mencius
said, “bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da” (there are three things which are unfilial, and to

5
The three obeyings refer to “obedience to father before marriage, to husband after marriage and to son
after husband’s death.”

6
The title of my dissertation “Flow into Eternity” was just a translation of these four characters.

16

have no posterity is the greatest of them).
7
This was a disastrous fate that any Chinese
wanted to avoid.

One of the most important aspects of patriarchal power possessed by parents was the
unarguable right to arrange children’s marriages. In traditional Chinese society, the most
important function of marriage was to continue the family line. Since the perpetuation of
the patrilineal family line was so important and marriage was the only way to realize it, it
was impossible for the seniors of the family to trust such an important matter as marriage
to the hands of the juniors, who were seen as lacking the necessary social experience for
handling such a complex and important matter. To make sure that the marriage of their
children was compatible to the goal of perpetuating the family line, the seniors of the
family found it necessary to keep firm control over their children’s marriages. As a result,
marriage, the essential step in realizing the continuation of the family line, was never
seen as a matter solely between a man and a woman. Instead, it was regarded as an affair
between two families. Mutual love and sexual satisfaction were never considered
essential part of marriage. The opinions of the primary parties, the young man and the
young woman, were not treated as important in contracting marriages. In fact, many
parents betrothed their children when the latter were very young babies and were totally
ignorant of what marriage was. What made it even worse was that they were not
supposed to meet each other before their wedding day. Only after the wedding ritual was

7
See Part 1 of Chapter Li Lou of Mengzi (Mecius). English translation by James Legge is accessible at the
website http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/.

17

finished could the groom remove the red cover
8
from the bride’s head and get a first look
at his bride. It must in many cases have been extremely difficult for them to get used to
each other and adapt to their new social situation.
Together with the transfer of the bride to the groom’s family, a traditional Chinese
marriage normally involved the transfer of wealth between the families involved (Fei
1939; Hsu 1948; Siu 1993; Stockard 1989; M. C. Yang 1945). Without such a transfer of
wealth, a marriage could not be concluded. Since all family properties were controlled by
parents in a traditional Chinese family, young people had to rely on their parents for their
marriages. Thus, such marriage transactions ensured parental control over children’s
marriages.

Marriage transactions varied from place to place, from time to time and from social class
to social class in traditional China. In some marriages, dowry was dominant (Siu 1993; M.
C. Yang 1945). But in other marriages the groom’s family had to pay brideprice (Hsu
1948; Siu 1993). Sometimes, both brideprice and dowry were necessary (Stockard 1989).
In talking about marriage transactions in traditional China, different scholars used
different terms or used the same terms in different meanings. To avoid confusion, it is
necessary to define the terms before using them. I will use “dowry” to refer to the wealth
that the bride’s parents give to her for her to take to her husband’s family at marriage.
This wealth should come out of the pocket of the bride’s family. “Brideprice” is the

8
At a traditional Chinese wedding, a bride’s head would be covered with a piece of red cloth. No one
could see her face until all other rituals were completed and the groom ritually removed the red cloth from
her head with a steelyard. For most couples, this was the first time to see each other.

18

wealth paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family who will then keep the wealth for
their own use. It is also known as bridewealth in anthropological literature. Goody (1973:
2) used the term “indirect dowry” to refer to the wealth that is paid by the groom’s family
to the bride’s family but is later converted into dowry and taken back to the groom’s
family. This type of marriage transaction differs from a real bridewealth payment in that
“the marriage prestations are made by the groom or his kin” but “the ultimate recipient of
these gifts is the bride and not her kin” (Goody 1973: 2). These gifts form “part of a joint
(or sometimes separate) conjugal fund rather than a circulating societal one” (Goody
1973: 2). When talking about this practice in other places, I would adopt the term
“indirect dowry.” But when discussing a similar practice in my native village, I would
prefer to use the term “pseudodowry.”
9
This is because even though villagers know that
the gifts carried off to the groom’s family with the bride has been purchased with the
money paid by the groom’s family, they still insist on calling it “dowry.”

In a marriage, if the bride’s family pays most of the dowry out of their own pocket, I
would call such a marriage “dowry marriage.” If the bride’s family keeps all or most of
the brideprice, I will call the marriage “brideprice marriage.” If most the wealth paid by
the groom’s family is taken back by the bride at the wedding to her new home, the
marriage is called “pseudodowry marriage” (or “indirect dowry marriage”).

9
For the term “pseudodowry,” I should give credit to my academic advisor Professor Gary Seaman. When
editing our film “Marriage, Maoism and Modernity,” we thought the term “indirect dowry” was not enough
to capture the social meaning of what was called by villagers as “dowry” but was actually paid for by the
groom’s family. Professor Seaman coined the term “pseudodowry.” I think it is a much better term in
denoting such a marriage transaction than the term “indirect dowry.” Thus, I prefer to use it instead of the
commonly used “indirect dowry.”

19

Since parents were traditionally given absolute control over their children’s marriage,
they had the right to arrange marriage for their children in ways they saw as proper. Some
parents arranged “foster daughter-in-law” (tong yang xi) marriages for their sons or
daughters (Fei 1939; Yuehua Lin 1947; C. K. Yang 1959; Hayes 1994; A. Wolf and
Huang1980; M. Wolf 1972). In this kind of marriage, a very young girl was raised by the
parents-in-law, but the marriage would not be consummated until the girl grew up.
10
This
was used as a way to avoid the economic expenses for marriage in time of economic
difficulty (Fei 1939: 53; M. Wolf 1972: 178). In this type of marriage, the young girls
suffered from more patriarchal oppression (Fei 1939: 54-55; M. Wolf 1972: 174-176).
With no protection and affection from parents, they were often treated badly by their
foster parents, particular by the foster mother. Their needs were put at the lowest priority
while they had to undertake burdensome housework when they were very young. This
could be seen from Margery Wolf’s description of her impression of the life of a foster
daughter-in-law in Taiwan:
When we first met this girl we assumed she was the family servant, so differently was
she dressed from her older sister. She told us later that she did not need new clothes
and could wear her older sister’s castoffs because she did not go out very often.
Movies were cheap in the local market town, and she was allowed to go there. Her
sister, who went to movies only in Taipei, naturally needed nicer clothes. Our
observations of the girl’s relations with her older sister did nothing to clarify our
original misunderstanding of her status in the family. The older girl ordered her

10
Arthur Wolf and Huang (1980) classified all marriages in Taiwan into three types: the major marriage,
the minor marriage and the uxorilocal marriage. The major marriage refers to marriages in which the
transfer of brides to the groom’s family happened at the wedding. The Minor marriage refers to the
“foster daughter-in-law” marriage, in which the bride was transferred to the groom’s family long before the
wedding.

20

around much as she might a servant, and her foster mother gave her complete
responsibility for the more burdensome chores in the house. (1972: 175)

Not only were young people deprived of the right to arrange their own marriages, they
also did not have the freedom to end their marriages. According to legal codes in imperial
times, there were only several occasions on which people were allowed to put an end to
their marriages. The most common conditions were the so-called “Seven Outs” (qi chu),
(that is, seven grounds for a husband to evict his wife): barrenness, wanton conduct,
neglect of parents-in-law, garrulousness, theft, jealousy and ill-will, and incurable disease
(Baker 1979: 45). But the “Seven Outs” were compromised by the “Three Not Outs” (qi
bu chu), which were the conditions under which a wife could not be evicted even if she
should have been according to the “Seven Outs.” These conditions were: she had kept the
three years of mourning for either of her parents-in-law; her husbands’ family had
become wealthy after she was married into it; and she had no home to return to (Baker
1979: 45). Another occasion on which divorce was possible was when the relationship
between the husband and wife met the condition of breaking the moral bonds (yi jue),
which meant when the husband or the wife murdered or injured senior relatives of the
other party. On such an occasion, the government would force the husband and wife to
divorce (Gu et al. 1996: 79). Although a divorce agreed on by both the husband and wife
was permitted by Tang and Yuan legal codes, there was no such an article in the legal
codes of later dynasties (Gu et al. 1996: 81 and 117). To summarize, people did not have
the freedom to seek a divorce in imperial times. A divorce was permitted only for special
reasons. There was also an inequality between men and women in divorce. While men

21

were given the right to divorce their wives for some special reasons, women had very few
chances to divorce their husbands.

In the first half of the 20
th
century, although divorce became less and less uncommon in
cities, it was still very rare in villages. People still saw it as a shame to every party
involved. A man who did not like his wife might get a concubine if he could afford. But
there was nothing that a woman could do if she did not like her husband. Even when a
woman was literally deserted by her husband, she could not get a formal divorce and start
a new life. Francis Hsu (1948: 105) described a case in his study of a village in southwest
China. The husband did not like his wife and married again in a city. Although the wife
was deserted, there was nothing that she could do but stay with his relatives until her
death.

Related to divorce was the problem of the remarriage of widows. Although there had
never been any legal codes forbidding the remarriage of widows, the emphasis on female
virginity in Confucian values created inequality between men and women in remarriage.
While a widower was always encouraged to remarry, a widow was often discouraged
(Hsu 1948: 103-104). Normally a widow with a son or even a daughter was not supposed
to remarry (Hsu 1948: 104). When a widow remarried, she was not supposed to take to
her second marriage any part of the properties accumulated in her first marriage (Shi
1999: 266). In addition, a remarried widow was “a dishonored object,” indicating the low
status of such marriages and people’s disapproval of them (Hsu 1948: 104).

22

Even when a widow did remarry, she might not be able to control her marriage. It was
often her parents, parents-in-law or others who arranged her second marriage. It was also
very common for the family of her husband either to prevent her from remarrying or to
force her to remarry so that they could take over her deceased husband’s properties
(Holmgren 1985: 12), or take a brideprice for her remarriage (P. C. Huang 2001a: 8). The
customs of levirate marriage
11
and having a widow take in a husband
12
(Fei 1939: 70-71)
in some places all restricted the widow’s freedom of marriage.

4. Revolution and Family Reform
The traditional Chinese patriarchal family system began to become a “problem” at a time
when the weakness and impotence of the imperial Chinese government in its encounter
with the western powers led people to question the validity of the Chinese traditional
social order. The defeat by the British in the Opium War shattered the traditional Chinese
worldview that China was the center of the world, surrounded by barbarians inferior in
culture and morality. One defeat after another by western powers made people realize the
western superiority in technology, but at the same time the elites still held to the idea that
China was superior in culture and morality to those “foreign devils” (yang guizi). In the

11
A levirate marriage was a custom by which the widow married her husband’s brother. Fei (1939)
described it as a way to keep the widow within the patriline of her husband.

12
Fei (1939) described a custom by which a widow took in a husband to continue her dead husband’s
family line. The children born of this marriage would be seen as descendants of her dead husband.

23

second half of the 19
th
century, the court and the officials were active in borrowing
“western learning” (xixue) for its practical use but at the same time held on firmly to the
traditional Chinese culture and family values. This confidence in Chinese superiority in
culture and morality was completely bankrupted when China was defeated in 1894 by the
Japanese, who had been seen by the Chinese as subordinates to China in culture in the
last thousand years. Astonished by the progress Japan had made, people began to
reevaluate the traditional Chinese social, cultural and political order that had been so dear
to them so far. Some Confucian scholars, such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, etc,
became the pioneering proponents for political and social reforms. But a major political
reform effort was thwarted by the conservative forces headed by the Empress Dowager in
1898, with the reform-oriented emperor put into house arrest and the major proponents of
the reform either killed or exiled.
13

The year 1900 saw another of China’s major defeats by the western powers. Even the
court began to realize that changes were needed in order for the empire to survive. The
imperial civil examination that focused on the knowledge of Confucian classics was
abolished in 1905. A western-style school system was adopted. Students were sent to
Japan and western countries to receive modern education. These students later became
the major proponents for dramatic social and cultural changes.
14

13
See Tang (2003) and Zheng (2005).

14
See Zheng (2005: 421-91).

24

Overthrowing the imperial court in 1911 further cleared the way for people to cast their
doubts upon the old social system and traditional values. Although the subsequent
republican government was controlled by warlords who had little interest in any real
social and cultural changes, the schools and universities provided a niche for young
intellectuals educated abroad to promote and spread new ideas borrowed from the west
and launched a New Culture Movement.

The New Culture Movement was inaugurated by the publication of the first issue of
Qingnian Zazhi (The Youth Journal) in 1915 and Chen Duxiu’s article “Jing gao
Qingnian” (A Call to the Youth) carried by this issue. The journal, later renamed Xin
Qingnian (The New Youth) became a forum for the New Culture Movement radicals and
had a great influence among Chinese intellectuals at the time.
15

In this and his subsequent articles, Chen called on Chinese people to oppose
Confucianism and the traditional rules, norms, morality and politics, and embrace “Mr.
Democracy’ and “Mr. Science,” since it was democracy and science that “had salvaged
western countries from the darkness” (of the medieval ages) (Chen 1984: 317-18). He
argued that obedience and submissiveness required by the traditional social order was
“the morality of slave” (Chen 1984: 74). The implication was that only by abolishing the
traditional social order based on Confucianism could China have a bright future as the
western countries.

15
Sha et al. (2001: 64).

25

The traditional Chinese family system, the core of the Confucian social order, naturally
became the target of attack. Many leading figures in the New Culture Movement wrote
articles calling for family reform. The major problem with the Chinese traditional family
system was seen to lie in its patriarchal nature. The suffocating control over the juniors
by the elders was seen as one of the important reasons for the backwardness of China.
Since individual rights and freedom were seen as essential to the modern economy and
society with which western countries achieved their power, the traditional Chinese family,
which suppressed individual rights and freedom, was seen as blocking the way to the
modernization of China.
16

The status of women in the patriarchal family attracted no less attention from the young
intellectuals at the time. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, when translated into Chinese,
aroused incessant repercussions among the intellectuals (Glosser 2003: 9). To the
intellectuals of the New Culture Movement, the traditional women who were dependent
on others and submissive to patriarchal power did not fit in with a future modern China,
which required women to be both intellectually and physically capable. Without
sufficient education, a woman could not undertake the task of bringing up a modern
family nor contributing to the modern society (Glosser 2003: 6-9).

16
Susan Glosser (2003) gave a detailed description of what the family reformers believed in the
relationship between conjugal families and the modern state. Such beliefs can be traced to ideas popular
during the New Culture Movement.

26

What Li Daozhao (1999) stated about marriage and family in his articles was
representative of the ideas held by most New Cultural Movement intellectuals. In his
article “Lixing Jiating” (the Ideal Family) (1999: 146-147), he offered an ideal model of
family life: should be the conjugal family formed by a couple and their unmarried
children. In such a family, democracy should be the principle governing the relationship
between family members, with no inequality between sexes and generations. Patriarchy
would no longer exist. To make such a family possible, freedom of marriage was
essential. Monogamy should be strictly observed. Since love was the basis of this new
type of family, if love no longer existed, divorce should be allowed. He also called for the
abolition of concubinage and prostitution, which was seen as depriving women of their
dignity as human beings (1999: 316-317).

Based on these ideas, many pioneers of the New Culture Movement, such as Chen Duxiu,
Li Dazhao, Hu Shi and Lu Xun, published articles calling for youth to fight for freedom
in marriage (Minjie Zhang 2001: 112). They themselves practiced what they promoted.
Chen Duxiu divorced his wife and married his wife’s sister for love, defying the
traditional morality. Mao Zedong refused to accept the wife his parents chose for him. He
later married his teacher’s daughter.
17

17
In 1910, Chen fell in love with his wife’s half sister. He divorced his wife and married his sister-in-law.
For this story, please see Ren (1999: 32-33). Mao was first married to a girl four years older than he when
he was 14 years old. This marriage was arranged by his parents. He never accepted this bride as his wife.
Later he married his teacher’s daughter Yang Kaihui, who bore him three sons. For Mao’s story, please see
Ke et al. (2004: 13 and 63-70).

27

The New Culture Movement got more momentum with the May 4
th
Movement, which
started on May 4, 1919 as a student demonstration against the Versailles Peace Treaty
that further eroded China’s sovereignty.
18
With the New Culture Movement intellectuals
actively participating in this new movement and with more people drawn into it, the new
ideas promoted by these pioneers of the New Culture Movement got a broarder audience.
The New Culture Movement and the May 4
th
movement (also known together as May 4
th

New Culture Movement, or just May 4
th
Movement) had a long lasting influence on the
social and political life in the first half of the twentieth century in China (Peng 1998: 652-
657).

The New Culture Movement not only promoted new ideas and values, it also provided
personnel for the Nationalist and Communist revolutions in the following decades (sha
et.el. 171 and Liu, Yingming : 386). The Nationalist revolution in the 1920s, a joint
venture between the Nationalist Party (or the KMT in short) led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and
the newly established Chinese Communist Party (the CCP), was spiritually inspired by
the New Cultural Movement and manned by the generation of youth under its influence
(Yongming Liu 1990: 386-387; Sha et al. 2001). This revolution ended in 1927 with the
separation and war between the KMT and the CCP. But the legacy of the New Culture

18
Versailles Peace Treaty: according to this treaty, China, as one of the winning nations at the WWI, was
not allowed to get back the German colony in Qingdao, Shandong. The treaty allowed Japan to take over
this former German colony. This aroused intense patriotism among young Chinese students. The movement
started from Beijing on May 4, 1919 and soon spread to most urban centers in China.

28

Movement was still continued in one way or another by both the KMT and the CCP, two
trajectories towards a modern China (Sha et al. 170-171).

In 1927, the KMT established the Nationalist government in Nanjing. This government
was recognized as the national government, even though its control over the country as a
whole was very weak. In 1930, the Nanjing government promulgated the Law of Kinship
Relations, as part of the Civil Code. As a “compromise law,” it “incorporated many of the
ideological objectives of the family revolution, although many of the basic principles of
the traditional family institution were retained” (C. K. Yang 1959: 16). It acknowledged
the principles of equality between sexes, freedom of marriage (C. K. Yang 1959: 31) and
monogamy (C. K. Yang 1959: 58). But in some of its articles, later interpretations and
legal practices, discrimination against women was still present (Gu & Gu 1996: 166).
Although divorce was allowed, there were still many limitations on women’s right to
divorce (Ono 1978: 153; P. C. Huang 2001a: 46-47). Concubinage was abolished by this
law, but later interpretations by the Supreme Court made it still lawful (Gu & Gu 1996:
156-57 and Ono 1989: 153). Marriage of the pre-adolescent children was still allowed
(Ono 1989: 153). This put the marriage of children under the authority of parents,
violating the principle of freedom in marriage.

Even this compromise law was hard to enforce. Although the Nanjing government was
recognized as the national government, its authority was limited to southeastern China,
with the rest of China controlled by various warlords. And only seven years after the

29

promulgation of the Law of Kinship Relations, China was plunged into war by the
Japanese invasion. The Nationalist government lost control of the coastal areas and
retreated to the west. It was impossible for the government to make any serious effort to
enforce the law. The law only took effect in the cities among the educated. In the vast
rural areas, changes in family and marriage were very limited, at best (P. C. Huang 2001a:
46-47).

After the KMT established the Nationalist government in Nanjing 1n 1927, the
Communist Party had to go underground in cities or flee to the vast countryside to avoid
persecutions by the KMT. Throughout the country, the Communists organized uprisings
and insurgences to fight against the Nanjing government. They organized their own
troops, which were named the Red Army, following the model of the Soviet Union. With
the Red Army, the Communists built up various “Soviet regions” in areas remote from
major urban centers. The largest “Soviet region” was in the areas between Jiangxi and
Fujian under the leadership of Mao Zedong. In 1931, the “national” Soviet government
was established in Ruijin, Jiangxi. Mao was elected the Chairman. The government
stayed there until it was driven out on a long march in 1934.
19

19
The legendary and heroic Long March in the official narrative of the CCP was in reality a fleeing retreat
from the Soviet area in Jiangxi and Fujian, as a result of the failure of the Red Army in resisting an
overwhelming offensive by the Nationalist troops. The retreat started in October 1934. Driven by the
Nationalist troops, the Red Army traveled a dozen provinces and settled down in Northwest China in
October 1935. The Red Army suffered heavy losses on the way. The number of its troop fell from the
starting 100,000 to less than 10,000 for the Central Red Army, which was the unit under the direct control
by the Central Committee of the CCP. Three other units of the Red Army were also driven out of their
original base areas by the Nationalist troops and arrived at Northwest China before or after the Central Red
Army.

30

The Communist Party was more radical than the Nationalist government in family and
marriage reform. In the early years of the Soviet period, different Soviet regions
published their own regulations on family and marriage. In 1931, a provisional marriage
law, called the Marriage Regulations, was promulgated by the “national” Soviet
government.

Many scholars (Ono 1989; Stacey 1983; K. A. Johnson 1983) have reviewed these
regulations and their effects. Ono acclaimed them as “the first modern marriage law” in
China (1989: 152). Johnson also saw them as the “most important and revolutionary
legislation affecting women” (1983: 54). The first article of the regulations established
the principle of freedom of marriage. It outlawed any form of marriage imposed on the
young, including the purchase and sale marriage
20
and the “foster daughter-in-law”
marriage (Meijer 1971: 281).

The Marriage Regulations also had a radically liberal divorce clause. Divorce would be
granted if one party was determined in the request (Meijer 1971: 281). At divorce,
women were given the property right to her land allotment
21
and an equal share of all

20
In the official discourse of the CCP, purchase and sale marriages refer to marriages involving the
transfer of wealth, in particular brideprice. The brideprice marriage is seen as characteristic of the
marriages in the “feudal” and capitalist societies, where women are treated as commodities. In the socialist
society, such marriages should be abolished.

21
The Chinese Communist Party carried out a radical land reform program in the “Soviet areas.” They
confiscated land from the rich and allocated it to the poor on a per capita basis. Of course, women also got

31

properties accumulated during the marriage. Women also had the priority for children
custody, while men still had to support the children, contrary to the prevalent patrilineal
principle in Chinese society (K. A. Johnson 1983: 55).

Yet, both Stacey (1983: 158-194) and Kay Ann Johnson (1983: 56-62) found that in
practice the Party had to retreat from its radical position in face of resistance from male
peasants who were afraid of losing their wives by this radical marriage law, since the
CCP relied on these men for support. This was reflected in a formal Marriage Law
promulgated in 1934, which backed off from the original stance. A divorce from a Red
Army soldier was only possible with his consent. It also reduced the responsibility for a
divorced man to provide for the children not under his custody.

The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 helped to force the two antagonistic parties, the
KMT and the CCP, to form a United Front to fight their common enemy, the Japanese.
The Red Army was redesignated as the Eighth Route Army, under the nominal leadership
of the Nationalist government. During the eight years of the anti-Japanese war, the CCP
greatly expanded its influence and power in north China, where the KMT had withdrawn
its military forces and lost political influence. Most of the rural areas of north China were
under the Communist control or influence while the Japanese only controlled the cities
and towns. The CCP established its governments in strongholds in the mountainous areas.

their own share of land. Even though a family still farmed the land of all its members together, women at
least got a legal claim to part of the land of the family.

32

These local “border governments”
22
promulgated various laws and regulations
concerning family and marriage.

Although these regulations and laws reaffirmed the principles of freedom in marriage and
equality between sexes, they retreated further from the 1934 Marriage Law of the Jiangxi
period (Stacey 1983, K. A. Johnson 1983). Freedom in divorce was no longer a basic
principle (Stacey 1983). Freedom in marriage was compromised. Betrothals were
recognized as legally binding, giving parents more control of their children’s marriages
(K. A. Johnson 1983: 66-67). Women were no longer given priority in children custody
at divorce (K. A. Johnson 1983: 66-67). Some of the local laws and regulations even no
longer outlawed “purchase marriage,” “foster daughter-in-law marriage” and child
betrothal (K. A. Johnson 1983: 67). These retreats helped the Communist Party avoid
alienating the traditional-minded peasants, who formed the majority in the border areas
and whose support was essential to the Party’s survival and victory during wartime (K. A.
Johnson 1983; Stacey 1983). This policy continued into the civil war after the Japanese
surrendered.

22
The border regions refer to the regions occupied by the Communist troops during the Anti-Japanese
War from 1937 to 1945. When the Japanese troops occupied cities and towns in north China, the Chinese
Communist Party and its military forces, the Eighth Route Army, mobilized the Chinese people in north
China to fight against the Japanese occupation. The CCP and its troops built up strongholds in areas along
the borders of the northern provinces of China. These areas were normally located in mountainous areas,
where it was hard for the Japanese to apply its advantageous military power.

33

5. The Communist Victory and China under Mao
The surrender of the Japanese in 1945 did not bring peace to China. The two previous
enemies that had been kept in a fragile United Front by the Japanese invasion soon
resumed their old animosity. A civil war broke out in 1946. Under the leadership of Mao
Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party and its military forces, now called the People’s
Liberation Army, gradually got an upper hand in the war, in spite of the initial military
superiority of the KMT. By spring 1949, a Communist victory was beyond doubt. In
April 1949, the Nationalist capital Nanjing fell to Communist occupation. On October 1,
1949, Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China on
Tiananmen (the Gate of Heavenly Peace), outside the Forbidden City in Beijing. By 1950,
the Communist troops had already occupied most of Mainland China. The KMT and its
nationalist government fled to Taiwan, an island off the coast of southeastern China. The
CCP became the ruling party in Mainland China.

Land Reform
One important factor for the CCP’s victory over the KMT in the civil war was the land
reform (Li Weiguang n.d.). After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the CCP took over
most of the North China, except for the major cities and their surrounding areas. When
the civil war started, the CCP started a land reform in its occupied areas to win support
from poor peasants. (Luo 2005: 64)

34

In the land reform, the Communist Party mainly did two important things. One was to
confiscate land and other properties from the rural rich families and redistribute them to
the poor, making rural communities almost economically homogeneous. The second
thing was to give every rural family a class label that reflected their social and economic
status in the last three years before the land reform. These labels included landlord, rich
peasant, upper middle peasant, lower middle peasant, poor peasant and hired laborer. The
families who had large land holdings and seldom did the farming by themselves were
landlords. Those who had fairly large land holdings but also participated in farming were
rich peasants. Those who owned some land and farmed it by themselves were middle
peasants, among whom the better-off ones were upper middle peasants and the poorer
ones were lower middle peasants. Poor peasants were those who had very little land.
Hired laborers had almost no land and made a living by selling their labor. The landlords
and rich peasants were the targets of attack in the land reform while the poor peasants and
hired laborers were the beneficiaries. The middle peasants were supposed to be
untouched.
23
The class labels did not disappear with the completion of the land reform.
They became political identities, which determined the fate of their bearers in the decades
after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
24

23
For details about the criteria of class categorization and the policy towards different classes, please see
“Zhonggong zhongyang guan yu tudi gaige zhong ge shehui jieji de huafen ji qi daiyu de guiding (caoan)”
(Regulations by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on how to classify and treat
different social classes in the land reform (draft)) in Jifang zhanzheng shiqi tudi gaige wenjian xuanbian
(Selected Documents on Land Reform during the Liberation War) compiled by Zhongyang dangan guan
and published by Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe in 1981. This draft was worked out in 1948.

24
Martin King Whyte (1975) and Philip Huang (1995) discussed in detail class labels and social
stratification under Mao.

35

Seen as the enemies of the new regime, members of the landlord and rich peasant
families who were adults at the land reform were deprived of political rights. Called
“landlord elements” and “rich peasants elements,” they were to be “reformed”
25
under
the supervision of the “revolutionary masses.”
26
Lower middle peasants, poor peasants
and hired laborers were seen as the firm supporters of the new regime. Thus these people
were the favorite of the CCP. According to the original policy, after landlords and rich
peasants worked five years and three years respectively after the land reform, their bad
class labels could be removed (Zhongyang Danganguan 1981: 190 and 195-96). But
this declared policy was never put into practice. For the next three decades, class labels
became an important part of the social and political life in China. Not only did those
“elements” suffer from discrimination but also their descendants.

During the civil war, family reform was a marginal task for the CCP, which was busily
engaged in its war efforts. But the land reform during the war had indirect effect on
family and marriage. Women were given their own shares of land, which made divorce
conceivable. But many women did not really get control of the land allocated to them
(Stacey 1983: 175). In fact, women were not allowed to take away their land in 61% of

25
“Reform” landlords (gai zao di zhu): According to “Draft Regulations on Supervising and Reforming
Landlords” (1951) drafted by East China Bureau of the CCP and forwarded to other parts of China to
follow, landlords should be deprived of political rights for a certain time and be subject to supervision.
They should be forced to work in order to turn them into new citizens of the new society.

26
The Revolutionary Masses referred to those people who were seen by the Party as the supporters of the
regime.

36

the divorce cases examined by a legal committee of a local government (Stacey 1983:
175).

The Collectivization Movement
Although the CCP gave each farming family the ownership of land through the land
reform, it did not want the land to be forever privately owned. Before the poor peasants
had time to fully enjoy the ownership of the land, they were told to give up this
ownership. In fact, even before the land reform, the CCP had already encouraged
peasants to organize small-scale mutual aid teams (huzhu zu) in the areas under its control
(E. Friedman et al 1991). These small mutual aid teams are usually composed of several
families, who pooled part of their privately owned resources, such as land and draft
animals. These families worked together as a single unit. The income was distributed on
the basis of both each family’s labor contribution and the capital investment in the mutual
aid team. Dividends from capital investment were still an important part of the incomes
of individual families.
27

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, small mutual aid teams
sprouted throughout the country with the support and encouragement from the Party State.
From 1951, more and more small-scale mutual aid teams expanded into “elementary
cooperatives” (chuji she) that consisted of many more families. In an elementary

27
For the ownership within and the function of the mutual aid teams (hu zhu zu), please see Feng (2003:
168-72).

37

cooperative, the dividends based on capital investment were reduced. Labor contribution
became the major source of income for its members.
28

In 1955, Mao got impatient with the “slow” steps towards socialism. He wanted a quicker
step in organizing large cooperatives in rural China. He criticized his conservative
colleagues for blocking the way toward socialism. Soon, a “High Tide of Socialism”
29

occurred throughout China. Within just four months, cooperatives (gaoji she) were
established throughout the country (Bo 1991: 400). In north China, each advanced
cooperative normally consisted of all the families in a village. The changes did not only
lie in the size but also in the fact that there would be no longer any dividends from capital
investment. Labor contributions became the only source of income. This type of
productive organization was thought to embody the socialist principle of “more work,
more gains” (duo lao duo de). The ownership of all the major agricultural means of
production, including land, important farm tools and draft animals, etc. was transferred
from the ownership of individual families to that of advanced cooperatives. But even
though an advanced cooperative was the owner of the means of production, the everyday

28
See Feng, Kaiwen (2003: 172-82).

29
“High Tide of Socialism in China” is the title of a pamphlet compiled by the CCP. Published in 1956, it
recorded cases of successful cooperatives to show peasants’ aspiration for socialism. Mao wrote an
introduction to this pamphlet. This pamphlet played a key role in the Collectivization Movement. After the
publication of this pamphlet, a “high tide of socialism” occurred. Collectivization was completed almost
overnight throughout the country. For details, see Bo (1991: 376-82).

38

management of production was the responsibility of smaller groups called “production
teams” (shengchan dui), which were basically the previous elementary cooperatives.
30

The Great Leap Forward and the Famine
The apparent success of the collectivization fueled Mao’s further ambition. He wanted
the whole country to quicken its pace toward a modern and prosperous country. In 1958,
he and his party launched a movement called “the Great Leap Forward.” The major goal
of this movement was to raise the outputs of agriculture and iron production. The latter
was given even more importance by Mao because of its significance in building up
military power. On the orders of Mao and his party, the whole country was mobilized for
the increase of iron production in the second half of the year 1958. Even villagers were
ordered to build furnaces to produce iron, for which they did not have the needed skills.

In order to raise agricultural output within a short time, Mao and the CCP proposed the
combination of the advanced cooperatives into even larger units to make it more
convenient to mobilize labor and resources for large infrastructure improvement projects
(Bo 1991: 728-740). This type of large collective was named “the People’s Commune.”
In October 1958, the people’s communes were established overnight everywhere in rural
areas on the orders of the CCP. A people’s commune was usually a combination of
dozens of the former advanced cooperatives. The size of a people’s commune was

30
For details about the ownership and functions within an advanced cooperative, please see Feng, Kaiwen
(2003: 182-93).

39

extremely large. In my hometown, for example, the county of about 170,000 people was
divided into four people’s communes, with each having about 42,000 people (JXZBW
1994: 88)
31
. Under the People’s Commune, there was little private ownership. A people’s
commune became the owner of almost all the properties under its administration.

A people’s commune was supposed to provide various social services for its members.
Every commune was ordered to set up collective kitchens to provide meals for its
members. Villagers could eat their meals for free. On the other hand, no family was
allowed to cook its own meals. Childcare facilities were also established. With these
housekeeping services provided, women were supposed to be freed of housework and to
be able to participate in production.

With “communism” realized and private ownership almost totally banned, no one cared
anymore about doing farm work. Since no matter how much they produced, they had no
ownership over their products, why should they work hard? As a result, harvests under
collectives were poor even though the favorable weather promised good harvests in most
places of the country in 1958 (Jin 1993).

But the state still had to collect heavy levies from peasants to feed workers in the
dramatically expanded non-agricultural sectors. Peasants were left with insufficient

31
The number of people is my estimation based on the population increase rate. For the figures, see
JXZBW (1994: 633).

40

foodstuff. The poor management of the collective kitchen added to the difficulties. The
year 1960 was the worst time. People were starving all over the country. Because of the
high political pressure for success, no one dared to speak out the truth. They even did not
dare to say they were hungry. Tens of millions of people died in the year 1960. (Cao
2005; Ding 1991; Jiang 1989).
32
This situation lasted until 1961 when Mao gave up the
actual management of the economy. He let his colleagues take care of the messed-up
economy. The collective kitchens were abolished. People were again allowed to cook
their own meals. Each peasant family was given a small piece of land called ziliu di
33

(private plots), all the product of which could be kept by individual families. These
measures alleviated the famine.

But Mao would not let his colleagues completely get rid of the people’s commune system
that he favored so much. The basic structure of the people’s commune was kept, even
though the size was reduced. Take Song Family Village as an example. The people’s
commune that Song Family Village was in consisted of about10,000 people in the early

32
Different scholars gave different numbers of life losses during the famine from 1959 to 1962: Jiang
Zhenghua and Li Nan (1986) 16.97 million, Coale (1984) 22 million, Jin Hui (1993) 27.91 million and Cao
Shuji (2005) 32.5 million.

33
Private plots (zi liu di) played a very important role in village life under Mao. Since the output in the
collective plots was very low, the private plots provided indispensable supplements to the food stock of
villagers. The harvest from the private plots solely belonged to individual families and no taxes needed to
be paid for them. Villagers spent much effort in cultivating their private lots. The best fertilizer was applied
to the private plots instead of the collective plots. During the collective period, it was very easy to see
which part of the land was a private plot. Crops in the private plots grew much better than these in the
collective plots. Policy on private plots varied from time to time. But except for the couple of years during
the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s to the early 1960s, each village family was allowed to keep a
small private plot in Song Family Village.

41

1960s, divided into 23 brigades, each of which was a village. A brigade consisted of
several production teams, which had about 100 to 200 people. The ownership of the
means of production was given back to the brigades. The everyday management of
production was given back to the production team. This system lasted until the early
1980s.

In the following chapters, I will use “the collective” as a general term to refer to the
systems of collective ownership, including the elementary cooperative, the advanced
cooperatives and also the people’s commune. The period from 1956 to 1982 will be
referred to as “the collective period.”

The Cultural Revolution
Class struggle did not end with the completion of the land reform in the early 1950s.
Class enemies had to be put under close watch of the state and the “revolutionary
masses,” supporters of the Communist regime. The list of enemies, which originally
included landlords and rich peasants, was expanded to include counter-revolutionaries,
who either had served the KMT regime or had taken any political actions against the new
regime, and rightists, who got the label because of their complaints about the Communist
Party and its officials in the 1957 anti-rightist movement that had produced more than
550,000 victims

(Bo 1991: 619; Zhu 2004: 647).

42

The first few years after 1949 were not so bad for most of the class enemies, or at least
for their family members. But the atmosphere of class struggle got more and more intense
after the anti-rightist movement in 1957. Even the children of these bad class families
were affected. Schools and colleges restricted or denied the admission of children from
these families. Good job opportunities were denied to them.
34

This discrimination culminated during the Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966
to 1976. The Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao in order to purge officials who
were not following his political line.
35
But Mao did not reveal his real intention at first.
Answering Mao’s call to rebel, the student Red Guards
36
attacked school and college
teachers, especially those who were from bad class families. The bad class people in
general also became the targets of attack. Only after the young people were aroused did
Mao show that his real targets were his rivals within the Party. In 1967, many officials,
including Liu Shaoqi, who had been second only to Mao in power and thus was the most

34
Please see Martin King Whyte (1975) and Philip Huang (1995) for detailed information on social
stratification under Mao.

35
There are different interpretations on the causes of the Cultural Revolution. Bo (1991: 1128-36) gave a
detailed description of the precursors to the Cultural Revolution from an insider’s perspective. From his
description it can be seen that the conflict between Mao and Liu Shaoqi over power was an important cause
for this political movement, if not the only cause.

36
The “Red Guard” was originally the name of a small group of high school students in the Affiliated
School o f Qinghua University. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, they rose against the leaders of
the school. They wrote a letter to Mao, who gave them a reply and praised them for their “revolutionary”
actions. From then, “Red Guard” became the official name of all groups who rose to the call of Mao in the
Cultural Revolution. The original “Red Guards” were mostly children of high officials of the CCP. After
parents of many of them became the targets of the Cultural Revolution, these “Red Guards” fell into
oblivion. They were replaced by the “Rebels” (zaofan pai), who on many occasions also called themselves
“Red Guards.” For details, see Xiu, Youyu (1999) and Liu, Qingfeng (1996).

43

dangerous rival to Mao, were removed from office by Mao’s rebels (zaofan pai).
37
But it
was unexpected that the competition for power led to fighting among the rebels
themselves. In 1968, Mao had to call in military forces to restore order. The military
forces, under the leadership of Mao’s new deputy Lin Biao, became the most important
political force in the country. But Mao soon got nervous with the power of Lin Biao. He
began to look for ways to get rid of Lin and his followers. Mao won the struggle again. In
1971, Lin Biao was killed in an airplane crash when fleeing China. His close followers
were purged.

After Lin Biao died, the Cultural Revolution lost momentum. People were disillusioned
with what had happened. Many people no longer believed what the Party and the Great
Leader
38
said. Mao died in 1976. Less than a month after his death, his close followers,
including his wife Jiang Qing, were arrested. The Party declared an end to the Cultural
Revolution.
39

The decade of the Cultural Revolution was a social arena where people played different
roles at different times following the direction of Chairman Mao, who showed his
excellent skills at pitting one faction against another. Today’s persecutors might become

37
Although many “rebels” (zao fan pai) also called themselves “Red Guards,” they were different from the
original “Red Guards” in that they were mostly from common family background. Mao used them to attack
the incumbent high officials of the CCP.

38
The Great Leader (weida lingxiu) was the title that Mao was officially addressed during the Cultural
Revolution.

39
For details of the process of the Cultural Revolution, please see Zheng, Qian et al. (2003).

44

victims tomorrow and today’s victims might later become the persecutors. Comedies and
tragedies were staged one after another. But there were some people who were doomed to
play only the role of victims. They were the bad class people. No matter what political
movement happened and who came to power, they were destined to be persecuted. Many
people who came to power used the persecution of these victims as a way to show their
firm revolutionary stance in class struggle. In many places, the bad class people were
humiliated and tortured. In some places, they were even all killed (Song 2002). During
the Cultural Revolution these people lived in constant fear and apprehension, never sure
when disasters would befall them.

6. Marriage Practice under Mao
The 1950 Marriage Law and its Implementation
On May 1, 1950 the People’s Republic of China promulgated its first law: the Marriage
Law. This showed the Communist Party’s continued commitment to family reform. The
first chapter of the law reaffirmed the principles of sexual equality and freedom of
marriage, outlawing arranged marriage, bigamy, concubinage and child betrothal. It gave
widows the right to remarry without interference from others. Divorce was to be granted
automatically if both the two parties agreed, but if only one party requested it, mediation
was needed before granting the divorce.
40

40
For details of the 1950 Marriage Law, please see Meijer (1971).

45

After the promulgation of the Marriage Law, the Party and the government launched
campaigns from 1950 to 1953 for its implementation. Many scholars have acknowledged
the radical efforts by the Party State to implement the law in the early 1950s (K. A.
Johnson 1983; Parish and Whyte 1978; Stacey 1983; C. K. Yang 1959; M. Wolf 1985).
The most noticeable change as a result of the implementation of the law was the rising
divorce rate (C. K. Yang 1959: 69-73; Parish and Whyte 1978: 161; K. A. Johnson 1983:
117-118; Stacey 1983: 178; M. Wolf 1985: 17). Most of the divorces were initiated by
women (C. K. Yang 1959: 71; Parish and Whyte 1978: 192-193; K. A. Johnson 1983:
118; Stacey 1983: 178; M. Wolf 1985: 17). As a result, peasants referred to the new
marriage law as the “divorce law” (Stacey 1983: 178). Women’s efforts to break away
from unhappy marriages met with fierce resistance from “husbands, in-laws, and cadres”
(Stacey 1978: 178). Some women were driven to suicide or even murdered (Stacey 1978:
178).

While many scholars found that women in cities were more ready to seek divorce than
village women because peasants were more traditionally minded, Diamant (2000) had an
opposite view. He found that “the rural community fostered both legal strategies and
cultures that facilitated taking advantage of the Marriage Law and of Communist political
and legal institutions” (Diamant 2000a: 9). Because of this, “many people did not view
marriage as a lifetime proposition and that many couples informally separated and
formally divorced (sometimes with surprising ease) in rural areas throughout the 1950s
and the 1960s” (Diamant 2000a: 9). But one limitation in his research was that he mainly

46

observed divorces in the suburbs of major cities. Since these areas, close to urban centers,
might have been influenced by the cities, what he had discovered might not hold for the
vast rural areas remote from urban centers.

The rising divorce rate did not mean that women had gained equal rights. The patriline
was still empowered because in both the disposition of family property and children
custody, the local officials often favored men in cases involving a divorce or the
remarriage of a widow (Parish and Whyte 1978: 195; Stacey 1983: 220).

The government stepped back from its original aggressive stance after the mid-1950s,
claiming that the problems in traditional family and marriage reflected “cultural and
economic backwardness,” which could only be overcome in the long run together with
social and economic changes (K. A. Johnson 1983: 129-130). Since 1953, the CCP has
never resumed any large-scale marriage reform effort (K. A. Johnson 1983: 131).
Adopting an orthodox Marxist view on family and the problem of the liberation of
women, the CCP expected the goals of family reform to be achieved in the natural course
of the social and economic changes in the future (K. A. Johnson 1983: 220-221).

The Marriage Law was intended not only to help to destroy the traditional family but also
to establish the new type of family, which was essential to the construction of the new
society (Meijer 1971: 78). Thus, the stability of the new family was seen as important as
reforming the traditional family. Different emphasis on these two tasks in different

47

periods led to different policies on family and marriage. While the emphasis on family
reform in the early 1950s led to the rising divorce rate, the government adopted a policy
that discouraged divorce from the mid-1950s (K. A. Johnson 1983: 127), because leaders
of the CCP “became increasingly concerned with stabilizing the bases of family and
community solidarity upon which they hoped to build new cooperative village structures”
(K. A. Johnson 1983: 213). The result was that in rural communities, divorce for women
was still socially unacceptable and a divorced woman found it difficult to remarry in the
following decades (W. Zhang 2002: 162).

In addition to the rising divorce rate, the 1950 Marriage Law and its implementation
produced some other effects. There were very few “foster daughter-in-law” marriages
after the 1950s. Child betrothal also almost disappeared. Concubinage no longer existed.

The Socialist State, the Collectivization and the Power Relation in Family
The Communist Party hoped to solve the problems in family and marriage in the natural
course of the social, political, and economic changes. Scholars have found both change
and continuity in family during the decades of collective economy and highly
politicalized social life. C. K. Yang (1959: 97-100) found that in various political
movements, the CCP liked to recruit young people and put them in leading positions.
Seniority was no longer a source of authority. The young people were no longer
unconditionally obedient to their seniors. Women’s position in the family had been

48

empowered with the new marriage law emphasizing the equality between husband and
wife (C. K. Yang 1959: 113). The women’s movement and the campaigns for literacy
and education for women all helped to raise women’s status (C. K. Yang 1959: 115).

Collectivization also helped to weaken the patriarchal authority of parents (Parish and
Whyte 1978: 209-221; Stacey 1983: 225-227; and 2003: 103-108), with less
subordination of the daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law and perhaps of sons to fathers.
Daughters-in-law had a stronger position in conflict with their mothers-in-law (Parish and
Whyte 1978: 216-217). Since individuals earned their own work points
41
and therefore
contributed to the family income, the young, aware of their contributions, became less
respectful of their parents (Yan 1997 and 2003).

But social continuity still existed. During the collective period, the grain and cash earned
by family members were given in a whole sum to the family head instead of to the
individuals. This enhanced the patriarchal power of the seniors in the family (W. Zhang
2002: 161). The juniors were still expected to respect the aged (Parish and Whyte 1978:
211-213). Husbands and wives still had unequal power and burdens (Parish and Whyte
204-205). Having women work outside home did not necessarily contribute to sex
equality, contrary to the classic Marxist view that women could only be emancipated

41
Work point is a unit commonly adopted throughout China in recording individuals’ contribution of labor
to collective farming during the collective period from the late 1950s till the early 1980s. In Song Family
Village that I have studied, an average adult’s full day of labor would be recorded as worth of 10 work
points. Most of the time, women would get 8 work points for a day’s work. Juveniles got even less
according to their age. A significant part of the income was distributed on the basis of work points that
people earned. For a detailed account, please see Chapter Two of this dissertation.

49

through the participation in production (Parish and Whyte 1978: 246). Weiguo Zhang
(2002: 161) argued that the collective made women rely heavily on their husbands and
their marital families. Kay Ann Johnson attributed the continuity of inequality between
sexes to the existence of the patrilocal exogamous marriage patterns, which “give
structural substance and support” to these practices (1983: 215-216).

Freedom of Marriage under Socialism
With the slight weakening of the patriarchal power of parents, some changes in mate
selection also occurred. The change of power structure led to “the prevailing compromise
between the generations on marriage arrangement” (Stacey 1983: 225). Margery Wolf
(1983: 173) found that in the countryside the boy and the girl were allowed to get to
know each other before their wedding, even though arranged marriages were still the
common practices. In their study, Potter and Potter (1990: 197) found that marriages
were still formed without the bride and groom fully acquainted but the potential parties
were given the power to veto any marriage arrangement they did not like. The traditional
custom still prevented young people from selecting mates by themselves but there had
been an increase in such marriages among the young through the decades since 1949
(Potter and Potter 1990: 200).

Yunxiang Yan in his 2003 book Private Live under Socialism gave more credit to the
Communist regime in promoting freedom of marriage. He found a shift toward free-

50

choice matches over the five decades of the Communist rule (62). He regarded the period
from 1946 to 1962 as one of the rise of youth autonomy (47). He admitted that the state
efforts to enforce the marriage law did not produce significant impact on spouse selection
(48), but the state-sponsored program was successful in the ideological realm, leaving the
potential for future changes (51). He argued that collective work and education provided
youth with the opportunity to develop romantic love. He saw 1963-1983 as a period of
the rise of romantic encounters (52-54).

Marriage Transactions
Marriage transaction was an important way for parents to control the marriages of their
children (Gates 1996; Goody 1973; Yan 2005). For family reformers in China, it was
thought necessary to abolish marriage transactions to ensure the freedom of marriage.
Brideprice, often called “buying and selling marriage,” was seen as subordinating women
to patriarchal oppression. The practice of marriage transactions had been under vehement
attack since the New Culture Movement. Reflecting this legacy, the 1950 Marriage Law
prohibited “the exaction of money or gifts in connection with marriages” (Meijer 1971:
300).

But through the decades since 1950, such practices did not disappear. Parish and Whyte
(1978: 185) found in Kuangtung that the collective economy brought about a shift
towards a pure brideprice exchange, contrary to what the Party policy expected. The

51

major part of the bride-price was kept by parents of the bride for the marriage of their son
(Parish and Whyte 1978: 185). They assumed that this was due to the increase of the
value of women’s labor. By paying the brideprice, the man’s family acquired the
woman’s labor (Parish and Whyte 1978: 187).

What Kay Ann Johnson (1983) found in Wukung, a village in North China, was opposite
to what Parish and Whyte had found in Kuangtung. She saw that Although women in
Wukung also had intense participation in the labor force, brideprice diminished in value
and incidence through the decades of the Communist rule because it was seen as a ‘feudal
practice’ signifying selling daughters, but at the same time, “dowries are still openly and
proudly brought by a bride at marriage” (K. A. Johnson 1983: 210). These dowries were
considered gifts from parents in compensation for the labor earnings that the young
women had contributed to their natal families before marriage. She thought that the
difference in practices resulted from the difference in the traditional customs in these two
places. While the traditional marriage transaction was dowry dominant in Wukung, that in
Kuangtung was brideprice dominant. This contrast showed that “people tend to adapt to
structural changes through the prisms of old values and behavior” (K. A. Johnson 1983:
211).

Margery Wolf (1985: 179) disagreed with Parish and Whyte’s assertion that women’s
participation in labor force caused the increase of brideprice. She found that both
brideprice and dowry increased. The brideprice was returned to the groom’s side in the

52

form of dowry. Besides that the bride’s side also contributed to the dowry out of their
own pockets.

The existence of brideprice practices was seen by Kay Ann Johnson (1983: 212) as
reinforcing “women’s continuing subordinate position in family and society” because
they ‘symbolize the “exchange of women” between patrilineally defined families which
continues to occur at marriage in very real and meaningful ways’. The payment of
brideprice may also “infringe on women’s rights” because that made divorce more
difficult for women (K. A. Johnson 1983: 212).

From the 1950s to the 1960s, the groom’s family in Xiajia of Northeastern China
provided betrothal money, which would be controlled by the bride’s parents and might be
used by her parents to finance her brother’s marriage (Yan 1996: 182). In the mid-1960s,
the groom’s family had to spend a sum of money to buy goods, which would be given to
the bride for her to take back to the groom’s family at the wedding (Yan 1996: 183).
From the late 1960s, the groom’s family had to hand to the bride a sum of money for her
ritual services at the wedding (Yan 1996: 184). Yan also found that there was a trend
from the 1950s to the 1970s for the bride’s parents to allow her to take an increasing part
of the bride wealth to her new home (1996: 184).

A special kind of marriage transaction that Cohen (2005: 111-12) found popular during
the collective period in a village in Hebei was the exchange marriage (huanqin). In such a

53

marriage, what was used by a family to exchange for a bride was neither money nor
goods but the daughter of the family. In a two family exchange, family A gave out a
daughter to marry the son of family B. In return, a daughter of the Family B will also
marry the son of family A. Neither dowry nor brideprice was needed. In a three way
exchange, Family A’s daughter marries Family B’s son, family B’s daughter marries
Family C’s son and Family C’s daughter marries Family A’s son. According to Cohen
(2005: 111), such marriages were adopted by families with many sons and daughters.

Political Status and Marriage
In Mao’s China, rural communities were on the one hand characterized by an internal
economic egalitarianism, but on the other hand had a sharp stratification based on
political status as a legacy of the land reform (Diamant 2000a: 7; Murphy 2001: 223-24;
Whyte 1975: 699; Parish and Whyte 1978: 30-33; Stacey 1983: 225; P. C. Huang 1995:
127). This social stratification affected the marriage practices. Diamant (2000: 7) found
that the good class people would try to avoid fraternization and marriage to bad class
people. Similarly, Stacey observed that a girl’s family might not be willing to marry their
daughter into a bad class family, while the good class families found their class status
made them easier to find wives for their sons (1983: 224).

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Family Reform Uncompleted?
Since the CCP from its start put family reform and the liberation of women on its
political agenda, great changes in family, marriage and the status of women were
expected after decades of the Communist rule. But when China opened its door to the
west, many scholars were disappointed with what they saw. Representative of this
disappointment were several works by feminist scholars (K. A. Johnson 1983; Andors
1983; Stacey 1983; M. Wolf 1985). They used the words “uncompleted” (K. A. Johnson
1983: 215) and “postponed” (M. Wolf 1985) to describe the failure they saw in family
reform and liberation of women under the Communist rule. What Margery Wolf (1985)
found in her study were representative of these “failures” scholars found: discrimination
against women was still prevalent in working places (78); women were paid less for the
same amount of work in villages (110-11); women were still expected to be quiet and
obedient (112); parents still played an indispensable role in arranging children’s
marriages (181); there were still negative feelings about the remarriage of a widow and
her children were still commonly seen as belonging to the family of her dead husband
(202); the uterine family was still important for married women even in cities (207);
daughters-in-law were not yet managing the household while the mothers-in-law still had
much power (237).

Kay Ann Johnson (1983: 220-21) found two major causes for such a failure. One is that
the success of the revolution was based on the support of the vast peasant population. The

55

Party had to make a compromise between the reformist intellectuals and the traditional-
minded peasants. The other reason was that the Communist Party’s orthodoxy Marxist
view of family reform and women’s status made them put economic transformation at a
higher priority than family reform and the liberation of women, assuming that the social
and economic transformation would automatically alter the family institutions and
improve the status of women.

Stacey also attributed this failure to the “peasant base” of the Chinese Communist
revolution (1983: 249), but she recognized more agency in the patriarchal tradition of the
peasants, because “China’s traditional peasant family system played a crucial role in
shaping the revolutionary process and patterns of socialist development in the PRC”
(1983: 8). She thought the peasants, who experienced family crisis due to the economic
and political decline of the Chinese empire in the late 1800s and the early 1900s (1983:
86-101), had the desire to realize their patriarchal familial ideals through revolution
(1983: 105). Thus, “a successful resolution of the peasant family crisis became a crucial
task for the socialist revolution in China” (Stacey 1983: 249). The CCP had to adapt its
revolutionary goal to incorporate the peasants’ familial ideals. The result of this strategy
was a new moral economy that was basically patriarchal. The reciprocal interactions
between patriarchal family and Chinese revolution produced what Stacey called “new
democratic patriarchy” (1983: 251).

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Margery Wolf argued, “the leadership did hope to relieve women and young people of
the patriarchal burden but were defeated because they did not recognize their own
cultural blinders” (1985: 261). She asserted, “social planners in China, alas, have ignored
the fact that patriarchal thinking, the ideology of the men’s family system, pervades every
aspect of Chinese society and continues to inhibit women’s full participation in political
as well as economic life” (1985: 189). Even the sporadic campaigns against such
patriarchal ideology did not bring much change. “As a result, depressingly little has
changed in rural domestic organization” (M. Wolf 1985: 189).

Although having different focuses in their researches, Stacey, K. A. Johnson and M. Wolf
have all attributed the failure in family reform and women’s liberation to the weaknesses
in the Party’s policy. They all shared the same assumption, explicitly or inexplicitly, that,
with a better policy, the Party and the state might have achieved the goals of family
reform and women’s liberation.

7. Marriage Practices in the Post-Mao Reform
Revolution Ended: Post-Mao Reform
The death of Mao in 1976 made political changes possible in China. Two years after
Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping and his practical-oriented colleagues gained dominating
power within the Party. The CCP decided to turn the focus from revolution and class
struggle to economic development. This laid the ground for the new reform policies in

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the following years. In villages, different forms of responsibility system were
implemented to raise productive efficiency. Production teams were divided into smaller
groups. Peasants were allowed to seek nonagricultural employment. By 1982, most
collectives throughout the country were disbanded. Land was allocated to individual
families on a per capita basis. Although officially land was still not privately owned,
individual families were given the absolute right in the management of their small farms.

With the dismantling of the collective, the household again became a productive unit.
Peasants gained freedom in the management of their small farms and the allocation of
their time and labor. Not long after the collectives were gone, many peasants began to
seek employment outside agriculture. The expanding economy of the country provided
many such opportunities. These changes brought about a relative prosperity in the
following decades. New houses were built. Many consumer goods entered peasant
households.

Power Relation in Family
Many scholars found that the shift of power from the older generation to the younger
generation continued during the reform era (Judd 1994; Yan 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang
2002). Judd (1994: 235) argued that the loss of exclusive control of economic resources
by the senior male household head weakened his patriarchal power in the household. This
change favored the younger members, both male and female, in the household, who

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gained more autonomy even within a stem family. Yan (1997: 202) found that this shift
in power was reflected in the fact that most of these stem families were managed by the
younger generation, although the older generation still kept the nominal position of
family head. In his 2003 book, Yan described a dramatic change of power relationship
between the older generation and the younger generation, which he called “the collapse
of the notion of filial piety” (Yan 2003: 182). According to Yan (2003: 168-71), not only
was the younger generation no longer obedient to the older generation, it was also not
uncommon for older people to be abused by their unfilial children. The support of elders
was no longer taken for granted. Parents had to continually invest in their relationship
with their married children to guarantee the support in their old age. Yan (2003) found
many factors contributing to this crisis. There was no legal support for filial piety (182-
83); public opinion was silent about it (184-85). The symbolic world supporting it
collapsed: ancestral worship almost disappeared; people no longer believed in a powerful
Heaven that could punish the evil and reward the virtuous; the funeral reform forced
people to cremate the dead (185-88). No less important was the fact that the older
generation no longer had any property to pass on to their children due to the deprivation
by the state through decades of socialism (188-89).

Together with the shift of power from the older generation to the younger generation was
a shift of the core relationship from that between father and son to that between husband
and wife (Yan 1997: 206; W. Zhang 2002: 161-167). “Older parents, once their children
marry and form procreative units, cannot stop the occurrence of emotional

59

nuclearisation” (W. Zhang 2002: 167). The result was that most young men stood on the
side of their wives when there were conflicts between the wives and the parents (Yan
1997: 204-05 and 2003 106-107; W. Zhang 2002: 162). Yan (1997: 209) called this shift
“the triumph of conjugality,” attributing it to the combined working of the increase of
bridewealth and the erosion of patriarchal power since the collective period. Sara L.
Friedman (2005: 322) encountered a similar flourishing of marital intimacy in the 1990s
in her research at Huidong in Southeastern China. But she saw it as an unintended
consequence of the meeting of the market forces in a more open society with a rigid state
policy of marital registration.

Croll (1983: 41) found that although the new responsibility system benefits women by
raising their living standards, it also created some new problems for women. The
individual peasant household again became the major production unit, in which women
were more likely to be subject to patriarchal control. This view was challenged by Judd
who found that “women’s organized turn toward household-based enterprises in the
1980s” was “more advantageous to women than employment even in relatively well-paid
rural industry” (Judd 1994: 236), as a result of the power shift from the older generation
to the young within the family.

Weiguo Zhang (2002: 162) found that the patriarchal power of husband over wife and
mother-in-law over daughter-in-law had been further eroded in the reform period.
Women have gained much bargaining power. He attributed this to the changes in

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marriage practices in the village. The increased cooperation between married daughters
and their natal families guaranteed that they had support from their natal families easily if
they needed. A woman was also empowered by “the increasing dowry and the trend
toward the equalization of the dowry-brideprice ratio” (W. Zhang 2002: 163) because she
also contributed significantly to her new conjugal family. The consequences of the
increasing bargaining power of women were that many women controlled their family
income and played larger roles in decision making. But Weiguo Zhang (2002: 164) also
found that in rich and poor families, men had more patriarchal power because they had
more control over family resources.

Yan (2003: 102) also saw women’s larger contributions to the functioning of their
families as an important cause for the increasing power of women. In addition to that,
the following factors also contributed to the increase of women’s power within family:
the high cost of marriage, the wife’s threat of divorce and the government’s support for
women’s rights (Yan 2003: 102). But he found that the most important factor was
women’s active role in struggling for their rights in various aspects of life (Yan 2003:
110).

Freedom of Marriage
The way to contract a marriage reflected the power relationship between generations and
also between sexes. Croll (1983: 76) found that in the early years of the reform era,

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arranged marriages were still a very common form of marriage particularly in the
countryside. This was because there were few chances for young people to meet and
choose their own marriage partners. She also saw the existence of betrothal gift as
limiting young people’s opportunity to make their own choices (Croll 1983: 79).

Weiguo Zhang (2000: 65-66) found in his research that both men and women had more
control over their marriages, but they still could not choose their spouses independent of
their parents. Women were less independent because they were more vulnerable if they
married without their parents’ consent. Loss of ties to their natal families meant the loss
of the last resort in case of trouble in her marriage: to return to her natal home (W. Zhang
2000: 65-66). Some very poor families had to resort to exchange marriages (W. Zhang
2000: 60 and 2002: 165). He found that such a marriage deprived a girl of her freedom of
marriage, since when she already had a romance, she either had to break with her boy
friend and obey her parents’ arrangement, or had to run away (2002: 165). But many of
them would be caught and persuaded to return to their natal families (2002: 165).

Yan (2003) was more optimistic about young people’s control over their marriages. He
traced the evolution of mate selection in the village he studied. There was stagnation in
the rise of youth autonomy in choosing their spouses during the 1980s and the 1990s
compared with earlier times (Yan 2003: 62-63). Extending the idea of romance to the
romantic interactions between boys and girls whose marriages were initiated by parents,
Yan found by the end of the 1990s a dramatic increase of romance in courtship, which he

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called “a romantic revolution in courtship” (2003: 83). Young people had much more
autonomy in determining their marriages. Even pre-marital sex was tolerated (Yan 2003:
83-84).

Marriage Transactions
After decades of socialism, marriage transactions were still an important part of marriage
practice in rural communities. During the post-Mao reform, the amount of marriage
transactions increased (Croll 1983: 85; Harrell 1992: 335; Siu 1993: 166; Murphy 2001:
231; and W. Zhang 2000: 62-63). Croll (1983: 80) argued that the value of labor
contributed to the rise of betrothal gift (brideprice). In the Pearl River Delta, Siu (1993)
found a contrast in marriage practices between the town and the villages in the sands, a
pattern very similar to that of the periods before 1949, with the dowry common in the
former and brideprice practiced in the latter. But she denied this as a simple restoration of
the traditional pattern. Instead, she saw this as the result of the working of “several
contradictory trends that had changed the meaning of the family on the one level and
reinforced it at another” (1993: 187). In Xiajia village in Northeastern China, more and
more families paid dowries out of their own pockets for their daughters’ marriages since
the 1980s, and thus, there was no longer flow of wealth from the groom’s family to the
bride’s family (Yan 1996: 190). Bride wealth became a form of pre-mortem inheritance
(Yan 1997: 206 amd 2003: 156-57). What was worthy of note was Yan’s discovery that
marriage transactions helped to erode parental power instead of enhancing it (Yan 2003:

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158). In a village in Hebei, Weiguo Zhang found the “increase of dowry and the trend
toward the equalization of the dowry-brideprice ratio” (2002: 163). But there was a social
stratification in the practice of marriage transactions. The poor had to pay high
brideprices while the rich had more options in deciding whether they should pay more or
less (W. Zhang 2000: 63).

8. My Analytical Framework
From the reviews above, it can be seen that many scholars have contributed to the
understanding of the changes in family and marriage in China under the Communist rule.
Their works let us see that the Communist Party tried to reform the traditional family and
marriage but did not achieve its goals in its first thirty years of rule (S. L. Friedman 2005;
Judd 1994; Parish and Whyte 1983; K. A. Johnson 1983; Stacey 1983; Potter and Potter
1990; M. Wolf 1985; W. Zhang 2002), even though collectivization eroded the power of
parents (Stacey 1983; Yan 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang 2002) and women had a better life
(Parish and Whyte 1978). Arranged marriages were still common in the rural areas
(Potter and Potter 1990; Stacey 1983; M. Wolf 1983), but they were often the result of
compromises between parents and children (Judd 1994). In many places, property
transaction in marriages never disappeared but changed in response to the social changes
(Siu 1993; Yan 1997, 2003 and 2005). Significant changes happened during the reform
era since the 1980s (S. L. Friedman 2005; Yan 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang 2000 and 2002),
with the older generation losing their patriarchal power and the younger generation

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getting more power (Yang 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang 2000 and 2002). The young people
had more freedom in marriage (Yan 1997 and 2003). Women gained more power within
the household (Judd 1994; Yan 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang 2000). But the young people,
especially women, were still not completely free in marriage (W. Zhang 2000 and 2002).
Marriage transactions have increased since the beginning of the post-Mao reform (Croll
1983; Harrell 1992; Murphy 2001; Siu 1993; Yan 1997, 2003 and 2005; Zhang 2000),
but marriage transactions can empower women (Yan 1997 and 2003; W. Zhang 2000 and
2002).

Although different scholars had different emphasis on their researches, and their
discoveries varied accordingly, a general picture could be synthesized from these
scholarly works. That is, external forces, either the powerful socialist state during the
Maoist era or the market during the post-Mao reform, empowered the young and the
female and liberated (or has not yet liberated) them from the domination and oppression
by the seniors (typically the parents) in family and marriage. This approach, which might
be called “the liberation approach,” emphasized the agency of the external forces, either
the socialist state or the market, in the transformation of family and marriage. Even the
feminist scholars who thought the liberation was not completed assumed that with a
better policy the socialist state might have done a better job. Although some recent
scholars (Yan 1997, 2003 and 2005; W. Zhang 2000 and 2001; S. L. Friedman 2005)
emphasized the agency of the young and the female in the transformation, the young and

65

the female were still be seen as empowered by the external forces, such as the state policy
and the market forces. Thus, these works still fall into the liberation approach.

Although works in this approach have contributed fruitful insights into the understanding
of the transformation in family and marriage in Communist China, there is one important
aspect missing from the picture: the role of parents in the transformational process. Seen
as representing patriarchal authority in the traditional family and marriage system,
parents were given no active role in this approach. They were seen either as resisting the
changes or accepting the changes passively. Since both the state (or the market) and the
young (male or female) are agents against patriarchy, there are naturally only two
possibilities in the transformation of family and marriage. One is that the family and
marriage system remains as patriarchal as before, when the forces working against
patriarchy are insufficient. The other is that the system becomes less patriarchal, when
the forces against patriarchy are strong enough. But the actual picture might be much
more complex than that. In my research, I found that patriarchy could become stronger
under the Communist rule when parents exerted more patriarchal power than before in
arranging their children’s marriages under some circumstances. That is, there is a third
possibility in the transformation of the family and marriage system. For example, I found
that during the famine in the early 1960s, many families sold their daughters in exchange
for a small amount of sweet potatoes, which were normally considered the worst food. At
the same time families with food hurried to buy brides for their sons. The large number of
such transactions was quite rare even before the Communist rule. In these transactions,

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parents had to exert more patriarchal power over their children in face of this man-made
famine, even though the state had tried to liberate the young and female from the
patriarchal power of their parents. During the Cultural Revolution, parents of the bad-
class families had to exert more patriarchal power to force their daughters to accept
exchange marriages, which had never previously existed in the community I studied.
Only when we put parents back as active agents could we understand such phenomena,
because it was just the active manipulations of the parents that made these changes
happen.

To understand the changes in family and marriage during the reform era, the active role
of the parents is also very important. From the descriptions in the existing scholarly
works, we know that the power and authority of parents have been eroded since the 1980s.
The young men and women have gained more power. Their parents have become the
victims of such changes. In my research I found a similar phenomenon. But how shall we
understand such a change? Are the parents merely passive victims of such changes? My
answer is no. In fact, parents have actively contributed to such changes. In order to get
their sons married, parents compete with each other to attract brides. That gives young
girls opportunities to extract wealth from the pockets of their future in-laws. Eventually,
the grooms’ parents are deprived of almost all the properties they have. Penniless and
powerless, they have to rely on their sons and daughters-in-law when they are old.
Parents play an active role in the process of their own deprivation, driven by the

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patriarchal ideology of continuing their family lines. For this reason, I can say that they
are the victims of their patriarchal ideology.

After putting parents back into the scene as active agents, we still needed to know how
they were motivated in their actions. Bourdieu’s practice theory provides a good
theoretical model to account for it. The most important concept in Bourdieu’s model is
the notion of habitus defined as

Systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to
function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and
structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively “regulated” and
“regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively
adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express
mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively
orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor.
(Bourdieu 1977: 72).

Habitus is the site for “the internalization of the externality and externalization of the
internality” (Bourdieu 1977: 72). Habitus is mostly formed in the early experience of
agents, by internalizing the objective social structure they are in into mental dispositions.
These dispositions, reflecting the earlier objective social structure, serve as the principles
that generate the future practices of the actor and at the same time can also be
transformed in the agents’ future experiences. We can say that actors are motivated and
regulated by their habitus in their practices.

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One problem with the notion of habitus in Bourdieu’s model is his emphasis on the
unconscious nature of habitus. That is, the dispositions that compose the habitus are seen
as unconscious knowledge of the objective social structure, which social actors apply
unconsciously in generating social practices. This compromises the agency of the social
actors. It reduces social actors into numb executors of the principles that they
unconsciously possess in their habitus. I think many social practices call for conscious
efforts of the actors. Social actors are not robots that acted according to programs that
they themselves were unconscious of. Social practice is a process in which social actors
have to make decisions in face of many options and choices. Sometimes, people may be
able to made decisions just out of their “feel.” They feel that their decision is right but do
not consciously think about why it is right. This might be the case of the working of the
unconscious knowledge. But in most cases, people have to resort to their conscious
knowledge of their social situations. They have to compare carefully which option is
better before they can make the decision that they think is right. This is just where their
agency lies in social practices. The conscious knowledge was much more important in
generating social practices than what Bourdieu thought. Thus, I would like to expand the
concept of habitus to incorporate both the unconscious and the conscious knowledge of
the objective social structure possessed by actors. An actor is thus a knowing agent, both
consciously and unconsciously. With this expansion of the notion of habitus, actors are
given full agency in their practices.

Field is another notion in Bourdieu’s model that is useful in my research. It is defined as,

69

A network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions. These
positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they
impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential
situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital)
whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the
field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (Bourdieu and
Wacquant 1992: 97).

To put it simply, a field is a social space structured by power relations between different
social positions. Such positions are defined by the actual or potential access to species of
capital. In each field, there will be profits at stake that are specific to this field. These
stakes are the objects that agents struggle for in their practices.

Difference among agents in access to specific kinds of capital defines the structure of a
certain field. Although “capital” is a concept borrowed from Marxism, Bourdieu
extended its use beyond the field of economy to refer to any power or resources, whether
economic, cultural, social or symbolic, so long as the possession of them can make a
difference to the positions of agents in the power structure of a field (Swartz 1997: 73).

Practices are carried out in a certain field (the field of marriage in my research), which
has a certain objective social structure in the form of the different possession of capital
among agents. In these practices, agents are motivated and regulated by their habitus,
which is a reflection of the earlier objective structure in the field. But in this process, they
are not only constrained and regulated by their habitus but also by the current objective

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structure in the field. Practice can transform or reproduce the objective social structure. In
this process, the habitus might be transformed to reflect the changed social structure.

In my model, parents and young men and women practice in the field of family and
marriage. They have different habitus, endowed with different power and given different
access to resources (capital). The state and the market, as institutions external of the field
of family and marriage, do not practice within this field. But they could exert their
influences by giving parents and the young different access to capital, thus giving the
potential for changing the structure of the field. For example, the state, with the Marriage
Law, gave young men and women more access to state support, which can be seen as a
kind of social capital. In the reform era young people had more opportunities to earn
money. That means the market gave young people more access to economic capital. But
these do not necessarily lead to changes in the field of marriage. Only through the
practices of parents and young people could these external influences transform the field
of family and marriage. But such transformation might not always conform to what is
expected.

In the following chapters, I will observe the changes in marriage practices under the
Communist rule. I will look at how parents took different strategies in order to get their
sons married in face of the social, economic and political changes, as well as the power
relationship between sexes and generations. Using a practice model, I will try to explain

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why parents took certain strategies and how the patriarchal power of parents was
transformed in the field of marriage.

Chapter Two is an introduction to the setting of my research, including the location,
ecology, history and social structure in the village that I have studied. In chapter Three,
by tracing the history of one family, I will look at the traditional family and marriage in
the village as the point of departure for the following discussions. In the village,
continuing the family line of descent was the ultimate goal of traditional patriarchal
family. Almost all activities, including marriage, were carried out around this goal. To
achieve this goal, different families took different strategies.

Chapter Four is devoted to changes in family and marriage as a result of the 1950
Marriage Law and the collectivization movement in the mid-1950s. I find a mixed picture
in the effect of the new Marriage Law. The freedom in divorce did not benefit village
women in the early years after the promulgation of the law. Some of them were
victimized by their husbands who worked in cities and took advantage of this law to
divorce them. But it did make the remarriage of widows easier. The collectivization
provided public space for young men and women to interact with each other. That made
it possible for the first romance to occur in the village.

Chapter Five is focused on an abnormal marriage practice, which I call “sweet potato
marriage. The Great Leap Forward movement, a project sponsored by the Party State to

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modernize the country, resulted in a nation-wide famine from 1959 to 1961. In
desperation, many families sold their daughters as brides just for a bag of dried sweet
potatoes. It was an irony that the revolution with the intention of liberating women turned
women into victims of stronger patriarchy.

In Chapter Six, I will talk about exchange marriages during the Cultural Revolution. The
emphasis on class struggle during the Cultural Revolution affected the field of marriage.
No family wanted their daughters to marry into the bad-class families. Unable to marry
their sons in the normal way, these bad-class families used their daughters to exchange
for brides for their sons. Once this new form of marriage was invented, even the good-
class families followed suit, as it was the most cost-efficient way of marriage. Women
again became victims of the combined forces of patriarchy and the revolution.

Chapter Seven discusses the marriage practices and the change in family power relations
in the post-Mao era. The death of Mao took China away from revolution. A prosperous
market economy gradually replaced the state-controlled economy. Pseudodowry became
a common practice and its amount increased dramatically through years. These payments
did not turn brides into victims of the patriarchal family. It actually gave them power over
the patriarchs who were eager to get their sons married. It was the patriarchs who were
victimized by their own attachment to patriarchal ideas of continuing the family line.

73

In the concluding chapter, I try to use a “practice” model to explain how new marriage
practices came into being and how power relationship in family and marriage was
reproduced and transformed in response to external social, political, and economic forces
mediated by the patriarchal tradition, a shared habitus of the community

74

Figure 1 China and Hebei Province
(The Red Area is Hebei Provine)

75

Figure 2 Song Family Village in Hebei Province

76

CHAPTER TWO
SONG FAMILY VILLAGE
1

1. Physical Settings
Setting out southward from Beijing by rail to my native village, you must travel the
length of Hebei Province along the North China Plain. To your right, the Taihang
Mountains separate the plain from the loess lands of Shanxi beyond them to the West. On
your left, the flat, featureless land merges imperceptibly into the Yellow Sea to the east.
Apart from occasional courses of streams and dry gullies running across from the
mountains to the sea, the only things that might attract your eyes are the numerous
villages surrounded by fertile farmlands. My native village is one of them. After getting
off at the rail station of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province, it will not take long for
you to find a bus heading for my hometown. On the bus, you are going deeper and deeper
south and east into the heart of the Hebei plain, which is part of the larger North China
Plain. Three hours later, you will arrive at Julu town, the county seat of Julu County
2
,
which has a population of about 360,000. Coming out of the town, you will be on a paved
country

1
Part of this chapter has been adapted from China Study Guide: Ethnographic Notes on Song Family
Village on the North China Plain, written by me and edited by Professor Gary Seaman. Thanks to Professor
Gary Seaman and the Ethnographic Press for permitting me to use part of these chapters for my dissertation.

2
The current administrative system in the People’s Republic of China mainly consists of five levels of
government: The central government, the provincial government, the municipal government, the county
government and the township (or town) government. These five levels of governments were staffed by
state-payroll personnel. The village government was below these five levels of government. It is staffed by
villagers elected or appointed who are not on the state payroll.

77

Figure 3 Song Family Village and Vicinity
(The shaded areas are towns and villages)

78

road leading to the west. Along the way, you can see low sand dunes on both sides. They
are the remains of an ancient course of the Yellow River. After a short trip of four miles,
you will arrive at my native village, Song Family Village, named after the family name of
the majority of its population of about 1,500.

Like most villages on the North China Plain, Song Family Village shows a clear
boundary between the land and the village itself. The village is surrounded by the fields
collectively owned by villagers. The village itself was a collection of one-storey brick or
concrete houses, separated only by narrow streets, lanes and alleys. The main street of the
village runs from the east to the west. All the important public places are located along
this street, including the temples, the school, the clinic and several small stores. This is
also the place where people gather in slack seasons, exchanging ideas and rumors.
Running north and south, one narrow lane after another intersects the main street.
Between each pair of lanes are houses that are arranged in rows, with each row consisting
of two or more houses built adjacent to each other along narrow alleys. All the streets,
lanes and alleys in the village used to be dirt roads. Many of them were full of bumps and
dips. A rain could turn them into muddy ponds while a long stretch of dry weather would
make them very dusty. In 2006, the government allocated funds to the village and had the
main street paved. According to villagers, more streets and lanes will be paved in the
coming years.

79

Figure 4 The Flat Plan of Song Family Village
(The shaded areas are houses. The blank areas are streets, lanes or open
spaces)

80

Most of the houses in the middle of the village are old houses, which are low and shabby,
with older people living in them. The houses get taller and newer from the middle of the
village towards the outskirts. The new wealth accumulated with the economic
development has enabled the younger generation to move out of the old houses that their
ancestors occupied for hundred of years and build new houses of their own on the
outskirts of the village.

Even though recently there have been a lot of changes in materials used in construction,
both the new and old houses in Song Family Village are typical in structure and layout of
the traditional north China domestic space, which includes a courtyard in the middle,
surrounded by rooms or walls on four sides. The rooms on the north are usually the
master rooms that function as reception areas for guests, and they are relatively taller and
more spacious. The rooms on the east and the west are side rooms, lower and narrower in
space and often function as bedrooms. The south side is either only a wall or a small
room used as storage or kitchen. The gate is usually located at the southeast or the
southwest corner, depending on the house’s relative position to the street, lane, or alley.
For example, if the house is on the east side of the lane, the gate will be at the southwest
corner, open to the west. If it is on the west side of the lane, the gate will be at the
southeast corner, open to the east. For those houses that do not have side rooms on both
the east and west side of the house, the side rooms are usually on the same side as the
gate. Since this side is adjacent to the lane, a room provides better protection for the
house than a wall, which is usually much lower than a room.

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Figure 5 The Flat Plan of an Old House in Song Family Village

82

The latrine of the house usually occupies the opposite corner of the gate. That is, if the
gate is on the southwest corner, the latrine will be on the southeast corner. Chicken coops,
animal pens and refuse pits are also found in the quarter nearest the latrine. A cistern to
store the fresh water that is indispensable to family life is usually located near the center
of the interior courtyard. Outside the house, opposite the gate, there may be a “spirit
wall” constructed in such a way as to block direct access into the house, especially if it is
not located on an interior lane.

Most of these features are shared by both the old and new houses, the features that have
existed perhaps for thousands of years. In spite of the many similarities, the new houses
do show some differences from the old houses. In appearance, the new houses tend to be
quite high. A one-story building will not be lower than a common two-story building in
the USA. In the old houses, there are usually two rooms of similar size on the north. In
the past, these master rooms were occupied by the seniors of the family, usually the
grandparents and the parents. The young couples could only occupy the side rooms.
Nowadays in the new houses, the northern side of the house consists of one bigger room
and a smaller room. The bigger room will be occupied not by the elders of the family, but
by a newly wed young couple. The parents have had to move into the smaller room.

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Figure 6 The Flat Plan of a New House in Song Family Village

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2. The Lineage and its History
According to the oral history that I have been familiar with since I was young, nearly
90% of the families in the village could trace their descent to a man named Song Zhi who
settled in this village 600 years ago. At that time, a bloody dynastic transition was just
coming to a close. The Mongol Yuan dynasty had just been replaced by the Ming dynasty
established by the Han Chinese. As a consequence of the constant warfare and the
collapse of the social and political order during the dynastic transition, the North China
Plain had lost a large part of its population. Thousands of previously populous and lively
villages were deserted, with fertile land left unfarmed. The new Ming rulers found it
urgent to redevelop this area in order to collect taxes and levies. When the Yongle
Emperor, the third emperor of Ming Dynasty, moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing
three decades after the establishment of the Ming dynasty, the new capital needed a large
population in the surrounding areas to supply it with necessary goods and services. It
became even more urgent for the government to fill up the population gap on the North
China Plain.

Protected by the ramparts of the Taihang Mountains from the wars that had been fought
on the plain, neighboring Shanxi Province had a large population. The government
decided to move part of the population from Shanxi to Hebei. Several waves of migration
were organized by the imperial government.
3
As one of the numerous migrants, Song

3
The waves of migration were recorded in the History of Ming Dynasty (Ming Shi). Nowadays most
residents on the North China Plain claimed their ancestry to these immigrants who came to settle on the

85

Zhi, perhaps with his wife, came to settle down in this village as a farmer in the year
1404. Farming their land and building a home in the village according to the traditions of
Chinese domestic space, the Song founder couple later raised two sons and maybe one or
more daughters. But when the two sons grew up, they did not stay together in Song
Family Village. Instead, the younger son moved to the neighboring Tiger King Village,
for reasons now unknown to their living descendants. From then on, descendants of Song
Zhi began to live in two different villages. Most of the descendants of the elder son
remained in Song Family Village while those of the younger son lived in Tiger King
Village.

Generations after the two sons of the lineage founder passed away, an ancestral temple
was built in Song Family Village through the joint efforts of the Songs in both villages.
This ancestral temple became the focus and symbol of the Song lineage as a whole, that
is, to all the descendants of the lineage founder in both villages. At the Chinese New Year,
an ancestral scroll would be hung on the wall of the temple, with the names of all
deceased males and their wives on it. The living male members of the lineage would
gather at the ancestral temple and kowtow to their dead ancestors and living seniors.

As several more generations passed, the Song descendants in both villages became more
and more numerous and three new ancestral temples were built in the two villages. One

plain about 600 years ago. No one is sure whether such claims are based on just legendary stories or
historical facts.

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of them was built in Tiger King Village by the descendants of the younger son of the
lineage founder. The construction of the new ancestral temple in Tiger King Village
concretely symbolized the first major segmentation of the Song lineage. Although the
Songs in Tiger King Village still shared the old ancestral temple to venerate the lineage
founder, their new ancestral temple became the main focus of the ancestral worship
directed towards his younger son.

The Songs in Song Family Village did not build a new ancestral temple shared by all the
descendants of the elder son of the Lineage founder. Instead, two new ancestral temples
were built. This reflected another major segmentation of the lineage. The node of
segmentation was at the third generation of the lineage, whereby the elder son of the
lineage founder had four sons. Although there were four brothers at the third generation,
the second and the fourth of the brothers did not have any male descendants at all. So the
only two lines of descent from the third generation at Song Family Village were from the
elder and the third of the four brothers. The lineage segmentation represented by the
building of the two new ancestral temples in Song Family Village reflects complementary
segmentation along these two lines of descent.

The temple built by the descendants of the eldest of the four brothers at the third
generation is called the West Temple by the villagers due to its location at the western
end of the village. The other one, built by the descendants of the third of the four brothers

87

is called the East Temple. And most of the descendants of these two brothers live
respectively in the western and eastern parts of the village.

Figure 7 The Relationship of the Ancestral Temples in Song Family Village

Thus, centuries after the lineage founder first settled down in Song Family Village, the
Songs developed into a lineage of more than 2000 members. The whole lineage is
divided into three major segments, each with its own ancestral temple. The two Song
Family Village lineage segments are together complementary to the Tiger King Village
lineage segment, and within Song Family Village the East and West lineage sub-
segments are complementary to each other. Before the Communist Party came to power,
all the lineage activities were organized around the four ancestral temples. From year to

88

year, men belonging to each temple took turns taking care of the affairs of their
respective temples.

The most important ritual activity of the lineage was worshipping the ancestors during
the Chinese New Year. On the day before the New Year’s Day, the men on duty that year
had to first clean the ancestral temple. Then they would take out the ancestral scroll from
the box where it was stored and hang it on the back wall of the main hall of the temple.
Next they would go to the graveyard of the lineage founder. There, they would burn
incense and spirit money in front of the grave. They would kowtow three times before it,
saying, “It is the New Year, please come and spend the New Year at home.”

After this invitation, it was assumed that all the ancestors of the Songs would follow their
descendants who invited them to the ancestral temple. Back at the ancestral temple with
their ancestors, the men would burn incense and paper spirit money and kowtow toward
the ancestral scroll. This symbolized that the ancestors were seated there in the ancestral
temple waiting to be served and worshipped.

After the collective ancestors were installed at the ancestral temple, heads of individual
families would come to invite their own direct line of ancestors back home along with
some close collateral ancestors. First they would burn incense and spirit money and then
offer some food to the ancestors. After kowtowing towards the ancestral scroll, they

89

would take a stick of burning incense and a sheaf of spirit money away with them. This
burning incense symbolized the ancestors following them back home.

Returning home, they would enter the room of the house where their family’s ancestral
scroll was hanging on the back wall (the house shrine). That family ancestral scroll
contained the names of the direct ancestors of the family, which were only part of the
names on the large scroll at the ancestral temple. They would place the incense they had
brought into the incense brazier, burn spirit money and then kowtow to the family scrolls
in the house shrine. Thus, their ancestors now arrived at home with them, enjoying the
company of their kin and the delicious food of the New Year.

Another task for the men on duty at the temple for that year was to compile a duty roster.
Since the ancestors would stay in the village for 16 days, there should always be someone
on duty in the ancestral temple to make sure that the incense and candles were kept
burning and that offerings were made in a timely manner. On the list, they divided all the
families in the lineage segment into 16 groups, with each group on duty for a day. From
the New Year’s Day (the first day of the first month on traditional Chinese lunar calendar)
to the sixteenth day of the first month, there would always be several families on duty at
the ancestral temple each day. Before each meal, they had to bring food over and make
offerings to the ancestors.

90

The most exciting event happened on the morning of the New Year’s Day. All the males
of Song lineage would gather in the ancestral temples of their respective lineage
segments. There, they would stand in rows facing the ancestral scroll, lined up according
to their seniority of generation, with the most senior generation standing in the front and
the most junior standing in the rear. The headman and the assistant headman would lead
them in kowtowing first to the ancestors inscribed up on the ancestral scroll. The two
headmen then would turn around and all the men of the younger generations would
kowtow to them. After this, the line of men of the next generation would turn around to
receive kowtows from all their juniors. This continued on and on until all men down to
the most junior generation had made kowtows to their seniors.

During the New Year period, at every mealtime, families in the lineage made offerings in
their house shrines in front of their family ancestral scrolls. They also went to make
offerings at the ancestral temples on the day when they were on duty. On the 16th day of
the first month, each family would make the last offerings to the ancestors and roll up the
ancestral scroll. Then they would go outside the village and burn incense and spirit
money there. This symbolized sending the ancestors off.

After sending their ancestors off, the group of men on duty at each ancestral temple for
that year would hand over the duty of caring for the ancestors to the next group of men.
In the past, each of the ancestral temples owned some land. Every year, the land would be
farmed by the group of men on duty that year. The income from the land would be used

91

for the expenses at the ancestral temple. The expenses included money spent on incense,
candles, spirit money, fireworks, food offerings and also the repair of the ancestral temple.
When handing over the ritual duty to the next group of men, they would also hand over
the right to farm the temple land. They would then lock the door and take their leave.
Normally, the ancestral temples would remain closed and locked until the next New Year.

Although the ancestral temples and the lineage were important to the villagers, the most
active units of the lineage in the everyday life of the village were not the whole lineage or
lineage segments. They were instead sub-segments composed of descendants of a
common or apical ancestor about five generations earlier. Such a unit is usually called by
the villagers “ziji jia de,” literally meaning “of my own family.” People also used the
term “wu fu,” (literally “five degrees of kinship,” meaning that there exists an obligation
to mourn at the death of such a relative) to refer to such a kind of relationship. For
convenience, we can call such a group “the minimal segment,” since it is the smallest
operational segment within the lineage structure.

The term “wu fu” is derived from the custom of mourners wearing special garments that
precisely indicate the degree of kinship with the dead person. In the traditional Chinese
mourning system, when a person died, who should mourn for him, in which way and for
how long was determined by the closeness or distance of the relationship to him. The
symbolic way to distinguish closer relatives from more distant relatives was by wearing a
prescribed type of mourning dress at the funeral. There were altogether five “degrees” of

92

mourning dress, ranging from the “heaviest” (closest) to the “lightest” (most distant)
degree. Thus the closer the relationship to the dead person, the “heavier” the mourning
dress should be. The different kinds of mourning dress implied different responsibilities
toward the dead. This was best embodied in the length of the mourning period. The closer
the relationship, the longer the mourning period would be. For example, the son of the
dead should mourn for him for the longest time, the son of his brother for a shorter time
and the son of his cousin for even shorter a time. Mourning dress also established a
hierarchy of relationships that could be used to determine who was next in line as heir to
the dead person.

Figure 8 The Structure of a Minimal Segment in Song Family Village
(The blank circles and triangles represent deceased ones.)

93

The minimal segment had many social functions. One of the most important was at
funerals. According to Chinese tradition, a funeral was one of the most important events
for a Chinese family. To show filial piety, Chinese people were not only supposed to be
obedient to their seniors when they were alive, but were also expected to take good care
of them after they died. A grand funeral was part of this obligation to their dead relatives.
When a senior family member died, the family had to make sure of holding a proper
funeral for him or her. Otherwise, the descendants would be regarded as unfilial. And the
spirits of the dead did not always treat ingrates kindly. For example, a woman relative of
mine who is a shaman most often diagnoses the cause of illness or other problems as the
result of people’s failure to meet the obligations they owe to their ancestors.

The most important public ritual at a funeral was the procession that sent the dead to the
graveyard. All the members of the minimal segments who were junior to the dead in
terms of generation had to join the procession. Members of the immediate family walked
after the coffin, which was carried by friends and neighbors. They were followed by
members of the minimal segment in the order of their relationship to the dead. Males and
females walked in separate files. All of them wore their proper mourning dress. It was a
spectacular scene when they walked into an open area in the center of the village. The
coffin would be put in the middle. The relatives walked around the coffin three times,
with males and females in the opposite directions. If the minimal segment was a populous
and prosperous one, many of the on-lookers would stand around to marvel at the great
spectacle.

94

A single family would not be able to hold a grand funeral on their own, because many
people were needed for labor, various personal services and the performance of proper
rituals. Thus support and involvement of relatives beyond the immediate family were
necessary. The minimal segment provided just the right scale of organization to offer
such services.

A wedding was another important event when the minimal segment played an
indispensable role. Providing free labor was one of most important functions of the
minimal segment. At the wedding, many guests would arrive with congratulations and
gifts. Banquets were served to every guest. Feasting with the bride’s agnates was even
more important. All these service and labor were to be provided by relatives within the
minimal segment together with friends and neighbors of the family. Some ritual roles had
also to be performed by specific ones of the groom’s relatives. Senior relatives had to be
sent to pick up the bride. The new affines who arrived with the bride had to be
accompanied by the proper relatives.

Even though the minimal segment theoretically (that is, based on the term wu fu) should
be limited to five generations in depth, in practice it could go beyond that limitation. This
was because demographic imbalance between descent groups was quite common. When a
descent group had few people related within five generations, it could be extended by
consent to include people beyond the five generations to form a minimal segment. This

95

flexibility of the minimal segments was required by the nature of its social functions. To
be able to carry out all the tasks necessary at weddings and funerals, for example, at least
dozens of people were needed within the minimal segment.
The lineage organization and its activities were abolished and suppressed during the
Cultural Revolution, with ancestral scrolls burnt and the ancestral temples converted into
village offices. Villagers were forbidden to worship ancestors. But after the Cultural
Revolution, this tradition was gradually revived. In the 1980s, most families remade their
ancestral scrolls. Ancestors were worshipped at home. In 1994, villagers raised funds and
had the East Temple reconstructed. A large ancestral scroll was made, to be hung on the
wall of the main hall of the East Temple. At the same time, the West Temple and the
Tiger King Temple also restored their lineage activities. Again, villagers gathered at the
temples on the Chinese New Year’s day to worship the ancestors and pay respect to the
seniors. But whether this tradition can be continued or not is problematic because those
gathering at the ancestral temples were mostly older people. Most young people were
busy gambling and drinking at the time. In contrast, the role of the minimal segment has
been more enduring than that of the whole lineage. More closely connected to life and
death rituals, which are essential for village life and the state has found it almost
impossible to forbid, it had its role to play even at the high tide of the Cultural Revolution.
Nowadays, it still plays an indispensable role in village life. At least in the foreseeable
future, we do not expect any other social organization to replace it.

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3. Political Economy before the Communist rule
Since the apical ancestor Song Zhi came to this village, generations and generations of
Songs farmed this land, which provided the major resource for their survival. Land was
also the symbolic and material base for social status. Up until the mid-1940s, land was
privately owned in the village. It could be sold and purchased on the market. That gave
some people chances to increase their land holdings. But not everyone could afford to
purchase land. Only those who were hardworking, thrifty and lucky could afford it. To
accumulate the cash needed to purchase land, a family had to work very hard and at the
same time to strictly suppress their desire to spend. In this way, they would accumulate
little by little. Whenever they had any extra money, they would use it to purchase more
land. Their land holdings could thus increase bit by bit. A famine might provide a good
opportunity for those frugal and hardworking families to get a great increase in their land
holdings. In famine, grain became the most precious commodity, while land became very
cheap. Many families were willing to use their land to exchange for some food for
survival. A family hard working and thrifty enough to have accumulated extra grain
could take advantage of this opportunity to enlarge their land holdings.

The relative economic status of families in the village was never static. As an old saying
goes, “no family could remain wealthy for over three generations.” When a family
became wealthy, some of their children might lose the virtue of frugality that had made
their ancestors successful. A spendthrift could easily dissipate in a short time the family

97

fortune that had taken several generations to accumulate. But for more families,
becoming poor was the result of a natural demographic process. With wealth and a secure
life, a family would tend to have more surviving offspring. Based on the principle of
equal partibility in family division, each son had the right to a share in their father’s
property. In a couple of generations, the original large asset would be divided into many
small assets that were hardly enough to provide their holders a decent life. Eventually, the
descendants of a wealthy man would be as poor as all others in the village.

Through the six hundred years since the apical ancestor settled down in the village, as the
number of his descendants increased, there must always have been economic
differentiation among them. Although we have no way to know the situation in the early
history of the village, a general picture of the first half of the 20
th
century can be
reconstructed from the villagers’ memories and from stories and legends passed down
from previous generations.

Let’s first trace the history of two most populous minimal segments, which are called by
the villagers “the South House” and “the North House.” At the turn of the 20
th
century,
each of the two segments was still a single undivided family having about 1,000 mu
(about 167 acres)
4
of land. That made the two families prominent not only in the village,
but also in the neighboring area.

4
A unit of the traditional Chinese measurement of area. One mu is equal to 0.164 acre.

98

Through the next half century, each of the two families had expanded greatly in
population and experienced several rounds of family divisions. Before the land reform in
1946, the South House had already experienced two rounds of family division. The first
round happened among three brothers in the second generation. Each of them inherited
about 300 mu of land. Not long after that, another family division happened among the
five sons of the eldest of the three brothers in the second generation. Each son got about
70 mu of land. No further family division happened in the families of the other two
brothers of the second generation, since each of them only had one son. The original
single family had fissioned into 7 families. Two families had 300 mu of land while the
other 5 families each had only 70 mu of land. The North House had experienced more
family divisions than the South House. Before 1946, they had 9 families, with only one
having a land holding of about 200 mu, with most other families having less than 100 mu
and three families had very little land left.

In the first half of the 20
th
century, except for four other families, most wealthy families
in the village belonged to these two minimal segments, except for 4 other families. These
families with comparatively large land holdings were the elites in the village. Their
comparatively large land holdings protected them from natural disasters, which were not
uncommon, and guaranteed them a relatively secure and stable life.

99

Most other families in the village were subsistence farmers. They farmed their small
pieces of land for food. Their women’s spinning and weaving turned the cotton they grew
into clothes. Raising domestic animals and involvement in handcraft industry brought
them supplemental incomes. There were also families whose landholdings were below
subsistence level. They had to hire themselves out as laborers.

With no modern technology, farm work was done manually. Fifty mu of land would be
more than a small family could farm by themselves. But according to senior villagers, in
this village the families that had more land than they could farm by themselves seldom
rented their lands out. They instead preferred to hire hands to farm their lands. In this way,
the land and crops were still under their own control.

The difference in wealth underlay differences in power. The most powerful families were
usually those with the largest land holdings. With more land, these families could invest
in the education of their children, hoping they would secure an office in the
administrative hierarchy of the state. With more experience in dealing with the outside
world, especially with officials, members of these families often provided local
leadership.

The first half of the 20
th
century in China was full of war and political chaos. The last
emperor’s stepping down from his throne in 1911 did not lead to a peaceful and
prosperous new China. Warlords and different political forces competed for power,

100

disrupting the social and political order in the country. This chaos made the village
leadership a harder task than ever. A wide variety of troops came and left. All of them
needed provisions. A wealthy man who dealt with them would easily fall prey to them. In
such chaos, members of the wealthy families would try to avoid public positions of
village leadership. People from a poor family would be put on these positions. Although
reluctant to hold any public leading position, wealthy families in the village played no
smaller role in village affairs. Public projects needed their contributions. Extortions by
various militaries required their largest contributions. Thus, their participation in village
affairs was still indispensable.

4. The Japanese Invasion and the Expansion of the Communist Influence
In July 1937, Japanese troops attacked Chinese troops near Beijing.
5
The anti-Japanese
war, which was to last eight years, broke out. News soon reached Song Family Village.
Some old people in the village still remembered what happened during that time, even
though they could not remember the exact date of these happenings.

One day in 1937 after the war broke out, many villagers were harvesting sweet potatoes
northeast of Song Family Village. An airplane flew over. People all looked up at this rare
object. Suddenly, the plane fired down at people and then flew to the east. Fortunately, no

5
The fight at the Marco Polo Bridge south of Beijing (then called Beiping) started the eight years of Anti-
Japanese War in the modern history of China. This war gave the desperate Communist Party and its troops
the opportunity to expand its influence in north China among people of all walks of life. This influence laid
the foundation of its victory in the Civil War in the late 1940s.

101

one was hurt. But people soon learned that that was a Japanese plane. It flew over the
county town and dropped several bombs, killing an old lady. According to the local
gazetteer, this happened on October 12 of that year (JXZBW 1994: 16).

Rumors spread in the countryside. One was that the Japanese would soon arrive and all
children would be killed. In one village, an old man was extremely worried about his
grandchildren. He fell down with a stroke and died not long after. Although not all people
were as afraid as that old man, everyone was perplexed as to what was going to happen to
them.

The local gazetteer (JXZBW 1994: 377-379) gave us more detailed information about the
situation at the beginning of the war from 1937 to 1938. The county magistrate fled his
office when the Japanese occupied neighboring cities. His escape left the county
leaderless and initiated a period of anarchy. Some local elites and officials organized a
temporary government. But many military groups, most of whom were bandits organized
by local gangsters, rose up to challenge their power. Before the Chinese New Year of
1938, groups of bandits gathered together and started fighting with the police forces of
the temporary government. Afraid of the ransacking and looting of the bandits, most rich
families in villages fled to the town for protection.

Just at the time, a small troop of around 500 men speaking strange dialects arrived in the
county. Meeting with the leaders of the temporary government, the commander of the

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group introduced themselves as a unit of the Eighth Route Army.
6
They claimed they
had come here to fight the Japanese. Although knowing that they were Communists, the
local leaders found it hard to keep them out. The Communist Red Army had already
officially become part of the national military forces under the nominal leadership of the
Nationalist government. As the only unit of the national military force present in this area,
they had much more legitimacy than the temporary government that had been set up by
local elites. Anyone who resisted them could be labeled as traitors to the Chinese nation
and be killed. This small group of Communist soldiers immediately served as the
mediator between the bandits and the local police forces. With their status as a regular
unit of the national army and with more military strength, the small unit of the Eighth
Route Army soon forced the two sides, the bandits and the local police, to a ceasefire.
Both groups were then absorbed into the Eighth Route Army.

At the same time, the Japanese only occupied the important cities along the major
transportation routes. They were still busy pursuing the retreating troops of the
Nationalist government and had no time and personnel to occupy this relatively remote
area. This situation gave the Communists an excellent opportunity to expand their
influence. By absorbing local military groups and recruiting new members, this small

6
After the Anti-Japanese War broke out, the Communist and the Nationalist parties reach an agreement to
form a united front against the Japanese. As part of the agreement, the Communist Party suspended its
brutal land reform policy. Its troops dropped the name “Red Army.” They were nominally incorporated into
the military forces under the command of Nationalist government. The Communist troops in North China
was redesignated as the Eighth Route Army and those in South China as the New Fourth Army. Although
officially part of the military forces under the Nationalist government, those troops were under the firm
control by the Communist Party.

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group of Communist troops soon expanded from their original 500 men to more than 10
thousand. They became the most powerful military and political force in this area before
the Japanese arrived one year later.

Besides expanding their military power, they disbanded the temporary government set up
by the local elites and established a government firmly controlled by them. They also set
out to recruit local people into the Communist Party and set up their local branches
almost in every village. Some people in Song Family Village joined the Communist Party
and a secret party branch was also organized. Village leadership was put under the firm
control of the Communist Party members.

In late 1938, the county town was occupied by Japanese troops, who soon established a
puppet government there (JXZBW 1994: 379). The Communist government fled the
town but continued to operate in the countryside. Although the Japanese controlled towns
and important transportation routes, most villages were still controlled by the Communist
government and their guerrilla forces (JXZBW 1994: 281).

The expansion of the Communist influence was not only the result of their military
success, but also a result of their temporary suspension of their previous radical

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revolutionary agenda. In their early years of revolution
7
, they undertook a radical and
violent land reform policy, whereby landlords would not only be deprived of all their
lands and properties but most of them were killed. Although such a policy might have
won support from the lower class in poor mountainous areas, it would keep away most of
the population in more affluent areas where people were mostly land-owning farmers.

On the eve of the Japanese invasion of China, the Nationalist government and the
Communist Party reached an agreement to form a coalition against the common enemy:
the Japanese. As a concession to the Nationalist government, the Communists
temporarily dropped their goal of overthrowing the Nationalist government, stopped
confiscating land and other properties from the rich people and tried to win support from
every patriot, no matter rich or poor
8
. This change of policy was essential to the
expansion of their influences in north China, including this area. With this change of
policy and as the only Chinese political force in this area, the Communists found it easy
to win support from people of all walks of life. Even rich families began to cooperate
actively with the Communist forces. Many even let their children join the Eighth Route
Army and the Communist Party. Jiren, one of the richest men in Song Family Village,
had his second son join the Eighth Route Army, even though he also sent his eldest son to
join the Nationalist troops.

7
From the late 1920s until the mid 1930s, the Chinese Communist Party adopted a radical land reform
policy in the various Soviet areas throughout the country. They confiscated properties of landlords, many of
whom were killed.
8
In fact, many young people from wealthy families in North China joined the Communist Party during the
Anti-Japanese War. Because most of them were well educated, many of them soon assumed leadership in
the local units of the Communist Party and its troops.

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Due to its close location to the county town, where the Japanese troops were stationed,
the Communist Party branch in Song Family Village could only operate in secret. Its
members never revealed their identity as Communists. But with the support of the
underground Communist government, they controlled the village leadership. The village
head, who was not a Communist, was only a puppet. The ones who pulled the string
behind him were the Communists.

Few people in the village were willing or dared to collaborate with the Japanese. The
secret branch of the Communist Party was keeping watch on the activities of the villagers.
It had the right to kill anyone who really collaborated with the Japanese. In this way, even
though the Japanese and their puppet government controlled the towns, villages in the
vast countryside was under the firm control of the Communists.

By 1945, the Communist troops had become powerful enough to launch massive attacks
on the remaining Japanese and their collaborative troops. It was obvious that the Japanese
would soon be driven away. Early in the morning on July 25, 1945, news came to the
village that the Japanese and their cooperative troops would flee the county town. What
was more surprising was that they would head for Xingtai, a city on the railway, just by
way of Song Family Village. Villagers were all appalled, since they knew what these
predators would do. Every family, no matter rich or poor, hurried to pack up their

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belongings and took to the road. Soon the roads leading out of the village were full of
people carrying their belongings and leading their domestic animals.

Towards noon, smoke and fire were seen in the direction of the county town. Soon,
gunfire was heard. About one hour later, the Japanese and their collaborative troops came
along. When they passed, they were ambushed by small groups of guerrilla troops.
Luckily for the villagers, the Japanese troops did not enter the village, possibly for fear
that the guerrilla troops might cut off their retreat. The only loss that the villagers
suffered was fruits and melons that grew in the fields beside the roads where these troops
passed by.

That ended the eight years of anti-Japanese war for Song Family Village. The villagers
were over-enjoyed by the end of the war. They had good reasons for this. Through the
eight years, villages were frequently raided by the Japanese troops. On these occasions,
every villager was in danger of being killed if the Japanese troops suspected that he was
an Eighth Route Army soldier. According to villagers, one man in Song Family Village
was caught by the Japanese when he was working in the fields. Because he tried to flee
when he saw the approaching Japanese troops, he was suspected as an Eighth Route
Army soldier. He was taken to the county town and killed there.

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5. The Power Structure under the Communist rule
After the Japanese were gone, this area was controlled by the Communist Party. Its party
members in the village emerged from secrecy to hold public leading positions. The Party
secretary became the most powerful man in the village. Under him was the village head,
the captain of the militia and cadres
9
in charge of the youth, the women, etc. Although
the administrative structure experienced changes in the following decades, there was one
thing that seldom changed: the Communist Party branch as the center of power and the
Party Secretary as the top leader in the village.

The land reform in 1946 destroyed the previous power structure based on the differential
possession of land. The wealthy families lost most of their land and other properties. The
poor families obtained land that they had needed badly. An economic homogeneity was
created in the village. But a new stratification based on class labels was established. In
Song Family Village, three families were labeled as landlords, fourteen families as rich
peasants, and a couple of families as upper middle peasants. Most other families were
either lower middle peasants or poor peasants. The landlord and rich peasant families
accounted for almost 20 percent of the village families.

9
Cadre (gan bu) was a loan word from the Japanese language. As a very important notion during the
Maoist era, the word “cadre” could be used to refer to different kinds of people. Among the urban residents,
there was a distinction between workers and cadres. The former refered to blue-collar workers while the
latter referred to those who held administrative jobs or who assumed white-collar positions. In the village,
cadre referred to those who held leading positions. In my dissertation, I reserve this word for village cadres,
just for convenience, while use the term official to refer to those administrations who were on the state
payroll.

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The landlords and rich peasants were toppled from the top of the previous power
structure to the bottom of the new hierarchy. They were seen as the enemies of the
Communist regime. During the following decades, these people and their family
members were untouchables in the village community. In contrast, the poor people
gained power. Those who were active in the land reform were recruited into the Party.
The only one Communist party member from a rich peasant family was driven out of the
Party after the land reform. Party members, who were all from poor families,
monopolized political power in the village in the following decades.

The Great Leap Forward and the People’s Commune movement in 1958 set up in the
village an administrative structure that functioned through the next two decades. For most
of the time, Song Family Village was one of the twenty-three brigades of Tiger King
People’s Commune. As a brigade, Song Family Village had a party secretary and a
brigade head. The Party secretary remained the top leader, having the final say in all
affairs. The brigade head mainly took care of affairs related to agricultural production.
Under these two, there were a militia captain taking charge of the military training of the
young people in the village, a security officer responsible for the public safety in the
village (the major part of it was to supervise those landlords and rich peasants to make
sure that they were obedient to the Communist regime) and an accountant responsible for
book keeping and the financial affairs of the brigade. The only female official on the
brigade level was the head of the Women’s Association.

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Within the village there were three production teams, which were the units for everyday
productive management. There were usually two team leaders in each production team.
They decided on what farm work should be done each day and who should do what.
There was a bell hanging outside the headquarters of each of the production teams. Every
morning, one of the team leaders would toll the bell to summon people to get ready for
work. Gradually, people would gather at the headquarters. When the team leaders saw
that most people were there, they would allocate work for everyone. Then people would
leave for their work. Besides the team leaders, there was an accountant for each team,
whose main responsibility was to keep records of work points that people earned.

The collective system provided the power base for the Party Secretary, who had control
over all the resources in the village. The occupant of this position was not elected but
appointed by the higher authority of the Party. There were no internal forces to check his
power in the village. As a result, it was not uncommon for a party secretary to abuse his
power. The one in a neighboring village was arrested for having raped many women in
his village. Due to the privileges and power enjoyed by the Party Secretary, many
villagers wanted to occupy this position. But only Party members were eligible. In order
to monopoly the power, the village Party branch seldom recruited new Party members,
effectively keeping most villagers off the center of power. The result was that a small
group of people monopolized the power in the village. For most of the time of the
collective period, two cousins from a previous poor family took turns at serving as the
Party Secretary in Song Family Village.

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The commune system lasted until 1982 when the land was allocated to individual
families on a per capita basis. With the collective disbanded, the production teams were
redesignated as villager groups (cun min xiaozu). Although no longer productive units,
the villager groups still kept some of the functions of the production teams. For example,
wells were still collectively owned. To make them work, each villager group had two
leaders, whose most important duty was to manage the wells.

On the village level, the Communist Party branch was still the core of village leadership
and the Party secretary was still officially the top leader. But his power was greatly
weakened by the collapse of the collective. With most resources privately owned, he had
very little control over other villagers. In late 1998, the Communist Party began to
implement the program of village autonomy, the most important part of which was to
have villagers elect their own village heads. But at the same time, the Party secretary was
still appointed by the Party. The result was a conflict in power between an elected village
head and an appointed party secretary.

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6. The Ecology and Economy
Climate, Water Resources and Irrigation
Like the rest of the North China Plain, Song Family Village is located in an area
dominated by a monsoon climate. The local gazetteer described the local climate as
follows,
The county has a temperate continental monsoon climate, with distinct four seasons.
The annual average temperature is 13 °C. The average temperature of January is
–3.6 °C and that of July is 26.8 °C. The historical highest temperature was 42.7 °C (in
1968) and the lowest temperature was –23 °C (in 1981). The average annual sunlight
time is 2764.4 hours. The frost-free period averages 197 days a year. The average
annual precipitation is 520 mm, concentrated in the months of July and August. With
rainfall concentrated at a time when heat and sunlight are at their height, the climate
is favorable for crops. (JXZBW 1994: 1).

With such a climate, the cold winter is characteristically long, lasting for nearly four
months, from December to the end of March the next year. During this period, the
weather is usually very dry. The amount of snow varies, but in many years there is very
little snowfall. Following the long winter is a short spring, lasting only a little more than
one month, from April to May. Although the temperature is mild in the short spring, it
can be quite windy and dusty as the winds from the ocean and the continent struggle for
domination, blowing the dust off the ground that has long been short of rainfall.

Like winter, summer is quite long, starting from the end of May and lasting till the end of
August. The summer monsoon from the Pacific Ocean brings most of the precipitation of
the year, making the weather very hot and humid. Most of the rainfall is concentrated in

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summer, but the amount varies greatly from year to year. In some years, there can be so
much rain that dramatic floods may deluge everything, but in other years, there might be
so little rain that all the crops die in the severe drought. The autumn is the best time of the
year, with mild weather and clean air. It lasts from September till the end of November.

The monsoon climate together with the geographical features of this part of the North
China Plain greatly affects agricultural resources such as water and proper soil. Water, in
particular, is an extremely important factor in agricultural production in this area. The
concentration of rainfall in summer, the season when heat and sunlight are at their height,
is favorable to crops growing at this time. But the lack of sufficient rainfall in other
seasons has serious negative effects on crops. The variation in rainfall from year to year
adds to the instability of agricultural production. Worse, most of the rivers on the plain
cannot provide reliable water resources for agriculture when it is badly needed.

If you look at the map of China’s east coast, you will see that the North China Plain in
Hebei Province forms a narrow belt, delimited on the west by the Taihang Mountains and
on the east by the Bohai Gulf. Most of the rivers running across this area originate from
the Taihang Mountains to the west and run into the sea. These mountains are not high
enough to hold permanent deposits of snow, thus the major source of water for these
rivers is the rains that fall in the mountains or directly on the plain. Due to the heavy
concentration of rainfall in the summer, most of the rivers will have little water in the

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spring when water is most needed. But in summer, too much water sometimes will
overflow the banks of the rivers and flood the neighboring areas.

Several rivers like this run not far from Song Family Village. The closest one is only 3
km away. Most of the year, these rivers are dry. Even when there is any water flowing,
the water is not intended for agricultural use, but for downstream industrial centers. Only
villages situated right beside the rivers are permitted to use the water. The increasing
pollution accompanying economic development in the past twenty years has made things
even worse. In some of the rivers, even when there is water flowing, the water is not fit
for irrigation due to the heavy pollution.

Even though these rivers cannot provide water for irrigation when it is needed, they
sometimes flood the whole area. Historically, floods have been nothing unfamiliar to
villagers in Song Family Village. The last major flood struck the area in 1963, when
Song Family Village together with other villages in this area were inundated by the water
overflowing from the rivers. All the crops were destroyed and tens of thousands of
houses collapsed (JXZBW 1994: 651-652).

After this, the government had all the river channels widened, greatly facilitating the
drainage in this area. In order to protect the downstream industrial centers from floods,
the government designated a large area, of which Song Family Village was a part, as a
flood catchment basin (JXZBW 1994: 128). When there is a flood, the water will be kept

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in this basin before it is drained slowly by the rivers to the sea. Thus, Song Family
Village is put in a place whereby it not only cannot benefit from the water in the rivers,
but also has to face the frequent threats of floods.

Although always caught between droughts and floods, drought is a disaster that has
haunted Song Family Village far more frequently than floods. With no access to water
from the rivers to fight drought, the only alternative is water from underground aquifers.
But even this resource is not easy for villagers to obtain. Because of the poor drainage in
the areas surrounding Song Family Village, the upper levels of underground water are
salty, unfit for irrigation or drinking. To get fresh water, wells have to be dug deep
enough to pump up the fresh water below.

According to old villagers, in earlier times the village only had one well that had fresh
water. That well was located far from the village in a piece of low-lying land. Every
morning every family had to send someone to fetch water from that well. Since it was not
a deep well, the water available was very limited. If one came late, there might be no
more fresh water available. For the whole day, the family would have to endure the
bitterness of the brackish water from other wells. Thus, every house had two big jugs, one
for fresh water and one for salty water.

This situation continued for centuries until the early 1930s, when several wealthy
families had five deep wells dug in the fields. This was an improvement to agriculture in

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the village. But the tools used for lifting water were only Persian wheels driven by draft
animals, so each of the wells could irrigate only about 30 mu (5 acres) of land. The 150
mu of land irrigated by the five wells was only a very small part of the overall 4000 mu
(667 acres) of village fields. But most important to the villagers was a deep well dug at
that time right in the middle of the village. Dug with money raised from each family in
the village, this well provided drinking water to all villagers. They no longer needed to go
far away to fetch water. For decades, these wells provided water for drinking and
irrigation.

In 1966, a devastating earthquake struck the area around Song Family Village. This
earthquake not only cost many lives and properties, it also destroyed all the wells in this
area. The salty water on the upper level leaked into the fresh water on the lower level. No
wells could produce any freshwater.

In the 1970s, with encouragement and support from the state for well drilling, there was a
dramatic increase in the number of wells. But many of the wells soon broke down due to
poor management. Between 1982 and 1990, no more wells were drilled. By 1990, there
were only 3 wells working unreliably in the fields. With little irrigation, little wheat could
be cultivated, for wheat mainly grows in the spring when there was little rainfall. People
could only cultivate crops such as millet, cotton, sweet potatoes and gaoliang, which
grew in summer and autumn when the monsoon climate brought in rainfall. When

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drought became extremely serious in the 1980s, even the autumn crops were severely
affected.

In 1990, the village leaders helped to secure credit from the government to drill three new
deep wells and fixed a couple of old wells. They also raised funds from the villagers for
pumps and power cables. Pipes replaced the dirt ditches conducting water from the wells
to the fields, so there was no longer any worry about the water seeping into the earth
before reaching the fields. Each of these new wells can irrigate as much as 300 mu (50
acres) of land. Altogether, more than half of the land can be irrigated and produce two
crops each year.

Each of the three new wells drilled since 1990 is shared by two of the six villager groups
(cunmin xiaozu) in the village. Each of the wells has one or two managers, who have
several duties to fulfill. One is to make a schedule for the irrigation. Since every family
needs their lands irrigated at nearly the same time, it would be chaos without a fair
schedule. To make it work, the manager has to be fair and strict rules have to be followed.
When it is your turn to irrigate according to the schedule, you have to take it or drop it.
You cannot put it off. If you find your crops do not need irrigation at the time, you have
to drop your turn. No matter how badly your crops needs to be irrigated, you will not get
another chance for irrigation until your next turn comes over. Such rules have to be
followed letter by letter, otherwise conflicts of interests would prevent anyone from using
the well.

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Another job for the well managers is to raise funds for the repair and maintenance of the
wells. Since the wells are used at a very high rate, it is inevitable for them to break down
from time to time. When this happens, the well manager has to collect money from each
of the families that share the wells. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Some families
refuse to contribute. The manager is thus put in a difficult position. If he skips these
families, other families will complain and make it even more difficult when money needs
to be collected next time.

Not long after I started my fieldwork in fall 2002, I learned of what happened to one of
the wells in the village in the spring of that year. The weather was very dry in the spring
and the wheat needed irrigation badly. At one well, the power converter and some other
equipment were stolen just when people wanted to irrigate their crops. The well managers
then went to collect money in order to replace the stolen equipment. But some families
refused to contribute on the excuse that it was the managers’ fault that the equipment was
stolen. The managers made efforts to persuade these families to contribute, but they
stubbornly refused. As a result, the well was not used in the whole spring and the harvests
were reduced by half.

Drinking water has long been a headache to villagers of Song Family Village. The well in
the middle of the village that had provided fresh water to the villagers was destroyed by
the earthquake in 1966. Thereafter no easy access to fresh water was available to the

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villagers. In the 1970s, two new wells were drilled at the outskirts of the village, with
credits from the government. These wells were not intended for drinking water, but
villagers could fetch water from them when they were used for irrigation.

But most of the time, especially in winter, the wells were not in use. Then the villagers
had to drink water fetched from three ponds around the village. The water in the ponds
mostly came from the summer rainfall. When the weather was dry and the ponds ran out
of water, villagers would pump water from the well to the pond. The water in the ponds
was not sanitary. But this was the only thing available. People had to boil this water
before drinking it.

In the late 1980s, the two wells at the outskirts of the village broke down. The weather
was so dry that none of the ponds had any water available. Villagers had to go to fetch
water from other villages. In 1990, the village got some subsidies from the government
and had a well repaired in the middle of the village. Right beside the well, they
constructed a big cement tank. Every day, water would be pumped into the tank and each
family could fetch water from this tank.

But there was a problem with the management of the well. Whenever the well needed to
be repaired, the manager had to collect money from each family. There were always
people who did not like to contribute. Thus, whenever there was any problem with the
well, it would take quite a time to get the money and have the well repaired. Villagers

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then had to go far away to fetch their water again. In 1996, that well finally broke down
permanently.

After that the village drilled a well to the north of the village. But the village government
could not pay for the equipment. The village leaders decided to rent the well out to a
private person, who was allowed to sell the water from the well. He bought three tractors
and three large water tanks mounted on wheels. Two workers were hired to deliver water
to the door of any family who ordered it. At the beginning, 5 yuan was charged to
families in Song Family Village for each tank of water. Years later, they raised it to 6
yuan. People from other villages who want their water are charged a higher price, 10
yuan a tank. A new well to the east of the village later also joined in the water selling
business. There is fierce competition between the two and they frequently show their
bitter feelings toward each other.

Each family in Song Family Village had a cistern (storage well) in their courtyard. These
cisterns are used as containers for drinking water. The size varied, but it was usually 10
meters in depth, 3 meters in diameter at the bottom and half a meter at the top. A simple
hand operated pump was put in through a hole in the cover. Although it was much more
convenient for the villagers to get their drinking water than before, not everyone was
willing to pay for the convenience. Some villagers complained that they now had to pay
for the water that they used to get for free.

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The year 2006 marked a historical change in drinking water supplies in Song Family
Village. That year, the county government decided to incorporate villages under its
administration into the drinking water supply system that had by then only provided
running water to residents of the county town. As part of the project, a new well was
drilled to the north of Song Family Village to provide drinking water to Song Family
Village and seven other villages. The well would be managed by the County Water
Company, which was one of the state owned utility companies in the county. A family
was to pay 200 yuan and the company would lay all the pipes that led into the house of
the family. The project was completed by the end of the year. For the first time in history,
people in Song Family Village had running water at home.

Land Tenure
Song Family Village collectively owns 2673 mu (445 acres) of farmland. Although to the
east are vast sandy dunes left by the ancient course of the Yellow River and to the west
are salty lowlands, most of the land owned by Song Family Village is of very high
quality and suitable for most crops. Sweet potatoes produced around Song Family Village
are locally famous in flavor. Song Family Village peanuts have big kernels and thin hulls.
Even in times of serious drought, the soil retains some moisture and can still yield
acceptable crops.

121

Before the Communists came to power in this area in 1945, all the land was privately
owned. The owners had to pay taxes on their land holdings. After the Communists took
over, they implemented in 1946 a land reform in which land was confiscated from the
wealthy families and redistributed to the landless and poor families. Ownership was
allocated roughly on a per capita basis. Since Song Family Village had more rich families
than most of the neighboring villages, and therefore much higher per capita land holdings,
nearly half of its land was lost to neighboring poorer villages.

After the land reform in the 1940s, each individual family was granted title to their lands
and all the village families became subsistence farmers. But this did not last long. In the
mid-1950s, all the land in the village was collectivized. After that, the collective farms
were run by government-appointed leaders. Everyone worked for the collective. After a
day’s work, each working villager had to check with the accountant of the production
team on the work points they earned for that day. Work points were supposed to be
assigned according to the quality of the work done, but in fact most people got the same
work points. The only differences were between males and females as well as adults and
juveniles. For a long time, a male adult would earn 10 work points for a full day’s work,
but a female could earn only 8 work points. Juveniles earned work points according to
their ages until they were 18 years old, an age that qualified them as adults. When crops
were harvested, the collective had to first pay the taxes to the state. Then, a part of what
was left was distributed on a per capita basis and another part was distributed according

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to the work points they earned. The percentage of these two parts varied from time to
time according to the state policy.

This collective farming system lasted for more than 20 years. After the post-Mao reform
of the 1980s, the farming collective was demolished. The land was redistributed to
individual families on a per capita basis. Each family was then put in charge of their own
farm and had to pay taxes directly to the state, much like the system before the
collectivization. But the land was officially still collectively owned and redistribution of
the land was supposed to happen every few years to reflect the demographic change in
village families. Yet redistribution has only happened twice since 1982, the year when
the collective was disbanded. In recent years, due to the government policy emphasizing
stability in land holdings and the practical difficulties in redistribution, there seems to be
little likelihood that land will be redistributed again. So now the collective ownership of
land is only a policy on paper. In reality, individual families now seem to have got sort of
permanent tenure on the farms they occupy.

Yet, since land is officially still collectively owned, it can be lost to developers who do
crooked deals with local authorities. Villagers had to jealously guard their right to the
land. In the early 1990s, a market was to be set up south of Song Family Village. The
village Party Secretary planned to sell part of the village land cheaply to the developer in
order to secure a position for himself in that market in the future. The price for one mu of
land was only 600 yuan, roughly equal to three years’ farming income from this piece of

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land at that time, according to villagers. Hearing this, many villagers organized protests
against this scheme. They sent delegates to appeal to the county government. Due to their
persistent protests, the scheme bankrupted.

Crops and Cropping
Climate and geographical location put Song Family Village in the traditional gaoliang
(sorghum) and winter wheat agricultural belt of the North China Plain. Crops in the
village can be classified into two types: subsistence crops and cash crops. Typically, the
former includes winter wheat, corn, millet and sorghum. The latter includes cotton,
peanuts, sweet potatoes, sesame, fruits, etc.

Winter wheat is planted in early winter. Spring is its major growing season. With little
rain in spring and with no irrigation, very little wheat was grown in Song Family Village
traditionally. The small amount of wheat was usually cultivated in fallow fields. After the
autumn harvest, the farmers would plow the fields so that the soil would be soft enough
to absorb water. The land would lie fallow through the whole summer and autumn. At the
end of the autumn, farmers would plow the fields again. In this way, the weeds that had
grown over the summer and autumn would be turned underground to provide nutrients
and hold moisture. With the green fertilizer and moisture accumulated through the
summer and autumn, wheat could grow acceptably in spring.

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But even by using this technique, the output of wheat was so low that large-scale
cultivation was discouraged. The best output would be only 100kg per mu (1/6 acre).
With a dense population and such a low per capita ownership of land, the low output
would not be able to support the large population. The limited cultivation of it and the
low output drove its price much higher than other staple crops, such as corn, sorghum and
millet. Few people could afford it as their staple food. For most villagers, they had to eat
coarser grain, such as millet, sorghum and sometimes corn.

With more wells available since the 1990s, the villagers have been growing more wheat
than any other crops. Under irrigation, wheat can grow quite well even when the weather
is very dry in spring. With easy access to water, there is no longer need for the land to be
left fallow in order to accumulate moisture and nutrients. As a result, the acreage for
wheat has expanded dramatically. It has replaced corn and sorghum as the major staple
food for all villagers.

Millet was traditionally the most important staple crop in North China. Due to its
capability to endure drought, which is quite common in the monsoon climate of North
China, it used to be one of the main staple foods here for thousands of years. According
to findings from an archeological site at Cishan, a place about one hundred miles
southwest of Song Family Village, the history of millet cultivation in North China can be
traced to 7,000 years ago (Ebrey 1996: 17). Nowadays it has ceased to be a major crop,

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but most people still grow some in order to use it to cook a kind of porridge that people in
this area like so much.

Another important staple crop is gaoliang (sorghum). Since gaoliang is highly tolerant of
flood and salt, it is often planted in low lands. As Song Family Village does not have
much low-lying, salty acreage, gaoliang was not as important as in other villages in
traditional times. Only in the 1970s when the government promoted the expansion of
gaoliang cultivation due to its higher yields was it widely cultivated in Song Family
Village. But when the land was redistributed to individual families as a result of the
reform policy in the 1980s, few people wanted to plant gaoliang anymore, due to its poor
quality as staple food. Nowadays seldom do you see any gaoliang in the fields in Song
Family Village.

Corn is a staple crop only second to wheat in importance. It is usually planted after the
wheat is harvested. With wheat and corn, the land can yield two crops a year. Corn used
to be an important staple food for villagers. But nowadays, villagers eat very little of it.
Most of the harvest will be either sold or used as food for domestic animals.

Although subsistence crops guaranteed the survival of the villagers, cash crops have also
been very important to the economic life of the villagers. Among these cash crops, cotton
has long been an important one in this area of China. South Hebei Province, where Song
Family Village is located, is one of the leading cotton producers in China (P. C. Huang

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1985). According to the local gazetteer (JXZBW 1994: 99), cotton cultivation has a
history of at least 600 years in this area. Most of the land in Song Family Village is well
drained, thus very suitable for cotton cultivation. Decades ago, two important ports on a
nearby river leading to Tianjin used to provide cotton cultivators easy access to the cotton
market. This convenience helped to expand cotton cultivation in Song Family Village.

While in the past the grain produced was barely sufficient to support the dense population,
cotton was one of the major sources of cash income for most families in the village,
enabling them to buy grain to fill in the gap. Furthermore, the value of cotton was not
only limited to the cash income earned by selling the cotton directly on the market. It was
more valuable as the raw material for an important handicraft in this area: home weaving.
Home weaving provided the most important source of clothing for most villagers. Only
30 years ago, the clothes that most villagers wore were still made from the cotton that
was cleaned, spun into yarn, and woven at home. With quite limited cash income, it was
impossible for most people to buy manufactured cloth. Home-woven cloth was also an
important source of cash income. Besides using it for their own clothes, people also sold
it on the market. The cash income from home-woven cloth used to be an important way
to make up for the insufficiency of the farming income for many families, just as what
Philip Huang (1985: 191-93) described of handcraft in North China.

Nowadays, no one wears clothes made of home-woven cloth any more. Home weaving
also ceased to be a profitable handicraft, with cheap manufactured cloth abundantly

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available on the market. But weaving cloth is still an important task for village women.
They do this not for economic gain but mainly for ritual purposes. There has long been a
custom for families to use home-woven cloth as part of the dowry for their daughters.
Home-woven cloth has been replaced by manufactured cloth in other aspects of people’s
lives, but it is still irreplaceable in this case.

Although cotton has traditionally been one of the most important cash crops in the village,
for a couple of years beginning in the mid-1990s, pests reduced the yield of the crop to
almost nothing. At the same time, the price of cotton was not high enough. People had to
stop growing cotton. This situation continued for several years. Then genetically altered
pest-resistant cottonseeds were introduced. In 2002 when I went back to do my fieldwork,
the price of cotton had risen to a historic high. Many villagers complained they had not
planted enough cotton and wanted to grow more the next year. In the early summer of the
year 2004, when I returned again to the village, I found even more land had been turned
into cotton fields. There was a kind of “cotton rush” going on as people sought to take
advantage of the high prices. Nowadays, villagers sell almost all the cotton they produce.
The yarn they need for weaving cloth is usually purchased from the market.

Song Family Village is also famous for the peanuts it produces. Since the soil of the
village is slightly sandy, it is very suitable for peanut cultivation. From the past to the
present, every year there would always be part of the land used for peanut cultivation.
Peanuts are one of the most important sources for edible oil. In addition, a large part of

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the crop would be sold on market for cash. Peanuts are also the most common snack
offered to visitors during the winter season, and the fresh roasted peanuts are really
savory and delicious in the cold weather!

Soybeans also used to be one of the most important crops of this area. When meat was
not easily available to villagers, beans were the most important source of protein for them.
Even though beans were important, this area was never a major producer of soybeans for
the market. Most people grew beans solely for their own use, especially at the Spring
Festival, when nearly every family would make some tofu (beancurd).

Sweet potatoes were traditionally a very important cash crop. People could sell them on
market for cash, but a more profitable way was to turn them into a type of noodles
(usually called yam thread noodles in restaurants) that were widely used in the cuisine of
north China. They would first pound up all the sweet potatoes into a kind of porridge,
then filter out the mash and obtain only the starch, which was then made into noodles. In
winter sweet potato noodles could be seen hanging out to dry in the homes of many
families. After these noodles were dried, people would sell them on the market.

Sweet potatoes were also used as an important food in the past when grain was not
enough for consumption. They could be eaten fresh, but an alternative way was to cut
them into slices and let them dry. The dried sweet potato slices would be stored. When
needed, they could be grounded into flour and used as food for human beings and animals.

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Since the economic reform in the 1980s, sweet potatoes have been less and less important
in villagers’ diet. In recent years, a plant disease has dramatically driven down the
acreage for sweet potatoes. Many people have stopped growing them.

Villagers also grow some fruits. The most important kind is apricot. This area is famous
for a kind of apricot whose fruits can grow as large as a peach. Most of the apricots are
not for local consumption. Before they are ripe, merchants will come to buy them and
then sell them to canneries. Another important kind of fruits is gouqi (Chinese wolfberry).
It is a kind of bushy plant producing small red and round fruits. When ripe, these fruits
will be picked and dried. Chinese people think that dried wolfberry fruits are healthy and
nutritious. There is a large market for it among overseas Chinese.

A new cash crop in the village is yinhua (honey suckle). Its flower is a kind of Chinese
herbal medicine. Yinhua has been cultivated in this area for a long time, but the acreage
used to be very limited. The product was mostly for local consumption. In recent years,
there has been an expanding market for it. With encouragement from the government and
a profitable market for it, its acreage has expanded greatly. This crop is very labor
intensive. The flowers have to be picked up by hand before they are in full blossom. A
family who grows a lot of it has to hire extra hands at harvesting time. Married women
provide the main labor force for doing such work.

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Technology in Village Life
Due to its remote location from any major urban centers, modern technology arrived at
Song Family Village quite late. Up to the early 1970s, human beings and draft animals
were the major sources of motive power. When I was very young in the early 1970s,
grain was still processed using stone mills driven by donkeys. The only sign of modern
technology was the diesel engines used for pumping water up from wells.

Electric power became available in 1972. After that powered mills gradually replaced the
stone mills and electrically powered engines replaced the diesel engines. But it was in the
late 1970s and the early 1980s that electric lights began to be used by villagers to light
their house at night. But the power supply was never reliable. Power outages happened
almost everyday. People always had to have their candles or oil lamps ready for the
power outage, because people were never notified ahead of time. Even nowadays power
outages still occur fairly frequently, though the situation has greatly improved in recent
years.

With electric power available, electric appliances began to enter village life. From the
early 1980s, a few families began to buy TV sets. In the 1990s, color TV sets began to
replace the black and white ones. Nowadays, almost all families have TV at home.
Watching TV at night after a day’s work has become an indispensable part of people’s
life in the village. Washing machines are now used by many young couples. The

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availability of running water might increase the use of washing machines in the near
future. Due to the instability of power supply, villagers are still not using refrigerators.
Air conditioners are just beginning to appear when I did my fieldwork from 2002 to 2003.

Farming technology showed a mixed picture of improvement and continuity. Most of the
land is irrigated now. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are widely used, perhaps too
widely used. The continued use of organic fertilizers produced by domestic animals to a
certain extent help to contain the negative effect that chemical fertilizers have on the soil.
Stalks used to be important fuels for cooking. But now with more and more people using
coal as fuel, most of the stalks are just abandoned on the roadsides. The government
encourages people to process the stalks and apply them to the fields as fertilizers. But few
people are doing that yet because processing the stalks also costs money.

The overuse of pesticide has caused a lot of problems. Since no tutoring services are
provided to help villagers master the correct way to use the pesticides, many people could
not apply them at the right time in the right amount. The result is that the overdose of
pesticide wastes a lot of money and causes pollution, but is not effective in controlling
pests. What happened to cotton cultivation in the 1990s is an example. People used a
large amount of pesticides to control the pests. But it did not worked at all. So eventually
people just gave up growing cotton.

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Draft animals are still widely used for plowing and sowing, even though more and more
people have started to use machinery. The land divided in small parcels has prevented the
use of large machinery. Of course, cost is also a factor. With plentiful supply of
manpower, it is not necessary to spend the money to buy farming machinery. But as more
and more men have transferred to non-agricultural sectors in recent years, machinery is
becoming more and more important in helping women and older men to do the farm
work. In the village, some families have purchased farming machines. They rent them out
to fellow villagers to make a profit. Maybe this will be the way towards a modern
agriculture in this village.

Although the farming technology has not improved greatly, Song Family Village has
joined the wave of industrialization that is going on throughout China. In the early 1980s,
a profitable industry began to develop in this area, when some people began to make
rubber washers. These washers were sold to different factories throughout the country.
The quality of their products was not good but the price was very low. They often had to
bribe the people in the factories in order for them to buy the products. Up till the early
1990s, most factories were still owned by the state and managed by personnel appointed
by the state, few of whom cared about the profitability of the business. The bribing
strategy always worked. Many people in Song Family Village also joined in this business.

From the 1990s, more and more state owned factories went bankrupt in China. In their
place arose privately owned factories. Even the existing state owned factories were more

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and more profit driven. Bribery no longer worked as well as before. Factories had higher
and higher requirements for the quality of the washers villagers produced. That forced
them to improve their technology. Many had to purchase new machinery in order to
remain in business. For example, people used to just use coal fire to vulcanize rubber, but
now they have to buy electric vulcanizing machines in order to better control the
temperature needed.

In Song Family Village, there are several factories in this business. A rubber factory
provides raw materials. A mould factory produces different kinds of moulds required.
Several small washer factories produce the end products for the market. When I did my
fieldwork in 2003, the owner of the mould factory was talking about purchasing
numerical controlled machine tools to produce more precise moulds, because the
availability of such tools in neighboring villages had already negatively affected his
business.

Roads and Transportation
Because of its location in a major water catchment basin, no major transportation routes
run by Song Family Village. People used to jokingly refer to Song Family Village and its
neighboring area as “the Tibet of Julu county,” implying its difficulty in transportation.
Before 1988, the only road connecting it to the outside world was a dirt road to the north
of the village. Due to the sandy soil, when the weather was very dry, many parts of the

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road would be full of loose sand that could be as deep as one foot. Riding a bicycle on
such a road was no faster than walking.

In 1988, this road was paved. That made the transportation easier, but it was still a
country road with a width of only 5 meters, too narrow for a normal traffic of cars and
buses. The major traffic on it consisted of bicycles and motorcycles. The quality of it was
not so high and there was no regular maintenance for it, because it was not part of the
national highway system. An occasional passage of a heavy-load truck would leave many
dips on it. By the time I started my fieldwork, lack of maintenance had already reduced it
to a very bumpy road.

When I was doing my fieldwork in 2002, villagers were gossiping about a road to be built
south of the village. But nothing happened in the following years. In early 2007, when I
made a trip back to China for family matters, I paid a visit to the village. The construction
of the new road that people had long been talking about was finally begun. I found that its
route had already been delimited by white lines. In fall 2007, I was told that it had
already been completed.

This is a road of a width of 9 meters, enough for the traffic of cars, trucks and busses.
What is more important is that it is part of the national highway system. That means it
will be maintained regularly like other major roads. This road will make transportation
much more convenient for villagers in Song Family Village. Their agricultural and

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industrial products will have better access to the outside market. The county government
has already designated an area along the road as an industrial development area. With this
development, village economy might see dramatic changes in the future.

Together with the development of roads, there have also been many changes in the means
of transportation. When I was still a primary school student in the village in the 1970s,
the best way to get around locally was by bicycle. But many families at the time could
not even afford a bicycle. In the early 1980s, bicycles were no longer anything special.
Some people began to buy motorcycles. From the mid-1990s, motorcycles became more
and more common. Nowadays most families have motorcycles, with almost all younger
men riding motorcycles and only older people still bicycling slowly on the road. When I
did my fieldwork from 2002 to 2003, two families had already owned their own cars.

Agricultural and Non-Agricultural Incomes
Before the 1980s, agriculture used to be the only major source of income for most
families in the village. After more than 20 years of market economy, the economic
structure in the village has changed a lot. For most families today, income from
agriculture makes up only a very small part of their total income. When asked about their
incomes from agriculture, most people will complain that there is hardly any profit in
farming. Only autumn crops provide some cash income.

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To model this situation, let us suppose one farmer is double cropping all his land. The
first crop will be winter wheat. The average output per mu (1/6 acre) of wheat is about
600 jin
10
(about 660 pounds). The price for wheat in the year 2002 was 0.60 yuan/jin.
That means the gross income from farming wheat would be 360 yuan/mu/year. It is
widely estimated that this amount will cover all costs of inputs for all crops for the
farming year, paying for fertilizer, irrigation water, etc.

The second crop, or the autumn crop, usually consists of millet, corn, beans, etc. Let us
take corn as an example. The average output per mu (1/6 acre) for corn is about the same
as for wheat. That is about 600 jin. The price for corn in the year 2002 was 0.40 yuan/jin.
The gross profit from farming corn would be 240 yuan/mu/year. The average per capita
acreage is 1.8 mu. If all the land were used for corn, the per capita gross income from the
second crop would be 432 yuan. Since the cost of this second crop had already been
covered by the income from the first crop of wheat, the gross income from this second
crop was actually the net income for the whole year. That is, if the first crop was wheat
and the second crop was corn, the per capita income for the year 2002 would be 432 yuan.
Growing millets and beans would not make much difference. For comparison, a young
woman can make about this much in a month working at a local factory. Without other
sources of income than farming, life would be hard for a family.

10
A Chinese unit of weight. It is equal to about 1.1 pound.

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Since farming cannot meet the financial needs of the family, other sources of income are
indispensable for the family economy. The allocation of labor within the family clearly
reflects this fact. Young men, especially those who are unmarried, will usually either
work in local factories or leave home to find temporary employment in urban centers.
Middle-aged men usually tried to find temporary jobs that allow them to help with
farming in their spare time. Unmarried young girls are all working in local factories.
Most of the people working on the farm are older men and women.

To illustrate the common pattern of labor allocation, let’s take a typical family in the
village. The parents are in their late 40s, the eldest son is 22, the second son is 20 and the
daughter is 18. The farm is worked on by the parents. Usually it is only the mother who
spends most of her time working in the fields. She gets up very early in the morning
(about 6: 00 am in the summer) and then leaves for the field. After working in the field
for about two hours, she will return home and cook a simple breakfast for the family. By
9: 00 am, she has already finished her breakfast and is ready to return to her farm work
again. She will work for about four more hours before she returns for lunch. Most days,
she is the only person having lunch at home. Thus the lunch will be simple and hasty. In
summer when it is too hot at noon, she will rest for a couple of hours to wait for the
summer heat to fade a little. Then four hours of more work follow until it gets dark. The
father might join her for supper. Then they watch TV programs for an hour or so. 10: 00
pm will see them sleeping in bed.

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The father only helps with farm work early in the morning and late in the afternoon. This
is because he is working for a building contractor in order to earn cash. Many people
working in his crew are in a similar situation as his. If the work is not urgent, they can
begin working later in the morning and quit fairly early in the afternoon, so that they can
still help their wives with the farm work. In harvesting or planting season when there is
too much farm work, the crew will stop working. During this period, the members of the
crew will spend their whole day doing farm work. After the busy season the contracting
crew will resume their work again. In a year, the father might earn about 2,000 yuan.

The three children almost never work on the farm. The two sons are working as
construction workers in Beijing. They seldom come back to visit their parents. The month
around the Chinese New Year is their only time to join their family. Each of them earns
about 3,500 to 5,000 yuan annually. The daughter is working in a local factory. She lives
at home and commutes to work every day. She can earn from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan,
depending on whether the factory has enough work for workers to do. The factory pays
on the basis of piece work.

To sum up the family’s yearly cash income, let’s say each of the two sons earns about
4000 yuan, the daughter earns 3500 yuan and the father earns 2000 yuan. The farm
income from the land would be 2000 yuan. Then their total yearly income would be
15500 yuan. Only 2000 yuan, or about 13% of their income is from the farm.

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Starting from 2006, the state exempted farmers from paying agricultural taxes. This was
the first time in a history of more than 2000 years. Historically, taxes from farmers
formed the most important part of the revenues for the imperial government. Even in the
first few decades of the People’s Republic of China, taxes paid by farmers provided an
important part of the investment in industry. But with the economic boom in the past two
decades, agricultural taxes have become a less and less important component of the
governmental revenues. At the same time, farming has become less and less profitable. In
order to encourage farmers to provide food for the country, the government decided to
remove some financial burdens on farmers. The exemption for agricultural taxes was one
such effort. Farmers welcomed this policy, but the problem of non-profitability in
farming cannot be solved by this policy alone. The main problem of Chinese agriculture
lies in the fact that the per capita landholding is too small. Such a small farm can never
provide for the increasing needs of farmers. The only way to solve the problem is to
transfer most of the rural population to industrial sectors. This seems to be just what is
happening in Song Family Village.

Villagers and the Market
After a crop is harvested, villagers will first keep enough for their own consumption and
then sell the rest on the market. But most villagers will not sell it at once because the
large supply of it immediately after the harvest might drive the price very low. They will
keep it until the price is higher enough.

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Selling agricultural products is very easy. They do not even need to transport it to the
market place. There are many traveling factors going from village to village to purchase
agricultural products. When the villagers see one of these men, they will first ask about
the price. If it is satisfactory, they will invite him into their houses to check their products.
After several rounds of offers and counter offers, they might reach an agreement on the
price. Then the deal is sealed.

Villagers not only sell their products on the market, but also have to purchase consumer
goods from the market. Nowadays, they have to rely on the market for almost everything
except for their staple food. No one wears homemade clothes anymore. Even shoes are no
longer homemade, since the cheap price of the manufactured shoes on the market makes
it no longer worthwhile to spend the effort to make them at home.

The most convenient place for shopping is the county town. The numerous shops there
are open every day of the week. People can come and do their shopping whenever they
want. Besides the shops that open daily, there is also a periodic market in the town, which
happens once every five days. In the past, there would be a huge crowd present at the
town on a market day. Numerous stalls selling various commodities would line up on the
major streets, making the traffic very congested. Even when I did my fieldwork from
2002 to 2003, the market day still attracted a lot of people. But in recent years, several

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shopping plazas have been built with numerous shops open every day. So the periodic
market is less and less attractive.

While the periodic market in the county town has become less and less important, the
ones in towns and villages distant from the county town have become more and more
popular. In a village on the border of the county, a new periodic market has been
prosperous in recent years. I visited it in the year 2004. It was as crowded as the periodic
market in the county town used to have been. It seems that these periodic markets in the
countryside have taken over the functions of the previous periodic market in the county
town, as the latter gradually developed into an urban center with businesses operated on
daily basis.

Since Song Family Village is located fairly close to the county town, no periodic market
has arisen in its neighborhood. But villagers do have an important alternative to shopping
at the county town. That is the temple fair. A temple fair was originally related to
religious activities at a temple. But in many cases, the temple perished long time ago but
the temple fair has survived. These are the old temple fairs that have existed for such a
long time that most people alive today do not even know about their origins. From the
1990s, many villages that used to have no temple fairs started their own. They first sent
out flyers announcing that a temple fair would be held on a certain day. Then they would
invite an opera troupe to attract people. If this process was repeated for three years, then
most probably the temple fair will be continued. In fact, people say that it is very easy to

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start a temple fair nowadays, since numerous itinerant peddlers are looking out for such
opportunities. The government encourages and supports those new temple fairs. Usually
in the first three years of a temple fair, no taxes are levied from the itinerant peddlers.

The major beneficiaries of a temple fair are the itinerant peddlers. Most of them are just
villagers who do this kind of business during slack seasons. The day before a temple fair
is to be held, peddlers will ask friends or relatives in the hosting village to reserve spaces
for them. At dawn on that appointed day, they will arrive with their motor carts piled with
commodities. By the time the sun rises, most peddlers will already have set up their stalls
along the streets. By noon, the village will be full of people pushing their way through the
crowds between the stalls that line up on the narrow streets, where peddlers will be busy
serving their customers.

Numerous things are sold at a temple fair, including agricultural products, domestic
animals, farm tools and various consumer goods. Most of the consumer goods sold there
are not locally made. The itinerant peddlers often go to cities to buy commodities from
wholesale merchants. Everyday on the buses returning from cities, you can always see
big packages piled inside and on top of the buses. These are the commodities those
itinerant peddlers have purchased from the cities.

Unlike the periodic market, a temple fair is just a one-day event. Yet, there is almost
always a temple fair somewhere in the region everyday, especially during the slack

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seasons, since most villages now have their own temple fairs. Thus, the itinerant peddlers
do not need to worry about the lack of temple fairs for them to attend. But a successful
peddler needs to know exactly where there is a temple fair on a certain day. In fact, such
a service is provided for them. At one temple fair, I found and purchased a pamphlet that
contains a complete list of all the temple fairs in more than 200 villages in the county. At
another temple fair I purchased maps of several neighboring counties containing lists of
temple fairs in those counties. No one knows who compiled these pamphlets and maps.
There was no copyright information on them. But they did satisfy the needs of the
itinerant peddlers.

A temple fair not only provides an opportunity for villages to buy and sell, it also gives
them a chance to meet friends and relatives. It is a custom that at a temple fair, villagers
of the hosting village are supposed to treat their friends and relatives who attend. Most of
the guests arrive in the morning. After greeting each other, chatting and gossiping, the
hosting family will serve lunch. In Song Family Village, like most of the villages in this
area, a typical lunch for such an event includes steamed bread and stewed meat and
vegetables. After the lunch, the guests will go out on the street to buy whatever they need.

Sometimes, villagers might need some small items so urgently that they cannot wait until
a periodic market day or a temple fair. Yet, a trip to the town is not worth it. The village
stores satisfy just such needs. In 2003, there were five stores in the village. All located on
the main street, they were very small shops owned and operated by individual families.

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They sold various commodities, including candies, soy sauce, vinegar and salt. These are
things that every family needs on a regular basis. In the year 2005, when I went back for
a short trip, I saw a super market had opened on the paved road to the north of the village.
It had many more commodities than the village stores. The quality was also better. The
competitive market may soon drive the village stores out of business.

It is interesting to make a comparison between the present situation of the marketing
system in the area where Song Family Village is located and Skinner’s model of the
modernization of the Chinese marketing system. According to Skinner, “modernization
of a traditional marketing system can commence only when it is linked by economically
efficient transport to outside systems of production which are likewise economically
efficient” (1964-65: 213). In China, this can only happen when “cities were linked by
steamer, railroad, or improved roads to centers of industrial production, whether the latter
were external or—after 1895—internal to China itself” (Skinner 1964-65: 213). When the
central markets and their intermediate markets were linked with this improved
transportation, Skinner predicted, the improved transportation linking the central market
and the intermediate markets, the standard markets in this traditional marketing system
will die out (Skinner 1964-65: 214). As a result, the number of the markets in this
marketing system will decrease, as his data from Ningpo, Zhejiang Province showed
(Skinner 1965-64: 215).

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This modernization process characterized by the improved transportation has already
happened in the area under my study. In recent years, the Chinese government has
invested greatly in the infrastructure of the countryside. As Lei Hongdian and Zuo
Huiyong reported in an article on Xingtai news net on December 4, 2007, all villages in
Julu County, where Song Family Village is located, have been connected with paved
roads by the end of 2007. Mechanized vehicles, such as trucks, tractors and trucks, have
been available to villagers for even a longer time. The burgeoning factories in the villages
are the results of this improved transportation, which makes it easy for people to sell their
products in distant markets.

But contrary to the prediction by Skinner, the modernization of transportation did not
lead to the decrease and disappearance of standard periodic markets. In fact, new periodic
markets have been added. The number of temple fairs increased dramatically in the past
ten years. Itinerant peddlers frequent these new markets with the greatest convenience
provided by the improved transportation from village to village. My temporary
explanation for the difference from Skinner’s model is that in his model, he kept
consumers’ purchasing power almost constant. Thus, easier access to urban centers and
upper level markets enabled by modernized transportation would take consumers away
from local markets. The standard periodic market would shrink or even disappear when
consumption was shifted to urban centers and upper level periodic markets. But in the
present-day rural China, there has been a dramatic increase in people’s purchasing power
together with the increasing economic prosperity. Even though part of people’s

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consumption would shift to urban centers or upper level periodic markets, their
increasing purchasing power makes sure that the left part of their consumption is still
enough to support an expanding local market. This is why local periodic markets are
more and more prosperous and their number is on the increase, even though modernized
transportation has provided local people unprecedented easy access to urban centers.

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CHAPTER THREE
TRADITIONAL FAMILY AND MARRIAGE
IN SONG FAMILY VILLAGE

1. The Early History of a Traditional Family
To understand the changes in family and marriage in the village during the decades under
the Communist regime, we first need to travel back in time in order to see what family
life and marriage customs were like before the Communists came to power. Our story
starts with a man named Xingye, who lived one hundred years ago at the turn of the last
century. He was at the last stage of his life at that time. Almost retired from active
management of affairs, he was still seen as the head of the family and the one who held
the ultimate authority.

Reaching the last stage of his life, there seemed to be little reason for him not to be
satisfied with what he had achieved in his life. With three sons, seven grandsons and over
1000 mu of land, his family was prosperous both in population and wealth. What was
more, all his three sons and he himself had imperial degrees
1
. His eldest son’s service as

1
In the last thousand years, the Chinese imperial courts selected officials by a civil service examination
system. To seek employment with the imperial court, a man had to hold a certain imperial degree awarded
to him after he passed one examination after another. The lowest degree was sheng yuan (also called xiu
cai). After getting this degree, a man was regarded as different from a commoner. He did not need to kneel
down when he went to see an official. The second degree was ju ren. Getting this degree sometimes
entitled a man to hold an office. The highest degree was jin shi. Getting this degree would certainly put a
man in the rank of officials. Holding an imperial degree gave a person a prestigious status in a village
community composed of mostly of illiterate peasants.

148

the deputy magistrate of a county in a neighboring province added more prestige to his
family. Yet, the family had not always been as prosperous as it was then. For seven
generations before him, there was only one son for each generation. The thin line of
descent had always been in danger of being broken.

A story that has been passed down orally for generations may reveal the situation of this
family a couple of generations before Xingye. According to this story, when the
grandfather of Xingye was twenty years old, he was struck with a very strange illness.
although he was too weak to work, he was always hungry for baozi
2
, a kind of steamed
buns with vegetables and meat wrapped in it.

There is nothing special about baozi nowadays, but it was then a very special food that
people only had chances to enjoy on holidays or other special occasions. Thus, his desire
was rarely satisfied. What was more unfortunate for him was that he had a stepmother. A
stepmother was normally said to be cruel and vicious to her stepchildren. This one was,
according to the story.

One day, a neighboring village was to hold its temple fair. This was always an occasion
for villagers to escape the boredom of everyday life and have some fun. When the young

2
Baozi is a kind of steamed buns with vegetables and meat wrapped in it. It used to be a special food for
people in rural north China. People only had opportunities to eat them on special occasions, such as the
Chinese New Year.

149

man heard that his stepmother planned to go to the temple fair, he was very glad and
requested to go with her, for he knew there would be a lot of food stalls that sold baozi at
the temple fair. He hoped his stepmother would buy some for him.

The stepmother did not object to his going with her. Anyway, she needed someone to
carry her basket, which would be a heavy burden for her bound feet when it was full of
purchased goods. To please his stepmother, the young man carried her basket all the way,
even though he was very weak with his illness.

At the temple fair, there were a lot of food stalls that sold baozi, just as he had expected.
Whenever they approached a stall, he felt sure that the stepmother would buy him a baozi.
But the stepmother did not. His hope flagged from one stall to another. When the temple
fair had almost ended, she still did not show any intention to buy him a baozi. When they
turned back from the temple fair with a basketful of things, no baozi had been bought for
him. The young man felt very much frustrated. In depression, his illness got worse and
worse. Not long after, he died, leaving behind his wife and an eight-month-old son.

The story about the baozi and the death of that young man was passed on from generation
to generation. Whenever his descendants paid visits to the family graveyard, they would
make offerings of baozi in front of his tomb. Then they would go to the stepmother’s
tomb and scold her for her bad treatment of her stepson.

150

The widow of the young man did not leave this family after his death. A record in the
local gazetteer compiled at the end of the imperial times recorded her as a “chaste
woman” (jie fu)
3
. From this record, we can see something of her life after her husband’s
death,

Lady Wang, the widow of Song Tinghe, was twenty-four years old when her husband
died. Her father-in-law was paralyzed and her mother-in-law was always sick. She
supported the family with the income from her hard work at spinning and weaving.
She remained filial to her in-laws, brought up her son and got him married. Her
grandson later became a student at the county school
4
. She is almost eighty years old
but still in very good health. People say this is a reward for her virtue and filial piety.
She was honored as a “chaste woman” in the ninth year of the Tongzhi reign (1870).
(Ling et.al 421).

She did not remarry after her husband’s death. She remained filial to her in-laws and
brought up her son. But what made her really extraordinary was that she fulfilled these
duties when the family was in a very difficult situation. The parents-in-law were both
sick and she was the only breadwinner in the family. It seemed that they did not have
much land at the time because she had to support the family with the income from
spinning and weaving. She brought up her son and got him married, thus having
completed the most important duty of a widowed mother. Her grandson brought prestige
to her and her family by winning an imperial degree. That grandson was Xingye. The

3
Chaste women (jie fu) referred to widows who lost her husband when she was young and never married
again in her life.

4
In imperial times, a person who got the lowest civil service degree was called sheng yuan. They were said
to have entered the school. Some of them would be students of the imperial school in Beijing, some would
be students at the prefecture school and more would be students at the county school. These people did not
need to attend the school regularly. The school was only responsible for checking on their study of
Confucian classics from time to time.

151

baby son in the baozi story, who lost his father when he was only eight months old, was
Xingye ’s father.

The legendary baozi story and this record in the gazetteer also convey some basic
information about family life at that time. Family properties were controlled by parents as
long as they were alive. Juniors had no right to dispose of them and were not allowed to
confront seniors with their own demands. This was why even though the young man was
hungry for Baozi, he dared not make his demand directly. A widow was not supposed to
marry again after her husband died. A daughter-in-law was supposed to be loyal to her
parents-in-law. Getting a son married was very important for parents. Xingye’s
grandmother was honored by the imperial government just because she had fulfilled
excellently all the obligations expected of a widow, a daughter-in-law and a mother.

2. Sons and Daughters: Different Life Careers
As an imperial degree holder, Xingye was never a miser in investing in his sons’ future
careers. When his three sons came of school age, he hired good teachers for them, in
addition to his own tutoring. He wished that they would be more successful than he had
been in the imperial civil service examinations and become scholar officials in the future.
But the three sons were not as successful as he wished. The eldest son passed the
examination for the lowest degree, but did not get any further. The second son never
passed any examination at all. The youngest son also won the lowest degree, but just

152

when he was preparing for the examinations for higher degrees, the civil service
examination system was abolished by the imperial government. Officials were no longer
selected from among Confucian scholars who had passed these examinations. The
Chinese classics, which he had spent so many years studying, were no longer of any use.
It seemed that Xingye ’s hope of producing an official would fail.

Ironically, events that happened at the end of imperial China brought renewed hope for
Xingye in his aspiration to turn his sons into officials. At the end of the Qing dynasty,
endless wars and natural disasters exhausted the revenues of the imperial government. In
desperation, the government began to turn to its last resort: selling offices and titles to
increase the government revenue. Hearing this, Xingye decided to take advantage of the
opportunity. No one alive still knows what machinations he went through in making this
happen. He probably approached the local officials and let them pass on his intention to
the higher officials who were in charge of this. Then negotiations with the officials in
charge determined how much to contribute and what positions and titles he could secure
for his sons.

Finally, he succeeded. His eldest son was appointed deputy magistrate at a county in a
neighboring province. Although the office of a deputy magistrate was among the lowest
in the imperial bureaucratic hierarchy, what mattered most in terms of prestige was that it
was the first time in the history of the family to have an official among its members. At
the same time, he also purchased a degree for his second son. Oral history claims that

153

several cartloads of silver dollars were spent in these two transactions. These payments
might even have exhausted almost all the cash reserves the family had.

People from other cultures might find it difficult to understand why Chinese have so
much interest in becoming an official. This enthusiasm for office came from the power,
honors and prestige associated with such a position. An official represented the imperial
court in front of the people he ruled. Symbolic of his status was the requirement that
commoners must kowtow to him when seeking audience with him. Power also brought
wealth. Although the regular salary of an official was very low, the under-the-table
money he could get was often far more than his measly salary. What was more important,
his family could also benefit from his increased power and prestige. He could provide
protection for his family and relatives, who might otherwise easily fall victim to bullying
and extortion from local officials. He could also bring posthumous titles to his dead
ancestors.
5
For example, after Xingye died, his eldest son, already an official, petitioned
to the imperial government to bestow a posthumous official title on his deceased father.
The title was bestowed and a stele was erected in front of his father’s tomb, with this
posthumous title carved in it, adding to the glory of the family.

Just because an official had a high social status, securing such a position became the
ultimate goal of an ambitious man. A man who never served as an official was seen as

5
In imperial China, a high official could appeal to the imperial court to bestow posthumous titles on his
parents, grandparents and great grant parents. A low official could only win a title for his parents.

154

nobody, no matter how well he did in another career. Even now, people living in villages
still have the same idea. When I went back to do my fieldwork, I was frequently asked
what kind of official I would be after I finished my Ph.D. When I told them I had no
interest in pursuing a career as an official, they could not understand. In their mind, if you
do not want to be an official, what’s the purpose of spending so many years studying and
what good it will bring you?

While Xingye invested heavily in his sons’ education and careers, all his five daughters
were illiterate. In a traditional Chinese family, daughters and sons were raised on
completely different tracks. A son was expected to continue his father’s family line by
producing grandsons, take good care of his parents while they were alive, make timely
and proper offerings to them after they died, and, if possible, seek a career that could
bring honor and glory to his family. In contrast, a daughter’s adult life would have more
to do with her husband’s family than with her natal family. Her life trajectory would be
set as a filial daughter-in-law to her parents-in-law, an excellent housewife for her
husband and a qualified mother for her children. The investment in a son’s education
would eventually bring back returns to the family, while investment in a daughter’s
education would bring back nothing. As a result, any extensive investment on her
education would be seen as irrational. Xingye’s discrimination between sons and
daughters was just a reflection of such a mentality. Yet, it was unfair to say that he did
not care for the future of his daughters. His care for them was mainly reflected in the
marriages he helped to arrange for them.

155

To make sure that their daughters could marry into proper families, Xingye’s wife began
to teach them the skills of housework when they were very young. Weaving and sewing
were among the most important skills that they must master. Even for a well-to-do family
like Xingye’s, everyday clothes for family members were mainly homemade, out of the
cloth woven by the wives and daughters of the family. After a woman got married, she
had to undertake the duty of providing clothes for her husband and children. Lacking
such a skill would be a significant defect for a girl and might make her an undesirable
candidate for marriage. Excellence at this would certainly add to her attraction.

Even more important for a girl was footbinding.
6
A girl with unbound feet was
considered unmarriageable. Some old people in the village still remember that when
people went to see a new bride, what they first examined was not her face but the small
feet. A good-looking bride with large feet was still considered ugly and undesirable. An
ordinary-looking bride with very small feet was seen as beautiful. When a girl was four
or five years old, her mother would begin to bind her feet. The beginning was particularly
painful. The bone of her toe was literally broken with the tight binding. For rich families
like Xingye’s, footbinding was even more important. With no need for their women to do

6
Footbinding was a custom in China before the 1920s. Small feet were regarded as beautiful and feminine.
A precondition for a good marriage for a girl was to have small feet. When a girl was very young, her feet
would be bound tightly with cloth belts to prevent them from growing. Her feet were deformed, as a result.
Thoughout her life she had to walk on her heels. That greatly restricted her mobility. This custom was
especially popular in north China where farming did not require labor contributions from females. The
custom gradually disappeared after the late 1920s when the Nationalist government forbade it. See Dorothy
Ko (2001 and 2005) and Wang, Ping (2002) for details.

156

work requiring heavy labor, they were less lenient on the size of a bride’s feet. Thus,
even though Xingye and his wife were more than aware of the pain their daughters
suffered in footbinding, they had no choice. The temporary pain of a young girl would be
rewarded by her good marriage in the future.

Thus, in Xingye’s family, sons and daughters were viewed quite differently by their
parents. The sons would remain forever within their parents’ family to continue the
family line while the daughters would sooner or later became members of their husbands’
families. A son was expected to have a career as a scholar official and bring glory and
prestige to his own family while a daughter was trained to be a proper wife and daughter-
in-law in her husband’s family. This led to their parents’ differential investments in them
when they were young.

3. Who Can Inherit: Unequal Rights of Sons and Daughters
In his last years, Xingye already had a large family. Although his second son did not
bring him any grandsons, his eldest son gave him six grandsons and the third son brought
him two grandsons. Before he passed away, a couple of his grandsons were already
married and some great grandsons had already been born.

After his death, all the family members still continued to live together in this expanding
extended family. Since his wife was still alive, the family could not be divided. Even

157

though managing such a large family posed many difficulties, no one dared to seek
family division. Dividing the family when one or both of the parents were still alive was
seen as unfilial.

The old lady was seen as happy and lucky. With so many descendants and all of them
filial to her, that was the best life one could imagine for an old lady at the time. But
nothing was perfect. Her fourth daughter’s life had long been a headache. This daughter
was engaged to a boy in another village when both of them were very young. When the
boy grew up, he turned out to be a good-for-nothing, spending most of his time drinking
and gambling.

After the marriage, the man still continued his wild life. There were frequent quarrels
between the young couple. Free of any restriction after his parents died, the man lived an
even more wild life. With no income, he just spent out of the properties he had inherited
from his parents. Eventually, his gambling debt cost all the properties he had inherited. In
the end, he fled to escape from his creditors, leaving his wife and two sons with nothing
to live on. With no choice, his wife returned to her natal home with her two sons. By that
time, her father Xingye had already died but her mother was still alive. Her brothers were
still living together in a large family.

Although her natal family could provide for her and her sons while her mother was still
alive, her mother, the matriarch of the family, was worried about what would happen to

158

her after the matriarch died and the family properties were divided among her brothers. It
was doubtful that her brothers would want to support her in the future.

One day, the old matriarch called the three sons together and told them she would like to
use her own personal savings to buy some land and house from them for her daughter.
She asked her sons to decide which part of the family land and which house they wanted
to sell to her. The sons dared not disobey their mother’s order. They selected a piece of
land that was sufficient for providing for a family and gave it to their sister. A house was
also given to her. No one knew whether or not the three sons really accepted the money
the old lady paid, but the land and house were regarded as purchased from them, not as
gifts from them. Thus, their sister did not owe them anything.

The old lady’s action might seem absurd to people in the present day, who might wonder
why the old lady did not just give part of the family properties to her daughter. But it
would sound reasonable if we see it from the perspective of patrilineal inheritance in the
traditional Chinese family system. The family properties were to be passed on only
through the male line. That means only sons had the right to inherit. A daughter had no
right to inherit any properties from her parents, except for the dowries. For this reason, if
the old matriarch asked her sons to cede part of the family properties to her daughter, it
would mean that the daughter got a share of the family properties to which she was not
entitled. The daughter would be seen as depriving her brothers of part of the properties
that they were to get. But by offering to buy the land and house with her own personal

159

savings, the old lady gave the transaction a quite different meaning. A difference between
the family properties and women’s personal savings was often honored in a traditional
family in this village. While the family properties were regarded as collectively owned by
the whole family and could only be passed on through the male line, the personal savings
of the mother were not regarded as part of the family’s shared properties. It had been
accumulated from her dowry, which had been invested in land or other profit-generating
businesses. It belonged only to her. Even her husband had no right to dispose of it
without her consent. She had full right to determine how to use it and whom she would
give it to. She could give it to her sons, but if she gave it to her daughter no one could
question it. For this reason, the old lady in our story offered to buy the land and house
with her own savings. In this way, the properties given to the daughter was a favor from
her, instead of from her sons. Since her properties were not part of the family’s shared
properties, her sons had nothing to say about it and her daughter did not need to be
grateful to her sons.

Years after the arrangement for the life of the homeless daughter, the old lady passed
away. Family division was put on the agenda. Before the old lady’s death, the family had
already expanded to an extended family with five generations. It boasted of several dozen
members. Managing such a large family had long been a headache. Now that the
matriarch had passed away, there was no longer any reason for them to stay together.
Most people in the family in fact were looking forward to that division.

160

The family properties were evenly divided into three shares, with each of Xingye’s three
sons getting one share. The large extended family was then fissioned into 3 independent
families. In the following decades, these three families experienced more family divisions,
which gave rise to more independent families with each family division. It should be
noted that even though the fourth daughter was living beside her brothers, she got nothing
from the family division.

The same practice applied to all families in the village, no matter rich or poor. Even a
family with only a small piece of land and a shabby cottage would pass on their humble
properties to their sons instead of their daughters.

4. Everyone was Expected to Marry
“When a boy is old enough, he should take in a bride; when a girl is old enough she
should marry out to a husband” (nan da dang hun, nü da dang jia). One of the most
important duties for Xingye and his wife was to get his sons and daughters married in a
timely and proper manner. Getting married was a social obligation, both for the boys and
girls and also for their parents.

To Xingye, the marriages of his sons and daughters were both important, even though
they were meaningful in different ways and thus treated differently. The aim of a son’s
marriage was mainly to continue the family line. Only by his marriage could offspring be

161

produced and the family line be continued. For villagers, the concept of “family” was
composed not only of the living members, but also the previous members, those who had
already died and become ancestors, as well as the future members, those who had not
been born yet. Ideally, a family was an endless chain of generations of people, which
could be traced to remote antiquity and extended to eternity in the future. Each generation
was seen as merely one of the numerous nodes that formed this endless line of descent.

This idea was symbolically represented during the New Year, when all members of a
lineage gathered together at the ancestral temple. When the living members of the lineage
lined up in rows and kowtowed to the ancestral scroll hung on the wall, there was
obviously a continuation of the line of descent from the dead ancestors, who were
represented by their names written on the scroll, to the living members, who were
kowtowing to the former. Each row of names on the ancestral scroll represented a
generation of ancestors. Similarly, each row of people kneeling down on the floor
represented a generation of living members. Although separated by the insurmountable
border between this world (living people) and the other world (symbolized by the
ancestral scroll), the rows of ancestors and their living descendants form a continuous
line of descent. The continuation in time was represented in the continuation in space at
this ritual.

Derived from this idea, when family members died, what disappeared were only their
bodies, not their souls, which were still seen as living in the other world. Although no

162

longer physically present, they were still treated as members of the family line. They and
their descendants were still supposed to care for each other. While their material life
depended upon their descendants in this world, they could either protect or harm their
descendants with their spiritual power acquired after their death, depending upon whether
the descendants would take good care of their material life. Fearful of their spiritual
power, the descendants were always careful to satisfy the needs of their ancestors. During
the New Year holiday, the ancestors would be invited back home by their descendants to
enjoy the good food that was rarely available year around. A good amount of paper
money would be burnt in front of the ancestral scroll as cash gift for the ancestors to
spend in the other world. At the Qingming festival
7
, the descendants would visit the
ancestors’ tombs with offerings that would meet the ancestors’ needs for summer. At the
first day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar, offerings would be made at the tombs
in order for the ancestors to change for warm clothes to ward off the bitter coldness of
winter.

If the family line ended without any descendants, there would be no one to take care of
the needs of the ancestors. They would have to live a miserable life in the other world.
This partly explains the reason why having no descendants was seen as the worst of
“three things for being unfilial.”
8
Since the traditional Chinese family was a patrilineal

7
Qing Ming normally occurs around April 4
th
every year. People in China make offerings to their
ancestors on this day so that the ancestors can get ready for the coming summer (with summer clothes).

8
See footnote 7 of “Introduction” of this dissertation.

163

institution, the continuation of the family line depended upon whether the sons could
have male offspring. Therefore, the marriage of the sons was not just a personal matter. It
was concerned with the continuation of the family line. For this reason, parents in the
village, no matter rich or poor, would try their best to get their sons married.

For a daughter, her marriage was also important to her parents, though in a different
sense. For her natal family, she was only a temporary member when she was young.
After she grew up, the only proper place for her was in her husband’s home. There she
would serve as a daughter-in-law, a wife and a mother. This could be seen from the fact
that a daughter’s name would never be entered into the ancestral scroll of her father’s
lineage, which only contained the names of the male members of the lineage and their
wives.

After a woman died, her body was supposed to be buried in the graveyard of her
husband’s family. There was no place for her in the graveyard of her natal family. That
was reserved for the males of the family and their wives. If a woman died before she got
married, she could only be buried somewhere away from her natal family’s graveyard.
Whenever you see a grave standing alone in the fields, it probably belonged to a girl who
died before she was married. To Song Family Villagers, that lonely grave was not a
pleasant sight. Everyone should have a family. Even the dead should be buried together
with their relatives to enjoy the warmth of the family. This was why even when a young
girl died before she could get married, her family would try to arrange a posthumous

164

marriage for her. They would find a family that had a bachelor who died without a wife.
Then that dead girl would be “married” to that dead “bachelor,” so that her body could be
moved to the graveyard of his family and buried together with her “husband.” This
practice still exists today.

For parents, there was yet another reason for marrying a daughter out. As we have
already discussed, the family property was passed down from father to son in the
traditional Chinese society. A girl had no right to inherit her natal family’s properties.
She had to marry in order to have access to the properties of her husband’s family. If a
girl did not get married after she grew up, she would be in a very awkward position.

In the area where Song Family Village was located, there had been still little opportunity
for a single woman to make a living by herself even until the middle of the 20
th
century.
With no right to inherit any means of production and with few employment opportunities
available, women had to rely upon someone to make a living. She had to depend upon her
father when she was young, upon her husband when she grew up, and upon her son when
she was old. Parents might be able to support an unmarried daughter. But when her
parents died and the family properties were divided among her brothers, the brothers
most often would not want to support her. How could she survive? Getting married was
the only solution.

165

Due to a son’s duty to continue the family line and take care of his ancestors’ afterlife, his
marriage was particularly important to his parents. But unfortunately, not every man
could get married. There seemed to be always a shortage of women. There were several
factors contributing to this scarcity of women. One was the natural higher birth rate of
males than females.
9
Another might be due to female infanticide (Coale et al.: 1994).
But in my fieldwork, I did not hear of any case of that in the village, either now or in the
past. The last factor, but maybe the most important one, was the higher death rate of adult
women, particularly caused by childbirth. Before the 1950s, there were no hospitals in
Julu County. Few doctors had any modern medical training (JXZBW 1994: 503).
Delivery was done at home, with the help of traditional midwives who did not even know
the importance of sterilization. Any problem that occurred at the delivery might cost the
woman her life, since no one could do any surgery to save her. Infection from the
delivery also cost many women and infants’ lives. This did not improve until training
programs were started by the new Communist government for village midwives from the
early 1950s (JXZBW 1994: 501). The high death rate of women could be seen from the
ancestral scrolls of Song lineage. On them, there were many entries with one man’s name
but several women’s names. These were not cases of polygyny, for a concubine’s name
would never be entered into the ancestral scroll. They were all wives of the man, married
to him at different times in his lifetime. Except for the last one, all of them died very
early. In the year 2006, I happened to be present when a family was moving the graves of
their dead relatives to a new graveyard. When they opened up one tomb, I saw four

9
The normal ratio of males to females falls between 1.05 and 1.07. See Coale et al. (1994: 459).

166

coffins inside. One of them belonged to a man, but all the other three belonged to his
wives. He married three times in his life. His first two wives all died very young, without
any offspring.

Due to the relative scarcity of women, there was a fierce competition for marriageable
women. People’s behaviors in marriage practices were very similar to those on the
market. They all use their resources to get the best deal they could. The wealthy families
attracted brides with their economic status. They refused to pay any brideprice. A poor
family had to use brideprice to attract a bride from a poorer family. The poorest families
who could not accumulate enough brideprice could never get their sons married. Thus,
we can call the field of marriage a marriage market, where there were winners and losers.

The losers in the competition on the marriage market would not be able to get married.
They would remain bachelors throughout their lives. But after a bachelor died, his
relatives would not like him to remain a bachelor in his afterlife. Most likely, they would
build a straw effigy “woman” and assign a name to “her.” Then the effigy would be
buried beside the man as his “wife.” Although this sounded like cheating because there
was a “real dead husband” but not a “real dead wife,” it satisfied the requirement that
everyone should be married.

167

5. Marriage by the Order of Parents and Words of Go-betweens
As was the case with every family in the village in his time, all the marriages of Xingye’s
sons and daughters were arranged by him and his wife. They even never sought consent
from their children. They did not see any need for that. Filial Children had the obligation
to accept whatever marriage arrangement their parents made for them. This was called
“marriage by the order of parents” (fumu zhi ming). No direct contact was allowed
between the boy and the girl before their wedding. In fact, they were even not allowed to
see each other. The only information about the other side was provided by go-betweens.
This was called “marriage by the words of the go-betweens” (meishuo zhi yan). The
marriage “by the order of parents and words of go-betweens” (fumu zhi ming, meishuo
zhi yan) was seen as the only moral and legal marriage in the village. It was beyond the
villagers’ imagination in the past for a boy and a girl to arrange their own marriage. In the
villagers’ eyes, that was similar to adultery. It would bring shame to parents of both sides.
To prevent this from happening, villagers kept boys and girls segregated before they were
married. For wealthy families like Xingye’s, their daughters even seldom came out of
their houses.

Many engagements were contracted when the couple were not yet of school age. One of
the great grandsons of Xingye still had some memory of his engagement, which was a
good example of the engagements in traditional time. He was only three or four years old
at the time. One day when he was playing outside in the courtyard, a man came in. Seeing

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the boy playing, the man asked him, “Do you want a wife?” The boy replied, “Yes, of
course.” Then the man went in and began to talk with the boy’s parents. Many years later,
the boy’s father told him that that man was a go-between and his marriage was initiated
on that visit.

Most of the marriages among Xingye’s descendants were arranged in this way before the
Communist Party came to power in this area. The boys and girls were engaged when they
were three or four years old. A boy and a girl thus engaged were not allowed to see each
other until their wedding, which happened when the boy and girl were around the age of
fourteen.

Although most marriages thus arranged worked out just fine, it was inevitable that some
of them got into trouble. Since a boy and a girl were not allowed to interact with each
other before their marriage, it was not rare that the bride and the groom could not get
along with each other after marriage. Even though parents thought they had made the
right arrangement on the basis of family backgrounds, such a marriage did not work for
the boy or the girl.

The marriage of Chenglan, one of Xingye’s great grandsons shows the problem that this
type of marriage arrangement might cause. Like most men in his family, Chenglan was
engaged to a girl when he was very young. This arrangement might have worked fine for
other men, but definitely not for him. When he grew up, he turned out to be somewhat

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mentally retarded. Although he was not an idiot, his mind was slower than a normal
person. He attended school with other children when he was young, but education did not
make any improvement on his intelligence. It was said that one day the young students
were required to memorize a poem with a sentence “A little bird rests in its nest”
(xiaoniao ju chaozhong). All other students could recite it correctly but him. Whenever
he came to this sentence, he would remember it as “A little bird eats a snake” (xiaoniao
chi changchong).

In contrast to his slow mind, the bride was an extraordinarily bright girl. According to
seniors who knew her, she was not only beautiful, but also quite smart and well educated.
She could read and write, which was very rare even among girls in rich families at that
time. It was said that she could do two calculations using two abacuses with both hands at
the same time.

Two days after their wedding, the young couple was supposed to visit the bride’s parents.
To celebrate the event, it was customary for the bride’s family to hire a theatrical troupe
to stage an opera in their village. As the distinguished guest of the day, the new groom
was supposed to order the first opera. The man’s family knew their son quite well. They
were sure he was unable to handle this, for he could not even read the menu. Long before
the wedding, they began to teach him what to do and which opera to order. They just let

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him memorize the title of one opera. The opera was titled “Butterfly Stele” (hudie bei)
10
.
As one of the most popular operas at the time, any theatrical troupe could play it. He
worked hard. But to make sure that he could remember it, his parents tested him before
the trip. They were pleased to see that he already had a good mastery of it. Feeling
reassured, his parents sent him off on the trip with his new wife.

Before the opera began, a menu was brought to him, as expected. He was asked to order
the first opera. He pretended to read the menu carefully. After a while, he said loudly and
confidently, “let’s have Butterfly Flying” (hudie fei). The whole crowd exploded with
loud laughter. Both his wife and her family felt ashamed in public.

The bride felt she was cheated. She could not accept such a stupid man as her husband.
She tried to stay with her parents as much as possible. When she had to come to stay at
her husband’s home, she did not let him sleep in bed with her. These were the only things
that she could do. She never even thought of divorce. It was impossible at the time. Not
only would her husband’s family not allow her to divorce, even her own family would
not permit that to happen. Divorce was then still regarded as a shame to a family. If she
had divorced her husband, it would had severely humiliated her parents and brought
severe damage to her own family’s name. A proper attitude a woman was expected to

10
This is an opera about the famous tragic romance between Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai. The two fell
in love with each other, but Zhu was forced to marry another man chosen by her parents. She committed
suicide at her wedding. Liang, after hearing the death of Zhu, committed suicide in front of her tomb. After
Liang’s death, the souls of the two turned into two butterflies that flew together aound the tomb.

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have towards her marriage was “jia ji sui ji, jia gou sui gou.”
11
literally meaning “if
married to a cock, fly with him; if married to a dog, run with him.” If a woman married a
man she did not like, she could only blame her fate. There was nothing else she could do.

A couple of years after the marriage, people learned that the young wife was pregnant.
Her belly grew bigger and bigger. Then a boy was born. The little boy was smart and
handsome. She liked him very much. If nothing had happened, she might had spent her
life like all the Chinese mothers, raising her son until he grew up, finding a wife for him
and then enjoying the life of “fondling grandchildren with candies in mouth” (han yi
nong sun)
12
.

Unfortunately both for her and her husband’s family, the child did not grow up. When he
was several years old (no one still remembers his exact age at his death), illness deprived
him of his life. The mother was very sad. The relationship between her and her husband
got even worse. To console her, her parents-in-law adopted a son for her. But that did not
seem to help. She never showed any like for the newly adopted boy. The feeling of bad
fate put her in deep sorrow. A couple of years after her little son died, she was struck by
tuberculosis, which was a common and fatal disease among young women at the time.
Without an effective cure, she died soon.

11
This is a very common usage in talking about the traditional Chinese marriage, meaning that women
were supposed to accept whatever marriage their parents arranged for them.

12
This phrase refers to the happy life of old people who have many grandchildren.

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Everyone who knew her felt sorry for her bad luck. Maybe death was the only way for
her to get out of the marriage that she hated so much. Although everyone knew that her
husband was nothing of a match for her, there was nothing people could do. No one could
help her out of her situation, even her parents, who had so much love for her.

It was decades after she died that some women close to her revealed that her son who
died very young was not born of her. The pregnancy was a faked one. The big belly was
made by tying pillows to her waist. Since she seldom came to live in her husband’s
family, few people could find it out. Not long after the marriage, her husband’s family
gradually learned about what happened between the young couple. When they saw no
chance of improvement in the relationship between the young couple, they went to seek
help from the bride’s parents. But even her parents could not do anything to change her
mind. Finally, parents of both sides agreed upon a solution.

The bride’s parents happened to know a poor family with too many children. The wife of
that family got pregnant again but they could not afford another baby. If someone were
willing to give them some compensation, they would allow him to adopt the child after it
was born. The bride’s parents persuaded her to pretend pregnancy. When the child was
born, it would be given to her immediately, so that she could pretend that the child had
been born to her. The bride, knowing that she could not divorce her husband, thought it
an acceptable solution. At least, when the child grew up, she would have someone to rely

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upon. She agreed. Then parents of both sides let people know that she was pregnant.
Pillows were tied to her waist to pretend pregnancy. When the child was born, it was
taken immediately to her. They were glad to find that it was a boy. Then all relatives and
friends were informed that she had given birth to a son. Few people knew that this son
was actually adopted. But it seemed that her fate was still working against her, for even
this little son did not live long. The death of this little boy took away her last hope in life.
After that, she seemed doomed.

6. The Matching Windows and Doors
Although from time to time there were cases of bad marriages, few people questioned the
way marriages were arranged. Anyway, most marriages arranged by parents worked out
just fine. Those bad marriages were only seen as the result of bad luck.

Xingye had three sons and four daughters. All the marriages were contracted with
prominent families. In selecting spouses for his sons or daughters, Xingye paid little
attention to whether the two individuals were suitable for each other in personality,
intelligence, etc. In fact, it was impossible to make such evaluations because the boy and
the girl were too young at the time of the engagement. For Xingye, a proper marriage for
his son or daughter was to be contracted with a family of similar social and economic
status. This was an idea shared by most people at the time. As long as the two families

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matched each other, it was considered a good match. This was called “men dang hu dui,”
literally meaning “matching windows and doors.”

For Xingye, there were several advantages in selecting spouses for his children from
families of similar background. One was that the young couple would have more in
common in terms of habits, values and sense of morality. In this way, the barriers
between the new couple would be minimal. The two would get used to each other sooner
and adapt to their married life more easily.

Selecting husbands for his daughters from rich families was even more important.
According to the custom, a daughter had no right to inherit her parents’ properties, except
for the dowries that she took away with her at her wedding. As a result, when a daughter
got married, she personally owned very little. The dowry alone could not guarantee her a
decent life in the future. Marrying her into a family no worse off than her own was very
important. In such a family, at least she would not need to worry about survival.

The idea of “men dang hu dui” had been deeply entrenched in traditional Chinese society.
Not only rich people, but poor people were also fully aware of class distinction in
marriage. There was an old saying in the village, “how could a poor man and a rich man
bow to each other if the two families contracted marriages between them?” Decades ago,
a rich man usually wore a long gown while a poor man could only afford a short coat.
When the poor bowed, his bottom would be exposed, without a long gown to cover it.

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Luckily, bowing to each other was a ritual only for the rich. A poor man did not need to
do that. But if a poor man’s family contracted marriages with a rich man, they had to bow
to each other. The implication of this saying was that there was a class distinction hard to
cross on the marriage market. The following story about the marriage of one of Xingye’s
grandsons could reveal how the idea of men dang hu dui affected people’s behaviors.

In the early 1900s, the wife of a grandson of Xingye died, leaving behind her husband
and a young son. The death of a young woman was quite common at that time. The
husband needed to take in another bride. There would be little difficulty in finding a
family who wanted to marry their daughter to the young widower. The only problem was
whether he could still marry a girl from a rich family. Since this was his second marriage,
that might be difficult. A family might be reluctant to marry their daughter to a widower
from a family with similar social status, especially if he had children left by his first wife.
Being a daughter-in-law was already a difficult task for a young woman. Being a
daughter-in-law and a stepmother at the same time was even worse. As a stepmother, the
new wife was expected to treat the children well. Yet, a cultural stereotype always
assumed that stepmothers were vicious to stepchildren. Everyone in the family would
keep watching eyes upon how the stepmother treated the stepchildren. Thus, normal
interactions between a mother and her children, such as disciplining, might be thought as
improper if a stepmother did the same thing. In one word, a stepmother was not given the
authority of a mother, but was burdened with all the responsibilities for the children. For
this reason, while the principle of “men dang hu dui” was strictly followed for a first

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marriage, a man’s family had to be a little flexible with his second marriage. But still, a
rich man did not need to worry too much about getting a new wife. He could always
marry a girl from a poorer family if he had to. There were always people who wanted to
marry their daughters into a better family.

Not long after his first wife died, many go-betweens began to approach the family to
propose possible matches. After careful consideration, his parents finally selected a girl
from a village four km away. But the girl’s family was not the type that his family usually
contracted marriages with. That family did not own much land. They made a living
mostly by operating a restaurant. Traditionally, only farming was seen as the proper
career that a person should undertake if he failed to become a scholar-official. People
involved in other trades were all regarded as shrewd and thus morally stigmatized.

Reluctantly, the family and the man finally accepted this marriage arrangement. Anyway,
this was a second marriage. A bride from such a family would not hurt the family’s
reputation much. The bride and her family were quite aware of the distinction in social
status between the two families. They tried to furnish the best dowry that they could
afford for their daughter in order for her to feel better about the match.

The bride knew that her sisters-in-law, the wives of the brothers and cousins of her
husband, were all from wealthy families. She did not want them to know that her family
was poor, for they might look down upon her if they knew. In order to show them that her

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own family was not as poor as they thought, she changed her clothes four times on the
day of her wedding. She somewhat achieved her purpose, since many people noticed
what she did. But contrary to what she expected, she became a laughing stock. Decades
later, people were still telling this story about the bride who kept changing her clothes.

The story shows that even though class distinctions were less important for a second
marriage, people were still fully conscious of them. Crossing this line was still not a
comfortable experience for the people involved. But it should be noted that even though
“matching doors and windows” was the ideal in contracting marriages, female
hypergamy still existed. It was common for a female to marry into a family of a social
and economic status equal to or higher than her own natal family’s. A man typically
married a woman from a family of equal status to or lower status than his own. But the
precondition for hypergamy in a normal marriage was that the gap between the two
families involved was not very large. Basically, they both belonged to the same class. A
family with two hundred mu of land might find it easy to marry their daughter to a family
with 500 mu. Although there was a difference in possession of wealth between the two
families, they were both large landholders who were regarded as elite families in rural
communities. But it would be difficult for a family with little land to marry their daughter
into a family with 500 mu of land. This was only possible when the marriage was a
second marriage, as in the case mentioned above, or when a man in a wealthy family took
a concubine from a very poor family.

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7. Gain at a Boy’s Marriage and Loss at a Daughter’s Marriage
For a village rich man like Xingye, the wedding of a son or daughter was more than a
ceremony for the union of a young couple. It was about family face and prestige. Face
and prestige had to be built up by conspicuous spending. Although Xingye and his family
lived a thrifty life, they had to spend generously on such occasions. There was no written
rule as to how much one should spend, but everyone in the village knew what was a
proper wedding for a family on the basis of their social and economic status. If one spent
less than supposed to, he would lose face in public and would be looked down upon by
the in-laws.

The expenses of a son’s wedding included the costs of providing food and alcohol for the
relatives and friends who were invited, renting sedan chairs
13
, hiring sedan carriers and
employing a musical troupe
14
that could add to the ceremonial flavor of the event. A
bridal chamber would also have to be provided for a son’s wedding, usually a single
bedroom in the house of the groom’s parents. Most commonly, it would be a side room,
with the master bedroom still to be occupied by the parents of the groom. But a rich
family might build a brand new house for the wedding, even though it might not be

13
In Song Family Village, a bride had to be carried in a sedan chair from her natal home to the groom’s
home at a traditional wedding. A sedan chair used at a regular wedding was normally decorated in red color,
symbolizing happiness. According to villagers, a sedan chair was still used at a wedding in the 1950s. From
the 1960s, the government forbade its use. A horse cart was then used in place of the sedan chair to
transport the bride at a wedding. Since the 1980s on, cars have become the bridal vehicle at a wedding.

14
A musical troupe was often employed at a wedding to add ceremonial flavor to the event.

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occupied solely by the new couple. A grandson of Xingye famously built a 3-story
building for the marriage of his eldest son.

Expenses lavished on a daughter’s wedding were even more important. A dowry usually
included the furniture and some everyday household utensils. For wealthy families,
jewelry and even cash might be added to the dowry. In some cases, the bride could even
use her dowry to purchase some land, which then legally belonged only to her. Although
Xingye did not invest in his daughters’ education, he had no hesitation in providing
handsome dowries for them. For a family like his, providing large dowries for daughters
was an obligation.

If one has seen a Chinese wedding procession, he would understand how the dowry was
related to fame and prestige of the bride and her family. At the wedding, the dowry would
be sent in a formal procession together with the bride to the wedding ceremony at the
groom's home, so that the amount and nature of the gifts were publicly exposed for all to
see. While the bride's relatives were still preparing her for the ritual, the dowry would be
taken outside and loaded onto carts. The crowd of villagers standing by would check over
and make comments on what items were contained in the dowry. Under the scrutiny of
fellow villagers, a rich dowry would certainly be admired and bring prestige and pride for
the bride and her family.

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After the bride finished her preparations at her home, she would be escorted outside into
a red sedan chair, which was traditionally considered essential to a proper marriage. Then
she would be carried away together with her dowry to the groom's home, which, in most
cases, would be in another village. When the procession arrived at the groom's home
bringing the new bride and her dowry, the whole village would turn out to inspect the
bride and the items. When the dowry was unloaded from the carts, a large crowd would
certainly be attracted to the sight. Their critical comments were notable on such occasions
for their color and humor. It is no exaggeration to say that a wedding procession was a
public review of a family’s power and prestige. No family liked to lose face on such an
occasion.

For wealthy families, a fine dowry was also a way to get their daughter well established
at her husband's family. Since the bride had never met her groom and members of his
family before the wedding, the first years of her life at her new home were often quite
difficult for her. Surrounded by strangers, often her dowry was the only comfort for her.
A good dowry guaranteed that in the first several years of her living at her husband's
home, she did not solely depend on her in-law's goodwill for her quality of life. A rich
dowry would also please her parents-in-law and so to a certain extent might alleviate the
oppressive patriarchal authority imposed on her by the in-laws. In contrast, a bride with a
small dowry would likely be subjected to invidious discrimination in a rich family.

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When villagers talk about the traditional marriage, they like to say, “A daughter would
take away your money, and a son would bring in money” (guinü shi pei qian huo, xiaozi
shi chaihuo duo). Seen from the family’s perspective, this was quite true. When taking in
a bride, she would bring over a dowry. This would add to the family property. When
marrying out a daughter, she would take a way a part of her father’s property to her
husband’s home. Her parents lost money on her marriage. This fact is also reflected in the
term used to refer to dowry in the local dialect: “pei song.” “Pei” means “lose,” while
“song” means “give.” Both terms imply that a bride’s family will lose money by giving
their daughter a dowry.

The foregoing description shows how most families in the village married out their
daughters and took in brides in traditional times. They lost money on a daughter’s
marriage while gaining some profit on a son’s marriage. Although most families could
not afford such a large dowry as the wealthy families usually gave their daughters, they
still provided dowries that were commensurate with their means. In short, most families
adopted the practice of dowry marriage in traditional times.

But not every family in the village followed the same practice in marriage transactions.
There were families who could not afford the “dowry” game. When I asked an old man in
the village whether he paid anything to the bride’s family at his marriage, he said,
“Of course, but the amount was not large, only 200 yuan. Usually the bride’s side
would say, ‘we will provide some dowry but we cannot afford to give too much. You
must help with it.”

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The idea was that the groom’s family needed to give some money to the bride’s family.
The latter would not keep the money but use it for part of the dowry. In addition to the
money from the groom, the bride’s family also had to contribute to the dowry out of their
own pocket, even though the amount might be very small. Thus, the total amount of the
dowry that the bride brought over to the groom’s family at the wedding consisted of
contributions from both sides. This was clearly a case of pseudodowry marriage.

In a pseudodowry marriage, the bride’s family was usually too poor to furnish a decent
dowry for the daughter. They had to ask the groom’s family to help to pay for it. The
groom’s family in such a marriage was usually also a poor family. Very few people
wanted to marry their daughters into such a family. Even poor families wanted to marry
their daughters into richer families. It was highly possible that the son of such a poor
family would never be able to marry. In order to get the son married, a poor family found
it necessary to give in to the demands of the bride’s family. When the bride’s family
wanted them to contribute to the dowry, they had no choice but to agree.

Although most people who asked the groom’s family to pay for the dowry would use the
money to furnish the dowry, there were some people who were so poor that they would
keep part of or even all of the payment. In that case, such payment, at least part of it,
became brideprice. This only happened when the family was so desperate that they would
not care about losing face.

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Thus, we could classify all the marriages in pre-Communist times into three basic types:
dowry marriage, pseudodowry marriage and brideprice marriage. Dowry marriage was
performed by most people in the village and was also regarded as the ideal type. Not only
the wealthy people, but most of the other families who could afford a decent dowry for
their daughters would also prefer the dowry marriage. In such a marriage, the dowry was
almost entirely provided by the bride’s family, except for some symbolic gifts from the
groom’s family. The groom’s family was only responsible for providing the expenses for
the wedding ceremony and the bridal chamber. The bride’s family lost part of their
property, for the dowry was contributed solely by them and would be taken over by the
bride to her husband’s family. Although this loss might not be a big problem for wealthy
families, it would be a significant loss for poorer families. Even a humble dowry might
cost a significant part of their family property. This partly explains why many people
preferred having sons to daughters.

The pseudodowry marriage was a derivative of the dowry marriage. It took the apparent
form of a dowry marriage but most or all the “dowry” was actually paid for by the
groom’s family. Economically, the groom’s family did not lose anything because their
payment would eventually be brought back by the bride at the wedding. Likewise, the
bride’s family lost nothing (when the dowry was paid for entirely by the groom’s side) or
lost much less than normal (when the groom’s side helped to pay at least part of the
dowry).

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In a brideprice marriage, the groom’s family had to pay cash money to the bride’s family.
But different from a pseudodowry, the brideprice would not be brought back by the bride
at the wedding. The payment by the groom’s family to the bride’s family would be kept
by the latter. The bride’s family, by marrying out their daughter, obtained some economic
gains. This type of marriage was seen as “selling daughters” (mai guinü), as least in the
eyes of fellow villagers. But it should be noted that in such marriages, though a girl was
exchanged for money, the marriage still followed the essential rituals of a proper
marriage in other respects. The girl became a lawful wife after such a marriage. A normal
affinal relationship between the two families was established as the result of this marriage.
The rituals and the relationship established set it off from really selling daughters as
commodities on the market. In the latter case, few rituals were involved and no
relationship was established between the two sides of the transaction.

It should be noted that these marriage types are just idealized types for the convenience
of analysis. In reality, a dowry marriage might involve a small amount of brideprice,
which was only symbolically significant. A pseudodowry marriage also might involve a
real dowry, the amount of which might vary from case to case. But as long as the
groom’s family contributed the major part of the cost of the “dowry,” it was a
pseudodowry marriage. By the same token, in a brideprice marriage, a small amount of
the money paid by the groom’s family might be taken by the bride as pseudodowry to her
new family, but most of it would be kept as brideprice by the bride’s parents.

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8. His Marriage and Her Marriage
Following Xingye’s grandmother’s tradition, no widows remarried in the families of
Xingye’s descendants in pre-Communist times. Although there was no legal ban on the
remarriage of widows even during imperial times, the imperial government often used
“chastity awards”
15
to promote the idea that a widow was not supposed to remarry. A
marriage to a second husband would ruin the woman’s chastity, which was seen even
more precious than her life. When it was threatened, she was supposed to defend it by
sacrificing her life.

In Song Family Village, not only the widows in rich families would not remarry, few of
those in poor families would either. For the rich families, the widows at least did not need
to worry about their livelihood. The family properties were enough to support the widow
and her children. But in poor families, this would be very difficult. Some poor families
had only just enough land for their survival when the husband farmed it himself. After the
husband died, the widow with her bound beet could not manage all the farm work. The
widow and her children would be in a difficult situation. She had to hire hands, but that
meant part of the income from the land had to be used to pay for hired labor. That could
make the income insufficient for them to live on. It would be even more difficult for a

15
During the imperial times, especially during Ming and Qing dynasties, “chastity awards” was often used
as a way to promote chastity of women, especially young widows. A widow whose husband died before
she was thirty years old and remained single until she was fifty years old would be honored as a chaste
woman by the imperial government. For details, please see Gu et al. (1996: 137-43).

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widow in families with little land. When the husband was alive, he could hire himself out
as a farm hand. With his wages plus the income from their small piece of land they could
still make a living. With the husband’s death, the family was cut off from the most
important source of their income. To overcome such difficulties, some widows had no
choice but to use their sex in exchange for labor or money.

A certain widow in Song Family Village made a living just in this way. After her
husband died, she did not remarry. Her husband had left her a small parcel of land.
Several years later, a man in the same village moved in to live with her. This man was
married and had his own children, but he left his own wife and children and came to live
with this widow. They lived together for more than ten years, even though the man never
divorced his wife. While he was living with the widow, his wife also had affairs with a
bachelor in the village. She even gave birth to a son during this period. Villagers said that
the son looked very much like that bachelor.

Another widow did the same thing. After her husband died, she began to live with one of
the great grandsons of Xingye. This man, from a rich family, became a major source of
her living. But this man was a good-for-nothing. His only source of money was from the
properties he inherited. While he was living with the widow, he sold off almost all his
properties, including his farm land and house. Finally, he was left with nothing to sell.
When he fell seriously ill, the widow was afraid that he might die in her home. Anyway,
he was useless to her by then. She asked some people to help carry him out of her home

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and put him on the street. When the man’s relatives saw this, they did not want to see him
die so miserably, even though they knew he deserved it. They took him to live in one of
the spare houses they owned. There he recovered.

Ironically, the custom intended to protect the chastity of widows eventually forced some
of them to use sex for survival. Of course not all widows took this strategy for survival.
Some widows did remarry, especially when they had no children. People in Song Family
Village remember at least one widow who remarried before the Communists came to
power in the village.

While widows were not supposed to remarry, the remarriage of a widower was seen as
both natural and necessary. Due to the high death rate of young women, there were in this
village many men who married more than once. When a young man’s wife died, his
family would try every means to get him another wife, especially when he still had no
children. The continuation of the family line was the most important thing,

To continue the family line, not only sould the widower remarry, but polygyny was also
allowed for a man, usually for the reason of infertility of his first wife. In this village,
people remembered only one man who was polygynous. Polygyny was so abnormal in
the village that his case became legendary in the oral history of the villagers. This man
was Xingye’s second son, Shengwu. His first marriage was just like his brother’s
marriages. The bride was from a prominent family. A grand wedding ceremony was held

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for them. Life after his marriage was as normal as any other marriage in the village. But
after several years of the marriage, the wife did not show any sign of pregnancy, so both
he and his mother got worried.

A couple of more years passed, his wife still showed no sign of pregnancy. Looking at
the flat belly of his wife, he felt increasingly frustrated. His elder brother, who was only a
couple of years older than he, already had several sons. Another couple of years passed,
but his wife still showed no sign of pregnancy. He could feel the sarcastic eyes of the
villagers. Although the villagers might not know the proverb, “there are three things
which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them” (bu xiao you san, wu
hou wei da), they regarded a man with no sons as a loser, for eventually his property
would be taken over by other people’s sons no matter how rich he was. To the villagers,
having sons was essential to be a man.

As a member of the wealthiest family in the village and entitled to inherit one third of the
family property, plus having an imperial degree, which was very rare in the village, he
could not endure losing face in front of his fellow villagers. Furthermore, he wanted his
own son to inherit his property after he died in the future.

Since his wife had no hope of giving birth to a child, he decided to get a concubine. This
was unusual for his family. Usually concubines were only taken by high officials or big
merchants who had significant income from non-agricultural sources, or by those

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landlords who possessed enormous land holdings. Although his family was the richest in
the village, his wealth was nothing compared to those kinds of people. No one in the
previous generations of his family had ever taken any concubines.

Since the family had not divided yet, the expenses of taking a concubine had to be spent
out of the common family budget. Before he could do anything like this, he had to get
consent from his parents and brothers. His mother was not a big problem because she
would not like to see him remain heirless. His two brothers, though not necessarily
without any reservations, could not oppose it, since it was for a purpose that no one could
dispute. Even his wife could not stage any opposition to his desire. According to the
longstanding tradition of “Seven Outs” (qi chu), barrenness was the first of the seven
legitimate excuses for divorcing a wife. Not divorcing her was already doing her a favor.
How could she want to prevent her husband from having children? A good wife should
even have encouraged her husband to take a concubine if she herself could not give birth
to any children.

The process of taking a concubine was quite different from his first marriage. A
concubine was purchased from her parents. The money paid to her parents had no ritual
meaning but was just the same as the money paid for any commodity on the market. The
two sides were seen as strangers involved in a market exchange. After the payment was
made, the ownership of the girl was transferred to the buyer. He could do whatever he
like to her and the girl’s family had no right to intervene. In the contract that sealed such

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a transaction, it usually stipulated that the girl’s family was not supposed to see the girl
while she was alive and should not see her body when she died (sheng bu jian ren, si bu
jian gu)
16
. The completion of the transaction meant that the girl was cut off any
relationship with her own family. The girl’s family would not be seen as relatives to the
buyer’s family. Neither side had any further obligations to each other, after the money
was paid and the girl was delivered to the man’s household.

Seen as a commodity transaction, this wedding was also treated quite differently from
that of his first marriage. There were few public rituals for this wedding, except that the
ancestors would be told a concubine had been taken in for the purpose of producing
offspring. The girl arrived in a sedan chair that was different from the one used for his
previous wedding both in color and in size. Instead of the red color used for a regular
wedding, the sedan chair used for this wedding was blue. The size was also smaller.

After the concubine was taken into the household, she was assigned a different status
from that of the first wife. The concubine was not regarded as a full member of the family.
Her status was only a little higher than a servant girl. Although she was a concubine to a
senior member of the family, the juniors in the family would not regard her as a senior.
No one would address her in kinship terms. They addressed her just by her name. Even

16
In traditional times, contract sealing the purchase of a concubine often had this stipulation in the area
where Song Family Village is located. After the girl was delivered to the person who bought her, she was
cut off from any relationship with her natal family.

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her own children were not supposed to call her “mother,”
17
even though she had given
birth to them. That term was reserved for the first wife of her husband. Only the first wife
was regarded as the legal mother of the children of the husband, no matter born of her or
not. A concubine was only seen as a tool to produce offspring.

The first concubine of Shengwu was taken just in the way discussed above. To the
satisfaction of the whole family, this young girl was very docile, readily accepting her
new status. She was very obedient to the seniors of the family and very kind to the juniors.
Decades after she passed away, many people still had very good memories of her. The
wife of an adopted grandson of Shengwu still remembered her gratitude to the first
concubine. She said the grandmother (the chief wife of Shengwu) never treated the
juniors well. The grandmother kept good food to herself, Shengwu and the two
concubines (Shengwu had taken in another concubine by that time). The juniors and
children had few chances to enjoy these foods. When this grand daughter-in-law’s second
son was only several years old, he was seriously ill. The high fever blinded both of his
eyes. One day, he smelled meat baozi and cried for it. But his mother dared not ask the
seniors for it. The boy kept crying. His mother could not stand it and went out. When the
mother returned after a while, she was surprised to see her son eating a baozi. She asked
him who had given it to him. The boy said the baozi came down from the sky. She
immediately understood. The first concubine had heard the boy crying. She wanted to

17
A concubine’s children could only call their natural mother Aunt. They called the wife of their father
Mother. This can be seen from the description in Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber).

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give him a baozi but dared not do it openly, for fear that it might offend the Grandmother,
chief wife of Shengwu. She secretly took a baozi and threw it in through the open
window. Although the boy died not long after that, his mother felt grateful to the
concubine throughout her life.

Since the first concubine was so docile, eventually her mother-in-law felt that some
reward should be given to her. The matriarch decreed that no juniors should address her
by her name and everyone should address her in kinship terms from then on. By her own
merit, she earned a position as a full member of the family.

A couple of years after the first concubine was taken, she gave birth to a daughter. Since
this was his first child, Shengwu was very glad. He hoped the concubine would bear him
more children. But years passed, she did not get pregnant again. Many doctors were
consulted and a lot of medicine was taken. Still nothing worked. When Shengwu realized
she could not produce an heir for him, he said, “Still no son? I will get another
concubine.” Another concubine was taken in. But this concubine was quite different from
the first one. She was not willing to accept this fate. She hated her father for selling her as
a concubine for just 200 silver dollars. Misery and depression cost her life only a couple
of years after she was brought in.

When a third concubine was taken in, the man was already in his 60s. The girl was only
16 years old. The old man, his hot temper mellowed by age, treated the young girl quite

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well. The girl was from a very poor family where she had to work hard and was treated
badly by her father. She was grateful to the old man. When the old man died, she was in
her twenties, but she never thought of leaving the family. Even when the family was
designated as a bad-class family under the Communist regime and women like her were
allowed to remarry, she still did not think of betraying her dead husband.

To the disappointment of the old man, the third concubine did not bear him a son either,
though she did give birth to a daughter. The old man was getting older and older. When
he came to his seventies he finally realized that the chances for him to have his own son
were minimal. Without a son of his own, he had to adopt a son in order to continue his
line of descent. After careful consideration, he adopted the second son of his elder brother.

9. Living in a Patriarchal Family
Managing a large family was not an easy job. When the sons got married one by one, the
interests of their small conjugal families might not be compatible with the interests of the
large family. This incompatibility might cause internal conflicts. Daughters-in-law, who
came from different families, had different personalities and habits. These differences
could also be causes for family conflicts. Chinese traditions provided the ideology and
efficient methods for keeping a large family together. As a Confucian scholar himself,
Xingye had no hesitation in resorting to the teachings and practices of Confucian masters
in his management of the large family. A proper family should be governed by the rule

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“zhang you you xu, nan nü you bie.”
18
That is, every member of the family occupied a
specific position defined by generation status, age and sex in the hierarchy of rights,
power and authority within the family.

When Xingye was getting old, his family was a good example of such a traditional
Chinese family. With his parents dead for a long time, Xingye occupied the top of the
power hierarchy, holding the ultimate power and authority over everyone in his family.
To outsiders, he was the sole representative of the family. As the manager of the family
assets, every transaction his family had with others had to be endorsed by him.

Although the family assets were collectively owned by all the male members of the
family and all the adults made their contributions to them, only Xingye had the right to
dispose of these properties. His sons and grandsons had no right to dispose of any part of
the family properties without his consent. Everyone in the family was supposed to be
obedient to his order. Confucian teachings did not allow any room for juniors to defy the
authority of the elders.

His wife was second in authority only to him. Although women generally had lower
status than men, an old woman would usually achieve much authority in a family as her

18
The distinction in seniority was important in traditional China, but that between sexes was even more
important. A woman’s place was inside home. She was not supposed to have any interactions with males
who were not her family members. Unmarried young girls were especially strictly segregated from outside
males.

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sons grew up. Not only were the sons supposed to be obedient to their father, they were
also supposed to be obedient to their mother. In fact, in popular literature, filial piety was
most often exemplified by a son’s excellent care of his aged mother. It is said that when
Xingye’s wife was very old, one of his grandsons was the manager of the family. On
holidays, the grandson always consulted the old grandma how much meat should be used
for the special meals. The old matriarch, too old to know the realities of the family
economy, always said, “four or five cubes (one pound/ cube)
19
of pork will be enough.”
That number was far from enough because the family population had greatly expanded.
Of course, the family manager would not adopt her suggestion. But the significance in
asking her was showing her due respect.

Accompanying the authority and power were the obligations and responsibilities. Besides
raising their three sons and five daughters, Xingye and his wife also had to make sure that
all of them would marry properly. This was the most important commitment that parents
had towards their children.

Another responsibility that parents had towards their children was to accumulate enough
wealth for them. For the sons, they had to leave enough properties for them to inherit
after they died. For daughters, they had to have sufficient means to furnish handsome
dowries for them. Although not all parents succeeded in fulfilling this responsibility,

19
In Song Family Village, people used to cut pork into cubes of 2 or 3 inches in dimension. These cubes
would be cooked and marinated in salt water for preservation.

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Xingye and his wife certainly did. When they passed away, they left behind them
properties that made each of the three sons’ families among the richest in the village even
after the family division.

Children were supposed to be filial to their parents. Even after a son was married, his
primary loyalty was supposed to be with his parents instead of with his wife. When there
was any conflicts between his parents and wife, he was expected to side with his parents,
no matter whose fault it was. “Under the heaven, parents are never wrong” (tianxia wu bu
shi de fumu).
20
When his parents were old, the son and his wife were supposed to take
good care of them. A son who did not care sufficiently for his aged parents would
encounter moral sanction in the community.

Xingye and his wife did not need to worry about their life in old age. Controlling the
family properties, they could have evicted a son and deprived him of the right to inherit if
he was not filial. But that might not be true for parents who did not have much for their
sons to inherit. Even though filial piety was the core value in regulating the relationship
between generations, frequently I heard stories about unfilial sons and daughters-in-law.
In this village, there was a rumor about a man beating his aged father. It was said that
when another man in the village passed his gate, the man was seen sitting on his father
and beating him. Irritated, the passerby rushed in and tore him away from his father.

20
Filial children was supposed to be absolutely obedient to their parents. They were not supposed to
question anything their parents did or said.

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In contrast to a son, a daughter had fewer obligations to her parents after she married out,.
Although occasional visits to her parents were encouraged, she was not expected to
provide everyday care for her parents. It was her parents-in-law whom she should take
care of. Taking care of her own parents was the duty of her brothers’ wives.

The moment when a bride was carried into the gate of the groom’s family signified a
sharp change in the life of the young girl. Although she was most probably only a
teenager, she would be seen as an adult from then on. She was expected to take over her
responsibilities as a wife and a daughter-in-law immediately. To symbolize this transition,
soon after finishing all the rituals of the wedding, the mother-in-law would hand over to
her some cloth and other materials. She was expected to turn these materials into clothes
for her husband or other members of the family. Although this first housework
assignment was more ritualistic than practical, it was a very important test of the girl’s
competence in needlework, and thus could affect her mother-in-law’s attitude to her in
the future. The well made clothes would certainly please the mother-in-law. But this was
almost impossible for a young girl who was only a teenager. A good mother-in-law
would be more tolerant of the work she finished but a picky one would find this a good
opportunity to give her a dressing-down.

In the first few years after marriage, a bride was always under the watching eyes of
family members. Any misdemeanor might sour her relationship with other members and

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compromise her position in the family. She had to try every means to show herself as an
obedient, diligent and industrious daughter-in-law. The next day after the wedding, she
would have to make sure to be the first to get up in the family. A new bride who got up
late the first morning would be seen as a lazy woman. Her mother-in-law would have a
negative impression of her. Although she was new to everything in the family, she was
expected to get up early every morning and prepare breakfast for the family. Even more
important for her was to take over the care of her husband’s everyday life from her
mother-in-law immediately after she was married. All the clothes of her husband were
supposed to be made by her. She was supposed to keep him properly dressed all the time.

According to some senior members who once lived in Xingye’s extended family, the
materials for making clothes were allocated to each married couple every year. All the
clothes for the married couple and their children were supposed to be made out of these
materials by the wife. Even decades later, wives still complained about the insufficiency
of these materials. They had to get some from their natal homes to fill in the gap. The
lady mentioned above who was from a poorer family had even more reason to complain.
According to her, this skimping practice made her life very difficult. For her sisters-in-
law, who were all from rich families, their parents could make up for the insufficiency so
that their daughters would not lose face for not providing enough clothes for their
husbands and children. For her, things were different. Since her natal family was not rich,
they could not provide anything for her. She herself had to earn what was needed. With
her small savings, she bought cotton from the market, spun it into yarn, and then wove

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the cloth. After selling her product, she could earn a small profit. Then the earnings were
put into another round of production. With the profits accumulated this way, she was able
to fulfill her duty of providing clothing for her husband and children. What made her feel
even more unfairly treated was that she not only had to provide for her husband and her
own children, but also had to provide for the child born of her husband and his first wife.

Besides taking care of her husband, a bride also needed to serve the other members of the
family, including the parents-in-law. She needed to help with the cooking, cleaning,
weaving and tailoring. It was said that when all Xingye’s descendants lived in a large
extended family, the family just hired one of the grandsons of Xingye as the cook. Since
it was a very large family, he himself could not handle all the cooking work, the wives of
the seven grandsons of Xingye had to take turns helping with the cooking.

The traditional relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law was
notoriously difficult. A mother-in-law had absolute authority over the daughter-in-law, at
least theoretically. A daughter-in-law was supposed to be obedient to the mother-in-law,
no matter whether she was right or wrong. Any defiance of her authority was not
tolerated. No one could defend the daughter-in-law, even her husband. Whenever there
was a conflict between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law, a politically and
morally correct action for the son was to stand on the side of his mother no matter
whether she was right or wrong. Any son who defended his wife against his mother
would be regarded as unfilial, even if the mother were wrong.

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In such a family, even the younger siblings of her husband would have higher status than
the new bride. They grew up at their mother’s home and had easier access to family
resources than the wife of their brother, because they could just ask their parents for it if
they needed anything. The bride, on the other hand, had to be very careful in demanding
anything from the mother-in-law. Any mistake might arouse conflict with the mother-in-
law and made her life more miserable. In interacting with younger siblings of her
husband, a new bride also had to be very careful. Older than them, she was supposed to
be kind and helpful to them while having no authority over them.

For many marriages, the first few years after the marriage found the relationship between
the husband and the wife very awkward. An intimate relationship between them was not
encouraged. The man spent most of his time with his parents or siblings but not with his
wife. A man’s loyalty was expected to go to his parents while they were alive.

The only way for the young brides to escape from this unpleasant position was to stay at
their natal homes as long as possible. It was common that a bride spent most of her time
in the first few years of married life at her natal home. The first couple of children were
often brought up at their maternal grandmother’s home. Only on holidays was she
obligated to come and stay for short periods of time with her husband’s family.

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A daughter-in-law’s life varied from family to family. There were families where
daughter-in-laws were treated well by the mother-in-law. But there were also cases where
cruel treatment by the mother-in-law drove a daughter-in-law to suicide. What happened
to a daughter-in-law in one of the families descended from Xingye provided just such an
example.

One morning in the 1930s, the whole village was shocked by the sudden death of a young
wife of the family. Rumors flew in the village. Although the family declared that the
young woman died of a disease, everyone in the village knew that she had committed
suicide. In the following days, this became the hottest topic for village gossip. People
were all talking about this event. The deceased woman was the daughter-in-law of Jilin, a
grandson of Xingye. The young couple had got married only three years before. Like
most marriages of Xingye’s descendants at the time, this marriage was arranged when the
boy and girl were only 3 or 4 years old. The girl was from a village 15 km from this
village. That family was the richest one in their village, a perfect match for Chengxin’s
family. What was equally important was that there had already been marriage exchanges
between the two families, which fact made the marriage arrangement even more desirable.
When the son was 15 years old, the father felt it was time to get the boy married. He
asked the go-betweens to present this request to the girl’s family. The bride’s family was
happy to agree. Their daughter was already 17 years old. It was the right time to marry
her out.

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This marriage turned out to be a very good one shortly after the wedding. The bride was
beautiful and well cultivated. What was more admirable was that the young couple liked
each other. Jilin, the father of the groom, was glad that he had arranged such a good
marriage for his son. But the mother-in-law did not feel that way. Even though the young
bride worked very hard trying to please her, she did not like her. Whatever she did, the
mother-in-law could always find some fault. No one knew the exact reason for this.
Maybe she did not like the intimate relationship between her son and the daughter-in-law.
Too much attachment to his wife was not a merit for a young man at that time.

The mother-in-law was known for her pickiness and stubbornness. Once she had an idea,
no one could change her mind. Although the son felt it was unfair of his mother to treat
the bride that way, he could not do anything. Any challenge against his mother’s
authority would only make things worse. His protection of his wife would surely irritate
his mother.

Eventually, even the father-in-law could not tolerate the way the mother-in-law treated
the bride. Whenever his wife disciplined the young girl, he would stand up to defend her.
As this happened more and more, his wife began to suspect that he had some secret affair
with the bride. Although the bride tried to stay at her own natal home as much as possible,
there were several occasions in a year when she must live at her husband’s home. It was
not difficult to imagine what the life was like for a young girl living away from her own
kin, suffering from scolding and sometimes beating from the mother-in-law. Although

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she mentioned her suffering to her parents, there was little they could do. Divorce was
definitely not an option.

Years of suffering made her lose any hope for her life. One evening, a serious fight broke
out again. Her mother-in-law fiercely accused the father-in-law of incest with her. The
son, as in most cases, left the house to avoid the embarrassment. The fighting did not stop
until quite late into the night. As in most cultures, incest was the most unforgivable fault.
A woman accused of this would find it difficult to survive in this world.

The next morning, the daughter-in-law was found hanged in her room. The whole family
was shocked. No one had expected this to happen. They called in their close kin to
discuss what to do. As a way to protect the reputation of the family, they decided to
conceal the fact and told outsiders that the young woman died of a sudden and fatal
disease.

When the bride’s parents were informed of her sudden death, they were more than
shocked. They knew how their daughter had been suffering in this family. The death of
their daughter gave them a chance to unleash their long-time grudges against the mother-
in-law. On the day of the funeral, the parents of the bride asked a large group of relatives
to come along. They planned to give the mother-in-law a good beating.

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But when they arrived, they found they had miscalculated. The father-in-law, Jilin, knew
something might happen. He had already called many relatives in to protect him and his
wife. The bride’s relatives knew they could not get an upper hand if they initiated a
conflict. The only thing they could do was to have their women scold and curse the
mother-in-law and her family in public.

This event put the whole family in crisis. The son was angry with his family, particularly
with his mother. With his beloved wife gone and with the reputation of the family
severely hurt, he felt he could not stay at home any longer. Not long after his wife’s
funeral, he fled home without telling his parents. When his parents realized he was
missing, it was already several days later. They tried every means to inquire about his
whereabouts. It took a long time before they heard that the son had already joined the
army.

Not long after Jilin got the news of his son, the Japanese invaded China. By some means,
He heard that the unit in which his son served would retreat to the south by way of a
nearby city. Jilin hurried to the railway station. There he found a stream of troops
retreating southward. The city was crowded with troops from various units. He went
around the city to inquire about the unit in which his son served. Finally he learned that
unit had already left a couple of days before. From then on, no news has ever been heard
of the son.

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10. Conclusion
From the above description of the early history of a family and the general situation in the
village, we can see that family and marriage in Song Family Village in pre-Communist
times confirmed what previous scholars have described of the traditional Chinese family
and marriage (M. C. Yang 1945; Levy 1949; Baker 1979; Stacey 1983; K. A. Johnson
1983; Potter and Potter 1990). The family system was patrilineal, patrilocal and
patriarchal. Within the family, sons and daughters were treated differently. Sons were
heirs to their parents. They were to continue their father’s family line. As a result, only
sons could inherit the parents’ properties. Daughters were expected to marry out. They
had no right to inherit their parents’ properties. Family properties were controlled by
seniors. Filial piety was a moral rule governing the relationship between the senior and
the junior, requiring the latter to be obedient to the former. A new bride occupied the
lowest position in the family, just as Fei (1939) described in his research. A daughter-in-
law was particularly supposed to be obedient to the mother-in-law. Marriages were
patrilocal, and were arranged by parents between families of similar social and economic
background.

Marriage transactions were present in all marriages in Song Family Village. As in Taitou
(M. C. Yang 1945), a village in the neighboring Shandong (Shantung) Province, marriage
transactions were stratified. While most families paid a dowry for their daughter’s
marriage out of their own pocket, some families asked the groom’s family to contribute

206

to the payments for the “dowry” (i.e. pseudodowry). The poorest families even took
brideprice in their daughters’ marriages.

But this stratification in marriage transactions should not be understood as reflecting
different subcultures of the gentry and the peasantry, as Goody has suggested (1990: 102-
104), following Fei’s (1946: 1) distinction between the gentry, who were landlords living
in towns on the rents paid by their tenants and peasants who lived in villages farming the
land rented from landlords. Such a static and rigid distinction between the gentry and the
peasantry might be true to the communities studied by Fei but not necessarily to other
places. At least in North China where Song Family Village is located, there was no such a
strict distinction in the decades before the Communist Party came to power. In Philip
Huang’s analysis of village communities mainly based on Mantetsu materials collected
by Japanese investigators in the 1930s and 1940s, the number of absentee landlords
(those who lived away from the village where their land was located) increased as a result
of increasing commercialization of agriculture in the first half of the 1900s (1985: 264-
270). From this we can see that it was not a traditional pattern for large landholders in
north China to live in towns, away from their land. Instead, they lived in villages, side by
side with peasants. In a village community, even though class distinctions existed
between the rich and the poor, the stratification was never characterized by a clear-cut
binary distinction. It more often took the form of a continuum of differential possession
of wealth, showing a gradual transition from the richest to the poorest. Even such
stratification was often fluid and dynamic. The relative status of village families was

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always changing. As the saying goes, “No family can remain rich for more than three
generations” (fu bu guo san dai), indicating the frequent change of status in village
communities. For most rich families, their power and wealth could last at most for several
generations. At the climax of its power and wealth, a rich family tended to have many
more descendants than other families. With the principle of equal partibility in family
division, the large estate would soon be divided into small parcels. In a few generations,
most of the descendants of this family would be no better off than any other families in
the village and thus were reduced to the status of common peasants. Such a situation has
been confirmed by Philip Huang (1985: 78). On the other hand, a common peasant family
might gradually accumulate sufficient wealth, invest in children’s education and became
a gentry family. What I have described of the history of Xingye’s family in Chapter
Three was typical of a common peasant family rising to the status of a gentry family. The
lack of a static hierarchy of status in village communities made it impossible for the rich
and the poor to develop distinct subcultures, even though different classes did show some
distinct features in behaviors. Thus, I agree with Cohen (1976: 231) who refuted the
notion of two distinct patterns of family organization between the gentry and the peasants
and saw the gentry and the peasants as following the same set of rules based on their
economic differences. By the same token, the difference in marriage transactions in Song
Family Village was not due to the existence of a clear-cut distinction between a peasant
subculture and a gentry subculture with different rules of behavior. It was the result of
different families following the same set of rules in pursuing the same goal on the basis
of their differentiated economic status. This goal was to get their sons married and

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continue their family line. For this goal, villagers took different strategies according to
their means. Even the same villager might take different strategies in his lifetime in
accordance with the changes in his fortune.

For every family, no matter rich or poor, the first priority in the use of the family
resources was to guarantee the sons’ marriages. Only after this task was accomplished
could the family resources be used in other respects. A family with means could marry
out their daughters with handsome dowries, because losing this part of their property
would not jeopardize their sons’ marriages. For a family with limited resources, they
were reluctant to use their resources for their daughter. This was why some families
would even ask the bride’s family to help with the dowry. A family desperate to get their
son married would not hesitate to use their daughter’s brideprice to get a wife for their
son. In an extreme case such as a famine, it was always daughters who were the first to be
sold to help the family through the desperate time. The sons were kept to continue the
family line.

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CHAPTER FOUR
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE IN A NEW SOCIETY

1. The Land Reform in the Village
After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Communist Party became the ruling party in
the area where Song Family Village was located. In May 1946, the Party initiated the
land reform in its occupied areas. Although almost sixty years had passed, Chengzhen
still remembered how his father, Jiren, got the news of the land reform before it was
implemented in the village.

One day in 1946, Jiren, the wealthiest man of Song Family Village, was on the road
leading to the county town. He would pay a visit to a friend of his, who was now the
magistrate of the county. When the Japanese were occupying this area, the magistrate
was an official of the Communist underground government. Whenever he came to Song
Family Village, he would live in Jiren’s house. A solid friendship was established
between them.

Jiren was in a good mood today. The war had ended a year before. Finally, he and his
family could live a normal life. For eight years, he and his family, like all villagers, had
lived in fear and anxiety. Any mistake might have incurred disaster. One of his nephews
was killed by the Japanese for no reason. Pillage and extortion was almost everyday

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events. People of means, like him, easily became targets. With the Japanese gone and the
war over, how could he not be happy?

In the town, it did not take long for him to find his friend’s office. Immediately after he
sat down, the magistrate told him that he must leave the village as soon as possible. He
was confused. He wondered why he had to leave home now that the war was over. Seeing
his confusion, the magistrate explained to him that a land reform movement was soon to
be started by the government. The rich people’s properties would be confiscated and
distributed to the poor. To do this, some measures would be taken against the rich people.
As one of the richest men in the village, Jiren would surely be a target of this movement.
No one knew what would happen to him. Although he had a good reputation in the
village and his fellow villagers might not be willing to do anything against him, the work
team
1
from the outside would not have any mercy upon him. It was better for him to stay
away from the village until the land reform movement was over.

From the magistrate’s tone, the rich man knew how serious it was. He thanked the
magistrate and lost no time in hurrying back home. Arriving home, he immediately told
his wife what he had learned and explained to her what she should do while he was away.
Then he secretly told his kinsmen and advised them to leave with him. He packed up at
night and left the village early in the morning, leaving at home his wife, two daughters-

1
Sending work teams to villages was a strategy often adopted by the CCP to ensure the implementation of
its policy. Especially when a policy was not well accepted in village communities, it was an effective way
to guarantee its implementation.

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in-law and his youngest son. In the next couple of days, most of the men from well-to-do
families fled the village.

Only a couple of days after these people fled the village, three strangers arrived at the
village. They were the work team sent down by the Communist government to lead the
land reform in this village. Immediately after they arrived, they began to approach the
poorest people in the village, telling them that their poverty was due to the exploitation
by the landlords and rich peasants. The only way to rise out of poverty was to struggle
against those rich people and get back what by rights belonged to them. Although not
everyone would accept such arguments easily, there were people who saw this as “a pie
fallen from the sky” (tianshang diao xianbing). They were always willing to get
something for nothing. These people became the activists that the work team relied on.
With the help of these activists, the work team organized the poor people in the village
into the Poor Peasants Association. These activists of course became the leaders of this
organization.

With the help of the activists, the work team restructured the leadership in the village.
Village leaders that were from well-to-do families were removed from their positions,
replaced by the new activists. When all these preliminaries were ready, it was time to
struggle against the rich people.

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This event is remembered by villagers as the “Mass Movement” (qun yun)
2
. The name
was quite true to the nature of this movement, since the most important feature of this
movement was to mobilize the “mass” to struggle against the rich. The struggle was often
violent. In some neighboring counties, many landlords and rich peasants were tortured to
death. Song Family Village was fortunate that its land reform was carried out relatively
peacefully.

As one of the richest families in the village, Jiren’s family was among the first to fall
victim to the mass movement. The Poor Peasants Association sent people to seize all the
properties of this family, including the houses. But they did not confiscate the properties
directly. Instead, they first ‘settled accounts” with the family. By calculating how much
the family had exploited the poor families, the association ordered the family to give back
what they had extracted from the poor.

Jiren had learned of this procedure from his friend, the magistrate. Before fleeing home,
he told his wife to give them the best of their houses when this happened. In this way, the
family might still have the hope of keeping part of their houses, though the worst part.
His wife did what he told her to do. The family first moved to the worst of the houses
they owned. The best ones were given over to the Association. Land and other properties

2
The significance of land reform was not only the redistribution of wealth. It was used by the CCP as a
strategy to mobilize the rural population into its revolutionary cause. As a result, one important feature of
land reform was to arouse among the poor hatred for the rich, so that the poor would rise to challenge the
power and authority of the rich and join the CCP in its war against the Nationalist government, which was
said to support the rich.

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were handed over. In the end, the family was left with very little. But that was not the end
of the story. Struggle meetings were staged to let the poor speak out their resentment
against the rich. The latter had to plead guilty to whatever charges were made against
them. To avoid being struggled against, Jiren’s mother was sent to her natal village,
where her nephews were poor. But the Association sent several female activists to fetch
her. She was placed under armed arrest. Since she was too old and sick, she was not
beaten. But her daughter-in-law was not so lucky. She was beaten by a crowd of women.
One female activist even intended to jab her with scissors, but was only stopped by other
women present.

The adult males who did not flee suffered from more severe humiliation. Jiru, A cousin
of Jiren, was tied to the tail of a mule and dragged along on the ground. This was a
tormenting technique that people learned from a neighboring county. But Jiru must have
felt lucky, because in the neighboring county, people were not dragged on the bare
ground but in the fields that were full of short sorghum stalks sticking up from the ground.
When the mule was set running fast in the fields, with a man tied to the tail of a mule, the
sharp sorghum stalks cut into the body of the man, who would soon die.

By threatening and coercing, the Poor Peasants Association confiscated almost all the
properties from Jiren’s family. The Association gave the family a small part of their
house and land. All the rest was distributed among the poor. The other well-to-do
families had similar experiences. Jiren’s son remembered an interesting episode. He said

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he was still a boy when his house was seized by the Poor Peasants Association. One of
his cousins was still a militiaman at that time. The militia of the village was given the
responsibility to prevent landlords from moving and hiding their properties. When this
cousin saw the boy carrying a bag out of the house, he followed him at a distance to see
where the boy was going. What was funny was that only a couple of days later, this
militiaman’s family was also labeled a landlord and he was kicked out of the militia.

Almost all Jiren’s relatives, the families of the South House minimal segment, were
treated as targets of class struggle. Two families were labeled as landlords and four as
rich peasants. Their lands were taken away and distributed among the poor. Their houses
were confiscated too. The families in the North House minimal segment were treated no
better. One family was labeled landlords and five were rich peasants. After several
rounds of land reform movements,
3
all the previous well-to-do families were no longer
rich. All the land was distributed evenly among all villagers, no matter rich or poor, on a
per capita basis.

The men who fled the village did not return home until they had no more place to hide, as
the Communist forces expanded to occupy the whole of China. Jiren was one of the last
to return home. When he returned he found only half of a house was left to his family.

3
During the civil war in the late 1940s, land reform was not completed in a single stretch. It was
completed with several political campaigns. From 1946 to 1948, there was a land reform campaign every
winter. The policy of the CCP varied through these campaigns. In 1947, violence was wide spread in every
Communist area. See Luo (2005).

215

The land that had been left for his family was just enough to support the family. While he
was away, it was his youngest son, the only male left at home, who farmed the family
land. Four years had already turned the son into a young adult.

2. Marriage transactions After the Land Reform
There was an important task waiting for him when Jiren returned home. Not long after he
returned, he learned that the girl that had been engaged to his youngest son had returned
with her family. Since both the girl and the boy had grown up, it was time for them to
marry. Due to the war and political turmoil, their marriage had been delayed. They had
been engaged since they were 3 and 5 years old respectively.

Although the son did not like the marriage, he had to give in to his father’s authority.
Then the family started to prepare for the wedding. The family was by then very poor.
Not only did they lose most of their houses and land, most of their furniture had also been
taken away. They even did not have a table for the wedding. Having lost most of their
properties, they were no longer able to purchase any new furniture.

The bride’s family was no better off. Her family was also a so-called landlord family.
They had suffered even more losses. Her family was driven out of their house to live in
an old temple. There was no way for them to provide any furniture as part of the dowry.
In fact, they could provide almost nothing for the wedding.

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Another problem was that Jiren’s family did not have an extra room to accommodate the
new couple after the wedding. Although the family was allowed to stay in one of their
houses after the wedding, they were only given the ownership of two side rooms and the
house lot. The main hall was confiscated but had not been distributed to others yet. To
solve the housing problem, Jiren went to seek help from the cadres in the village. Finally
they agreed to let him keep that main hall. For the furniture, he approached the village
cadres again and asked them to lend him a table for the wedding. For other furniture, they
had to use whatever was available to them.

The wedding happened as arranged. Although it still followed the traditional procedures,
it was dramatically different from the previous weddings in Jiren’s family. Fifteen years
ago, Jiren held the wedding ceremony for his eldest son. At that time, the family was in
its prime. Jiren had invested heavily in his son’s wedding. He even had a multi-story
building constructed specifically for that event. It was the best in the village. The bride,
of course, brought over a large dowry. It not only included furniture, clothes and jewelry,
which were indispensable to a proper wedding, but also cash money that was enough to
purchase 20 mu (3.3 acres) of land. But that kind of wedding was no longer possible for
Jiren’s family, without the means for a grand ceremony. There was no large amount of
dowry to be displayed ceremonially, since the bride only brought over some simple
bedclothes and quilts. There was neither fashionable furniture nor big bundles of clothes,

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which used to be quite common for a wedding in Jiren’s family. A humble wedding was
the only thing they could afford.

This was also true for all the previously well-to-do families. Deprived of most of their
properties, they became the poorest people in the village. They were no longer able to
provide for a grandiose wedding for their sons and less able to furnish generous dowries
for their daughters. Survival of the family became their first concern. Face was no longer
so important to them.

For the previously poor families, the impact of land reform on their marriages was quite
different. With the land reform, every family obtained land on a per capita basis. The
previously landless families and families with much smaller land holdings than the
average were now on equal terms with all the other families, at least in terms of land
holdings. Those who had not had sufficient houses were given houses. That not only
improved their social status, but also greatly changed their position on the marriage
market, especially for their sons’ marriages. They no longer needed to use brideprice to
attract brides. On the other hand, every family could afford a humble dowry for their
daughter. No one needed to ask the groom’s family to help with dowry. Still less did
people need to ask for bride price. As a result, both brideprice and pseudodowry
marriages disappeared.

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To summarize, even though the land reform did not take marriage customs as its target of
reform, it still brought about some changes in marriage practices. The previously rich
families could no longer afford large dowries for their daughters. The previously poor
families no longer needed to ask for pseudodowry or brideprice for their daughters’
marriages. The result was an almost universal dowry marriage, though the dowry was
usually quite small.

3. The 1950 Marriage Law and its Implementation
On October 1, 1949, the Communist Party declared the founding of the People’s
Republic of China. The next year saw the civil war almost over, with the Nationalist
government driven to the island of Taiwan. Having occupied almost the whole country,
the new Communist regime decided to establish its own legal system. While the
Communist Party intentionally avoided the theme of family and marriage reform during
wartime in order not to alienate the support of peasants, the firm control of the country
enabled them to address the task of marriage reform without worrying about complaints
from the peasants. As a result, the first law promulgated after the founding of the
People’s Republic of China was “The Marriage Law” of 1950. This could be considered
the first step towards fulfilling the Communist Party’s long commitment to liberating
women from patriarchal oppression. It could also be seen as one of the first steps to
restructure the family organization to win loyalty and support from women who made up
half of the population.

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As we have already discussed in the introduction, the law reaffirmed the principles of
sexual equality and freedom of marriage, outlawing arranged marriage, bigamy,
concubinage and child betrothal. It gave widows the right to remarry without interference
from others. Divorce was to be granted automatically if the two parties both agreed, but if
only one party requested it, mediation was needed before granting the divorce.
4

From 1951 to 1953, the government launched propaganda campaigns to propagate and
implement this law. To achieve this purpose, they started many educational programs,
explaining to people the details of the law. Women were the special targets for these
programs. Seminars and lectures were held for them, explaining to them the new rights
they were supposed to have under this new law. Women were told that they were equals
to men both inside and outside home. Marriages should not be arranged by parents.
Young men and women should select spouses by themselves. Any marriage arrangement
against their will was illegal. Divorces were encouraged if they were stuck in unhappy
marriages. Remarriage of widows was allowed and encouraged and no one had any right
to stop them. Women were also encouraged to participate actively in the “socialist
construction,” i.e. activities outside their home. Together with these propaganda
campaigns, the government also selected some legal test cases as a way to educate people.
They held public trials whereby those who violated the Marriage Law were arrested and

4
See Meijer (1971).

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sentenced in public to prison. Those on trial included parents who willfully interfered in
their children's marriages.

The effect of this campaign on the society could be seen from what a teacher in the
village told me of his experience when he was teaching at a primary school at the time.
One evening while he was in his office, a student in his class came in. He asked the
student what help he needed. The student did not answer his question but asked him if he
could come outside. Confused, he followed the student out. The student led him into a
classroom. The classroom was empty except for a girl sitting in front of a desk. In the
dim light of the oil lamp, the teacher could recognize her as another student in the class.
The teacher understood what would happen next. The male student told the teacher they
had fallen in love with each other. They wanted the teacher to act as a sponsor for their
relationship. Although still in primary school, these students were fairly old. Due to the
wars, many children had not had chances to start their school until they were teenagers.
These two students were around 18 years old at the time.

The teacher in his mind did not support this love affair. The boy and the girl had not even
finished their primary school yet. Although they were already old enough to be engaged,
it was still too early, since with so many unpredictable changes both in their minds and
career ahead, it was very hard to see how long their relationship could last and whether
their relationship could survive future changes. But the teacher did not dare to speak that
out. At the time, the government was enforcing the marriage law. Any obstacle to young

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people's pursuit of romantic love was regarded as illegal by the government. Any
objection to romance between young men and women might bring a disastrous result for
the one who objected. Teachers were particularly instructed not to oppose love affairs
among students who were old enough. Otherwise, they might be fired or even put into
prison. Not daring to speak out his objections, the teacher just expressed his best wishes
for them. But according to the teacher, their relationship came to an end in a few years
when the female student was admitted into high school while the boy was not.

4. The Impact of the Marriage Law on the Village
Even the villagers were soon to feel the impact of the marriage law. But it was not the
villagers who took advantage of the marriage law. Instead, it was people who had left
their native village to work in cities that challenged the old marriage system, or even the
family system, with the support of the new law. Working outside, mostly on the state
payroll, it was easier for them to accept the new ideas endorsed by the new law.

Jiren encountered such a challenge from one of his sons. The son had been married many
years before. The marriage, of course, had been arranged by the parents. But not long
after the marriage, the son left home for schooling. Since then, he had never been back,
due to the wars. After the Communist Party came to power, he found a governmental job
in a city. But years of separation between the young couple prevented them from
establishing an intimate relationship. His education and work made him no longer

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tolerant of a marriage not based on mutual love. He could no longer live with a wife who
was almost a stranger to him. After the publication of this law, he felt he did not need to
hesitate in expressing his desire for abandoning a marriage arranged by his father.

Jiren had already heard of many cases of divorce. Traditionally minded, he would not like
this to happen in his family. There had been no divorces ever in the family history. He
could not tolerate seeing the family’s reputation damaged. To prevent this from
happening, he sent his daughter-in-law to school, hoping that education could narrow the
gap between his son and the daughter-in-law. But this effort proved to be futile. The new
marriage law gave the son support in his decision about his marriage. As a government
employee, he had a better understanding of how to gain the governmental support.
Although he knew that his father would stand in the way, he did not care too much, since
he thought he was both morally and legally supported by the new regime. He wrote a
letter to his father and his wife, telling them he wanted to call an end to this marriage. He
asked his wife to sign an agreement to the divorce. As he had predicted, his father
rejected his request. The divorce agreement was not returned to him. His father wrote him
a letter, urging him to abandon his plan.

Seeing the opposition to his request, he did not press his case further. The truce lasted for
a time, and then he asked his wife to join him in the city. The father, aware of the danger
of this trip, advised the daughter-in-law not to go. But the daughter-in-law seemed to
have already understood that there was nothing she could do to keep this marriage. She

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even began to take her personal belongings back to her natal home before she set off on
the trip. When she returned from her trip, she brought back with her the divorce
certificate. The marriage was terminated. The father was very angry and frustrated. But
there was nothing he could do. Times had changed. He now had nothing in hand to
control his son.

If Jiren was reluctant to accept his son’s divorce, he would feel lucky when he heard
about another case of divorce in the same village. The man involved was from one of the
rich families in the village. Like most boys in a rich family, he had been engaged when
he was very young. As the eldest grandson of the family, his grandfather wanted him to
marry early. As a result he was married when he was only thirteen years old to a wife
eight years older than he. After his marriage, he continued his education. Graduated from
college, he became a schoolteacher in a city. By that time, two children had already been
born to them.

One day, his wife received a letter from him. She was invited to join her husband. Since
they already had two children, his parents and wife did not have any suspicion that
anything was amiss. The wife happily set off on the trip. When she arrived in the city, she
was surprised to find that her husband did not even come out to greet her. Surrounding
her were her husband’s colleagues, who told her that her husband wanted to divorce her
and persuaded her to consent to his request. Well educated, they used what they had
learned of the governmental policies to convince her. They told her that if she did not

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agree, her husband would bring the case to the court and eventually the court would force
her to accept a divorce. With no one to seek advice from, she had no idea what to do.
Illiterate, she had no understanding of the governmental policy. Finally, she had to agree
to her husband’s divorce request.

When she returned with the divorce certificate, her father-in-law was very angry. He did
not expect such a result. No one still remembered whether it was an agreement between
her and her husband or between her and her father-in-law, the divorce took the form of
“divorce but resident” pattern
5
. That is, after the divorce, the woman continued to live
with her ex-husband’s parents. Even though she was legally no longer related to him,
their children entitled her to the status as a full member of his kinship network in the
village, just as before the divorce. The husband later married another woman. But since
he and his new wife lived away from his native village, such an arrangement did not
cause confusion and embarrassment in everyday life. Such an arrangement was very
common at the time, especially when there were children born of the broken marriage.
This arrangement gave the divorced women a niche in the society when prejudice against
divorced women was still prevalent.

From then on, although this woman officially was no longer wife of the man, she still
lived with his parents and continued to be regarded as a member of this extended family

5
In the early 1950s, many divorces took this form. When a man working in cities divorced his wife who
lived in the village, the divorced wife would continue to live with his parents. She was still seen as a
member in the kinship network of her ex-husband in the village.

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by villagers and his relatives. The two children were raised solely by the mother, with
little support from the father. The man married again not long after the divorce. Three
more children were born of his second marriage. With these three children and one child
of his second wife’s first marriage, he was unable to support the two children of his first
marriage. Decades later, when his second wife and her children asked the children of his
first marriage to help with the economic difficulty in the family due to his long-term
hospitalization, the children of his first marriage refused because they thought he never
fulfilled his responsibility as a father towards them.

The early 1950s saw the first dramatic increase in cases of divorce throughout the country,
as a result of the newly published Marriage Law. The Party’s cadres and officials, who
had fought, worked and lived in rural areas in the past decades during wartimes, had
taken leading positions in cities, as the Party became the new ruler of the country.
Although Mao told his party members and cadres to keep from being corrupted by the
bourgeoisie in the cities, they liked the young ladies from the bourgeoisie families if not
the bourgeois way of life. They flocked to dump their illiterate wives in the countryside
and marry these ladies who were young and well educated. Their wives from the
countryside were often unable to marry again due to their age and the burden of raising
their children. While their husbands were liberated, they were not. Even though they had
raised children for their husbands and cared for their aged parents in the past years, what
these services brought back was the betrayal from their husbands. While their husbands

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enjoyed the more comfortable and modern family life in the cities, they were left in the
villages, struggling through a lonely and miserable life in the coming decades.

5. Collectivization, Widow Remarriage and Romance
In 1956, the Communist government became unsatisfied with the subsistence farming
economy that dominated the country after the land reform. They wanted to hurry up on
the road toward socialism. In villages, it meant imposing the collective ownership of
means of production, such as land, draft animals and important farm tools. A
collectivization campaign was staged throughout the country. Every rural family had to
join the collective. No one was allowed to stay outside the system. They had to contribute
their land, draft animals and big farming tools to the collective without any compensation.
Many families, especially those that had just become better off after the land reform,
were very reluctant to hand over the land, draft animal and farming equipment that they
had made great efforts to accumulate. Although newspapers and other public media were
full of news of peasants willing and anxious to join the collectives, the real situation was
the opposite, according to villagers in Song Family Village. The government had to use
various coercive methods to force people to join “voluntarily.” Under high political
pressure, villagers had no choice but to do what the government wanted.

All people in Song Family Village were incorporated into a single collective called the
“advanced cooperative.” The cooperative was divided into three “production teams,”

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which took care of the everyday management of production. In the following decades,
these two levels of administration in the village remained constant in spite of frequent
changes in the bureaucratic structure beyond the village.
The formation of cooperatives in the village not only affected the economic life but also
had impact upon family life. Before the collectivization movement, every family farmed
their own land. The allocation of resources, labor and time was solely determined by the
family, especially by the head of the family. The normal division of labor was for the
men to do most of the farm work and women to do most of the housework, including
weaving. In busy seasons, women also went out to help with the farm work. But most of
the time, they would stay at home.

After collectivization, individual families not only lost control of their means of
production but also that of their labor and time. They no longer had freedom in deciding
what they should do. Without the production team’s permission, no one was allowed to
take any nonagricultural employment outside the village. The only work available was
farming for the collective. Since working for the collective was the only source of income,
every family tried to provide as much labor as they could. Women, who previously did
little farm work, went out of their homes and joined the labor forces of the cooperative.

Their work for the collective was recorded by a work-point system. A full day of regular
work by a male adult was worth ten points. A female adult would earn less, normally 8
points. Sometimes, very heavy work would be worth more than 10 points. At the end of

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the year, the value of each work point would be calculated on the basis of the total
revenue of the production team. People’s income depended on how many work points
they earned. Every adult, male and female, had a record book. They had to bring it over
to the accountant every evening. The accountant would sign the book and indicate how
many work points that person earned that day.

The gatherings at the accountant’s office provided opportunities for males and females to
meet each other. Many elders knew that with males and females mingled together
anything could happen. No matter whether these elders were educated or not, the
Confucian idea of forbidding the intimacy between unrelated men and women was deep
in their minds. Any intimacy between unrelated men and women would compromise the
fame of the parties involved. Even though the Marriage Law had been in effect for
several years, romance between young men and women was still seen as immoral by
most elders in the village. For this reason, most parents, if they could, would try to
prevent their daughters or daughters-in-law from going to the office. Instead, the father of
the family usually would collect all the record books of the family members and go there
himself or send one of his sons over there to do the bookkeeping.

But a romance did happen only one year after the collectivization. In 1957, a marriage in
Song Family Village became a hot topic in people’s gossip. Three features of this
marriage aroused people’s interest. One was that the bride, Chunlan, was a widow who
had a young son. The other was that the groom was from the same village as the widow’s

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dead husband. The last but the most important point was that this marriage was through
romantic courtship. In Song Family Village, there had been a few widows who remarried.
But those remarried widows were all without sons. A widow with sons was not supposed
to remarry. A widow normally remarried into other villages to avoid the embarrassment
that the second marriage might cause. No marriage by romantic love had ever happened
in Song Family Village. Even a widow’s second marriage used to be arranged by her
parents or at least through a go-between.

Chunlan was the daughter-in-law of Jikun, who was given a label of rich peasant during
the land reform. Her husband, Chenglin, was killed seven years before in an accident
when he was digging a sweet-potato storage well. This was a technique commonly used
in this area for storing fresh sweet potatoes. In early winter when it was time to harvest
sweet potatoes, people would normally dig a well of about 10 feet deep, either with a
round or a square opening. Deep inside, the temperature would be constant and sweet
potatoes would not decay if stored in it. But digging a well sometimes could be very
dangerous. If the earth was too soft, the wall of the well might collapse and bury the
digger alive. To prevent such a disaster, it was important to find a site where the earth
was firm. A well should not be dug on a site where an old well once existed, since on
such a site the earth might be soft. But unfortunately Chenglin had chosen to dig where
an old well must have once existed long before. The old well had already been filled in,
with no traces left. While he was digging, he did not notice the softness of the earth. But
when the well was almost done, he suddenly noticed that some soil began to fall off the

230

wall. He realized that something would happen. He immediately tried to climb out of the
well, but it was too late. The well collapsed. He was buried alive in the well. This
unexpected disaster threw the whole family into deep sorrow. Surviving him were his
young widow and a little son who was barely one year old. His parents were stunned by
the disaster. The young widow was sad about her husband’s death.

As time passed, the young boy was growing. He brought some consolation to both his
mother and grandparents. For several years, this family of three generations lived a
peaceful life. Jikun farmed their land. His wife and the daughter-in-law did the
housework. It seemed that this young widow would follow the life trajectory of the
widows of previous generations: raising the child until he grew up and taking care of the
parents-in-law when they were old.

In working for the collective, the young widow came to know a young man in the village.
The first time they came to know each other was in the accountant’s office. No one knew
how this had happened. The man often offered help to the widow whenever it was
convenient. Their interactions gradually caught people’s attention. Rumors spread in the
village. But villagers were very competent in keeping the rumors from the people directly
concerned. For example, when a wife was involved in adultery, the husband would often
be the last to know in the village. In this particular case, it was also true. Jikun and his
wife never heard a word of the affair, even though most of their fellow villagers had long
known it.

231

The relationship developed very fast. Finally, the widow decided to marry the young man.
When she told her parents-in-law, the latter were astonished. They couldn’t imagine that
a widow in their family would remarry. They had never seen or heard of such a case in
their family history. It was really a shameful matter for them. What was more, she had a
son. It was unusual for a woman to abandon her son. If the widow remarried, who would
take care of the young son? Was she going to take him away? Of course the parents-in-
law would not let her take away the little boy, because he was by then their only male
grandchild. The continuation of the family line depended on this little boy. They tried to
persuade the widow to change her mind. But they soon found that nothing could stop it.
The young widow left the family and returned to her natal home, leaving the little boy to
his grandparents.

The widow married the young man not long after. The young man never worried about
any trouble from the old couple, because he knew they dared not do anything. On the one
hand, he belonged to the good class. He was sure he would get support from the village
cadres and the government. On the other hand, their marriage was completely legal, even
though not moral according to traditional values and customs. Since Jikun belonged to
the bad class, the young man knew that Jikun would not have the courage to intervene.

Although Jikun and his family dared not do anything to prevent the marriage from
happening, hatred and shame were buried deep in their minds. They could not understand

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how the widow could leave her young son behind. What made them even angrier was that
she did this in spite of the fact that they had treated her quite well. After the widow
remarried, the old couple forbade her to contact her son. They also prevented the little
son from contacting his mother. For many years, even though the mother and the son
lived in the same village, they had never had any personal contact.

Only after both of the old couple died and the boy came to his late twenties did he began
to have personal interactions with his mother. People often saw the mother come to the
son’s home in the evening and sometimes also saw the son visiting his mother. But these
visits only happened in the evening. They were reluctant to make their contacts public.
But when he got married and had his own children in the 1980s, he stopped interacting
with his mother. No one knows why.

Several factors had contributed to this chain of events. The first was the land reform,
which reduced Jikun’s family to the bottom of the village power structure. Having lost
not only their properties but also their political status in the village, they plummeted from
the top of the village power structure to the bottom. Although the political atmosphere
were not as hostile to them as during the Cultural Revolution ten years later, rich peasants
were officially supposed to be under the supervision of the “revolutionary masses.” They
were supposed to be very careful in their behavior. That prevented the parents-in-law
from taking any effective actions against the remarriage of the widow.

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The second factor was the new marriage law. The law strongly supported the remarriage
of widows and also marriage by romance. Although villagers did not necessarily accept
these ideas, it took great courage to openly defy this law, especially in the 1950s when
the campaigns implementing the law had just passed. Thus, even though villagers did not
approve of such a marriage in their own minds, no one dared try to stop them.

The third factor was collectivization. Before collectivization, every family was farming
their own land. Young people were under the watchful eyes of the elders of the family
both at work and at home. They had few opportunities to interact with outsiders,
especially with the opposite sex. With collectivization, everyone was now working for
the collective. People from different families, both males and females, were working
together. That greatly increased the chances for young men and women to interact with
each other, making it possible to establish liaisons between each other.

But the patrilineal tradition still persisted in the village. Even the remarried widow did
not claim the custody of her young son. People still believed that children belonged to
their father’s family. When the mother “left” the family by remarriage, she was not
supposed to taken away her children. Because of that, the old couple obtained the custody
of their grandson without dispute after their daughter-in-law remarried.

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6. Conclusion
One important result of the land reform in Song Family Village was the economic
homogeneity within the community. Most of the properties of the wealthy families were
confiscated and redistributed to the poor. The previous hierarchy based on differential
possession of wealth no longer exited. This economic homogeneity affected marriage
practice in the village. The previously rich families were no longer able and no longer
needed to use extravagant dowries to define their social status. With their newly obtained
wealth, the previously poor people no longer needed to ask the groom’s family to provide
for the “dowry.” They could provide it by themselves. The previously desperate families
no longer needed to use their daughters’ brideprice for their sons’ marriages or for family
survival. Pseudodowry and brideprice disappeared. In their place was a universal dowry
marriage, even though the amount of the dowry was usually small.

The 1950 Marriage Law was the Communist state’s first effort to reform the traditional
marriage and family. The liberation of women was one of its important goals. The
implementation of the law led to the rising divorce rate in the early 1950s. Many scholars
found that most of these divorces were initiated by women who wanted to end their
unhappy marriages (Parish and Whyte 1978, K. A. Johnson 1983, Stacey 1983, and M.
Wolf 1985). The implication was that this rising divorce rate was beneficial to women.
But what I found in Song Family Village was contrary to this accepted wisdom. All the
divorces in the village in the early 1950s were initiated by men who worked in cities.

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They took advantage of this new law and abandoned their illiterate wives. It was these
men who benefited from this new law. While men gained freedom from marriages they
disliked, women were the ones who had to bear the negative consequences of the
divorces. If a divorced woman was young, she might be able to get married again. But if
she was no longer young, and especially if she had children, it would be difficult for her
to remarry. Without economic independence, her living condition got worse after the
divorce. Raising the children born of the marriage was often left to the divorced woman,
who often did not have the knowledge or courage to bring a lawsuit to force her ex-
husband to undertake the responsibility of child support. This was not to deny that
women in general might eventually benefit from this law in the long run. I only want to
point out the complex picture of the effect of the Marriage Law. Any generalization about
the effect might run the risk of being over simplified.

The collectivization gave young women chances to work outside home and young people
the chances to interact with the opposite sex. This was the reason why the first romance
in the village happened in 1957, only one year after the collectivization. But that did not
mean that marriage by romance would become main stream in the village. In fact, even
now marriages by romance make up only a very small ratio of all the marriages.

Traditionally, whether a widow could remarry or not depended on her husband’s family’s
intentions. A widow in a powerful family would have found it very hard to remarry
because the family had the ability to prevent her from remarrying. It was often widows

236

from marginal families that could remarry, both because these families could not support
a widow and also because such families did not have the power to prevent the widow
from remarrying. The remarriage of Jikun’s daughter-in-law followed a similar pattern. It
happened because the family of Jikun was reduced to the lowest status in the village.
Jikun and his wife did not have the power and courage to prevent it from happening. And
of course, the New Marriage Law also provided legal support for the widow.

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CHAPTER FIVE
THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD AND THE
“SWEET POTATO MARRIAGE”

1. Introduction: “Dried Sweet Potato Brides”
When I was young in the early 1970s, I often envied some children of my age who could
follow their parents to temple fairs in a village about six miles southwest of mine. That
was a large village of about 5000 people, famous for its eight temple fairs every year.
These families could go to the temple fair because the mothers were from that or its
neighboring villages. The temple fairs were a good excuse for them to escape from the
tedious work on the collective farm and have fun visiting families and relatives.

One thing that was special about these mothers was the dialect they spoke. Although only
slightly different from that spoken in my village, even a young kid could tell the
difference. When people mentioned these women, they often referred to them as “dried
sweet potato” brides. They said that these women were purchased with dried sweet
potatoes when people in these women’s villages were starving. People in Song Family
Village took advantage of this opportunity and purchased brides for their sons. At that
time, I only took it as a story that sounded funny. Dried sweet potatoes for a wife? How
could that be? It was not until decades later that I started to have some understanding of
such marriage transactions and the sad stories behind them.

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These women married into Song Family Village in the early 1960s, when China was
struck by a nation-wide famine that probably caused the loss of tens of millions of lives.
1

Villagers in Song Family Village were lucky during that time. They benefited from
growing sweet potatoes as one of their major crops. Seen as the worst staple food, sweet
potatoes were not sought after when the state collected food products from villagers. The
villagers were able to keep a relatively larger share to themselves. These sweet potatoes
helped them survive the famine.

But not every village was so lucky. Only six miles southwest of Song Family Village,
people were starving. As wheat producers, they were more susceptible to state demands,
since wheat was seen as the best staple food. With most of their product taken away,
these people were left with little to eat. Desperate, people tried every means to get food in
order to survive. Some people in Song Family Village with extra food took advantage of
their misfortune. They offered some food to these starving families. In return these
families offered them their daughters. This was a way to save the lives of both the
daughters and other members of their families.

My fieldwork in 2002 gave me a good opportunity to look into what happened at that
time. That gave me a better understanding of the suffering that people experienced in the

1
Different scholars gave different figures of life losses during the famine from 1959 to 1961: Jiang
Zhenghua and Li Nan (1986) 16.97 million, Coale (1984) 22 million, Jin Hui (1993) 27.91 million and Cao
Shuji (2005) 32.5 million.

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high tide of socialism under Mao and why and how people had to use their daughters to
exchange for food.

2. The Great Leap Forward: the Cause of the Famine
The famine in the early 1960s left a deep impression in the memory of the villagers. Few
people, if any, attributed it to natural disasters, which was once the official line of the
Communist regime
2
. According to them, the local weather was normal, if not better,
compared to other years. They thought that the famine happened because the local cadres
exaggerated the agricultural output to the government. The government then levied taxes
on the basis of this exaggerated figure. As a result almost all grain produced was taken
away and the villagers were left with little to eat. The more exaggeration, the more
sufferings for people. It was the local cadres and officials who were to blame. When
asked why these cadres exaggerated the figures of agricultural output, the villagers
thought that it was because they wanted to win favor from the higher authorities. As one
villager said, “The cadres wanted to win favor from their bosses. The more exaggeration,
the more favor they had. They won favor but villagers suffered!”

Seen locally, this was a satisfactory explanation. Without the exaggeration of the output,
there would be no high levies from the state and the disaster would not have happened.

2
Though many leaders, such as Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, etc. admitted at conferences of high officials that
the state policy was the major cause for the famine, the CCP never admitted it to the public. The official
public explanation for the famine was natural disaster. Before the 1980s, the official term in referring to the
famines was “three years of natural disasters.” See Bo (1991), and Jin, Chongji et al. (2006).

240

This explanation was based on what the villagers had personally experienced. But seen
from a nation-wide perspective, this explanation was far from satisfactory. The famine
was a nation-wide catastrophe. Why did all the local cadres throughout the country
exaggerate their agricultural output to an unbelievable level? Were they all crazy?

Although the villagers’ explanation was not satisfactory, the ones given by the
Communist government was even further from truth. For a long time, the official
discourse of the Party State for this catastrophe was “three years of natural disaster,”
attributing the famine to the fluctuations of the climate
3
. A country with such a vast area
suffered from natural disasters at the same time for three years? How could that be? But
for a long time no one dared to openly challenge this lie for fear of persecution. It was not
until the late 1970s that the post-Mao Communist Party began to admit that this disaster
was mainly caused by the fallacies of the economic policy of the Party State during the
Great Leap Forward movement. But at the same time, the official discourse still kept
natural disasters as one of the factors contributing to this famine.

In the past two decades, many scholars, both Chinese and western, have conducted
researches in this area. Some autobiographies by senior officials of the Party also gave
some insider’s accounts about what happened at the time in the senior leadership of the

3
Jin Hui studied the records of the weather in China during the late 1950s and the early 1960s. He found
no evidence of abnormal climatic fluctuation during those years. See Jin, Hui (1998).

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CCP and the government
4
. The declassification of some party and government archives
also made available information that was essential to understanding the causes of this
disaster. There are still controversies among scholars and officials as to the weight of the
state policy in causing the famine, but few of them could deny that the Great Leap
Forward and its consequences were the major cause for this catastrophe. A brief overview
of the Great Leap Forward movement was necessary before we look at what happened in
the village during the time.

Although the Great Leap Forward as a movement started in 1958, the idea might have
existed in Mao’s mind long time before. When he and his party came to power in 1949,
he was eager to bring about a dramatic change to the Chinese “backward” economy, both
in the agricultural and industrial sectors. He could not see why this should be impossible,
now that he had led the Communists in winning an almost impossible victory over the
Nationalist government. Economic construction, as seen by Mao, was not so much
different from revolution. The mobilization of the masses and the solid leadership by the
Party were the determinate factors in the success of both.

With such confidence in himself and his party, Mao had always been in favor of a faster
pace in economic development. He was impatient with the conservativeness of his

4
An example is Bo (1991). The author Bo Yibo was an important leader in the first seventeen years after
the founding of the People’s Republic of China until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. He also
played an important role in the leadership of the post-Mao reform. As an insider who participated or was
involved in almost all the important events in the early history of the People’s Republic of China, his
reviews of these events and happenings were valuable for people to understand these events.

242

colleagues. In late 1955 and early 1956, he held meetings with some provincial leaders
and worked out a guideline for agricultural development in the next ten years (Guidelines
for National Agricultural Development from 1957 to 1967)
5
. In this guideline, many of
the economic goals were set much higher than what officials in charge of economic
development had worked out for the second five-year plan
6
and the national economic
developmental plan for the next fifteen years (Bo 1991: 524).

These officials soon found that Mao’s goals were unrealistic and the pursuit of these
goals had already caused many problems of economic development. These officials
began to take measures to stop the economy from being distorted. As one of the major
leaders (Bo 1991) recalled decades later, a similar disaster like the Great Leap Forward
would have come earlier if it was not for the efforts to check this trend. But Mao still
wanted a faster pace of economic development. In Nov 1957, while attending a
conference of world Communist leaders held at Moscow, Mao proposed that China
surpass Britain in fifteen years in the amount of major industrial products, echoing the
Soviet proclaim of surpassing the United States in fifteen years
7
.

5
This was a guideline worked out by Mao together with some provincial officials, independent of the
planning agency of the central government. See Bo (1991).

6
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the CCP adopted the Soviet model of a centrally
controlled economy. Economic development was based on plans made by the government for every five
years. The first five-year plan in China started from 1953 to 1957. Even though China has adopted a market
economy since the 1980s, the five-year plan is still used as a guideline for state-sponsored investments.

7
In a conference of international Communist leaders held in Moscow in Nov. 1957, Mao claimed that
China would surpass the Great Britain in major sectors of industry. See Bo (1991: 691-692)

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Echoing his call, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party,
carried an editorial in November 1957, criticizing the rightist tendency pervasive among
leaders on different levels. It called for a closer study of the Guideline for National
Agricultural Development in order to have a great leap forward in agricultural production
to realize the goals set by the plan. This was the first time the term “Great Leap Forward”
was used in public.
8
This term soon won applause from Mao.

In order to realize his economic goals, Mao launched severe attacks upon his more
conservative colleagues in early 1958. He claimed that these colleagues were “only fifty
steps from being rightists.”
9
This was a very threatening accusation that reminded people
of the fate of more than 500 thousand rightists
10
, victims of the anti-rightist campaign
from 1957 to 1958. Most of these victims were convicted as rightists only because they
made some minor complaints against the policy of the Party or even just some personal

8
See Hu (1991: 390) and Bo (1991: 680).

9
It means these people were very close to but not yet rightists themselves. The implication was that if
these people would obey Mao, they would have no problem, otherwise they would be labeled as rightists
and lose their positions and power. For a description of the context of this saying, see Bo (1991: 645).

10
The Anti-Rightist Movement movement was a political campaign to crack down on criticism against the
CCP from 1957 to 1958. In early 1957, Mao called on people to criticize the CCP and help it to correct its
mistakes. Many people believed it and began to voice their complaints. Soon Mao could not tolerate the
criticism. The CCP launched the Anti-Rightist Movement movement. More than 550,000 people were
labeled “rightists.” Many of them were convicted as rightists just because they expressed some minor
complaints against the CCP or against just individual party members. Some of these rightists were put into
prison, more lost their jobs and all of them suffered from political discrimination in the following decades
until 1979, when the CCP declared that most of them were labeled as rightists by mistake. But in the
official discourse, the Anti-Rightist Movement movement is still held as right and necessary. The only
mistake that the CCP admitted was that too many people were labeled as rightists. For details, see Zhu,
Zheng (2004).

244

grudges against individual party members. Declared as enemies of the “People”
11
by the
Party, they were severely punished, with many of them losing their jobs, and a significant
number of them even sent to prison. In the next two decades, they were to be subjected to
constant persecutions of the proletariat dictatorship
12
. Even their families were affected.
The effect of this campaign was that any voice different from that of the Party State was
muted.

Although the anti-rightist campaign was mainly targeting intellectuals
13
outside the
Communist Party, party members or even senior officials were not guaranteed exemption
from such a fate. In fact, those “rightists” included some party members or even senior
officials. With Mao’s overwhelming authority built up through his own success in
revolutionary leadership and also through Party propaganda, he could label any of his
colleagues a “rightist” if he found it necessary. Thus, his “fifty steps from the rightists”
accusation was a real threat to his colleagues. They had to give in to Mao’s will. When
Mao proposed the high goals for economic development, no one dared to challenge them

11
“The people” is a term with very strong political connotations in the official discourse of the CCP. It is
used to refer to those people who are recognized as supporters of the Communist regime. Those seen as
enemies are not seen as belonging to “the people.” The CCP often declares itself as representing the
interests of “the people.” This is why it likes to precede the names of its agencies as “the People’s.” For
example, the government is called “the People’s Government.” The court is called “the People’s Court.”

12
Proletariat dictatorship was a political system to guarantee the Communist control of the state. In
Communist states, including the Society Union and China under Mao, this so-called dictatorship by “the
working class” eventually turned out to be a dictatorship by a single dictator (Stalin in the Soviet Union and
Mao in China).

13
In China, the term “intellectuals” has been used to refer to those who are better educated than the
majority of the population. Who can be seen as an intellectual varied from time to time. In the 1950s, high
school education would certainly qualify a person as an intellectual, while nowadays an intellectual needs
to have at least a college education.

245

any more. To win favor from Mao, many officials went even further than Mao by setting
even higher goals than those of Mao. This was the only way to keep them safe from being
accused as conservatives. The top officials put pressures on their subordinates to meet the
goals they set up. The subordinates put even more pressure on their own subordinates.
When it reached the bottom of the bureaucratic hierarchy, the pressure was so high that
the local officials had to come up with extremely high figures to meet the expectations of
their superiors. Although many people knew the absurdity of these figures, no one dared
to play the role of the little child to reveal the nudity of the emperor. The whole country
was like a locomotive without brakes. It could only rush forward at a high speed until it
crashed. Thus, the terror of the anti-rightist campaign is the key to understanding how the
Great Leap Forward could have happened in China and why a famine could have lasted
for three years throughout the country during a time when there were no nation-wide
natural disasters.

The major targets for the Great Leap Forward was to enhance agricultural and iron
production within a short time. Iron and steel production was given an even more
important position by Mao because of its significance in building up military power. In
the latter half of 1958, the whole country was mobilized for iron production. Iron
furnaces of different sizes were built throughout the country. People without any relevant
knowledge or skills were told to produce iron and steel. In order to raise agricultural
output within a short time, the CCP and the government initiated a campaign to improve
the infrastructure of agricultural production throughout the country. Mao proposed the

246

combination of small cooperatives
14
into larger ones, which would make it more efficient
to mobilize labor and resources for large projects of improving infrastructure (Bo 1991:
728-731). Mao wanted such a large cooperative to be a self-contained society, which had
all the social functions and could provide all the social services to its members. These
ideas were soon accepted by the Party and put on its agenda (Bo 1991; Liu 1991).

As Mao said, the People’s Commune had two important features: one was its large size
and the other was its collective ownership (yi da, er gong) (Bo 1991: 741). Many
People’s Communes contained several thousand households. Individual ownership was
reduced to almost nothing. The boundaries between villages were broken. Properties
could be transferred without compensation between villages.

The commune system cleared the way for Mao and his party to pursue the ambitious
goals set for the following years. With the collective mechanism in place for mobilizing
both human and material resources, Mao and his colleagues thought they could turn
China into a prosperous industrial society in a couple of years and lead the whole country
into communism within a short time. But instead of improving the economy of the
country, these efforts plunged the whole country into an economic disaster, with the loss
of tens of millions of lives.

14
This refers to the Advanced Cooperative, which normally covered a single village in north China. Mao
still thought it too small for efficient mobilization of material and human resources. See Bo (1991).

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3. The Great Leap Forward in Song Family Village
Exaggeration of Output
The approaching summer of 1958 promised an excellent harvest of wheat. With little
irrigation available to Song Family Village, the spring crops of wheat relied solely on
rainfall, which was concentrated in summer and very rare in spring, due to the monsoon
climate. But the spring of 1958 seemed to be different. Immediately when the weather
turned warm and the seedlings of wheat were ready to wake up from winter hibernation, a
timely rainfall welcomed them into the growing season. Throughout the spring, several
rains provided the moisture needed for the growth of wheat. A heavy rain between the
spring and summer guaranteed an excellent harvest. By the early summer, every sign
showed that an excellent harvest was waiting ahead.

This was the second summer harvest after all the villagers joined the “advanced
cooperative.” By organizing all peasants into cooperatives, the state achieved much more
efficiency in extracting resources from the peasants. Now, the officials no longer needed
to deal with individual peasant families when collecting taxes and levies. They only
needed to approach the cooperative leaders, who controlled all the resources of the
cooperative. After each harvest, the cooperative would first pay taxes and levies to the
state, and then seeds and food for draft animals would be kept for the cooperative. What
was left would be allocated to individual families.

248

Just when villagers were expecting that the good harvest of wheat might bring them more
consumption of wheat flour, which was considered the best staple food, the state already
began to poke its nose in. Just before the harvest, the head of the advanced cooperative
was summoned to a meeting of cooperative heads held at the township government office.
The township officials first announced to them the call for a great leap forward by the
central government. To make them better understand the situation, they read them the
headlines of newspapers that reported incredibly high yields of summer harvest in other
places of the country. Although people at the meeting dared not doubt the figures
published in newspapers, they could not imagine that these figures were possible in their
villages. Then, the cooperative heads were asked to report estimates of the output of their
villages one by one. When the first one gave out his figure, he was immediately criticized
for being too conservative because it was far below the published figures in the
newspapers.
15
Then the one after him, seeing him criticized, immediately raised the
figure, but that figure was still far from what was expected by the officials. The officials
urged them to be more aggressive so that they would not be left behind by the Great Leap
Forward. People soon understood that the officials just wanted high figures without
caring about whether they were practical or not. This seemed to be an easy task. One by
one, the leaders of the cooperatives gave out their high figures, winning praise from the
officials. The figure went higher and higher until it reached an unimaginable level, almost
equal to those carried in the newspapers. The head of Song Family Village remembered

15
During the Great Leap Forward, many newspapers published news of high figures of agricultural output.
All of them were faked. For details, see Ding (1991) and Bo (1991).

249

that when his turn came, he gave a figure much higher than the ones before him. He
thought the figure was already driven very high by that time. Anyone without mental
problem could see that it was a figure impossible to be achieved. What harm would it do
to give an even higher figure? He thought these numbers were meaningless. No matter
what the number was reported, the government had to allow peasants to be left with
enough to eat before collecting the extras.

He was wrong this time. The summer did bring an excellent harvest of wheat, but the
output was nothing near the high figures reported by the cooperative heads. Yet, the
government set much higher figures for taxes and levies based on the exaggerated figures
reported by the cooperatives. When the cooperative was forced to meet the high levies
imposed by the state, very little was left for the villagers’ own consumption.

“Iron and Steel Drive”
16

Contributing more grain was only one way the state asked the villagers to contribute to
the Great Leap Forward. More expectations from the state were waiting ahead. Following
an order from the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, on Sept 1, 1958,
the Party committee and the government of the county made a decision that every village

16
“Iron and Steel Drive” refers to the campaign for increasing iron and steel production during the Great
Leap Forward in 1958. In the second half of 1958, the CCP adopted the wartime mobilizing strategy in
order to increase iron and steel production. Everyone in the country was required to contribute to iron
production. This was why small iron furnaces were set up everywhere and iron items were melt into waste
metal chunks.

250

should set up its own iron and steel furnaces in order to help the state to meet the iron and
steel production goal set for the year. Each village was given a quota for iron production.
All officials and cadres were required to take immediate action to realize this goal.

The cadres of the cooperative, after getting instructions from a meeting at the township
headquarters, immediately held a meeting of the whole village informing the villagers of
what they were supposed to do. Many villagers were surprised by this decision. They
were all farmers. No one had any experience in iron and steel production. What should
they do? Besides, with no easy access to any mines of iron ore and coal, what materials
should they use to produce iron and steel?

Although no one had any experience in iron production in the village, some people did
have experience in ironwork and at brick kilns. They first built the furnaces on the basis
of their knowledge of brick kilns. The only difference was to make it smaller in size.
Since iron production definitely needed higher temperature than the brick kilns, they
needed to find ways to fan in more air into the furnaces to raise the temperature. This was
nothing unfamiliar to them. The wooden bellows that they used to channel in air into their
stoves when cooking was a ready model to use. The only difference was that they needed
one in a much larger size. Soon, the village carpenters had huge wooden bellows ready.

With furnaces built and tools ready, raw materials were still a big problem. The state
definitely would not provide them with raw materials. They were asked to find their own

251

ways to solve the problem. Village cadres soon learned from the experience in other
places. Although they could not produce iron and steel from iron ores, they might be able
to turn iron into steel. The cadres of the village asked all the villagers to hand in anything
made of iron that was not in use, but only a small pile of broken iron utensils were
collected. It seemed impossible for them to meet the quota set for the village.

Under great pressure from the above to fulfill the production quota, the village cadres
decided to press villagers to hand in any iron articles that could be found in their houses.
The cadres and officials searched from family to family to find anything made of iron
that had not yet been submitted. As villagers remembered, even the lock holders were
pulled off the doors and gates and thrown into the furnaces. Anyone who hid any iron
article would be deemed a reactionary against the Iron Drive movement. With iron
production designated by the Party as the key task for the whole country, no one could
block the way of the “Marshall of Iron and Steel.”
17
In the end almost all the articles
made of iron were collected and thrown into the furnaces, including the cooking utensils.

The furnaces standing outside the village created a remarkable scene. The light given off
by the burning furnaces lit up the dark sky of the night. Strong young men took turns
working on the big wooden bellows to fan air into the furnaces. In spite of the marvelous

17
“The Marshall of Iron and Steel” was used to refer to the task of iron and steel production. In the second
half of 1958, it was seen as the most important task of the time to meet the goal of iron and steel production
set for that year. Human and material resources were mobilized and invested into this sector. One
immediate consequence was that there was not enough labor for autumn harvest. Agricultural output was
greatly affected. See Bo (1991).

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sight, the furnaces did not produce any steel of industrial use. What they produced were
chunks of mixture of coal and iron. The usable iron articles had been turned into
something of no use at all. These big chunks were declared as products of steel. In this
way, Song Family Village met the steel production goal imposed on them from the above.
That enabled the state government to declare that the goals of iron and steel production
were met by the end of the year (Bo 1991). Villagers could not remember how many
people worked at these furnaces, but according to the local gazetteer (JXZBW 1994: 27),
130,193 men and women were working for iron production in the whole county, which
had a population of less than 200,000. That meant most of the labor forces were put into
iron production.

The People’s Commune
Linked with “the iron and steel drive” was the People’s Commune movement. Only two
days after the village was told to build their own iron furnaces the county government
declared a drive to organize People’s Communes in the whole county, following the
orders from the central government. Overnight, all the villages and towns in the county
were reorganized into four people’s communes, with each one administering dozens of
villages and tens of thousands of people. Song Family Village became part of the
Xiaolüzhai People’s Commune, which incorporated 59 villages and about 50,000
people
18
. Since it was too large for effective management, this people’s commune was

18
This figure is my estimation based on the statistics of population in Julu Xian Zhi (JXZBW 1994: 633)

253

divided into several management districts. The one that covered Song Family Village and
its neighboring villages set up its headquarters in Song Family Village.

The establishment of the People’s Commune was not only a change in the administrative
structure, but also occasioned another dramatic change in property ownership. Although
the advanced cooperative that was established more than one year before eliminated
private ownership of major means of production, such as land, draft animals and large
farming tools, these resources were still collectively owned by the cooperative, whose
sphere usually covered only one village. Neither the state nor other cooperatives could
take away any of these properties without proper compensation. The village defined the
boundaries within which these properties could flow. Furthermore, the cooperative still
recognized the private ownership of houses and other personal properties.

Immediately after the People’s Commune was established, it became the owner of all the
collective properties under its administration. The boundaries between villages were
removed. The properties collectively owned by the village became collective properties
of the whole commune, which consisted of dozens of villages. In one stoke, the village
had lost control of all its assets. A piece of land that had previously belonged to and
farmed by one village could now be allocated to another village. Whenever the commune
officials needed anything, they could take them from any village under their
administration without any compensation. A village with extra grain might be forced to
hand over their surplus to other villages. Song Family Village was affected even more,

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since it housed one management district of the commune. Many families were ordered to
evacuate their own houses to make room for the various offices of the management
district.

Not only could material resources be taken away from the village without any
compensation, the villagers were also required to provide free labor forces for the various
large projects initiated by the state or local government. The newly established steel and
iron plants, in particular, recruited an enormous number of new workers from villages.
One villager recalled how he became a worker during that time. One afternoon, there was
an order from the government that this village had to provide workers for the iron plants
newly established in Handan, a major city in south Hebei Province. He was one of the
people selected. In the evening, they gathered in the middle of the village. Led by one of
the cadres of Song Family Village, they started off, joining people from the neighboring
villages. Through the night, the large group of people of several hundred marched by foot
toward the closest railway station. All along the way, there were people providing logistic
support for the “Army of Iron and Steel Workers.”
19
Cafeterias were set up on the way to
provide free food for them. Everyone could eat their fill whenever they liked. When they
reached the railway station early in the morning, hundreds of thousands of people were
already waiting there to board the train. Finally their turn came and all of them were
taken to Handan. They were turned from peasants into new ironworkers on the state

19
The “Army of Iron and Steel Workers” refers to people who were working in the sector of iron and steel
production.

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payroll. This was only one of the drafts. More and more people were taken away from the
village. Gradually, most of the young male villagers were taken away from the village
and became workers in different sectors of industry.

This labor drain had a serious impact on the village. Early October was just the
harvesting season. Many crops were already ripe in the fields. But most of the able-
bodied people had been taken away from the village in labor drafts or were working at
the iron furnaces in the village. There were very few people left to harvest the crops in
the fields.

Liberating Women from Housework
In order to solve the problem of labor scarcity, the government turned their eyes to the
housewives. If these women could be freed from household chores, it would at least
partially solve the problem. Motivated by this idea, the government proposed that all
villages set up collective kitchens, daycare centers and other facilities to provide services
that had traditionally been done by women at home. At the order of the government,
Song Family Village also established three collective kitchens. From November 1958, all
the families in the village were ordered to stop cooking at home. It was also just the time
when the local iron furnaces were seeking raw materials. With no iron ores available in
this village, the cooking pots and other kitchen utensils made of iron were the only good

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raw materials for the iron furnaces. So kitchen utensils were all melt down to make
“steel.”

Individual families not only had to hand over cooking utensils, they also had to give up
all their own reserves of grain saved up from previous years. Since famine was not
uncommon in this area, every family had the habit of saving back some grain if they
could, so that they would not starve if a poor harvest the next year did not bring them
enough food. Although no one was really willing to hand in their reserve grain, few
people dared to put up any resistance. The only thing they could do was to try to hide
some at home. Even this was not easy. The officials and cadres knew the villagers’ tricks
quite well. The commune sent work teams to the village. Together with the village cadres,
they searched from house to house for hidden grain. Except for some extremely well
hidden, most of the grain was found out and taken away to the collective kitchen.
Moreover, no one was allowed to cook at home. Whenever smoke was seen coming out
of the chimney of any house, the cadres would send militia men to that family. If they
found them cooking, their food and cooking utensils would be taken away and the person
would be “struggled against,” i.e. humiliated in public
20
.

20
This was a term used to refer to a ritual of public humiliation during the Maoist era. The target of the
humiliation would be brought in public and given verbal or physical abuse. A subject of such a humiliation
could be a bad class element or a person who committed a mistake or a minor crime. During the Cultural
Revolution, this kind of ritual was very common.

257

Work for the Commune
The establishment of the commune made significant differences in agricultural
production. Since all the crops belonged to the commune, no one cared about whether the
crops were properly harvested or not. In the past when people farmed their own land,
they made sure that nothing would be ruined or wasted in the fields. In harvesting the
cotton, they would pick the last shred from each stalk. In harvesting sweet potatoes, they
would dig up the fields again after the major harvest, in order to get out the stray ones left
scattered in the soil. But working for the commune, people felt that they were not
working for themselves. A bigger harvest did not mean more income for individuals.
Knowing that most of the grain would be taken away by the commune and the state, they
have no motivation to work as hard as when they had farmed their own land. Villagers
sometimes even lost the motivation to harvest the crops at all. For example, at the order
of the commune, Song Family Village gave a sweet potato field to a neighboring village
for them to harvest in fall 1958. Instead of showing gratitude to Song Family Village,
people in this neighboring village complained about the trouble this piece of sweet potato
field brought them. Since the harvest would eventually be taken over by the commune,
harvesting this extra piece of sweet potato field meant extra work without extra gain for
villagers. Then, why should they take the extra trouble to harvest the crops that were
supposed to be harvested by others? They just pulled off the vines and left most of the
sweet potatoes rot in the soil.

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This lack of motivation plus the labor scarcity created by the labor drafts for iron
production made a dramatic difference in harvest. In spite of the good crops, a large
portion was left in the fields to rot. The good crops did not lead to increased output. The
villagers remembered that the sweet potatoes grew extremely well that year due to the
favorable weather. But there were not enough people to harvest them in the proper way.
Normally, they harvested them by hand, making sure that sweet potatoes were not injured,
since injured sweet potatoes would easily rot in storage. Without enough hands, they had
to think of some labor-efficient ways harvest. Using plows driven by draft animals, they
plowed the sweet potatoes up from the soil. When the plow went over the spots where the
sweet potatoes grew, many sweet potatoes were cut in half, with only one part plowed up
and another part still left in the soil. No one had time and motivation to dig up the sweet
potatoes left stray in the soil.

People were also careless in storing and processing crops after the harvest. Processing
sweet potatoes provides a good example of this carelessness. Traditionally, there were
two ways of storing sweet potatoes. One way was to store fresh sweet potatoes. The most
important factor in good storage was to keep the sweet potatoes in a stable temperature. If
it was too hot, the sweet potatoes would rot. If it was too cold, they would be frozen.
People usually dig a well with a small opening and bigger bottom. At the bottom, a
couple of horizontal holes would be dug in the walls of the well. In this way, it would be
easier to keep the temperature stable. The fresh sweet potatoes could be kept fresh
throughout the winter. But close attention was needed to make it work, especially when

259

weather changed dramatically. When it was very cold, the opening of the well had to be
covered with a thick layer of hay. When it was hot, the hay covering the well should be
removed. Furthermore, the sweet potatoes to be stored had to be carefully chosen. Those
with cuts could not be stored. They would easily get rotten and would infect the adjacent
sweet potatoes. All such work called for dedicated attention.

But in the people’s commune, dedicated attention was just what was missing. According
to one villager, people just lumped together what they got from the fields and placed
them into the well, without taking the trouble to make the necessary selection. When the
weather changed, no one went to cover or uncover the well in time. The natural result
was that when the storage well was opened the next spring, people found that most of the
sweet potatoes were rotten.

Another way to store sweet potatoes was to slice and dry them. Most of the harvested
sweet potatoes were stored in this way. In fact, slicing and drying sweet potatoes became
the most important job for most of the families in the village in early winter. But drying
the sliced sweet potatoes was a very tedious job. It took several days before they were
completely dry even when there was enough sunlight. During this time, they had to be
turned from side to side frequently to make sure that both sides were dried. Otherwise,
the side facing the ground would rot. In 1958, due to the lack of labor and attention, the
sliced sweet potatoes were dried very carelessly. The slices were left in open spaces
outside the village. Pigs, chickens, and other domestic animals roamed on them, eating

260

some and frequently leaving droppings over them. Few people took the trouble to drive
the animals away. No one took the trouble to turn over the slices. Many of them rotted.
When they were dry, no one took the trouble to separate the good ones from the bad ones.
They just collected all of them and dumped them into storage, with many animal
droppings mixed in them. Having been promised a bright future by the officials and
cadres, they thought they would never have to eat them. What they did not think of was
that eventually these dried sweet potatoes would turn out to be such precious food that it
would make a difference between life and death.

Sweet potatoes are only one example of the poor management in harvesting. Other crops
suffered a similar fate. As a result, in spite of the excellent crops that had grown out of
the fields, the amount actually harvested was not as much as in previous years. But on the
other hand, the output reported to the state reached an unimaginably high figure.

4. The famine and the Sweet potatoes

According to the villagers, the collective kitchen was not bad in the first few months.
With the grain collected from individual families, it provided fairly ample and good food
for the villagers. After a day of hard work, meals were already waiting for them when
they returned from their work. Everyone could eat his fill. People enjoyed this
Communist way of life.

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But this did not last very long. Since everything was free, everyone ate as much as
possible. The per capita consumption was much higher than it was when people cooked
meals at home. There was a great waste of food. By the end of the year, the kitchen began
to limit the amount a person was allowed to eat. Food was allocated on a per capita basis.
By spring 1959, the kitchen no longer had enough food for everyone. Before the summer
harvest, the collective kitchen had almost run out of any food. They had to take away
food from domestic animals to put in people’s stomachs. The dried sweet potatoes from
the year before became the best food, although they were nasty and bitter due to the
rotten ones and animal droppings mixed in them. Even this food did not last very long. A
real famine befell the village. The state that had promised a bright future to people did
not give much help.
21

The summer harvest in 1959, though not good at all, at least provided temporary relief for
the famine. But the Great Leap Forward was still going on. The output figures were still
highly exaggerated. As a result, a significant part of the harvest was taken away by the

21
Skinner (1964-65) tried to explain the failure of the Great Leap Forward and the system of the People’s
Commune with his model of Chinese rural marketing system. According to him, one important cause for
this failure was that when establishing people’s communes, the Communist government did not take into
consideration the social and economic functions of the traditional marketing system. In many places, a
people’s commune covered an area three times that of a standard market (Skinner 1964-65: 384). Some
even crosscut standard markets. The malfunction of this artificial administrative unit was seen as one of the
causes of the failure of the People’s Cummune. But one easy repudiation of his argument is that Sichuan
was the province struck by the worst famine caused by the Great Leap Forward movement and the People’s
Commune system, but it was just the province whose people’s communes were seen by Skinner as most
closely conforming to traditional standard marketing communities (Skinner 1964-65: 394).

262

government again. The village was left with only a small amount. Although better than
the situation in spring, the villagers were still on the verge of starvation.

The spring of 1960 was the worst time in villagers’ memories. For two weeks before the
summer harvest, the village had run out of any food. Sweet potato leaves and vines were
ground up and used as food. In normal times, these were considered the worst food even
for domestic animals. The summer harvest temporarily saved villagers from starvation.
The real end to starvation came in autumn. The village had planted a lot of sweet potatoes
that year. The large amount of sweet potatoes harvested that year helped Song Family
Village out of starvation earlier than most other places.

People of Song Family Village also benefited from the way taxes were paid to the state.
Under the commune system, taxes were mostly paid in kind. Wheat producers had to pay
taxes by submitting a certain amount of wheat to the state. Sweet potato producers were
allowed to use dried sweet potatoes to pay their taxes. Since the village were still the
basic working unit under the commune system, taxes were also paid by the village. After
each harvest, the village would estimate their output and reported their figures to the
commune and the state. The state would work out the amount of taxes the village had to
pay. When a sweet potato growing village paid taxes with sweet potatoes, they had to pay
by dried sweet potatoes instead of fresh ones. When the village reported the amount of
fresh sweet potatoes they produced, the commune would estimate the amount of dried
sweet patatoes the village should pay on the basis of a fixed conversion rate between

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fresh sweet potatoes and dried sweet potatoes. According to Song Family Villagers, the
official conversion rate was set at 4: 1. That is, 4 pounds of fresh sweet potatoes could
produce 1 pound of dried sweet potatoes. Yet, the actual rate was higher. That is: 3
pounds of fresh sweet potatoes could actually produce 1 pound of dried sweet potatoes.
In this way, they were able to keep more sweet potatoes for their own consumption than
officially allowed. Let’s suppose they harvested 80,000 pounds of fresh sweet potatoes.
According to the official conversion rate, that would produce 20,000 pounds of dried
sweet potatoes. But in fact, they could get 26666 pounds of dried sweet potatoes. Because
of the favorable official conversion rate, they could keep the extra 6666 pounds of dried
sweet potatoes to themselves in addition to the amount they were officially allowed to
keep.

The crops left over in the fields were also an important supplement to people’s food stock.
In harvesting sweet potatoes and carrots, there was always some left in the fields. The
carelessness in harvesting gave villagers better returns when gleaning these leftovers. By
1960, people were already aware that they could not rely on the state for their food. The
collective kitchen by then had almost collapsed. People had to try their best to get their
own food. They would dig the harvested fields in search of any leftovers. These would
not be considered part of the output of the communes and thus whoever got it could keep
them as their own food.

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The sweet potatoes planted on “private plots” (zi liu di) also enabled Song Family Village
to recover from the famine earlier than others. When “private plots” was allocated to
individual families in the spring of 1961
22
, every family in the village grew a lot of sweet
potatoes. Although sweet potatoes were not considered good food, the high yield could
salvage people from famine. In contrast, in villages where sweet potatoes were not grown,
the grain from their individual plots was still not enough to save them from famine.
While people in many villagers were still starving, villagers in Song Family Village
already could eat their fill, even though the quality of the food was poor. It was sweet
potatoes that saw Song Family Villagers through the hardest time. No one starved to
death in the village during the famine.

5. Dried Sweet Potatoes in Exchange for Brides
In the spring of 1960, one family in Song Family Village learned that some people in one
of the neighboring villages got brides from some villages southwest of Song Family
Village for only one bag of dried sweet potatoes for each bride. The news soon spread in
the village. Many families having marriageable sons began to consider doing it
themselves. Although a bag of dried sweet potatoes were a precious commodity during
the time of famine, for many families in Song Family Village, this was still a good deal.

22
During the high tide of the Great Leap Forward, the private plots (zi liu di) were taken away by the
people’s commune. In 1961 when the famine got very serious, peasants were given back their private plots
again. In the next twenty years, these private plots were important sources of food for peasants, who could
never get enough food from the collective.

265

Families with sons who were already way past their normal marriageable ages were the
first ones to take advantage of this opportunity. Under normal conditions, these men
might never be able to get married, either because of their poverty or because of their
personal problems. They hurried to find people who had any connections to those villages
selling girls and begged them to serve as go-betweens. The go-between’s job turned out
to be very easy. In a very short time, several old bachelors got married. All the brides
were much younger than them.

In those southwestern villages, most of the families were in a desperate situation at the
time. These villagers were the major producers of wheat and corn in the area. After each
harvest, most of their grain was taken away by the state, on the basis of the exaggerated
output figures the cadres reported. By winter 1960, many of these villagers had run out of
any food. Deprived of almost all their private property by the People’s Commune
movement, they had nothing to exchange for food. As the most precious commodity at
the time, food prices rose to an incredibly high level. A teacher’s monthly salary was
only enough to buy a rabbit. People began to die of starvation. It was said that in one
village, the street was full of pottery shards broken ritually for funerals
23
. That meant
there were so many deaths in such a short time that people did not have time to clean the
street of the shards. Rumors had it that some people dug up dead bodies and ate the flesh.

23
In the area where Song Family Village is located, it is a custom for the eldest son of the deceased to
break a pot at the funeral.

266

Out of desperation, they turned their eyes to their daughters, who were the only family
property that was still valuable enough to exchange for some food.

Since these villages were not far from Song Family Village, they knew that Song Family
Village and its neighboring villages were much better off. Some families began to think
about marrying their daughters into those villages, even though traditionally there had not
been many marriage exchanges between these two areas. In starvation, many parents
were willing to give their daughters to whoever could offer them food. They no longer
cared about what kind of persons these men were. Many young girls were married to men
much older than them. The girls could not reject such marriage arrangements. Even
though they did not like such arrangements, it was better than having the whole family
starve to death. With their marriages as the only way for their families to survive, how
could they say no?

This was the first time in the living memory of Song Family Village that food became the
major part of the brideprice. In the past, even though paying brideprice was not rare in
this area, especially for some very poor people, food was never a major part of the
transaction. Mostly people would demand money and other precious gifts. But in famine,
food was more precious than anything else.

Not only did the old bachelors in Song Family Village benefit from such an
“opportunity,” but many parents who had sons of just about marriageable age also hurried

267

to take advantage of this opportunity. In such a marriage, the only expense was a bag of
dried sweet potatoes. No one cared much about ceremonies at the wedding. Almost all
the expenses on a wedding would be saved. For many parents, this was really a good
opportunity.

There was in the village a family that had five sons. The eldest son was only 18 years old
at the time. Although it was still fairly early for him to get married, his father saw this as
an opportunity that was too good to miss. The man was considered very wise. He
understood his situation quite well. With five sons, it would be very hard for him to get
all of them married. Even the minimum wedding expenses for every wedding of his sons
would add up to a heavy burden for him. Furthermore, no parents at that time wanted to
marry their daughters into families with too many sons. Since there was no opportunity
for any family to expand their property under the commune system, having more sons
meant a smaller part of the family property was available for each son to inherit. Take
housing for example. Although private ownership of houses was recognized again after
1959
24
, no family could afford to build new houses. If a family had only one son, he
would inherit the family house by himself. But this family had five sons. Each of them
would inherit only one fifth of the house. Where could they live if all of them got married?
In a normal situation, perhaps most of his sons would not be able to get married. The

24
In the second half of 1958, many private houses in Song Family Village were taken over by the people’s
commune to house its various officies. In the next few years, these houses were gradually given back to
private families as these offices collapsed one by one.

268

sweet-potato marriage provided this family a precious opportunity. He would regret it for
his whole life if he missed it.

One factor that enabled this man to decide to purchase a wife for his eldest son was that
the family had extra food. This might sound weird for a family with five sons at the time
of a famine. Normally, such a family would be short of food due to their lack of adult
bread winners. But the special situation turned the five sons into a capital resource rather
than a consumption burden. During the famine, many people began to steal from the
collective fields to fill their stomachs. Children were especially good at this. They were
small in size and less visible to people passing by. In the village, it was very common for
children to cut grass in the fields to feed domestic animals. Everyday after school,
children would carry baskets and go to the fields. This was a very good cover-up for such
minor thefts. Thus during the famine, the children were very good source of food.

Of course, stealing was not the only way that the children could contribute to the food
inventory of the family. In sweet potato fields, there were always some minor leftovers
even after people had dug up the fields a couple of times. When food was scarce, such a
small amount also became a very precious food source. Since the amount was very small,
it was not worthwhile for adults to spend time on it. But children could do that work.
They had plenty of time to spend on getting that small amount of food. In this way, the
children in that family also brought back some food.

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When the man heard that some people purchased brides with dried sweet potatoes, he
discussed it with his wife. After assessing the food they had, his wife agreed. Then his
wife began to search around for people who had relatives from the villages hungry for
food and asked them to find a wife for her eldest son. Several days later, a go-between
came to inform them that there was family who wanted to marry their daughter to his son
if he could give them some dried sweet potatoes. After the sweet potatoes were delivered
to the girl’s family, the boy and the girl were engaged, though they could not have their
wedding immediately. Decades later, people still praised the wisdom of that man.

Yet, not every young man was willing to accept such a marriage. The son of another
family, Lihang, was already in his mid-twenties. Having graduated from a normal school,
he had worked a couple of years as a schoolteacher. Like many people at the time, he
could not tolerate the low salary of the job. He quit the job and returned home to work as
a peasant. When some families purchased brides with dried sweet potatoes, his parents
also saw this as an opportunity to get him married. Although he was educated, it did not
seem that he would easily get a wife. His mother’s bad reputation might have worked
against his chance of marriage.

Before the land reform, his father did not get married until very late due to poverty. His
mother was not only much younger than his father but also very beautiful. Since his
father was a timid man, some men in the village often came to visit his mother and flirt
with her. His father did not dare to do anything about it. It was said that his mother had

270

sexual affairs with several prominent man in the village. Most of them were Communist
cadres. Rumors had it that Lihang was actually the biological son of one of the important
Communist cadres in the village.

A licentious woman would bring negative reputation to her family. A morally stigmatized
family would then be put in a disadvantageous position on the marriage market. In the
process of a marriage negotiation, both sides would try to tap information about the other
party. Most families would reject the marriage proposal if they learned that the other
party had moral problems. As a result, children in a morally stigmatized family would
find it much more difficult to get married.

Lihang’s mother knew what effect her previous behaviors would have on his son’s
marriage opportunity. She saw the dried-sweet-potato marriage as a precious opportunity
to get his son married. She began to ask people to find a wife for his son. Soon, a go-
between told the mother that a family was interested in marrying their daughter to her son.
The mother was very glad, but Lihang wanted to see the girl first before any decision
could be made. When he saw the girl, he was firmly against this marriage arrangement
because she was very ugly. His mother was angry. She scolded him, “Look at yourself.
You should feel lucky as long as someone was willing to marry you. Don’t make any fuss
of it.” Under the pressure from his mother, he finally had to accept this marriage.

271

But not every parent was active in taking advantage of this opportunity. Yankai was
already 24 years old in 1961, when people began to purchase wives for their sons. His
second brother was 20 years old. Since there were too many boys in the family, it was not
easy for them to get married. When this opportunity came about, many friends and
relatives urged their mother to purchase wives for them. The mother was hesitant. All her
sons were big eaters. The limited food they got was barely enough for them to live on.
Although giving up part of their food might not kill them at that time, she was not sure
what would happen next. Could they get enough to eat next year? She was not sure. From
their limited food, she wanted to save some for the next year. For this reason, she rejected
people’s suggestion of acquiring brides for her sons with food.

Yankai remained a bachelor until he married an old widow almost 4 decades later. His
second brother never got married. When mentioning this family, people often blamed the
mother for her stupidity. But she was not the only person who made such a decision. A
cousin of Yankai, who was a little bit younger than he at the time, did not marry either.
His mother was known for her wisdom and capability. But without enough food
necessary for purchasing a bride, there was nothing she could do.

From 1960 to 1962, Song Family Village obtained 20 brides in this way. In fact, these
were the only brides that this village took during that time. Among those women, there
were some who were not quite satisfied with their husbands, either because of the large
age gap with the husbands or because of the husbands’ personal problems. Not satisfied

272

with her marriage, one woman was said to have committed adultery with a bachelor who
was her next door neighbor. As proof for this, people often pointed out secretly that her
son looked very much like that man.

6. Conclusion
Let’s look at how we can understand the “sweet potato marriage” from a practice
perspective. With the Great Leap Forward, the state tried to revolutionize village
communities by changing the political, economic and social structures. Private ownership
was reduced to the minimum. The traditional boundaries of village communities were
removed. Many of the previous functions of family were taken over by the newly
established People’s Commune. Family was no longer a production unit, nor a
consumption unit. Women were taken out of the domestic space within which they had
been confined in the traditional family system. It was the first time for many of them to
participate in production work and undertake the same role as men.

These measures were supposed to change practices of family and marriage. But they were
in conflict with people’s habitus, the traditional values about family and marriage. These
traditional values, including the inequality between sexes and the continuation of the
family line as the major aim of marriage, could not be changed overnight. Most people in
the village, especially the elders, still held on to these traditional values. People’s
practices were still motivated by these traditional values. When the famine struck and

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people’s survival became a problem, the effect of the Party’s efforts to reform family and
marriage was nullified. People had to resort to their habitus, knowledge and skills, which
were passed down from generation to generation or from their personal experience, to
guide their practices. According to the patriarchal tradition, daughters had no value in the
continuation of the family line. They were always the first to be got rid of when
necessary. When people were starving, tt was inevitable for some parents to sell their
daughters in order to save the whole family. Although selling daughters were seen as
immoral even in traditional times, such a practice became acceptable when it was for the
purpose of family survival. In such practices, daughters were subject to the patriarchal
oppression by their parents. They had no power and no ability to fight their parents’
patriarchal power because when the state could not even guarantee their survival, the
state support for their freedom in marriage became meaningless.

For those parents who purchased brides for their sons, they saw this as an “excellent
opportunity” to fulfill their traditional obligations to their sons and ancestors. Such an
“excellent opportunity” motivated them to force their sons to accept their arrangements.
Although the Party State tried to reform family and marriage, village parents still felt it
was their most important task to get their sons married. When this precious opportunity
was available, many of them immediately grasped it.

The “sweet potato marriage” was made possible by the combined force of the traditional
values held by parents and the social conditions created by the Great Leap Forward and

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the famine. In such practices, patriarchy was not only reproduced but also reinforced. It
was an irony that the Communist Party, with its intention to reform the traditional family
and marriage, helped to strengthen patriarchy in family and marriage by its strong
presence in the village community.

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CHAPTER SIX
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE EXCHANGE MARRIAGE

1. The Cultural Revolution and Bad Class Families
Persecutions of Bad Class Families
One early morning in the summer of 1968, Chengsong, a member of the South House
minimal segment, was awakened by loud knocks on the door. He got up and heard one of
the village cadres calling him to open his gate. The cadre’s call at this time of the day
immediately made him realize that something ominous was happening. Not daring to
delay, he hurried out to open the door. There he found a village cadre standing outside,
followed by a column of militiamen with their rifles in hand. The village cadre did not
greet him but asked him to call his father out. It did not take long for the old man to come
out. Seeing him, the village cadre declared that the Revolution Committee
1
of the village
had decided that all the bad class elements
2
would be arrested and their families had to

1
In 1967, almost all levels of government collapsed in China when Mao directed the attack onto the CCP
officials. The Revolutionary Committee was established throughout the country to function as the
governmental body. A revolutionary committee was normally staffed by some “rebels” (zao fan pai), some
old officials and also some military personnel.

2
The bad class elements, officially termed “wu lei fen zi” (five types of bad class elements), referred to
landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists. A landlord element or a rich
peasant element referred to those who were 18 or older at the land reform. Their family members who were
under 18 at the time of land reform were termed descendants of landlords or rich peasants. Landlord
elements and rich peasant elements often had to undertake forced labor under the supervision of the
“revolutionary masses,” but their descendants did not have to. Yet, the descendants of landlords and rich
peasants also suffered from discriminations in social and political life due to the class labels of their parents
or even grandparents. Similarly, children of counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and rightists were also
negatively affected by such labels of their parents.

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move out of their houses immediately. The cadre waved to the militiamen behind him.
They went forward, bound Chengsong’s father Jishan up and took him away.

After his father was taken away, Chengsong and his wife were ordered to take their
children and join other bad class people inside the dry pond south of the village. Then the
militiamen sealed all the rooms in the house. Out on the street, Chengsong found that his
father was not the only one who was arrested. His uncles and cousins, members of the
South House minimal segment who were bad class elements, came out one by one, all
with hands bound behind them. Together with other bad elements in the village, they
were taken away by the militiamen.

When Chengsong and his family arrived at the pond, they found there were already some
bad class family members in the pond. Surrounding the pond were militia men holding
rifles in hand. Soon the pond was full of people. Although it was already early summer,
people were shivering, both due to the cool wind of the early summer morning and the
panic from what was happening. Although there was a large crowd in the pond, making
up almost one fourth of the village population,
3
it was very quiet, except for the
occasional muffled crying of little children. None of them knew what had happened and
what would happen to them.

3
Normally 10 percent of the rural population belonged to the bad classes (Luo 2005). Song Family Village
used to be one of the richest villages in the county. More families had relatively larger landholdings than
other villages before the land reform. As a result, it had a much larger percentage of bad class families than
other villages.

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When the sun rose, the village became noisy and busy. People were hustling back and
forth carrying things. The gates of the houses of all bad class families were wide open.
Each of the houses was searched thoroughly by militiamen. Everything of any value was
taken away. Although these items were supposed to be taken to the village office, some
people took this chance to pocket things that they liked.

It was not until evening that the bad class families were released from the pond and
allowed to return to their houses. Back home, they found their houses almost empty. The
belongings that they had accumulated through their own hard work had all been taken
away. The widow of one of Chengsong’s cousins felt more sorrow than others. For years,
she and her daughter-in-law had worked extremely hard weaving cloth. Everyone knew
that they were the most hardworking women in the village. By years of hard work they
had accumulated a chest full of cloth, both for their own use and for sale when they
needed money. But it did not survive this looting. When they got home, they found the
chest empty and all the cloth taken away.

While these people were lamenting the loss of their properties, the main street of the
village was lighted up by gas lamps. The goods taken from the bad class families were
piled at the center of the village. People were gathering there waiting for the
redistribution of the confiscated items among the good class families, just as had
happened in the land reform in 1946. Many good class families, especially those who

278

were still poor, were happy to get things for free. One person spoke out their desires, “ I
hope this sort of thing would happen every few years.”

The members of the bad class families did not have much time to lament the loss of their
properties. They were more worried about their relatives who had been arrested. Almost
every bad class family had some members arrested. The next day, these families were
told to send meals to their arrested relatives. They learned that these arrested relatives had
been taken to the commune office in a nearby town. They were detained with the bad
class elements from all other villages in this commune. They were still alive, but many
people had been tortured the previous night.

In the coming days, these “bad elements” were paraded through all the villages in the
commune. To humiliate them further, the Revolutionary Committee required them to buy
a paper dunce hat, on which their names and class labels were written. While many
people lined up along the streets watching the parade, members of the bad class families
stayed home to avoid the embarrassment.

The Cultural Revolution was the culmination of this type of humiliation for these bad
class families. Since 1957, the political atmosphere had become more and more hostile to
these people. At every political movement since then, these people were always singled
out for humiliation, no matter who the major targets were supposed to be. When any
problem occurred in the society, it was always these people to blame. They became the

279

predictable scapegoats in the political life in China. In Song Family Village, similarly,
they were often used as as negative role models for the cadres to show other villagers
what would be waiting for them if they were not obedient.
4

Since the Cultural Revolution started in 1966, the bad class people had been living in a
state of terror. From their experience in the past, they were fully aware that it was almost
impossible for them to be spared from harsh attacks in this revolution. The Cultural
Revolution started with the “Smash the Four Olds” (po si jiu)
5
campaign in the summer
of 1966. The “Red Guards,” who were students and teachers in the village school,
searched from one end of the village to the other, looking for anything that was “feudal.”
The temples were torn down and the statues destroyed. The ancestral temples were no
exception. The ancestral scrolls that recorded all the dead ancestors were taken out and
set on fire. The search for the “Four Olds” was especially targeted at bad class families.
As elites of the “Old Society,”
6
they were thought to have closer connections to feudal
society and thus they might have more “Four Olds” than others. Chengzhen, a cousin of
Chengsong, used to be a schoolteacher. For many years, he would buy a book every
month using the money he saved from the meagre salary of his teaching job. Year by year,
he had accumulated a fairly large collection of books. They were his most precious

4
For example, the previous landlords and rich peasants were blamed for the failure of the Great Leap
Forward. See Gao, Hua (2000).

5
The “Four Olds” referred to old thoughts, old culture, old customs and old habits.

6
“The old society” was a term often used by the CCP to refer to the society before the Communist Party
came to power, in contrast to “the new society” under the Communist rule. In the discourse of the CCP, the
old society meant miserable life for most people while the new society brought people a happy life.

280

possessions. The Red Guards, many of whom were his previous colleagues, knew of his
collection. They thought all these books were either “feudal” or “capitalist.”
7
All the
books were taken away and piled up in the schoolyard. Together with other items
representing “Four Olds,” they were all set on fire.

As the Cultural Revolution unfolded, the loss of books paled to insignificance. The
targets of class struggle shifted from “feudal” things to bad class people themselves. “The
Five Black Types” became a commonly used term to refer to all the “bad class elements”:
the previous landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements and the
rightists. Many of them were persecuted on trumped-up “crimes” that they had never
committed. Chengzhen was deprived of his job as a teacher and sent back home not long
after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, just because he was from a landlord
family and he himself had been labeled a “rightist.” Not long after, his brother, an
engineer at a factory in Beijing, was also sent back to Song Family Village for similar
reasons. What happened to one of Chengsong’s cousins, Chenghua, was even more
miserable. Chenghua once served in the military forces of the Nationalist government
before 1949. Because of this, somebody accused him of playing a part in killing Liu

7
In Chinese scholarship, the term “feudal” is used in a different sense than that in Western scholarly
literature. The Communist Party endorsed a historical view that fit Chinese history into the six-step
historical evolutionary scheme recognized by the orthodox Marxist theory on the basis of the history of
Europe: the primitive society, the slavery society, the feudal society, the capitalist society, the socialist
society and the Communist society. Thus, the feudal society is said to cover the two thousand years from
the Qin dynasty at 221BC until 1840.

281

Hulan
8
, one of the most famous “Martyrs” of the Communist Party. Even though there
was no evidence that he had any part in it, he was forced to admit the “crime.” He was
arrested by the militia in the summer of 1968 and tortured every day. One day after he
was sent home after a day’s torture, he thought he could not endure another day’s torture.
He picked up a bottle of pesticide and drank it. The next morning, he was found dead,
leaving behind his wife and six children. Chenghua’s death brought extreme terror to his
widow and children. In the following years, whenever his widow heard the village cadres
calling for a meeting, she was unable to control her bowel movements.

Like her, many bad class people lived in fear and panic everyday during the high tide of
the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1969. When they got to bed at night, they were not
sure what would be waiting for them the next day. They could be arrested and tortured
whenever the political campaigns needed a target. Their belongings could be confiscated
when the political atmosphere heated up. Even killing them was not a serious crime.
9

They had no future, no hope and even no friends. To avoid any trouble, other people tried
to stay as far away from them as possible. They became the untouchables in the Chinese
socialist society.

8
Liu Hulan was a young female Communist who was killed by the Nationalist troops during the Civil War
in the late 1940s. It was said that she remarked when threatened to be killed, “ I would not have been a
Communist if I feared death.” Then she was cut into pieces. Mao wrote a slogan “A great life, a glorious
death" in honor of her. She became one of the most famous heroines in the CCP political propaganda.

9
Many bad class people were killed during the Cultural Revolution. Massacres occurred in several places,
but the murderers were never severely punished. See Song, Yongyi (2002).

282

No Social Mobility for Bad Class Children
Not only were bad class elements reduced to the status of untouchables during the
Cultural Revolution, their sons and even grandsons were no better off. The Party State
officially made a distinction between the bad class elements and their descendants,
claiming that the latter could be given opportunities for social mobility if they would
follow the Party line
10
closely and draw a clear line between themselves and their
families. But in practice, the bad class status became hereditary. No matter what they
would do, the descendants of bad class elements could not get rid of the political stigma
that their family background left on them. They had few chances for social mobility.

This was best reflected in education. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the
school system became the first target of “revolution.” Mao and his wife Jiang Qing
blamed the whole educational system as having operated along the “revisionist” line.
11

Thus, radical changes were needed to bring it back to the “socialist line.” One important
change was that schools and colleges were no longer allowed to admit students on the
basis of their academic achievements. Any student who wanted to be admitted had to
seek recommendations from the local government, which commented on his/her family
background and political stance. At a time when only a small percentage of children

10
“Follow the Party Line” basically meant absolute obedience to the CCP, specifically to Mao.

11
Revisionism originally referred to any stance deviating from fundamentalist Marxism within the
Communist movement. It was often used as a tool by Communist leaders to purge their political enemies.
During the Cultural Revolution, whoever did not agree with Mao would be labeled as a revisionist, whose
opinion would be seen as representing a revisionist line.

283

could attend middle schools and high schools, family background became the most
important factor in determining who would be admitted. Children from bad class families
found it impossible to get recommendations from the village cadres, even when their
academic achievements were much better than others.

Chengsong’s eldest daughter had just finished primary school at the beginning of the
Cultural Revolution. Due to this recommendation system, she could not enter middle
school. She was not alone. During the first five years of the Cultural Revolution, no
children from the bad class families in Song Family Village could attend middle school.
Only from the mid-1970s when the state dramatically expanded secondary education
were children from these families allowed to attend middle school. Even after they were
allowed to attend middle school, post-secondary education was still inaccessible to them.
With many people competing for this scarce resource, family class background was the
first criteria to apply when candidates were selected. A child from a bad class family
would be immediately eliminated from the competition.

Not only education, but almost all other opportunities for social mobility were also
denied to people from the bad class families. They were not allowed to join the Party, a
very important way to power under the Communist rule. They were not allowed to hold
any leading positions in the village. One of Chengsong’s cousins used to be an engineer
in a factory in Beijing. With his education and skills, he helped a lot when some new
farming technology was first available to the village in the early1970s. Many villagers

284

knew that he could provide better leadership if he was elected a production team leader.
In one election, the team members voted for him, but village cadres and local officials
would not let him take the position just, because he was from a bad class family.

Even school children were affected by this discrimination. Chengsong’s son started
school in the mid-1970s. Although the high tide of the Cultural Revolution had long
passed by that time, the political atmosphere created by the Cultural Revolution still
existed. From time to time, the school would perform “class education” to students.
12
On
such occasions, every student had to speak out his family background in front of the
teacher and fellow students. With all the teachings about the evils of landlords and other
bad elements,
13
it caused a deeply felt shame when a young child had to speak out in
public that he was from a landlord family.

There were yet more humiliations to come to the young child. One semester in 1974,
every class was told to choose a model student
14
to be honored by the school district. The
teacher had all the students in the class cast a vote. Since Chengsong’s son did quite well

12
During the Cultural Revolution, school children were often made aware of their class identities based on
the class labels of their families. This was seen as an effective way to prevent the younger generation from
being corrupted by the capitalists.

13
In order to legitimate its ideology of class struggle, the Communist Party used various genres of literacy
to demonize the class enemies, who were elites in the past. Several literary figures were created and
became the icons of the whole class of those previous elites. The sculpture “Rent Collection Courtyard”
was a good example. The landlord Liu Wencai was depicted as a depredatory figure that brutally exploited
his tenants. But many of the “facts” contributing to this depiction later turned out to be faked.

14
“A model student” was an honor given to a student who was either academically or politically better
than most of the other students in his or her class.

285

academically, almost all the students voted for him. He was very glad when the result
came out. But the next day the teacher told him he could not be a model student because
he was from a landlord family. Dumbfounded by what the teacher said, he cried all his
way back home.

Under the Communist rule, one important way for social mobility was to get urban
residency. From the mid-1950s on, a household registration system
15
was adopted by the
Communist government, classifying all citizens in China into two categories: urban
residents and rural residents. Urban residents were legal residents in cities and towns,
plus those living in villages but holding state-payroll jobs. Rural residents were those
who lived in villages and whose major employment was farming. Residency status was
hereditary, with children’s residency status determined by their mothers. If a mother had
urban residency, her children would be urban residents and vice versa.

Urban residency was so desirable mainly because of the numerous benefits that the state
offered to urban residents. Besides working in the non-agricultural sectors, urban
residents were guaranteed the food ration by the state. This was even more important
when there was a food shortage. During the famine in the early 1960s, few urban
residents starved to death while tens of millions of rural residents died, even though they

15
The household registration system was adopted in the 1950s. It not only classified the Chinese
population into rural residents and urban residents, but also pinned everyone down to a certain place. It
made migration extremely difficult, especially when food coupons were issued in accordance with one’s
household registration. See Wu and Treiman (2004).

286

were food producers. Besides food, the urban residents who were on the state payroll also
enjoyed the benefits of free medical care, housing, paid vacation, a pension after
retirement, etc. Getting such a job meant that a good life was guaranteed. Everything
would be taken care of by the state. Even after death, the government would subsidize the
funeral.

In contrast to the comfortable life of urban residents, a rural residents’ life was miserable.
Their income was very limited. For a long time up till 1982, a day of labor for an adult
was worth only 0.2 yuan in Song Family Village. A full year of labor, without weekends
and vacation, would be only a little more than 70 yuan for a male adult. Plus, there were
almost no other benefits. In contrast, an entry-level salary for a young factory worker
would be about 30 yuan a month. That would be 360 yuan a year. And urban workers
also had weekends, paid vacation and other benefits.

This was why urban residency and state payroll jobs were highly desirable. But it was
very difficult for villagers to change their residency from rural to urban. The only way for
villagers to get urban residency during the Cultural Revolution was to join the military
forces. During the Cultural Revolution, because of China’s tense relationship with the
Soviet Union, the Chinese government expanded its military to a historically large scale.
To win loyalty from the military, the government gave good benefits to those who retired
from active military service. For a couple of years, almost all the soldiers retired from
their active service were given state payroll jobs.

287

Military recruitment emphasized the importance of family background. Since the bad
class people, including families of the previous landlords, rich peasants,
counterrevolutionaries and the rightists, were seen as enemies of the Communist regime,
“the barrel of a gun”
16
could not be trusted to these people. The military were not
allowed to recruit soldiers from these families. As a result, the road toward urban
residency was completely shut off for children from bad class families.

Bad Class Sons Unable to Marry
With no opportunities of social mobility and having to suffer frequent persecutions, the
bad class families were faced with another difficulty. That is, their sons could not get
married. Since everyone in the society knew what it meant to become a bad class family
member, no parents wanted to marry their daughters into these families. The experience
of Chengshu’s family was an example. Chengshu, a member of the South House minimal
segment, had five sons. The eldest son was much older than the other sons. He got
married in the 1950s, when class struggle was still not part of everyday life in the village.
The other sons were not so lucky, especially the next three sons, who came of age during
the Cultural Revolution.
Chengshu’s wife was a very capable woman. Chengshu, an amiable man, entrusted most
of the family affairs to his wife. Although every family was poor, this family was

16
One of the most famous quotations from Mao is “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. The
implication is that military power is the basis of political power.

288

managed quite well under her leadership. During the Cultural Revolution, three sons
came of age one by one, but none of them could find a wife. No girls wanted to marry
them. The second son Yanlin was a good carpenter. Normally, he would be a very good
candidate for any parents who selected future husbands for their daughters. His parents
should have had no worry about his marriage. But due to his family background, no one
would want to marry him. The third son Yandong was very smart. When he was at
primary school, he was the best student in his class. Yet, because of his family
background, no middle schools admitted him. In the early 1970s when the state promoted
the model of “barefoot doctors,”
17
he learned medicine by himself, hoping that he could
become a barefoot doctor. But his family background worked against him again. Such a
position was not for him. And like his elder brother, he could not get married. When the
third son came of age, it was already in the mid-1970s, but there was still no sign of any
change in the fate of these bad class people. The parents surely would not like to see their
sons remain bachelors throughout their lives. Seeing their sons coming of age one by one,
they were more and more worried. The mother was extremely so. Years later, she
recalled that she had never slept through a night without waking up and thinking about
the marriages of her sons for years on end.

17
From the late 1960s, the Communist regime initiated the “barefoot doctor” project. A barefoot doctor
was a person from a village, who received some simple training in medicine and then returned to the village
to practice medicine. This was an effective and cost efficient way to provide basic medical services to the
large rural population.

289

Someone proposed to her that she could marry out one or more of her sons to families
that had no sons as live-in sons-in-law (shang men nüxu). Many bad class families
followed this strategy. Some families already did that even in this village. To this
suggestion, she refused absolutely. For her, marrying sons out was a shame that she could
not bear. It was said she often told people, “I would rather let my sons rot at home than
give them away to other families.” Worried that some of her sons might want to marry
out to other families, she once called all her sons together for a meeting. She asked them
who wanted to marry out. Seeing that she wept while asking, all the sons promised not to
consider marrying out. Because of her insistence, all her unmarried sons kept their
promise and did not marry out. If it were not for the change of policy of the Party State in
the late 1970s, their sons would most probably have remained bachelors throughout their
lives.

This family was not the only one that had such a problem during the Cultural Revolution.
In Song Family Village, almost all the bad class families, who made up about one fourth
of the village population, were in the same situation during that period. According to one
of Chengsong’s cousins, families of the South House minimal segment, which made up
about one seventh of the village population, did not take any brides in a stretch of seven
years during the Cultural Revolution.

This was a natural outcome of the political discrimination against bad class families.
Seeing these families suffering attacks in one political movement after another, no

290

parents wanted to marry their daughters into such families. They knew too well what it
would mean for their daughters if they married into such families. The daughter would
immediately be reduced to an untouchable status. Her children would have the same fate.
Even her grandchildren could not escape such a fate. No only did the good-class people
hate to marry their daughters into such families, even other bad class families tried to
avoid it if they could, because they knew too well from their own experiences what that
would mean. They wanted their daughters to marry into good class families, so that they
daughters could escate the bad fate that they themselves were suffering.

With sons unable to get married, it meant that the family lines of these bad class families
would come to an end. A bad class woman told me that once a good-class woman said at
her presence, “In these days, it is even not easy for good class men to get married. How
could the bad class people hope to get married?” One village cadre once remarked, “ If
this situation continued, all the bad class families would die out.” For parents in the bad
class families, this was a fate they did not want to accept. In spite of the difficulty they
faced, they would not like to see their family lines terminated. The continuation of their
family lines was a task that they must accomplish. They must find some way out.

291

2. The Exchange Marriage
Huanqin: Direct Exchange Marriage
Yanci was the third of the four sons of Chenghua, who committed suicide at the high tide
of the Cultural Revolution. When he and his brothers came to the marriageable age, the
Cultural Revolution had already started. His father’s death further reduced his and his
brother’s chances to marry. Like many bad class families, no one wanted to marry these
young men.

Besides the four sons, the family had two daughters. The eldest daughter was only a
couple of years younger than the second son. When the daughter came of age, some
relatives persuaded the mother to try to use her to exchange a wife for his second son. At
that time, this type of marriage was still quite rare. Song Family Village had never had
any case of it. The mother did not take that suggestion. Years later, the mother regretted
her decision. Her daughter married a man from a good-class family. But the man never
treated her daughter well. What she regretted the most was that she missed a good chance
to get her second son married.

In 1972, Yanci was already in his late twenties, an age by which one should have been
married for a long time. Like his two elder brothers, no one even came to his mother to
propose a possible marriage for him. His second sister came of age at this time. One day,
an old woman from a neighboring village came to visit. After a short time of casual

292

chatting, the old woman began to ask about the sons’ marriages. The mother complained
how difficult it was to get them married. The old woman showed her sympathy. Then she
asked the mother how old the second daughter was and whether she had been engaged.
When the mother told her that she was just 18 years old, the old woman moved closer to
the mother. She said there was a marriage opportunity both for the son and the daughter,
but she was not sure whether the mother wanted to have it that way or not. The mother
asked what it was. She said that there were two families in a similar situation as Yanci’s
family. They were looking for someone to arrange exchange marriages. This time, the
mother no longer dared to let the opportunity go. She immediately asked the old lady to
arrange a meeting between the two sides.

Originally, the arrangement was among three families: Yanci’s family, the family of
Yanci’s wife Cailian and a third family from the county town. Cailian was to marry into
the town family, the girl from the town family would marry Yanci, and Yanci’s sister
would marry Cailian’s brother. For some reason, the family from the town did not like to
contract marriages with Yanci’s family. The town family wanted to kick Yanci’s family
out and contract an exchange marriage just with Cailian’s family. According to Cailaini’s
mother, she rejected this new arrangement. She said she was reluctant to contract
marriages with the town family because both the son and daughter of that family used to
be an actor and actress in a performing troupe. Actors and actresses were traditionally
thought to be licentious and thus not good candidates as marriage partners. Not able to
reach an agreement, the town family quit this three-way marriage exchange. With only

293

two families left, they decided to contract an exchange marriage directly between
themselves.

When I interviewed her thirty years after this marriage arrangement, Cailian’s mother
said that when both families agreed to the arrangement, they let her son and Yanci’s sister
to meet. After the meeting, she asked her son how he felt about that girl. Her son said
nothing. She said since her son did not express any objections, how could she? She told
her son, “If you had no objections, we will do it. Then if there is any problem after your
marriage, don’t blame me.” It is interesting that she was only concerned with what her
son thought about this marriage arrangement. As long as her son had no objection, it was
all right for her. The family line was continued and her duty as a mother was
accomplished.

Though the sons had no objections, it might not be true with the daughters. Both the girls
accepted such a marriage arrangement quite reluctantly. Born in bad class families, they
would like to have a change in their life by marrying into good class families. But
rejecting such an arrangement is difficult for them. They knew this might be the only
chance for their brothers to get married. Their parents, or even their grandparents, put
much pressure on them. It was almost impossible for them to reject this arrangement.

Yet, even though the girls could not reject such an arrangement, they often took
opportunities to express their hatred for their marriages. Before the wedding, Yanci’s

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sister wept all day, refusing to eat anything. Thirty years after the marriage, Yanci’s wife,
Cailian, still expressed her strong resentment and hatred for this marriage arrangement
when I interviewed her. She said that her marriage was arranged by her grandmother.
This was why she hated her very much. When her grandmother died, someone was sent
over to tell her. She told me that she said to the messenger, “let her die but I would not
mourn her.”

Zhuangqin: Exchange Marriage among Multiple Families
Not every family would accept a direct exchange of daughters between two families,
since that had a strong flavor of incest. To feel better about this issue, they preferred to
have exchanges among three or more families, just like the original arrangement of
Yankai’s marriage that has been mentioned above. Among three families A, B and C, the
arrangement was normally like this: A’s daughter would marry B’s son, B’s daughter
would marry C’s son and C’s daughter would marry A’s son, very similar to the so-called
“generalized exchange” described by Claude Levi-Strauss in his “The Elementary
Structure of Kinship.”
18
For each family, a bride was acquired by giving out a daughter,

18
In form, huanqin (direct exchange) and zhuanqin (exchange among more than two families) were very
similar to what Levi-Strauss termed “restricted exchange” and “generalized exchange” respectively. It is
interesting that these exchanges occurred as a result of the social, political, and economic difficulties
created by the Cultural Revolution. Villagers invented these forms of exchanges to steer clear of the
political or economic difficulties that had prevented them from getting their sons married. While the
“restricted exchange” and the “generalized exchange give rise to “the elementary structure of kinship” as
the exchanges continued from generation to generation, hanqin and zhanqin were only constringent
strategies to overcome temporary difficulties. No families wanted to continue the exchanges among them
through generations, since such exchanges were seen as of low status. Thus, it was impossible for such
exchanges to create “the elementary structure of kinship.” Another point worth of note was that families

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but the daughter would not marry the bride’s brother. The direct exchange was avoided
between any two of the three families. But nothing was perfect. With more families
involved, it was more difficult for this marriage arrangement to succeed. When one of the
families dropped out, the other families either had to abandon this marriage arrangement
or to find another family to replace the one that had dropped out.

Yanqi, one of Yankai’s distant cousins, was married in this way. Both his parents died
early, leaving behind Yanqi and his three sisters. With both parents gone, his eldest sister
assumed the role of a parent when she was still young. At the high tide of the Cultural
Revolution, it was time for her to get married. She was quite fortunate in her marriage.
Her husband’s family also belonged to the bad class category. But there was one thing
that made her husband’s family very special. Her husband’s father worked at a mine very
far away. With a fairly good salary, the old man could give his only son a lot of financial
help. At a time when everyone was poor, this financial help was significant, making this
young man far better off than most people in his village. But with his bad class family
background, the good-class families were still reluctant to marry their daughters to him.

Yanqi’s eldest sister was very satisfied with her marriage. This was the best that she
could have ever expected. Her husband was very good to her. This enabled her to

participating in zhuanqin were of equal status. There was no distinction between wife-givers and wife-
receivers in status. This was different from the Kachin example used by Levi-Strauss, where wife-givers
were of higher status than wife receivers.

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continue taking care of her younger siblings after her marriage. She not only took care of
them but also gave them financial help from time to time.

In the mid-1970s, it was the time to find a wife for Yanqi. As usual, his eldest sister took
on the responsibility to arrange a marriage for him. Of course, this was a difficult task.
No girls were willing to marry him because of his bad class family background. Thanks
to the new practice of exchange marriage, he did not have to remain a bachelor. He was
fortunate to have three sisters. Although the first two had both married by that time, there
was still the third one, Yanfeng, who could be used to secure a bride for him. Yanfeng
also seemed to have accepted her duty of securing a wife for her brother.

The two elder sisters were active in searching for proper matches for their sister and
brother. One day, a go-between from the same village that Yanqi’s second sister esd
married into came to visit his second sister. In that village there was a family that had a
son and a daughter who were not yet married. Since that family was also a bad class
family, they knew that the only possible way to get their son married was by exchange
marriage. They had already found a family in similar situation. But neither family was
willing to exchange daughters directly. To avoid that, they needed to find at least one
more family to join in the exchange. This was why the go-between approached Yanqi’s
second sister to see if they wanted to be the third party and complete the exchange
triangle.

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The second sister immediately went to see her eldest sister, since the latter was the
decision maker of the family. The eldest sister also thought it a good opportunity. Since
the second sister lived in the same village with one of the families, she knew that family
fairly well. It seemed that there was nothing wrong with that family, except for the fact
that the family was a rich-peasant family. The other family lived in a village just one mile
north of Song Family Village. There had been many marriage exchanges between the two
villages. It was not difficult to get information about that family.

After making an initial investigation into these two families, the eldest sister talked to
Yanqi and Yanfeng. Yanfeng was a docile girl. She had no objection to this arrangement.
Yanqi of course had no objection either. He knew quite well this might be the only
opportunity for him to get married. Then the eldest sister went to seek advice from the
elders of the minimal segment. Since both of their parents had passed away, these elders
in the minimal segment were the only people they could rely on when important
decisions had to be made. These elders were glad that such a good opportunity was
available for Yanqi. Many of them knew both of the other two families quite well. Some
of them were even related to these two families in one way or another.

Then the boys and girls of the three families met each other. No one seemed to have
objection. All the three families agreed to the marriage arrangement. Yanfeng would
marry into the family from the same village as his second sister. The daughter of that
family would marry into the third family and the third family’s daughter would marry

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Yanqi. Since Yanfeng was the oldest among the three girls, she was to be the first to get
married. But just when Yanfeng’s wedding was under preparation, an unexpected
happening almost destroyed the arrangement.

While the marriage arrangement was being made, something dramatic was happening in
China. Mao died in 1976. Only 10 days after his death, his widow and several senior
officials of her clique were arrested. The Cultural Revolution was officially put to an end.
This set off one of the dramatic social changes in Chinese history. Many of the
consequences of the Cultural Revolution were reversed. Officials who lost their positions
were restored to their original positions. People who lost their jobs were given back their
jobs. Yanqi’s fiancée’s family was one of the millions of families that were affected by
this social and political change. Before the Cultural Revolution, her father worked in a
factory in Shijiazhuang. The whole family lived in that city. When the Cultural
Revolution began, her father was fired because of his bad class family background and
the whole family was sent back to their hometown. In 1977, her father was notified by the
factory that he could resume his job and the family could move back to Shijiazhuang with
him. The family was overjoyed by this unexpected news. After ten years, they had lost
any hope of returning to the city. This was why they made such a marriage arrangement
for their daughter and son.

Although the family was allowed to move back to the city, there was a limitation for their
children. Only the unmarried children were allowed to return to the city. The married

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ones were not allowed. The parents would not like to leave any of their sons and
daughters back in the village. After living in the village for more than 10 years, they
knew the difference in life between the city and the village. They did not like their
children to continue suffering poverty in the village. But both their son and daughter were
already engaged. Their weddings were to come soon. After they were married, the son
and the daughter would not be allowed to move to the city.

It seemed that if they wanted their son and daughter to move back to the city there was no
way for them to keep the terms of the engagements. After careful consideration, the
father of the family went to see the go-between. He told the go-between that his daughter
and son regretted the engagements and wanted to cancel them. The go-between was very
angry. If one family withdrew, the circle of marriage exchange would be broken. He did
not know what the other two families would say about that. But what could he do? There
was nothing he could do. After the father left, the go-between immediately went to tell
the family that Yanfeng was to marry into. The father of this family was a hot-tempered
man. He was at once overwhelmed by terrific anger. He claimed that he would go to
confront the man who did not keep his promise.

Since he was related to Yanqi’s minimal segment, he went to seek advice from the elders
in that minimal segment to see whether there was any way to prevent that family from
canceling the engagement. Although everyone resented this change, most of them agreed
that there was no way to change it. But he still could not overcome his anger, claiming

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that he would find a way to humiliate that man for backing out. He said he would try to
catch that man on the road and put shit in his mouth. In spite of his declaration, there was
no news of this happening. Soon after, he shifted his attention to a more practical solution.

He and his family had already started preparing for the wedding of his son. Without this
incident, the wedding would have come soon. Now that the marriage exchange triangle
was broken, he and his wife decided that they should try to persuade Yanfeng to let the
wedding happen as soon as possible. Since both of Yanqi’s parents were dead, they
thought it might be very easy to convince her. They first let their son to talk to Yanfeng.
The girl was not strong-minded. She did not express any objection to the suggestion. But
when she told her eldest sister, the latter expressed her strongest objection. If Yanfeng
married into that family, whom would her brother marry? Would that family’s daughter
marry Yanqi? When that family urged Yanfeng to keep the wedding date already set,
they did not give any promise. It seemed that they did not take Yanqi’s marriage into
consideration at all. If Yanfeng married, it was very likely that that family would arrange
a normal marriage for their daughter. That meant Yanfeng’s marriage would not bring
back a bride for Yanqi. Then Yanqi would be left with no one to marry. For this reason,
the eldest sister thought that there should a solution for Yanqi’s marriage before
Yanfeng’s wedding could happen. The eldest sister went back to see the elders in the
minimal segment for advice. Most of them were strongly against letting Yanfeng marry
first. Everyone agreed that before that family was willing to marry their daughter to

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Yanqi or find another family to complete the exchange triangle, Yanfeng’s wedding
should not happen.

When Yanfeng’s future father-in-law learned of their decision, he was infuriated. He had
been preparing for the wedding for a long time. Many relatives had already been notified
of the date and time of the wedding. He did not want to make any change to the original
schedule. Furthermore, if this chance was lost, it might be difficult to find another
opportunity to get his son married. No one knew how he learned that one of the elders of
Yanqi’s minimal segment played an important role in making this decision. He hated that
elder very much. Rumors had it that he claimed he would find a chance to catch him and
give him a good beat. Of course, this never happened.

The negotiation between the two sides went on for quite some time before it came to a
solution. With the help of some relatives, they found another family who wanted to fill
the vacancy and complete the exchange triangle. The daughter from that family would be
married to Yanqi. Every party was satisfied with this result.

Exchange Marriage between Different Generations
As the above-mentioned examples have shown, exchange marriages were normally
arranged between pairs of brothers and sisters. But desperation could also lead to other
arrangements, even though such arrangements would be more frowned upon. This was

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what happened to a marriage arrangement between a family in Song Family Village and
another family in a neighboring village. The family in Song Family Village had six sons
and two daughters. During the Cultural Revolution, the mother and the grandmother of
the family head, Tongjun, were still alive. The only workers of the family were Tongjun
and his wife. With so many mouths to feed, the family was in an extremely difficult
situation. They could not survive with the limited income from the collective. To save the
whole family from starvation, Tongjun was forced to steal. All the collective properties
became the targets of his theft. Once, he was stopped by crop watchers of another village
while he was taking a stolen cart away to a market in a distant town. The crop watchers
asked him about his name and which village he was from. He dared not tell them the truth.
Instead, he gave them a coined name and told them he was from another village. The crop
watchers thought him suspicious and did not believe what he said. They detained him and
sent someone to go to the village that he said he was from to confirm whether what he
said was true. The information brought back turned against him. Finally he had to tell the
truth. He was tied up at once and sent over to Song Family Village together with the cart
that he had stolen. A good beating was waiting for him.

Although he frequently committed such crimes, he was never sent to prison. What he had
stolen were all collective properties. Few people in the village had any personal grudges
against him. Even the cadres did not really have any personal hatred for him. Since he
had a very large family, the collective would have to feed his family if he were in prison.
No one wanted to feed his family for free. Keeping him in village at least would have him

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contribute to the collective work. This was why the cadres were reluctant to send him to
prison.

His reputation as a thief plus bad class label severely affected the marriage opportunities
for his children when they grew up one by one. When his eldest son grew up, no one
wanted to marry him. In the end, the son was married out into a family with no sons as a
live-in son-in-law (shang men nüxu).

When Tongjun’s second son came to marriageable age, it was already towards the end of
the Cultural Revolution. The marriage market was still, if not more, hostile to the bad
class families. It was quite obvious that there was no way to get his second son a regular
marriage. Their daughter became the only resource that they could rely on to get their son
married. The daughter was only two years younger than the son. They were perfect
candidates for such arrangements.

The parents started to search for a family that was willing to contract an exchange
marriage with them. In a neighboring village, there was a family in a similar but a slightly
different situation. It was also a bad class family. The youngest son was already in his
late 20s but not yet married. His mother was worried. What made it even worse was that
he had no sisters that could be used to exchange a wife for him. By the mid-1970s, his
niece gradually attracted attention from the professional or non-professional go-betweens.
Some people began to persuade his mother to use the niece to exchange a wife for him.

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The girl’s mother had died years before. She was brought up by her grandmother. For this
reason, her grandmother had the authority to determine her marriage. This arrangement
was quite unusual. The normal cases of exchange marriage were between pairs of
brothers and sisters. It rarely happened between uncles and nieces. One important reason
why this kind of arrangement rarely happened was that it would easily cause confusion of
generations. Let’s imagine there were two pairs of uncles and nieces, labeled as U1, N1,
U2 and N2 for convenience. U1 is the uncle of Family One and N1 is the niece of Family
One. U2 is the uncle of Family Two and N2 is the niece of that family. In an exchange
marriage arrangement between the two families, N1 will marry U2 and N2 will marry U1.
That would cause confusion in the kinship terms that should be used to address each
other. When N1 visits her natal family, Family One, she has to call her uncle’s wife N2
aunt. But when N2 returns to her own natal home, Family Two, she has to call N1 aunt.
When U1 visits his wife’s home, Family Two, he had to call his niece aunt since she was
married to his wife’s uncle. The same will also happen when U2 visits Family One. The
children of these two couples would face even more confusion. For people who still held
traditional values, the differentiation between the senior and junior generation was
extremely important because that was the basis of the traditional social order. With
intergenerational exchange marriages, there was no way to tell who was junior and who
was senior.

In the case of the two families mentioned, the marriage was to be arranged between a pair
of brother and sister and a pair of uncle and niece. That would cause even more confusion.

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If they got married, the brother theoretically had to address his sister as aunt if he went to
visit her sister’s family, since his wife was the niece of the husband of his sister. The
niece became a sister-in-law to her uncle since the uncle married her husband’s sister.
The distinctions between the junior and the senior were totally distorted. This was
completely unacceptable to many traditional-minded people. But when the two families
were brought together by a go-between, they found they had very few alternatives,
although neither of them was willing to face the embarrassment of such a marriage. After
careful deliberation, the elders of the two families finally accepted such an arrangement.

Good Class Families Also Adopted Exchange Marriages
Although exchange marriage was first adopted by bad class families who could not get
their sons married otherwise, some good-class families who, for various reasons, found it
difficult to get their sons married in normal ways soon began to embrace this form of
marriage. Zhaoli’s marriage was an example. For Zhaoli’s parents, this form of marriage
provided them a chance to get their son married. The family belonged to the good class,
but two problems had prevented Zhaoli from getting married. One was that the family
was very poor. Another was that Zhaoli was not a smart guy. Even though he was not an
idiot, he was seen as slow-minded by villagers.

When one of Zhaoli’s sisters came to marriageable age in the mid-1970s, the parents
arranged an exchange marriage for Zhaoli and his sister. But after the marriage, the

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problem came. The bride of Zhaoli was quite unsatisfied with the marriage arrangement.
After her wedding, she refused to accept her role as a wife. When she found that her
husband was a slow-minded person, she was even more determined to break away from
this marriage. But a divorce was not easy for her, since it almost surely would result in
her brother’s wife divorcing her brother. She knew that it would annoy not only her
husband’s family but also her own parents and brother. The best strategy was to try to
have her husband and family divorce her. In this way, her husband’s wife might have no
excuse to divorce her brother. In order to realize this goal, she had to have her husband
and family realize that she would never be a proper wife and daughter-in-law.

Ever since the wedding, she refused to let her husband sleep with her. She tried to stay at
her parents’ home as much as possible. Whenever she had to stay with her husband and
her family, she would try to make trouble for them. She sometimes even beat her husband.
She hoped that these troubles would eventually become unbearable to the in-laws and
they would be willing to abandon her. But contrary to her expectation, her husband and
his parents did not seem to take offence at her behavior. They tried their best to please her.
They knew what the bride wanted but they also knew that if their son was divorced,
chances were the son would never get married again. Thus, no matter what the bride did,
they tried their best to treat her well, hoping that she would change her mind one day.

After a couple of years, when the bride finally saw that it was impossible for her husband
to divorce her, she felt that she could not wait any more. She packed up all her personal

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belongings and returned to her natal home. As she had expected, her parents tried their
best to change her mind, for fear that their daughter-in-law would also divorce their son.
She refused. Seeing that nothing could change her mind, her parents finally gave in.

When she proposed the divorce to her husband’s family, they in turn tried to persuade
their daughter to divorce her husband. To their surprise, their daughter refused. After the
marriage, the daughter was quite satisfied with her husband and his family. She did not
want to abandon this satisfactory marriage and to face uncertainty in another marriage
again. The final result was that Zhaoli was divorced by his wife, but his sister did not
divorce her husband. Zhaoli’s family lost one daughter in the attempt to marry Zhaoli by
exchange marriage.

When Zhaoli’s second sister grew up. Zhaoli’s parents decided to try their luck again. No
one knew how they managed to persuade the second daughter to accept an exchange
marriage. But they succeeded. The second exchange marriage seemed to work fine for
both sides. The new wife of Zhaoli did not show much reluctance in accepting her
marriage. She soon became part of the family. The next year, a baby was born. Zhaoli’s
parents knew that they were safe this time, since a woman with children was reluctant to
seek divorce.

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3. Conclusion
Exchange marriage had traditionally seldom occurred in Song Family Village. At least in
the living memory of the villages there was no instance of an exchange marriage before
the 1970s. According to many villagers, this was seen as the least desired type of
marriage. No one would consider contracting this type of marriages if not out of
desperation. Villagers felt that there was a sort of sexual relationship between a man and
his sister when he married a woman who was exchanged for his sister. A conflict between
two men that happened in 2002 while I was doing my fieldwork was very revealing in
this respect.

When a group of men were constructing a house, a quarrel started between two of them.
A was a very blunt-spoken man. He remarked scathingly to his opponent B: "Well, at
least I did not fuck my sister!" This infuriated B, who took up some tools and rushed
forward to attack A. If fellow workers had not stopped B and mediated the conflict, no
one knows what would have happened. The reason for A's remark was that B had got
married by exchange marriage. His family exchanged his sister for his wife. That sounds
as if B had sex with his own sister. Such a marriage was already humiliating for B. He
never liked anyone to mention it. This guy A not only mentioned it to his face, but made
it even more humiliating by making explicit the sexual implications of exchange marriage.
That was why it made B so angry.

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Although this type of marriage has been seen as disgraceful, the Cultural Revolution
made it acceptable in the village community. Although anything traditional became
targets of attract during the Cultural Revolution, it was hard to eliminate the tradition in
people’s mind. The traditional values in family and marriage, embodied as the habitus of
villagers, especially the elders, were still dominant in the village community. The core of
this tradition was the necessity to get sons marriage to continue their family lines. In spite
of the social, economic and political changes, getting their sons married was still their
most important task for parents. This tradition, embodied as habitus, was not executed
passively and mechanically. Villagers showed active agency in realizing this tradition.
When political persecution made it hard for sons of bad class families to get married, the
parents overcame the moral taboo against exchange marriages and used their only capital,
their daughters, to get their sons married. This new practice at the same time brought
slight changes in the shared habitus of the community. That is, it made exchange
marriage an acceptable type of marriage under extreme conditions. This was why even
many good class families began to accept this type of marriage as time went on.

What did it mean to the young men and women involved? Although both young men and
women had little say in such marriage arrangement, usually men were more willing to
accept such arrangements, for they were fully aware that there was little chance for them
to marry otherwise. But for the girls, the situation was quite different. In the Chinese
society, a woman could always marry up, i.e. into a family at least a little better than hers.
A girl from a bad class family might be able to marry into a good class family and thus

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get away with her stigmatized political status. A girl from a good class family could
marry into a family better off than her own. Since only families who were desperate
would adopt exchange marriage, a girl in such a marriage had to marry into a family that
was either very poor or politically stigmatized. She lost the chance to marry up. She
sacrificed herself for her brother’s marriage.

Most of the girls were reluctant to accept such marriages. Many of them put up resistance.
But it was hard for them to win this war against their family. Their desperate parents put
great pressures on them, because this was the only way to get their brothers married. The
public opinion in the village also gave their parents moral support. Getting a son married
and having the family line continued was considered the highest priority by almost
everyone in the whole community, no matter men or women. Although some people
would have sympathy for the girls, few people thought they should reject their parents’
request for an exchange marriage. The only ones who disliked this idea might be those
girls who were forced into such marriages. But even they did not necessarily question the
legitimacy of this strategy. This was why most of the girls would eventually accept such
arrangements and became victims of patriarchal power. In the practice of exchange
marriage, patriarchy was not only reproduced but also reinforced.

The occurrence of such marriages during the Cultural Revolution revealed the dynamic
interactions between the new discourses of the liberation of women and freedom in
marriage promoted by the government and the patriarchal familial tradition held by the

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villagers. In spite of the fact that the Party State had made great efforts in the propaganda
of these new discourses, the core value of the traditional familial system still held fast
among the villagers. Whatever the state policy and political changes, the continuation of
the family line was still seen as the most important task for parents. It was the political
discrimination and economic deprivation by the state that forced parents to use their
patriarchal power to press their daughters into exchange marriage. It is an irony that the
Communist Party that took the liberation of women as one of its political goals eventually
turned women into victims of patriarchal power during the Cultural Revolution through
its political presence in the village.

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CHAPTER SEVEN
THE POST-MAO REFORM, PSEUDODOWRY MARRIAGE
AND VICTIMIZED PARENTS

1. The New Prosperity
The death of Mao in 1976 made it possible to put an end to the Cultural Revolution that
had plagued the nation with political turmoil for ten years. With Deng and his followers
coming to power in the following years, a historical turn was awaiting China. From the
year 1978, the Communist Party began to loosen the shackles that the People’s Commune
had imposed on peasants. In Song Family Village, people were given more freedom with
their time and labor. If they could find other employment, they did not need to work on
the farm, as long as they would hand in a certain amount of their cash income to the
production team. Under such a policy, those that had special skills or personal
connections hurried to find non-agricultural employment opportunities, which paid much
better than farm work. Finally in 1982, the collective was demolished in Song Family
Village. Land and other collective properties were allocated to individual families, even
though theoretically the ownership of land still belonged to the collective. With this
reform, villagers were greatly motivated to improve farming. Everyone was working hard.
Crops were growing much better. Their agricultural income greatly increased. What was
more, villagers were given back the control of their own time and labor. They were
allowed to take up any job or business opportunity available. In this way, non-agricultural

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income became an important source of income for many families. Most families in the
village became better off.

Parallel to the beginning of a new prosperity for the village, more and more consumer
commodities were available on the market. For many decades, the supply of consumer
goods such as wristwatches, bicycles, sewing machines, etc. had been very limited. Even
if a person had money, he could not purchase them without the coupons issued by the
government.
1
Normally, these coupons were only available to urban residents. For
villagers, they neither had enough money nor the coupons needed for these commodities.
From the late 1970s, the supply of these commodities saw a dramatic increase. Many of
them were readily available on the market without the need for coupons. Whoever had
the money could purchase them. This made it possible for some villagers who were the
first to get better off economically to enjoy the pleasure and convenience brought by the
possession of these commodities.

2. Marriage transactions in the Reform Era
Inflation in Marriage transactions
Before long, this new prosperity began to affect the marriage market. Parents had no
hesitation in making use of their newly acquired wealth to attract brides for their sons. An

1
One feature of the Chinese economy during the 1960s and the 1970s was scarcity in commodities. Many
commodities, including food, cloth and most consumer goods, had to be purchased with coupons issued by
the government.

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easy way to show their new prosperity was to equip the family with the consumer goods
that had just begun to be available on the market. Several wristwatches or a couple of
new bicycles or a new sewing machine were all good signs of a family’s prosperity,
which would make the sons of the family attractive to parents who wanted to marry their
daughters into a well-to-do family, and to the girls who were eager to lay their hands on
these consumer goods. As a result, families that had the means to acquire such
commodities found it easier to get their sons married.

Offering these commodities as marriage gifts was even more attractive to girls. For
almost all the girls in the village, their only possible employment in the early 1980s was
farm work. The income was usually controlled by their parents. Having no personal cash
income, they had no money to spend on fashionable clothes and other manufactured
goods that were not essential to the everyday life of the family. The offers made in their
marriage negotiation might be the first time that they were so close to obtaining these
commodities. For some girls and their parents, these offers might be the determining
factor in their acceptance of a marriage proposal. For other girls, these offers were also
hard to ignore in the choice of their “Mr. Right.”

The news about new marriage offers spread quickly among girls of similar age. They
often compared with each other what they got from their prospective grooms. For those
girls who got less or did not get any gifts from their suitors, they would press for what
they wanted. If not satisfied, they could break the engagement and find someone else that

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was willing to make a satisfactory offer. Soon, the betrothal gifts that had once been
optional became obligatory.

No parents wanted their son to remain as a bachelor throughout his life. They were
willing to do anything to make sure that their son could get married. When some families
offered betrothal gifts, other families had to follow suit. This competition on the marriage
market gave leverage to girls for them to extract what they wanted from the prospective
groom’s family. Some girls and their parents were very good at taking advantage of such
opportunities.

This was just what Xueping, a girl in Song Family Village, did. Xueping was a hard
working and capable girl, excellent at all the skills that a girl was supposed to master,
including spinning and weaving. This made her desirable in the eyes of many parents
who were looking for proper brides for their sons. When she was about 18 years old in
the early 1980s, many go-betweens came to her mother to help arrange her marriage.
Following the standard procedure of marriage negotiation, she was engaged to a young
man in a neighboring village. But not long after, she discovered that some of her girl
friends got much more than her from their grooms. The engagement was broken off when
the groom refused to meet her requirement for more wedding gifts. But it did not take
long for her to be engaged to another young man who was willing to give more wedding
gifts to her. But not long after the second engagement, people heard that her engagement
was cancelled again. There were a lot rumors flying in the village about her and her

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family. Although more and more girls and their families began to ask for betrothal gifts,
few people went so far as to cancel their engagements several times just to get more gifts.
People still took engagements very seriously at that time. Cancellation of an engagement
agreement with no sound reason was considered immoral.

Due to the competition between families to woo girls, and also due to the competition
between girls for more betrothal gifts, the list of the betrothal gifts was increasing fast, as
more and more commodities were available on the market. In the late 1970s, the gifts
were only limited to some fashionable clothes. Before long, a wristwatch was added to
the list, then a bicycle. In the early 1980s, a sewing machine became an indispensable
part of the list and the groom's family was also required to provide fashionable furniture
available on the market. Soon, cash became part of the betrothal gift. In addition to giving
the brides various consumer goods as betrothal gifts, a certain amount of cash had to be
given to the bride and her family before the wedding as a kind of earnest money paid in
advance, so that the girl and her family could use the money to buy anything she wanted
for her wedding.

If the commodities given to the bride could be seen as gifts and were still acceptable to
people, a separate payment in cash to the bride was inevitably frowned upon by
traditional-minded people. When one girl in the village received 500 yuan in addition to
other gifts for her marriage, an old lady commented, “They got a mule’s price.” The
implication was that the family sold the daughter in the same way as selling a mule. To

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these old people, the money given implied a market transaction. The marriage was
thought as selling a daughter.

But this old lady soon had to take back her words. In 1981, her granddaughter was
introduced to a young man from a neighboring village. This young man for the past two
years had been working at a wood mill in the forests of Northeast China. This was a hard
job but it paid quite well by the standards of that time. In order to attract a good wife for
the young man, his parents were willing to use their newly acquired wealth as the bait.
When the boy and the girl were brought together by a go-between, the boy felt that he
liked the girl. Fearing that the girl might not agree with this marriage arrangement, they
told the go-between after the meeting that they would like to give the girl 500 yuan as a
wedding gift, a large sum by the standards of that time. The girl and her parents were
attracted by this offer. They felt nothing negative about this boy and his family. Now that
the boy’s family was willing to make such an offer, there was no reason for them to reject
this marriage arrangement. Different from the grandmother who frowned on the practice
of cash betrothal gifts, the girl's parents did not show any shame. Instead, her father often
proudly told others about how generous that family was to his daughter and his family.

From the 1980s through the 1990s, the list of the betrothal gifts became longer and longer
and the amount of cash paid by the groom’s family was getting larger and larger.
Electronic products such as tape recorders, TV sets, CD players and home theater system,
found their way into the list of gifts one by one as they became available on the market. If

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a tape recorder were a typical item of a betrothal gift in the mid-1980s, a TV set was an
indispensable item at the end of the 1980s. The turn of the 1990s saw color TV appear on
the list. Then a CD player, the home theater system, etc, all gradually entered the list. The
convenience of transportation was also a concern in marriage negotiation. While a
bicycle was an important part of the betrothal gifts in the 1980s, a motorcycle was added
to the list in the late 1990s. From 2002, an electric bicycle was included into the list to
provide more convenience for the bride to travel around. The cash payment has also been
increasing. In the 1980s, the amount was only several hundred yuan. When I did my
fieldwork from 2002 to 2003, people were paying from 3000 yuan to 5000 yuan. A
complete list of betrothal gifts (including cash) in the early 2000s included: 3000-5000
yuan in cash, a motorcycle, some furniture, a color TV set, a bicycle, an electric bicycle,
a sewing machine, 600-1000 yuan for clothes, and 70 jin of teased cotton.

Brideprice and Pseudodowry
At the turn of the century, such marriage transactions involved an almost direct
conversion of the “brideprice” into “dowry” for almost all families arranging their
children’s marriages. A bride would take to her new home at her wedding whatever she
received from her groom’s family, including the consumer goods and the cash payment.
Her parents would not retain any part of the cash money. In other words, pseudodowry
marriage became the dominant form of marriage. In such a type of marriage, even though
the groom’s family furnished these gifts and the cash, they did not really lose anything to

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the bride’s family, since these gifts and the money eventually returned with the bride at
the wedding. Some parents might even provide an additional dowry for their daughter out
of their own pocket. But the amount of this real dowry would be very small. It was more
valuable symbolically than monetarily. A typical dowry gift from her parents would be
cloth woven by the mother at home.

In the early 1980s just when betrothal payments became popular, some families did keep
part of the payments for their own use or to furnish betrothal payments for their own
sons’ marriages. In a marriage arrangement between a boy and a girl who were both from
Song Family Village, the bride’s parents required the groom and his family to help them
build a new house for their son’s marriage. When a boy and a girl in Song Family Village
fell in love with each other, the girl’s family also made a similar requirement. In both
these two cases, the groom’s family paid a brideprice, which was kept by the bride’s
family. But such cases were rare even in the early 1980s. After 1990, such cases almost
disappeared. When I did my fieldwork, I did not find a single case of marriage involving
brideprice payment. All the marriage transactions were actually pseudodowries.

Housing Becomes an Important Part of Marriage Agreement
Besides the betrothal gifts, housing gradually became an important factor on the marriage
market. For decades before the 1980s, few people could afford new houses, not only
because people were all poor at the time, but also because they had no access to the

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building materials for a house, such as bricks, lumber, and cement. These materials were
firmly controlled by the state and seldom sold to individual families. Only those who
were in power or had the right connections could have access to these materials.
2

From the late 1970s, things began to change. The state loosened its control of building
materials. Many materials that had been scarce previously were now available on the
market. Since most families had not built any new houses for decades, many large
families had long experienced difficulty in accommodating their members within their
old houses. With the new prosperity and the availability of building materials, many
families rushed to build new houses. One by one, new houses emerged on the outskirts of
the village. In just a few years, several new streets were added to the village, expanding
its size at an unprecedented speed.

Accompanying this rush to build new houses, housing was given more and more weight
in marriage negotiation. In a marriage negotiation during the 1980s, a girl and her family
would ask that a house be provided for the new couple at the future family division.
Without exception, the boy’s family would accept this request. But the promise was not
always kept by the groom’s family. After the marriage, the groom’s family might think
that there was nothing the bride could do even if they broke the promise. This caused
many conflicts between the bride and the groom’s family. The frequent conflicts between

2
In the 1960s and the 1970s, most building materials, such as wood, cement and steel were firmly
controlled by the state. Common people had no access to these materials.

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in-laws over housing promises made many girls’ parents very cautious when negotiating
their daughters’ marriages. From the late 1990s, the first thing that a girl and her parents
wanted to verify in a marriage negotiation was whether the boy’s family already had a
new house built or at least had got the materials ready for it. If there was no sign of the
family getting ready to build the house, the girl and her family would immediately reject
the marriage proposal.

The consequence of this change was that a boy’s family had to start preparing for their
son’s marriage several years before the wedding. They had to show everybody that they
were making serious preparations for their son’s marriage, which included acquiring a
house lot, laying foundations for the new house and beginning to accumulate construction
materials. Without such a demonstration, no go-between would even approach the boy’s
parents for marriage arrangements. When I did my fieldwork from 2002 to 2003, a
normal bridal request was that a new house should be completed and ready by the time of
the wedding.

Heavy Burden on Parents
Even though the groom and his family would not lose anything to the bride’s family in a
pseudodowry transaction, the cost of his marriage still put a heavy financial burden on his

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parents. A house at the turn of the century would cost 30,000 to 50,000 yuan.
3
The
betrothal gifts (including the cash payment) and the cost for the wedding would add up to
20,000 yuan. An average laborer could only earn about 3,000-5,000 yuan a year. That
meant the cost of a marriage was equal to at least 10 years of income of an average
laborer.

Of course, when a son grew up, he could also contribute to his own marriage. But the
problem was that a boy could only earn very low wages when he first started working.
Even if he started to work at the age of 16, the youngest age he was allowed to work
legally, he could only contribute half of the cost of a new house at most by the time of his
wedding, normally at the age of 23. That meant it was totally impossible for most young
men to accumulate enough money for his marriage by the time of his wedding. He had to
rely on the help of his parents for his marriage. For a family with only one son, it might
not be too difficult if the family started saving early enough, but for a family with more
than one son, it would be very difficult. Most parents had to borrow money for their sons’
marriages and then spent many years paying off the debt.

Due to the difficulties in building new houses, promises reached during the marriage
negotiation were not always well kept. Before the wedding, the girl and her family had to
check frequently to make sure that the house had been built as promised. No house, no

3
Different people use different materials in constructing their new houses. Therefore the cost varies. The
high quality materials used by a rich family would cost much more. While the poor quality materials used
by a poor family would save a lot of money.

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wedding. Villagers told me a story about a conflict over a promised new house a couple
of years before I started my fieldwork in 2002. There was in the village a man who had
three sons. In the marriage negotiation for his eldest son, he had to promise that a new
house should be ready by the time of the wedding, with both the main hall and side rooms
completed. But as the wedding date approached, they had only completed the main hall.
There was no sign that they would be able to build the side rooms before the wedding.
The bride and her parents were worried. They knew that if they did not do anything, the
promise would surely not be kept after the marriage. Since the groom’s family still had
another two sons to marry and they would surely allocate no more resources to the eldest
son after his marriage. Only several days before the wedding, the bride’s parents asked
the go-between to tell the groom’s parents that if they could not have the side rooms built
before the wedding, the groom’s family had to give the bride 10,000 yuan in cash.
Otherwise, they would not allow the wedding to happen.

Hearing this, the groom’s family was agonized. They knew that the bride’s family meant
what they said. The cancellation of a wedding was not unheard of. But 10,000 yuan was
too much for the groom’s family. They begged the go-between to persuade the bride’s
side to lower the amount requested. After many rounds of negotiation, the amount was
finally reduced to 3,000 yuan. But even this 3,000 yuan was too much for the groom’s
parents. By that time, they had run out of all their savings. The father of the groom
borrowed money from door to door in the village before he could get that amount.

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3. Working Hard for Sons’ Marriages
Since it was impossible for sons to finance their own marriages, parents had to undertake
this heavy burden. When their sons were very young, they had to start saving money.
When their sons grew up, they had to find employment for them so that they could help
to contribute to the family income. Only in this way, could they hope to get their sons
married in a proper and timely manner. For many parents in the village, getting their sons
married seemed to be their only goal of life. They lived very frugally, trying to save every
penny they earned. They worked very hard, looking for any opportunity to make money.
Even though this heavy financial burden brought them worries and anxiety, they took for
granted the duty to get their sons married. For most of them, this duty was such a natural
part of their life that they never gave a second thought to it. From the experience of
Yanqi’s family, we can see how parents in the village managed to get their sons married.
Yanqi has three children, all of whom are boys. Their ages are very close to each other,
just two years apart. This demographic distribution has a significant influence on the
family economy. It means that all their marriages should be concluded within a span of
four years. At the beginning of the new century, all the three sons were coming of age.
According to the statistics I gathered in 2002, a typical marriage would cost at least
50,000 yuan, including the house. That would add up to 150,000 yuan for all three sons,
without considering the continuous inflation of costs for marriage. That was a terrific
amount for Yanqi, whose annual income did not exceed 15,000 yuan in the year 2002.
That means the sons’ marriages would cost him 10 years’ family income. If 5,000 yuan

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was the minimum expenditure for their mere survival, they had to spend at least fifteen
years to save for their sons’ marriages. If we consider the variation in their income from
year to year, they might have to spend twenty years saving money for that purpose.

When their sons were born in the 1980s, Yanqi and his wife realized the difficulty they
would have in the future. By that time, the marriage of a son had already become very
costly. They had to start saving money as early as possible. In the early 1990s, he and his
family began to do some business, with the help of his brother-in-law. Yanqi had to go to
nearby cities frequently to buy raw materials. To save money, he always went by bicycle
instead of by bus. Even when he had to go to Shijiazhuang, which was more than 120 km
from Song Family Village, he still rode his bicycle and carried the heavy load back. He
told me that once it was already midnight when he and a fellow villager arrived at
Shijiazhuang. Not willing to pay for hotel, they just stayed at an abandoned green house
on the outskirts of the city. When they had just fallen asleep, a group of patrolling
officers woke them up. If they had not brought their identity cards with them, they might
have been arrested.

To increase his family income, Yanqi was willing to take any opportunity that could
bring in money. Sometimes the nearby rivers would be flooded by water let out from the
reservoirs upstream in summer. Coming down with the water were fish from these
reservoirs. From time to time, news spread in the village that there was a flood of fish in
the rivers. Then many men would start off with their nets for the rivers. In most cases,

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Yanqi would be one of them. They usually started off after finishing a day’s farm work.
Arriving at the river bank, they would first set up their nets and then just sleep on the
river bank. Early in the morning, they would pull out the nets and return to their village
with their catch. The fish they caught was not for their own consumption. Most of them
would cook and sell the fish. Since the only investment was time and effort, it was a very
good opportunity for Yanqi to earn some cash.

Farming was one of his major sources of income. But due to the small scale of his farm,
farm work would not take much of his time, except during the busy seasons. During the
slack seasons, Yanqi always tried to find some non-agricultural work to do. There were a
couple of contractors in this village mainly recruiting people who had to stay home taking
care of their farms and families. Although payment was not as good as working at urban
centers, the convenience of the work attracted many middle-aged men who could not
seek employment away from home but still needed some non-agricultural income.
Whenever there was not much farm work to do, Yanqi would go to work for these
contractors. In this way, Yanqi would earn 2,000 to 3,000 yuan in cash each year in
addition to the income from farming.

With these various incomes, Yanqi could save a small sum each year. When their eldest
son was a teenager, Yanqi and his wife began to prepare for the construction of new
houses. Each year, they would use their savings to purchase some construction materials.
Year after year, that added up to a lot.

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With three sons, Yanqi and his wife fully understood that there was no way for them to
accumulate the money needed for the three sons’ marriages only by their own efforts.
They had to have their sons start earning money as soon as possible. When their eldest
son Chunshan was 16 years old, Yanqi sent him off to work with a contractor in a distant
city. Since then, he has been working for various contractors throughout the country. A
couple of years after he started working, everyone learned that he was the hardest
working young man in the village. Every year, he left home the earliest and returned
home the latest. While many young men of his age would come back home for several
short visits, he never returned home in the middle of a year. In the year when I did my
fieldwork, I remember he came back only five days before the Chinese New Year, while
many young men had already returned a couple of months before. Each year he could
earn from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan.

When the second son Chunhai quit school at the age of 15, Yanqi sent him to a carpenter
shop in the county town as an apprentice. After finishing his apprenticeship one year later,
he began to work for a carpenter shop in Song Family Village. He was paid by the piece,
with the income varying from month to month and from year to year. The busy season for
the carpenter shop was in winter, when the weddings to be held before the Chinese New
Year provided the largest demand for their products. In spring, there were few customers.
Then there would be little work to do at the workshop. During this time, Chunhai would
join his father working for a local contractor. Each year he could earn from 2000 to 3000

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yuan. After working for two years at the village workshop, he was dissatisfied with the
payment. He decided to change his job. A distant cousin of his was running a small
contracting company in a nearly city. He invited Chunhai to join his group. In 2003,
Chunhai went to join that group.

The third son Chunying was the favorite son of Yanqi and his wife. People said that he
was a handsome young man even though I never saw him while I was doing my
fieldwork. He was then working in Beijing as a security staff for China Telecom. Among
the three children in the family, he was the smartest. At primary school, he had always
been among the top students in his class. One of his former classmates, who was at high
school, then told me that Chunying was the smartest one among his peers in the village. If
he continued his education, he should have done quite well. During the Spring Festival of
his first year at middle school, he saw an advertisement with news of recruiting security
staff for companies in Beijing. The salary was 700 yuan a month. Although very little by
the salary standards at Beijing, it sounds a lot for a boy who had never been out of his
county. The next day, he went together with several boys in the same village to the town
for an interview. Luckily, he got the job. Then he quit school and went to work in Beijing.

With the three sons coming to marriageable age one by one at the turn of the new century,
it was time for Yanqi and his wife to start arranging for their marriages. Like most
families in the village, the first thing they start doing was to build houses for their sons.
Luckily for them, Yanqi had acquired two house lots when the village government was

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selling house lots in the early 1990s.
4
Together with the lot of their old house, they had
three house lots, with one for each of their three sons. Years later, they felt lucky that
they grasped this opportunity, since that was the last time the village government sold
house lots. Those who had not taken advantage of that opportunity later on found it very
hard to get a house lot when their sons grew up.

From 2000 to 2002, he had the main halls of two new houses built. In order to save
money, much of the work was done by himself and his sons when they were at home for
the winter. For several years, Yanqi and his sons would carry earth to their new house
lots in order to elevate it from the low land surrounding it. Although there was machinery
available for rent in the village, they never used it, in order to save money.

When I did my fieldwork, Yanqi and his wife were building side rooms for one of their
new houses. They did not hire any hands. All the work was done by themselves.
Everyday after finishing farm work, they would go to their new house and work on it
until it was too dark. Although the work went on slowly, it was almost finished by the
winter.

4
Officially, all land is still collectively owned by the village even after the collective economy was
abandoned in the 1980s. Individual families had no right to convert their farming plots into house lots by
themselves. It needs the village government to designate a housing zone and the land within the zone will
be earmarked into house lots. In the 1980s, house lots were given for free to individual families who
needed them. But in the 1990s, families began to be charged for new house lots. This became an important
way for the village government to raise money to pay back the debts of the village.

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Building new houses brought in go-betweens. People all knew that there would be no
problem for Yanqi’s family to provide new houses for their sons. Although none of the
three sons received much education, they had very good reputations in the village.
Everybody knew that they were all industrious and thrifty. That made them very good
candidates for parents who were looking for prospective grooms for their daughters of
marriageable age.

When I did my fieldwork, I happened to participate in Yanqi’s second son Chunhai’s
engagement party. That was already his second engagement. His first engagement
happened one year before. That girl was from Yanqi’s eldest sister’s village. Although
his sister and her husband were not the go-betweens, they happened to know that girl and
her family quite well, since their daughter was a playmate of that girl when she was
young.

After several rounds of negotiation, the two sides came to an agreement on betrothal gifts
and housing. The betrothal gifts included: 3,600 yuan in cash, a motorcycle, some
furniture, a TV set, a bicycle, a sewing machine, 600 yuan for clothes, and 70 jin of
teased cotton. A new house should be ready by the time of the wedding. Only a couple of
months after the boy and the girl first met each other, they were engaged. Following the
current custom, Yanqi’s family paid the girl 1100 yuan at the engagement. This was part
of the 3,600 yuan cash payment.

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In interacting with the girl, Chunhai gradually felt something strange with her. He found
that she was extremely silent and a little slow minded. At first his parents did not take his
complaint seriously. They thought there should not be much problem with the girl,
Otherwise, Yanqi’s sister would have told them. But as their son complained more and
more, they decided to observe her more closely when she came. At the temple fair
5
of
the village, she was invited to join them for the event. While she was here, Yanqi’s wife
paid close attention to her behavior. She did find something strange about this girl, just as
her son said.

One day, Yanqi’s sister’s daughter came to visit. They told the niece their worry and
asked if she knew anything about Chunhai’s fiancée? She said the girl had epilepsy when
she was young. Once when she was playing with that girl, the latter was suddenly struck
with a seizure. Hearing this, Yanqi’s wife got nervous. She knew what that could mean.
Her sister had the same disease when she was young. That disease severely affected her
sister’s life. She wanted to make sure whether that was true.

Yanqi and his wife immediately went to see his sister. They thought she should know the
truth of the matter. But his sister said she did not know because that family moved to the
other end of the village when the girl grew up. The girl did have that problem when she
was very young. But they did not notice any symptoms after she grew up. Yanqi and his

5
It has been customary for a family to invite the prospective bride of their son when there is a temple fair
in their village. This provides an opportunity for the boy and the girl to interact with each other.

332

wife felt betrayed by his sister. As the closest relative, she should have told them of any
possible problem at the beginning. She should have known that this might ruin the whole
life of Chunhai.

After coming back, Yanqi immediately notified the go-between that they would like to
terminate the engagement. At the engagement, they had already paid the girl 1,100 yuan
as part of the betrothal gifts. By canceling this engagement, Yanqi would not be able to
get back that 1,100 yuan. The common rule was that if the girl canceled the engagement,
the girl had to return the money. But if the boy canceled it, the money would not be
returned. In spite of the economic loss, Yanqi’s wife was determined in this decision. She
did not want to ruin his son’s life just for that 1,100 yuan. Money could be earned in the
future, but if she had her son marry a defective wife, it would ruin her son’s life.

When I started my fieldwork, Chunhai’s second marriage negotiation was just under way.
The boy and the girl had already met each other more than half a year before. The go-
between was Chunmin, a distant cousin of Chunhai. The girl was the go-between’s
cousin’s daughter. The terms on betrothal gifts were still the same as Chunhai’s first
engagement: 3600 yuan in cash, a motorcycle, some furniture, a TV set, a bicycle, a
sewing machine, 600 yuan for clothes, and 70 jin of teased cotton. Of course a new house
was required by the time of the wedding.

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Usually a boy and a girl would be engaged within half a year after they first met each
other if everything went on well. But Yanqi and his wife deliberately postponed the
engagement because they wanted to make sure that there was no problem with this girl
before they paid the 1,100 yuan engagement fee. They did not like to lose money again if
they found anything wrong with the girl. By the Chinese New Year of 2003, the boy and
the girl had known each other for a year. Everything seemed to be O.K. with that girl.
Yanqi and his wife finally decided that it was the time for the engagement.

The decision to hold the engagement ceremony got the go-between busy. When he went
to tell the girl and her family, they had no objections. But they wanted to renegotiate the
details of the marriage payment. Although they had already reached a general agreement
on that, there were still many details that had not been worked out.

One day when I went to see Yanqi, I found his wife arguing excitedly with Chunmin, the
go-between. Yanqi gestured me to sit down and explained what they were arguing about.
Chunmin had just come back from the girl’s house. The girl’s family proposed that there
was no need to hold a ceremony for the engagement. They thought that there was no
point wasting money on this formality. The money saved could be given to the girl.
Together with the customarily 1,100 advance payment at the engagement, they wanted
Yanqi’s family to hand to the girl 1,600 yuan, with 600 hundred given to the girl herself
and the rest kept by the parents for the expenses of the wedding in the future.

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When Chunmin told Yanqi and his wife, Yanqi’s wife would not agree. She argued that a
normal engagement ceremony would cost 200 yuan at most. The girl’s parents’
suggestion would not save her money but cost more. They were too greedy. She would
rather waste the money on a ceremony than giving it to them. It both saved her money
and pleased her relatives.
6
She insisted that the go-between should go back and tell the
girl’s family of their objection. When Chunmin agreed to go back and tell the girl and her
parents, Yanqi’s wife’s anger was temporarily calmed down.

After several rounds of running back and forth, the go-between finally helped them to
reach agreements upon everything. A ceremony was to be held. The date was set upon
the sixth of the first month. One important part of the engagement process was a
shopping event that was supposed to happen before the engagement ceremony per se. The
boy and the girl were to go to the town to buy each other some gifts to seal the
engagement. Besides, the girl would take this opportunity to buy some clothing. Of
course, payment would be made by the boy. What was tricky about this event was that
there was no explicit agreement as to how much money should be spent. For many girls,
this was a good opportunity to extract money from the pocket of their future in-laws. For
the boys and their families, they tried every means to protect their pockets from being
emptied.

6
At an engagement ceremony, the hosting family is supposed to invite all members of its minimal segment
to attend. These relatives can provide various services at the ceremony and are also treated to a feast.
Inviting them is also a way to show respect for them.

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On such an occasion, the boy would not be accompanied by his relatives. The go-between
would be the only person he could trust. The girl, in contrast, would bring with her
several companions, usually her elder sisters or her aunts. They were supposed to give
her advice as to what to buy. Usually it was these people who pushed the girl to buy more
than the boy expected.

The shopping event was set upon the 20
th
day of the last month of the year on lunar
calendar. On that day, a car was hired by Yanqi to carry the girl and her companions to
the town. Early in the morning, Chunmin’s wife was sent over with the car to pick them
up. Chunhai would go with Chunmin and join them at the designated place at the town.
Before Chunhai started off with Chunmin, Yanqi and his wife asked Chunmin not to let
the girl spend too much. But that was not an easy job. No one was supposed to tell the
girl and her companions explicitly that they should not spend too much. They might be
annoyed. How to control the expenses depended solely upon the go-between’s smart
manipulations. He had to find legitimate excuses to prevent them from spending too
much. Yanqi’s wife asked Chunmin how much money would be needed. Chunmin said
confidently that 400 yuan should be quite enough. This was a psychological limit that
Yanqi’s wife could accept. Chunmin assured Yanqi’s wife that he could stop them if the
girl and her relatives wanted to spend too much.

But it did not turn out as well as Chunmin hoped. The girl wanted to buy a suit of
expensive clothes and a pair of expensive shoes. These two purchases alone drove the

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expenses way over 400 yuan. In the end, 600 yuan was spent. Since Chunhai only
brought with him 400 yuan, Chunmin and his wife lent him the rest of the money.
Chunhai knew what his mother would do if she knew how much was spent. He told
Chunmin never to tell his mother the truth. After the event, Yanqi paid back the money
borrowed from Chunmin without telling his wife.

Everything seemed to go on smoothly. But a couple of days before the engagement
ceremony, the girl’s parents made another demand. When Chunmin went over to
coordinate the arrangements for the ceremony, they told Chunmin that they were not
satisfied with what was purchased on the shopping trip. They wanted Yanqi’s family to
give them some more money in compensation for that. Yanqi’s wife was irritated. She
threatened to cancel the engagement ceremony. Chunmin hurried back to persuade the
girl’s parents to take back their demand. At the same time, Yanqi’s wife learned that the
shopping trip cost not the 400 yuan that she had expected, but 600 yuan. She was
exasperated. Whenever she was angry, she would be sick and not able to move. This
happened again. Just before the ceremony, she lay in bed, not able to do any housework.

In spite of her sickness, the ceremony happened as scheduled. On that day, Yanqi hired
two taxies to pick up the girl and her relatives, even though the two villages were only
one and half miles apart. This was a ritual that could not be neglected. Around twenty of
the girl’s relatives came. Female and male relatives were feasted in separate rooms. Male

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and females relatives of the boy were also invited. They were needed to serve the
relatives of the girl. After a busy day, the boy and the girl were engaged.

Yanqi’s eldest son Chunshan was engaged in 2001. At the new year of 2003, the girl’s
family requested the wedding to be held at the end of that year. Yanqi and his wife
hesitated because the side rooms of the two new houses had not been built yet. If the
wedding would be held that year, they would have a very tight budget and have to borrow
a large sum to make ends meet. After careful consideration, they suggested that the
wedding be held the next year. The go-between, who was Yanqi’s brother-in-law, also
wanted the marriage to be completed as soon as possible. He thought young boys and
girls changed their minds very quickly. Everything was possible before the marriage.
What happened later proved that the brother-in-law was right. When I went back for a
short follow-up research in 2004, I learned that the girl had broken off the engagement.
Working at a factory, the girl fell in love with one of her coworkers. Although her family
tried to prevent this from happening, they could not change her mind. Parents no longer
had the power to impose a marriage on their children.

Yanqi and his wife were very much worried. They asked as many people as they could to
help find a wife for their eldest son. Two years later in 2006 when I went back again, my
car almost ran into a girl who rushed out of a narrow lane on her bicycle. When I visited
Yanqi and his family, I found that that girl was Chunshan’s wife. They had already been

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married for almost half a year. The bride was already pregnant and Yanqi would be a
grandfather in several months.

Yanqi did not find any difficulty in his third son Chunying’s marriage. People said that
this young man was handsome and smart. He had many suitors. Once a sonless rich
family in Song Family Village had the intention to take him as a married-in son-in-law
(shang men nüxu). Both he and his parents were interested. But the father of the girl
changed his mind. This marriage opportunity did not come true. In 2006, he was engaged
to a girl in Song Family Village. When I returned to the village that year, many people
told me how unusual this engagement was. Both the girl and her parents liked Chunying
very much. When Yanqi and his wife told them they had not yet built a new house for the
third son, the father of the girl said he would not mind. Yanqi could start building the
house whenever he thought proper. When they began to talk about the betrothal gifts,
Yanqi and his wife told the go-between that they could not offer more than what they had
paid for the other two sons’ marriages. That was now a very low offer, because the
customary amount of betrothal gifts had increased a lot during the five years since they
arranged their eldest son’s first engagement. The girl and her parents thought Chunying
was such an ideal boy that they accepted this offer without any reservation.

Yanqi was lucky that all his three sons worked very hard when they grew up. Their hard
work did not only increase the family income but also earned a good reputation for the
family. This made the three sons’ marriages relatively easy. But not all parents in the

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village were so lucky. One of the neighbors of Yanqi also had three sons. The sons were
spoiled by their parents and were very lazy. When they came to marriageable age, the
family could not save much money to build houses for them. The parents had to borrow a
lot from relatives. When the two elder sons’ marriages were arranged, the prospective
brides all demanded that the young couples would not be responsible for paying back the
debts incurred by their marriages. Knowing that it was not easy to get their sons married,
the parents had to accept such a demand. They had to work hard for the rest of their life
to pay back the debts. When I did my fieldwork, many people told me of the miserable
life of the parents. According to the mother of the family, there was one month when she
and her husband had only a half yuan to spend in addition to food that they produced by
themselves. In spite of that, the parents never regretted getting their sons married. When
villagers commented on this family, they often blamed the parents for spoiling their sons.
No one thought that they should not help their sons in their marriages.

4. Marriage, Family Division and Lost Parental Authority
When I started my fieldwork in 2002, Yanqi was just building a new house. The structure
of the house attracted my attention. In appearance, this house had a structure typical of
the houses in north China. It had a rectangular courtyard enclosed with walls and rooms.
The master bedroom was on the north side. Those on the east or the west side were side
rooms. But a small room on the north was something that I had never seen. Although it
was on the same side as the master bedroom, it was much smaller. I asked Yanqi what’s

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the use of that small room. He told me that it was a room to be inhabited by him and his
wife. The big master bedroom would be inhabited by their son and daughter-in-law. He
explained that after all the three sons got married, he and his wife would not have their
own house. They had to either live with one of the sons or rotate among the three sons. In
each of the new houses, there was a small room for them to inhabit in the future. If they
could not get along with one of the daughters-in-law, they could move to live with
another one. I found that Yanqi was not alone in having such a “parents’ room.” All the
new houses built in the village since the 1990s had such a room. This new house structure
was in fact a result of practices in marriage and family division since the early 1980s.

According to villagers, in traditional times of Song Family Village, family division was
not supposed to happen until both parents died. When an old couple had more than one
son, all of them were morally obligated to live in the same household after marriage, as
long as their parents were still alive. They would share the same kitchen, consume out of
a common budget and work under the management of the same family head. A family
division when both or one of the parents was alive would turn the sons into targets of
moral condemnation by public opinion. Only after both parents passed away could sons
divide the family asset evenly among them. This post-mortem inheritance ensured
parental control over family asset and guaranteed the aged parents loyalty from their sons
and daughters-in-law. As a result, aged parents had high status in a traditional family.
This power structure was reflected in the residential pattern in the household. The aged
parents usually lived in the best room, symbolizing their authoritative status in the family.

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The collectivization in the mid-1950s reduced the need for parents to keep their married
children together. The means of production, including land, draft animals and large tools,
were taken away from private household control. The only important private property
was the house. Every adult had to work for the collective, which was managed by village
cadres. Juniors were no longer dependent on parents and family properties for a living.
This change was especially significant for daughters-in-law. Working for the collectives
just like anybody else in the family, they were no longer dependent on their husbands and
in-laws. The work points they earned were recognizable contributions to the family
income. Parents-in-law found their daughters-in-law no longer as obedient to them as had
been required by the tradition. When there were several daughters-in-law, the parents-in-
law found it very hard to have them live harmoniously together. With each of them
contributing to the family income, every one of them had their own interests. That easily
resulted in conflicts inside the family between the daughters-in-law. In such a situation,
the push for dividing the family was much stronger than that for keeping the family
together. Many parents would let their sons start their independent households after most
of the sons were married.

But it should be noted that most family divisions that happened during the collective
period were incomplete divisions. Villagers often called this “fenkai chifan,” literally
meaning “eat separately,” because each conjugal household had its own stove and cooked
by themselves. Such a conjugal household had its independent income and budget. But

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normally the ownership of the family houses was not divided, though each conjugal
family might get a house or a section of a house to inhabit. The completion of the family
division was still to be completed after the parents died. That was mainly because of the
lack of enough houses to be divided among the sons. It was common to see married sons
crammed in a single house, even though they were seen as independent households. In
this kind of family division, parents still controlled the most important family property
before their death. They still had some authority over their married children.

The housing boom in the 1980s as a result of the new reform policy contributed another
factor that facilitated family divisions. For the first time in decades, most villagers had
the resources to build new houses. The brothers, who had been crammed into a single
house with their aged parents for decades, hurried to build their new houses. At the same
time, a complete family division often happened between brothers. I remember in the
1980s many people came to ask my father to serve as the witness of their family divisions
and draft division contracts for them. Such a family division was normally administered
by parents. A family division contract often had terms on how parents would be
supported. In this way, parents still had some control over their life in the old age.

With the rise of the practice of pseudodowry and demand for housing in marriage
negotiation, marriage has played a more and more important role in family division since
the 1980s. In marriage negotiations in the 1980s and the early 1990s many brides
demanded that a new house should be built for them after their marriage. This gave the

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bride an active role in the future family division. Traditionally, daughters-in-law were not
allowed to play any role in family division. A family division was solely carried out
among brothers and parents. But since the 1980s it was no longer possible to keep a
daughter-in-law out of the process of family division because, promised a house in the
marriage agreement, she had the right to oversee whether she got what had been
promised. Through marriage negotiation, women obtained an indispensable role in the
family division of her husband’s family. Parents’ freedom in deciding on how to divide
the family was compromised because the promises made for their sons’ marriages had to
be kept.

Since the late 1990s, in most marriage negotiations, the girl’s side would first ask
whether the boy’s family had already built a house or if they already had a house lot and
had started the preparation for house construction. The go-betweens also put this at the
highest priority when they considered proper matches. If a boy’s family did not have a
new house or was still not ready to build one, they would not consider the boy a good
candidate. When a go-between went to propose a marriage arrangement to a girl and her
family, the first thing to tell them was whether the boy’s family had a new house or at
least had already started the preparation for building a new house. This was the most
important information to the girl and her family. When the parents started the background
check, they would try to check upon the house information that the go-between had
provided them. Only when they saw that the family could really have a new house ready
by the time of the wedding would they take this marriage opportunity seriously. In the

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process of marriage negotiation, it was common for the girl to examine the new houses
the boy’s family had and decide on which house she wanted to have after she was
married. As a result, before the marriages of the sons, a family’s houses would have been
divided among the prospective daughters-in-law.

During the marriage negotiation, the girl and her family would also try their best to
extract as much as possible from the boy’s family. In the early 2000s, the normal
payment to a bride was worth 15,000 yuan. Although the goods purchased with the
money as well as any cash that remained out of this sum would be taken back to the
groom’s family as pseudodowries after the marriage, these properties would solely
belong to the bride and the groom. The parents of the groom no longer had any claim to
these properties. The pseudodowry plus the house, which was normally worth 30,000 in
the early 2000s, would exhaust all that the groom’s parents could give to the bride and
the groom in a family division. After each son’s engagement, all the family properties
would have been divided. The parents would have no more properties to divide among
their sons in the future. In other words, marriage negotiation became a family division
process in which the groom and the bride got their share of the family properties. It is no
exaggeration to say that the new custom of pseudodowry and house demand in marriage
negotiations led to a pre-marriage family division. Parents lost control over how and
when the family properties hould be divided among the sons.

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These changes in family division inevitably affected the power relationship between the
older generation and the junior generation, especially that between parents-in-law and
daughters-in-law. Since most of the newly married couples inherited their properties from
the grooms’ parents through marriage agreements from the 1980s on, the properties
inherited from the parents of the groom were no longer seen by the bride as a favor from
her parents-in-law. Instead, she saw these inherited properties as something that the
groom’s parents owed to her according to the marriage agreement. Thus she did not need
to be grateful to her in-laws. Seeing those properties as belonging solely to her and her
conjugal family, she often guarded these properties jealously. The ownership and use of
the house, the most important property inherited on the basis of the marriage agreement,
was particularly important to the bride. She was ready to ward off any impingement on
her and her conjugal family’s ownership of the house, especially that from her parents-in-
law.

As we have discussed, after getting their sons’ married, most parents would have run out
of all their properties, including houses. They no longer had a house of their own with all
the houses already allocated to their sons and daughters-in-law even before their
marriages. A common practice was for them to choose to live in the house of one of the
sons who got a bigger house or some other compensation for the accomadation. Yet, even
with such an arrangement, the house was still seen as belonging to the son and the
daughter-in-law, who could always find excuses to reject the aged and impoverished
parents. Whether the parents would be allowed to live in their house or not solely relied

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on the mercy of the son and the daughter-in-law. Conflicts often arose between
daughters-in-law and parents-in-law about where the latter should live. This can be seen
from the following two episodes that I learned of during my fieldwork.

Fanglin had only one son. For his son’s marriage, he demolished his old house and built a
new one in the early 1990s. The new house was promised to the bride as part of the
marriage agreement. After his son married in the mid-1990s, he and his wife lived with
the new couple. But they soon found that they were not welcome by the new daughter-in-
law. In the following years, the daughter-in-law tried every means to drive them out.
Unable to stand the harassment, the old couple decided to move out. They first borrowed
a room from a relative and then built a “house” for themselves. It was impossible for
them to build a house like the one they had built for their son because they no longer had
the resources for such a big project after spending all their savings on their son’s
marriage. The “house” was actually a cottage built on the family threshing ground outside
the village. The walls were made of bricks that were piled up without using cement. The
roof was made of very cheap wood that they could afford. But it was a place of their own.
They no longer needed to endure the humiliation from the daughter-in-law. Standing
alone outside the village, the cottage was often pointed out as an example when villagers
talked about unfilial sons.

Xianfu had three sons. Not doing well economically, the family did not have the money
to build new houses for all of the sons in the 1980s. That negatively affected the sons’

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marriages. The eldest and the second sons did not get married until the 1990s when they
were in their thirties. The third son was the only one who got married soon after he came
to his marriageable age, which was normally twenty-three years old.

In the early 1990s, the family built one new house and rebuilt their old house. Not long
after the two houses were built, the eldest son and the youngest son got married, with
each of the brides promised a new house. In the early 1990s, there was still no custom for
a prospective bride to choose a house before the marriage. Thus, the parents did not hand
over the ownership of the two houses to the two married sons. They wanted to keep the
new house for the second son, in hope that it could attract a wife for him. That meant the
family still had to build another house before the family division, so that each of the sons
and their conjugal families could get a house. The two married sons and their wives were
kept together in the extended family for several years, but the family could not save
enough to build another house. Finally, the two daughters-in-law got impatient. They
wanted a family division. But there was only one house to be divided between the eldest
son and the third son. It was really a problem how to divide it fairly. The father finally
decided that whoever could pay 5,000 yuan would get the house and the other party
would get the 5,000 yuan. Whoever got the 5,000 yuan had to build a house for
themselves. It would no longer be the extended family’s responsibility to build a house
for them. This was not a small sum at the time. The eldest son’s wife had some wealthy
relatives. Hearing this, she went back to her natal home and brought the money back on

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the same day. After handing the money to the youngest son and his wife, she and her
husband was given the full ownership of the house.

Since the second son was not yet married, the parents, the youngest son and his wife lived
in the second son’s new house temporarily. In the mid 1990s, the second son finally got
married by exchange marriage. Before the second son was going to get married, the
youngest son and his family moved away. Although the youngest son had already got a
house lot, he still did not have enough money to build the house. Without a place to live
in, he borrowed an empty house from a distant cousin whose family had moved to the
town. The parents continued to stay with the second son and his new wife.

In the mid-1990s, the third son finally had his new house built. Besides this house he
bought another house lot adjacent to his. So now he had a house and an extra house lot.
The parents lived in the second son’s house for several years when the second son
decided to remodel his house in the early 2000s. The parents had to move out temporarily.
They asked the youngest son to let them stay in his house before they could move back to
the second son’s house. Reluctantly, the youngest son and his wife agreed. But after the
second son had his house built, his wife would not let his parents move back again. She
argued that the old couple had three sons, so why they should live only in her house. At
the same time, the third son’s wife tried to drive the old couple out of her house. Since
they had promised to move out as soon as the second son’s house was completed, how
could they break their promise? The eldest son’s wife would not accept the old couple

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either. She had been promised a house but her parents-in-law did not keep their promise.
She had been forced to pay for the house at the family division, even though what she
paid was much less than the value of the house. Her house absolutely belonged only to
her and her family. The old couple should stay with the other two sons who did not pay
for their houses.

The parents were put in a miserable situation. They did not know what to do. Some
people suggested to them that they could build a simple house for themselves, like the
couple mentioned above. Then they would no longer need to worry about being driven
around by the daughters-in-law. Both of them thought it a good idea. But the problem
was where to build that house? They did not have an extra house lot. In the middle of the
village, there was a small piece of land that did not belong to anybody. That became their
first target. Since that piece of land was too small to be used as a regular house lot,
nobody would compete with them for it. They asked the cadres of the village to allow
them to occupy that small lot. The cadres did not object to it. The old couple then went on
to buy bricks and began to prepare for the construction of their small house. But just
when they were going to start the construction, a family whose house was adjacent to that
small lot stopped them. That family said they had been using it as a storage place for a
long time. They would not let the old couple take it.

Frustrated by this failed effort, the old couple had to figure out another solution. Since
they had already bought bricks, which were the most important construction materials,

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they had to find another place where their house could be built. His youngest son’s extra
house lot became their next target. Anyway, that house lot was lying idle.

The father presented this idea to the son, with the promise that the little house would
belong to the son when the old couple passed away in the future. The son agreed. Even
the daughter-in-law did not have any objection. Everyone seemed to be happy with this
settlement. But only several days after reaching this agreement, the daughter-in-law
changed her mind. She told her parents-in-law that she would not like them to build such
a small house on that lot. They had some other use for it. Thus, the second attempt failed
again. Although the daughter-in-law made every effort to drive the parents-in-law out, the
old couple would not move.

The bricks they bought were just piled outside the youngest son’s house. At that time, the
youngest son’s house still did not have a gate, although the major hall and the side rooms
had been built long time before. One day, the son and his wife decided that they should
have their gate built for safety purposes, since there were frequent burglaries happening
in the village. The son asked his father if he could borrow the bricks first and return them
later. The father agreed. The gate was built but the son never again mentioned returning
the bricks. This gave the parents an excuse to stay on in his house. From time to time, the
daughter-in-law still tried to drive her parents-in-law away. But whenever she mentioned
this, the old couple would tell her to return the bricks first. They said they would move
out as soon as they paid back their bricks. The daughter-in-law did not like to pay back

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the bricks. So she had to let the parents-in-law stay on in her house. The other two
daughters-in-law also used this as an excuse to prevent the parents-in-law from moving
into their houses. They argued that since the youngest son used the bricks he should let
his parents live in his house.

Similar stories happened frequently in Song Family Village. Even for those parents who
were allowed to live in the house of their sons, they were at the mercy of their sons and
daughters-in-law. The parents had toiled for decades for the marriage of their sons. The
houses had been built by them. But after their sons’ marriages, they lost the ownership.
The houses belonged to their sons and daughters-in-law. With all their savings spent on
their sons’ marriages, it was impossible for most parents to build another house for
themselves. Lost with the ownership of the houses was their authority and dignity. They
were no longer honored and well respected by their sons and daughters-in-law as
previous generations of parents had been. They became nuisances to their sons and
daughters-in-law, something that they would like to get rid of if they could.

Losing their power and authority, many parents complained about their unfilial sons and
daughters-in-law. In spite of their complaints, no one had any doubt on their obligation to
get their sons married. When I did my fieldwork, I challenged some would-be parents-in-
law with the question of why they had to work so hard for their sons’ marriages when
they knew that their sons and daughters-in-law would not treat them well in the future.
Many of them had never thought about this question. They just knew that if they did not

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help, their sons would not be able to get married. Getting their sons married was their
obligation. Everyone was doing the same thing. They could not envision any alternatives
to that. The irony was that even though the would-be parents-in-law were fully aware of
their miserable life in the future, they were still working hard to make it happen.

5. Conclusion
The retreat of the state from the everyday life of the village as a result of the reform
policy since the 1980s led to economic prosperity in the village. This prosperity and the
market economy gave rise to almost universal pseudodowry marriage. This marriage
practice gradually changed the way family division was conducted. While women were
traditionally kept out of the family division process, the practice of pseudodowry
marriage since the 1980s gave young brides opportunities to play an active part in family
division. That has led to the pre-marriage family division since the 1990s. In this type of
pre-marriage family division, the prospective brides played a dominant role in the family
division of their prospective in-laws. Young brides were empowered by this practice
while parents-in-law lost their power and authority. It is an irony that the retreat of the
state influence in the village led to the empowerment of women.

Yan (2003) has pointed out that during the reform era, marriage transactions empowered
women, contrary to the common view that marriage transactions are oppressive of
women. He rightly pointed out the agency of youth in bringing about this change in the

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power relationship between generations. In my research, I found that parents also played
an important role in making this happen. Without recognizing the agency of parents it
would be hard to understand why this could have happened. Parents would have
maintained a better power position if they had not arranged their sons’ marriages, because
they would be able to keep much of their family properties under their own control. They
could, for example, have let their sons postpone their marriages until they had
accumulated enough funds for themselves. In my research I found that no parents would
take such a strategy. They even never thought of such an alternative. All parents played
active role in their sons’ marriages. They were motivated by the idea that getting their
sons married and have the family line continued was their most important duty in their
life. It is an irony that it was due to the parents’ adherence to the traditional patriarchal
ideology that they lost their patriarchal power. We can say that they were victimized by
their own patriarchal ideology.

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CONCLUSION
STATE, TRADITION AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

In the previous chapters I have observed changes in marriage practices under the
Communist rule as well as the power relationship reflected in these marriage practices.
Although I do not mean to present a complete picture of marriage practices during
decades of the Communist rule, I hope the changes at the critical historical points that I
focused on would reveal the interactions between the tradition of the village community
and the social, political, and economic changes in the outside world. In this concluding
chapter, I will review what I have found in the previous chapters and evaluate theoretical
significance they have in understanding rural changes in the past decades in China.

1. The Socialist State, Marriage Practice and Patriarchy
The state penetration into rural communities in China was unprecedented under Mao
from the late 1940s till the late 1970s. It was the first time in Chinese history when
everyday life in village communities was directly affected by decisions made in Beijing.
Villagers’ relationship with the state went much beyond “farming the land and paying
taxes” (zhong di, na liang),
1
which had been characteristic of the relationship between

1
In imperial China, the relationship between peasants and the imperial state was characterized by “zhong
di, na liang” (farming the land and pay the taxes). The rule of the imperial state only reached down to the
county level. The administration of the local communities was left to lineages and elites. A peasant might
not have any interaction with imperial officials through his life besides paying the taxes.

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peasants and the imperial state in the last two thousand years. Through the war efforts
2

and the land reform, the Communist Party established an effective organizational
structure that guaranteed the implementation of its policy. The Party had in place in every
village party members and cadres who were its supporters and also agents in carrying out
its directives. As beneficiaries of the new power structure under the Communist rule,
these local cadres relied on the Party State for their power and therefore their loyalty to
the Party was reassured.

Facilitated by this organizational structure, the Party State, with a missionary fervor, tried
to restructure the rural communities and transform the traditional way of life in village
communities into one that was modern and “socialist.” For this purpose, the land reform
was carried out before and after the CCP’s victory
3
in the civil war in the late 1940s and
early 1950s in order to abolish the unequal system of land ownership. This was seen as an
indispensable step towards a modern and prosperous China. The collectivization
movement in the mid-1950s aimed at turning rural communities into part of the socialist
society. Villagers were deprived of the freedom to choose their careers and manage their
own time and labor. Farming became their only employment. Confining all rural

2
During both the Anti-Japanese War and the Civil War after it, the Chinese Communist Party was
successful in mobilizing people into its war efforts. During the Anti-Japanese War, the Chinese
Communist Party mobilized Chinese people under its influence into the cause of fighting against the
Japanese invasion. During the Civil War in the late 1940s, the CCP successfully mobilized peasants into a
war against the Nationalist government. The support from the peasants made up for its inferiority in arms
compared to its enemies.

3
During the Civil War in the late 1940s, the CCP carried out land reform in the areas it occupied. In other
areas, land reform was carried out in the early 1950s after the war was over.

356

residents into collectives greatly facilitated the state in controlling the life of rural
residents. This was why the Great Leap Forward and the great famine could have
happened from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. The Cultural Revolution was an effort
of the Party State to influence political life in rural communities. By emphasizing class
struggle, it reduced part of the Chinese population into the status of outcasts in rural
communities.

While carrying out these social, economic and political projects, the Communist Party did
not forget its commitment to family reform and the liberation of women. The first law
promulgated after the founding of the People’s Republic of China was the Marriage Law,
which aimed at abolishing the “feudal” marriage practices that were oppressive of youth
and women. While the powerful state showed its efficiency in restructuring the economy
and politics of rural communities, the effect on family and marriage was not so
impressive.

As we have seen from the previous chapters, the relationship between the penetration of
the state power into rural communities and the changes in family and marriage was much
more complex than many scholars have realized. Feminist scholars (Andors 1983; K. A.
Johnson 1983; Stacey 1983; M. Wolf 1985) emphasized the insufficiency in the changes
brought about by the state while more recent scholars (Diamant 2000a; Yan 1997 and
2003) gave more credit to the state for changes. In spite of their different views, they both
shared the assumption that the result brought about by the powerful state was positive. In

357

other words, family and marriage were getting less patriarchal under the Communist rule,
even though the extent of this change might be insufficient. But changes in marriage
practices during the famine in the early 1960s and the Cultural Revolution showed that
this positive assumption was not always true. Under certain circumstances, the influence
of a powerful state could reinforce patriarchy.

Although many scholars have observed the relationship between family and marriage and
the Communist state, few people have looked at the effect of the Great Leap Forward and
the famine on family and marriage in rural communities in the early 1960s. It did not
catch scholar’s attention probably because this was a very short period and the famine
represented an anomaly in the history of the People’s Republic of China. But just because
of the anomaly, marriage practices during this period could better reveal the dynamics
between the state and rural communities.

The Great Leap Forward represented the high tide of socialism and also the deepest state
penetration into rural communities. The state intended to change not only the economic
structure, but almost every aspect of village life. The state even intended to demolish the
family system so that everyone was under the direct control of the state. In this way,
loyalty could be easily claimed by the state. Women were taken out of the domestic space
and put into the labor force of the people’s commune. Yet, the result of this radical
change was not a prosperous socialist society but a serious famine that cost tens of
millions of lives. In order to survive, parents used their patriarchal power to sell their

358

daughters as brides to whoever could offer them food. Thus, the penetration of the state
into the rural communities reinforced patriarchal power and subjected women to more
patriarchal oppression. This fact showed that the strong presence of state influence in the
rural communities did not necessarily bring about social transformations compatible to
what the state had intended. It sometimes even produced a change contrary to what had
been intended.

The Cultural Revolution was another example of how the strong presence of the state
influence in rural communities affected the practices in marriage and family. The
Cultural Revolution was claimed to be a revolution against anything traditional. Temples
were demolished, the statues of gods and goddesses were destroyed, ancestral scrolls
were burnt and all traditional and “feudal” activities such as ancestral worship were
forbidden. It was an irony that the emphasis on class struggle led to a stratified social
order on the basis of class labels in a “socialist” society, which was supposed to be
characterized by equality among people. The bad class families were put at the bottom of
this social hierarchy. Seen as the enemies of the Communist regime, they became the
targets of the revolution in the village. Even their descendants could not escape
discrimination. The bad class families became untouchables in a socialist society.

This political and social hierarchy was reflected in marriage practices. The discrimination
against bad class families made it hard for the sons of these families to find spouses.
Without any other choice, parents in these families began to use their daughters to

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exchange brides for their sons. In such marriages, the interests of daughters were
sacrificed for the marriage of their brothers. Most girls were not willing at first to accept
such arrangements. But under great pressure from their parents and brothers, most of
them accepted in the end. In such marriages, parents had to use their patriarchal power to
force their daughters to accept such marriage arrangements. We can say that it was due to
the state interference in the political life in village communities that some women were
subject to more patriarchal oppression. Patriarchy in family and marriage was reinforced
by the state penetration into village communities.

The post-Mao reform signified the retreat of the state from the everyday life in the village.
Land was given back to farmers. “Class Struggle” was no longer part of village life. But
the retreat of the state power did not lead to the restoration of patriarchal power, as had
been predicted by some scholars (Croll 1981 for example). As I have discussed in
Chapter Seven, the economic prosperity and the market economy gave rise to the practice
of pseudodowry marriage. This type of marriage enabled young girls to extract monetary
and material gifts from their prospective in-laws. Although these monetary and material
gifts would be taken back to the groom’s family as pseudodowry at the wedding, they
would henceforth be under the control of the newly weds. Parents of the groom would
have little or no control over these assets. At the same time, young brides, through
marriage agreements, began to get more and more involved in the initiation and the
process of family division. While they were traditionally kept out of the family division
process, the marriage agreement, especially the articles on housing, gave them legitimacy

360

for playing an active part in this process. The increasing demand for houses and pseudo-
dowries often resulted in a pre-marriage family division from the mid-1990s on. That is,
prospective brides participated in the family division of their prospective in-laws even at
the time of marriage negotiations. By the time they were married, young brides and their
husbands had already got their shares of the family assets. In this process, parents even
lost control over when and how the family assets that they themselves have accumulated
would be divided. After all the sons of a family were married, the family assets had
already been earmarked among the sons, leaving the parents penniless. The life of the
parents in the old age relied on the tender mercies of their sons and daughters-in-law.
They could no longer exert the patriarchal power that parents of previous generations had
enjoyed through the control of family property and the time of family division. From
these changes we can see that the retreat of the state interference from everyday life in
village communities weakened the patriarchal power of parents.

To summarize, state penetration into village communities sometimes could reinforce the
patriarchal power of parents, while the retreat of the state from village life could weaken
the patriarchal power of parents.

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2. Patriarchy and Habitus: Continuity and Changes

Patriarchy in family and marriage was embodied as habitus of villagers through their
experience of the institutions, rituals and events in the village. The lineage organization
inculcated into villagers a hierarchical social order based on gender and seniority. The
young and female were supposed to be obedient to the male and elders. The annual
ancestral worship reminded them of this social order from year to year. Family life and
marriage practice carved deep in their minds the core of this patriarchal social order:
perpetuation of the patrilineal family line. For this, parents were supposed to try their best
to make sure that their sons could get married.

Song Family Village experienced dramatic changes in the past decades. The land reform
evened out wealth in the village. The collectivization movement demolished a peasant
economy based on private ownership of land. A social order stratified on the basis of
class labels was deeply entrenched during the Cultural Revolution. Dramatic as these
changes were, the necessity to perpetuate the patrilineal family line never changed for
villagers. They held on to this ideology both for moral and practical reasons. Living in
the village, all parents were under peer pressure to fulfill this moral duty. Those parents
who could not fulfill this moral duty were often looked down upon. For practical
purposes, only by getting their sons married could they make sure that their sons would
have children to rely on for elderly support when their sons were old. Supporting the
elderly was still a family matter in spite of the dramatic changes under the Communist

362

rule. Getting married and raising a family was an indispensable measure to ensure
support of the elderly for everyone in the village. The miserable life and death of the
bachelors in the village reminded parents that if they were concerned about their sons’
welfare, they should get them married so that they would avoid such a miserable fate in
the future.

Even the radical policy during the Great Leap Forward did not bring about much change
in people’s idea of family and marriage in the village. The state tried to weaken the role
of family. Family was no longer a productive unit. For a short time, it was not even a
consumption unit. But these radical changes only lasted for a very short time before they
were proved to be impractical. Such a short time was not enough to change people’s ideas
about family and marriage. When the famine struck, we could see that people’s practice
was still following traditional patterns. Daughters, instead of sons, were first sold to save
the whole family, because sons were wedded at home to continue their family lines. By
the same token, parents in families with food hurried to take advantage of this
opportunity and use their extra food to purchase brides for their sons. Motivated by their
traditional ideal of getting their sons married and continuing their family lines, they were
active agents in such marriage transactions. The opportunities provided by the famine
enabled them to turn such an ideal into practice. In such a desperate situation as famine,
children had no one else to rely on but their parents. As a result, parents had more power
and control over their children. In such situations, patriarchy became more entrenched.

363

The traditional ideology of perpetuating the patrilineal line was also reflected in the
practice of exchange marriage during the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution,
though claimed to be a revolution against anything traditional, did not cause much change
in people’s ideas about family and marriage in the village. People were still trying to get
their sons married by every means. Parents of bad class families were no exception, even
though political discrimination made it very hard for them to fulfill this task. To
overcome this difficulty, they showed their agency by adopting tactics of exchange
marriage, a type of marriage that had never existed in the village before and was normally
seen as disgraceful. Treated as enemies of the state, the bad class families suffered from
discrimination and were isolated in the community. Marriage opportunities for children in
these families were severely limited. Especially for sons, relying on their parents was the
only way to get married. Even for girls, political discrimination made them more
dependent on their family. This situation made it possible and necessary for parents to
exert their patriarchal power to realize their traditional ideals of family and marriage.
Motivated by their traditional idea of the perpetuation of the family line, they forced their
children into exchange marriages. Such a marriage practice was made possible by the
joint forces of the persisting habitus of villagers in matters of marriage and family and the
political situation brought about by the Party State’s emphasis on class struggle. In this
new practice, the patriarchal power of parents was reinforced and young girls became
victims of this reinforced patriarchy. For some good class families that adopted exchange
marriage, it was poverty, instead of political discrimination, that made such practice
possible and necessary. Like political discrimination, poverty also limited the marriage

364

opportunities of children in these families. It made them rely more on their parents for
their marriages. Thus, it was possible and necessary for parents to exert their patriarchal
power over their children in arranging their marriages. To summarize, the practice of
exchange marriage showed that parents did not passively react to social, economic and
political changes. In fact, they were active agents in realizing their ideology of marriage
and family in the new social, economic and political environment.

During the post-Mao reform, we can also see the continuation of the traditional ideas of
marriage and family. Parents still saw the continuation of their patrilineal family line and
the marriage of sons as their most important duty. With “class struggle” no longer part of
village life, with a market economy in place and particularly with the new prosperity,
parents had to compete on the marriage market for brides to consummate their sons’
marriages. This competition gave young girls chances to extract properties from the
parents of their perspective grooms. It led to ever-increasing demands for increased
betrothal gifts and housing. Parents of perspective grooms had to accept the demands of
the prospective brides before any marriage could be concluded. But parents were not
passive recipients of these changes. In fact, they played an active part in bringing about
these changes. They assessed their own capital, such as wealth, reputation, etc and made
decisions about what offer they needed to give in order to attract brides for their sons.
The increasing pseudodowry and housing demand were the result of offers and counter
offers in numerous marriage negotiations.

365

Marriage negotiation eventually became a family division process. The terms of marriage
contracts specified which parts of the family asset the new couples should get. In this way,
a family was divided even before the sons got married; the parents thus lost control over
family assets. It was the agency of parents in getting their sons married that led to these
changes, even though the result of these changes was their own dispossession and loss of
wealth and power. The dispossession of parents due to their sons’ marriages changed the
power relationship between the older generation and the younger generation. That
inevitably brought about changes in parents’ habitus about the relationship between
generations, even though they might not change their ideas about the fundamental
necessity to get their sons married.

During the post-Mao era, patriarchal ideology could no longer bring parents the
patriarchal power that they once enjoyed. Instead, it facilitated the disempowerment of
parents. It was just because of their adherence to the patriarchal ideology of perpetuating
their patrilineal family line that parents had to work so hard to accumulate wealth that
could attract brides for their sons. It was just this ideology that subjected them to the
brides’ demands for pseudodowries and new housing. The result was their loss of all the
family properties to their sons and daughters-in-law. Together with the loss of properties
was their loss of the parental power. We can say that patriarchs were disempowered and
victimized by their own patriarchal ideology.

366

Thus, there were both continuity and changes in the field of family and marriage during
the decades of the Communist rule. The most obvious changes were different marriage
practices in different periods as a result of the interaction between the social environment
and the habitus in the fields of family and marriage shared by the community. In spite of
the dramatic social, political, and economic changes imposed by the Party State on the
local community, the core of such a habitus, the necessity to perpetuate the patrilineal
family line had never changed.

The village community played an essential role in perpetuating the habitus in family and
marriage. In spite of the dramatic changes, the community as whole was intact during the
decades of the Communist rule. In fact, the household registration system that classified
all Chinese into rural and urban residents made population exchange between the village
and the outside world very difficult. Villagers were permanently constrained within their
own village. With people sharing the similar habitus living side by side, they were rarely
exposed to any alternative views of family and marriage. Even though the state promoted
freedom of marriage and downplayed the patriarchal power of parents, there was no
moral support for those changes in the village community. Adopting what the state
promoted meant violating the social norm that the community upheld. Confined within
the community, the violators would have no way to escape from the moral sanctions of
fellow villagers. In a certain sense, we can say that the Communist Party, by adopting a
strict household registration policy, helped to uphold patriarchal ideology within village
communities.

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3. The Tradition and Social Transformation
One challenge that China has been facing in the past decades and will continue to face in
the future is how to incorporate her large rural population into the globalization process.
With the majority of her population still living in rural communities, the success and
failure of China on her road to modernization and prosperity lies in how successfully this
challenge is dealt with. The Communist Party in the first thirty years of the People’s
Republic of China attempted to initiate a wholesale change in rural communities.
Adopting the Soviet model of socialism, armed with the Marxist theory of class struggle
and encouraged by its success in war times, the Communist Party was determined to
replace the traditional social order with a completely new socialist society. The tradition
of rural communities was seen as “feudal” and backward and thus was suppressed or
even abolished. This effort was effective in some aspects but not in others. As we have
seen, these dramatic changes did not produce a wealthy and prosperous society.

The Party State, with its overwhelming power, once enjoyed some success in suppressing
the traditional institution and customs. Ancestral worship was forbidden, ancestral scrolls
were burnt, and a peasant economy based on private ownership of land was replaced with
the collective ownership of land. Yet, the traditional values still existed in people’s minds.
It was embodied as part of the habitus of villagers. That was hard to eliminate in spite of
the power and efforts of the state.

368

Rural residents were not just passive recipients of changes initiated by the state. They
were active agents of change. Motivated by the embodied tradition (habitus), they
actively confronted the social, economic and political changes imposed from the outside
on the local communities, and adopted practices that could overcome the difficulty posed
by such changes in order to conform to the tradition. Sweet potato marriages, exchange
marriages and pseudodowry marriages were the products of such an encounter between
the embodied tradition and the changed social environment. Due to the mediation of the
embodied tradition (habitus), the radical policy adopted by the state did not necessarily
produce results that had been intended. Unintended consequences were very common as
a result of the interactions between the tradition and the social, political, and economic
changes imposed from the outside. Sweet potatoes marriage and exchange marriage were
both examples of such unintended consequences. These marriage practices reinforced
traditional patriarchal power of parents, contrary to what the state had hoped to see.

It was only after the state relented its radical policy that some aspects of the tradition of
the local community were gradually eroded: parents gradually lost their traditional power
and authority; young people got more freedom; women became more powerful in the
family. One important cause for these changes was the relatively liberal social, economic
and political environment as a result of the post-Mao reform. People were more exposed
to the outside world and more economic opportunities were available. The latter was
especially important to women. With many employment opportunities available, they

369

became less dependent on their parents, husbands and in-laws. This gave them more
bargaining power in marriage and family relationships.

From what happened in Song Family Village in the past decades we can see that it is
never possible to change rural communities overnight. Radical policies might bring about
changes. But these changes might not be what had been intended. The core traditions
would not disappear overnight. The institutions and behavioral customs might be easy to
forbid, but the embodied tradition—the habitus—would still be working inside the
villagers. Any change imposed from the outside on a local community would be mediated
by the embodied tradition (habitus) of local residents. As a result, practice in the local
community was always the product of the combined interactive work of the internal
tradition and the forces imposed from the outside. Changes in the local communities
could never cut it off completely from their received traditions. What happened after the
Cultural Revolution showed that liberal social, political, and economic environment had
worked much better than a radical policy in bringing about gradual but lasting changes
that transformed the local community.

370

GLOSSARY

baozi 包子
Beijing 北京
Bohai 渤海
bu xiao you san, wu hou wei da 不孝有三，无后为大
Chen Duxiu 陈独秀
chuji she 初级社
Cishan 磁山
cunmin xiaozu 村民小组
Deng Xiaoping 邓小平
duo lao duo de 多劳多得
fenkai chifan 分开吃饭
fu bu guo san dai 富不过三代
Fujian 福建
fumu zhi ming 父母之命
gaoji she 高级社
gaoliang 高粱
gouqi 枸杞
guangdong 广东
Guinü shi peiqian huo, xiaozi shi chaihuo duo 闺女是赔钱货，小子是柴火垛
Guomingdang 国民党
han yi nong sun 含饴弄孙
Handan 邯郸
he xi: 喝喜
Hebei 河北
Hu Shi 胡适

371

huanqin 换亲
hudie bei 蝴蝶碑
hudie fei 蝴蝶飞
huzhu zu 互助组
jia ji sui ji, jia gou sui gou 嫁鸡随鸡,嫁狗随狗
Jiang Qing 江青
Jiangxi 江西
jie fu 节妇
Jing Gao Qingnian 敬告青年
jin 斤
Julu Xian Zhi 巨鹿县志
Julu 巨鹿
Kang Youwei 康有为
Kuangtung 广东
Lanzhou 兰州
Li Dazhao 李大钊
Liang Qichao 梁启超
Lin Biao 林彪
Liu Hulan 刘胡兰
Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇
Lu Xun 鲁迅
mai guinü 卖闺女
Mao Zedong 毛泽东
meishuo zhi yan 媒妁之言
men dang hu dui 门当户对
Ming 明
mu 亩
nan da dang hun, nü da dang jia 男大当婚女大当嫁

372

Nanjing 南京
po si jiu 破四旧
Qingming 清明
Qingnian Zazhi 青年杂志
Qing 清
qun yun 群运
Ruijin 瑞金
san cong si di 三从四德
san gang wu chang 三纲五常
shang men nüxu 上门女婿
Shandong 山东
Shantung 山东
Shanxi 山西
sheng bu jian ren, si bu jian gu 生不见人，死不见骨
Shijiazhuang 石家庄
Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙
Taihang 太行
tianxia wu bu shi de fumu 天下无不是的父母
tong yang xi 童养媳
Tongzhi 同治
wu fu 五服
Xiaolüzhai 小吕寨
xiaoniao chi changchong 小鸟吃长虫
xiaoniao ju chaozhong 小鸟居巢中
Xin Qingnian 新青年
Xingtai 邢台
xixue 西学
yang guizi 洋鬼子

373

yi da, er gong 一大，二公
yinhua 银花
Yongle 永乐
zhang you you xu, nan nü you bie 长幼有序，男女有别
yuan: 元
Yuan 元(dynasty)
zaofan pai 造反派
zhong di, na liang 种地，纳粮
zhuan qi 转亲
ziji jia de 自己家的
ziliudi 自留地

374

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Creator Song, Zhifang (author)

Core Title Flow into eternity: patriarchy, marriage and socialism in a north China village

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Anthropology

Degree Conferral Date 2008-12

Publication Date 11/11/2008

Defense Date 05/01/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag cultual revolution,exchange marriage,great leap forward,marriage,OAI-PMH Harvest,patriarchy,reform,socialism,sweet potato marriage

Place Name China (countries), Song Family Village (city or populated place)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seaman, Gary (committee chair), Cooper, Eugene (committee member), Wills, John E. (committee member)

Creator Email zhifangs@hotmail.com,zhifangs@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1765

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