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Adjusting the bonds of love: parenting, expertise and social change in a Chinese city

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ADJUSTING THE BONDS OF LOVE:
PARENTING, EXPERTISE AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN A CHINESE CITY

by
Teresa Kuan
________________________________________________________________________

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 Teresa Kuan

ii
Epigraph

In the contemporary family the personal projects of individuals to live a good life,
to infuse their actions and choices with meaning and pleasure, to realize their
ambitions, and to give their existence a transcendental purpose in the face of
certain death have become linked to social obligations for the continual
reproduction and rearing of adequate numbers of healthy and well-adjusted
children.
--Nikolas Rose

iii
Dedication

To my parents.
iv
Acknowledgements
Dissertation research and writing was made possible by the U.S. Department of
Education Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Awards
provided by the USC East Asian Studies Center, and by the College Graduate Merit
Award provided by the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences. Conference travel was
supported with grants provided by the USC U.S.-China Institute and the Graduate and
Professional Student Senate. I am grateful for the support of these awards. I thank Jean
Hung and the entire staff at The Universities Service Centre for China Studies at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong for always providing a comfortable and warm research
environment.
The seeds for this dissertation were first planted in 1999 when Jean Hung
introduced me to the late Professor Wang Zhusheng, who then invited me to teach a
course in ethnographic film history at Yunnan University. I am deeply indebted to
Professor Wang, and to Yang Hui, who sponsored my research, made important
introductions, and embraced me like a daughter. She is a passionate scholar and
extraordinarily caring of her students. Without her help and kindness, none of this would
have been possible.
Friends in Kunming always enlivened the sometimes lonely enterprise of doing
urban fieldwork. I’m grateful to Jay Brown, He Jiangyu, Elizabeth Remick, Mike Xu,
Yang Kun, Yang Yuyu, Yu Ming, Yu Tao, and Yuan Jianwei – all amazingly creative,
smart, witty, funny, and insightful people. Amy and Mathew Kohrman threw some of the
best parties in town. I am ever grateful for their warmth and generosity. I most especially
v
thank Stefan and Sylvia Kratz for inviting me to live with them in 2006. Our time
together make up some of my fondest memories of Kunming.
I’m grateful for the many years of love and support from my high school and
college girlfriends: you know who you are! A number of graduate school friends have
shaped my intellectual growth. They include Erica Angert, Jenny Cool, Tricia Gilson,
Courtney Everts Mykytyn and Zhifang Song. I especially thank Steven Rousso-Schindler
for all the practical advice, and for his enthusiasm for intellectual discovery. I’m grateful
for all the conversations I’ve had with Arianne Gaetano, who has inspired me in more
ways than she knows. Melissa Park read many of the chapters here. She taught me the art
of seeing the world in a grain of sand, though I doubt I will ever be able to do it as well as
she.
Many thanks to the members of my “dissertation writing group” – Jason Ingersoll,
Lili Lai, and John Osburg – for all their detailed feedback, and for encouraging me to stay
in the group when I thought I wouldn’t have time. Thank you to Lone Grøn, a long-time
reader and supporter. She believed in my work long before I did. Thanks to Stan Rosen
for always answering, in great detail, my many e-mailed questions. Ha! I made you an
advisor whether you liked it or not.
I would like to thank Dennis Miranda, especially for providing A/V on the day of
my defense at a moment’s notice, and Rita Jones, for ensuring that I made it to the finish
line without a hitch. Thanks to John W. Chang for help me with language related
questions. I’m also very grateful to have the additional support of Janet Hoskins and
Craig Stanford in my job search.
vi
This dissertation was written under the guidance of Charlotte Furth, Gene Cooper,
and Cheryl Mattingly, committee chair, for which I feel tremendously blessed. Based on
a meticulous reading of my chapters, Charlotte asked a slew of questions and provided
extensive critique. She got me to think more historically, to root myself more empirically,
and to have more sensitivity to indigenous philosophies. She has been an incredibly
thoughtful mentor throughout. Gene Cooper has supported me in many ways, and was
instrumental in helping me get through the IRB. I could always count on him to turn
things around quickly, be it a letter of support or feedback on a draft. But most
importantly, his demand for clearly articulated, jargon-free arguments, his encouragement
that I familiarize myself with “primeval slime,” has made me a better scholar and writer.
Cheryl Mattingly’s theoretical point of view has inspired and sustained me throughout
my graduate career. She taught me the very important lesson that good anthropology
ought to come from the heart, and it ought to take people seriously. She let me drag her
through my writing process, and always balanced critical feedback with warmhearted
encouragement. Her influence can be seen throughout these pages.
Words cannot express my gratitude to the many teachers and parents I worked
with in Kunming. I thank Yu Ming for introducing me to a certain primary school –
where I got most immersed, as well as the teacher I was paired with. I also thank all the
other teachers, administrators, psychiatrists, psychological counselors, et cetera, who
talked to me and offered further introductions. I thank Wang Lingling for making time
for me, and for inviting me to her lectures. And I thank Zhou Ting, for allowing me to
vii
follow her so closely. She has inspired me to be a better person. I especially thank all the
parents who, already so busy, welcomed me into their lives.
Finally, this journey has been nourished with the love of my nearest and dearest –
Bernie and Agnes, whose generosities helped take the edge off graduate student poverty.
My grandma nourished me both literally and figuratively. I always looked forward to our
Sunday nights together, may she rest in peace. Andrew Gura put up with long periods of
absence, and coached me throughout this entire process. His patience, humor,
constructive criticism, and love – it keeps maturing but never gets old – deserve much
more than what I can express with these words. I dedicate this dissertation to my parents,
whose love never needed adjustment.

viii
Table of Contents

Dedication iii

Acknowledgements iv

Abstract x

Preface xi

Introduction: The Child, the State, and the Suzhi Jiaoyu Reforms 1
The Social Invention of Childhood 4
Childhood in Modern China 11
The Concept of Human Quality 17
Suzhi Jiaoyu or, Education for Quality 19
The State Perspective 21
The Popular Experts’ Perspective 29
The Perspective of Parents 42
“Governing By Inaction” 51
Biopolitics 53
Governmentality, liberalism and neoliberalism 56
The Chapters 68

Chapter 1: The Setting 71
The Gendering of Parental Responsibility 80
The Family Constellation 85

Chapter 2: Practical Exigencies and the Burden of Learning 87
School Selection Fever 90
Surviving the Competition 99
Disappearance of Childhood? 105

Chapter 3: The Horrific and the Exemplary 112
Modeling for the 21
st
Century 114
Good Student Kills Mother 117
Perspective by incongruity 121
Moral coding and diagnosing 127
Inverting Disability 133
Battling Fate 135
Naturalizing Potential 141
Conclusion 148

Chapter 4: “The heart says one thing but the hand does another” 150
“Good mother, don’t worry, take it easy!” 154
ix
Case 1: The heart says one thing but the hand does another 161
Case 2: It’s clearly a situation you should be angry about 165
Case 3: Sometimes you’re left with no other choice 168
The Rule of Emotional Management 171
The Intelligence of Ambivalence 178
Conclusion 188

Chapter 5: Creating and Providing “Conditions” 189
Creating and Providing Tiaojian 196
On Regret 200
Case 1: I’m trying my best 203
Case 2: You can’t let your teacher have anything to say about you 214
Case 3: She’s getting better now, slicker 219
What is at stake here? 226

Chapter 6: Investing in Human Capital, Conserving the Life Energies 239
The Family Replaces the Commune as a Production Unit 243
Two people are in a forest, here comes a tiger 253
Two Genres for Managing Uncertainty 261
The Pragmatic Value of Metaphor 265
Children and Economic Value 268
Conclusion 272

Chapter 7: “Read ten thousand books, walk ten thousand miles” 274
Return to Nature 277
Educating the Emotions 284
Sensory Experience and Moral Development 287
The Beijing Trip 291
Back in Kunming, an epilogue of sorts 301
Conclusion 305

Conclusion 309

Glossary 316

References 322

x
Abstract

“Adjusting the Bonds of Love: Parenting, Expertise and Social Change in a
Chinese City” examines the intersection between popular advice for parents and the lived
experience of raising a child in urban China. Popular advice for raising high quality
children has been widely available since the implementation of the one-child policy at the
beginning of the 1980s. Disseminated through state and commercial channels, advice
focused on topics such as nutrition, childcare, how to rear intelligence, and so on. At the
turn of the 21
st
century however, we see a shift in focus from advice on educating
children to advice that educated parental emotions and conduct. I consider this shift in
relation to the suzhi jiaoyu movement, to changing political reason, and discuss how such
advice gets taken up in the context of everyday life.

xi
Preface
On the seventh floor of an office building north of Green Lake, above a
cacophony of honking buses and cars, Zhou Ting holds her mother education class
(muqin jiaoyu ketang) for a group of women, mostly in their 30s. It is Saturday, just a few
minutes past 7:00 p.m. People trickle in wearing the required blue shoe covers available
at the front door. Tonight Zhou will pick up from where the group left off last time and
read from the chapter “Understanding the meaning of ‘love,’” from Helen Keller’s
autobiography. She explains to the new members in the room that this class will teach
mothers how to raise children (jiaoyu haizi), and the book, is something they can put to
immediate use as soon as they get home. Zhou announces, “There isn’t anything in here
that is too theoretical,” reassuring her students that the science of good parenting as
contained in Keller’s personal narrative will be accessible to everyone.
That parenting constitutes a scientific enterprise – an undertaking that ought to be
guided by expert knowledge – is an idea that emerged (though not for the first time) with
the politicization of childhood in post-Mao China. In the 1980s implementation of the
one-child policy went hand in hand with a eugenics campaign, yousheng youyu or
“excellent births, excellent rearing.” Various state organs such as the Ministry of Family
Planning and the Women’s Federation took an active role in disseminating “scientific”
methods of childrearing, simultaneously promoting an otherwise hard to accept policy as
both good for the nation and good for childrearing. With fewer children, the propaganda
promised, parents could concentrate their resources toward the production of a single,
high quality child. Popular advice circulated under the banner of science, and commonly
xii
discussed how to rear intelligence, ensure optimal nutrition, resolve practical issues such
as how much pocket money to give, etc.
On this Saturday night in 2004 however, this local expert will not discuss
intelligence or nutrition, but rather, love. Like many other popular experts in China at the
turn of the 21
st
century, Zhou does not stop at giving how-to advice; what she
disseminates in her classroom enjoins mothers to attend not only to the inner life of the
child but also to the kind of inner work mothers ought to do. This is advice that concerns
reflexive parenting, and it begins with the assumption that all Chinese parents love their
child, yet, they do not know how to love their child. Becoming a good parent entails
adjusting one’s own attitudes and practices so as to avoid causing harm to a child.
Tonight’s reading will especially help the class think through what it means to love. “Is it
teaching a child how to address mom and dad? How to address relatives?” she asks
before going into the text. “Is this what you call love? Will the child know how to love
from that?” To illustrate the idea that love is not a simple thing, Zhou launches into a
story about a young Confucius:
His teacher gave him a piece of music to learn. After some time, he
played the instrument for his teacher and the teacher said, “Confucius, you can
already play very well (tan de hen shuxi). You can learn something else now.”
But Confucius said, “No teacher. I do know the music. But I don’t really know the
technique (jiqiao) of this piece.” So the teacher respected that and said, “Why
don’t you come back in 10 days.”
Confucius returned 10 days later and the teacher said the same thing to
him. “I can hear that you’ve now grasped the technique of this piece. You can
learn a new one now.” Confucius said no. “I feel like I’m still unclear on the
purpose of this piece, what it is trying to express exactly. Yes I know the content
(neirong) now. And I know the technique. But I’m not clear on the purpose. Why
did the author compose this piece? Under what kind of circumstance (qingkuang)
did the author compose this piece, I’m not clear.” So the teacher gave him another
10 days.
xiii
After another 10 days his teacher said to him, “You are already really
excellent now. You have grasped the content, the technique, and the purpose. You
can learn a new piece now.” At this time, Confucius said, “Teacher, please
forgive me. To this point I still do not understand the person who composed this
piece. I’m very clear on his purpose now. But, why is it that another person in the
same circumstance would not have written this same piece? Why is it only this
particular kind of talent (rencai) that could compose a piece with this purpose?”
So he goes back and starts to play again. Within another 10 days
something suddenly happened. The expression on his face changed. He
completely forgot himself as he played; completely forgot that he was playing an
instrument. He played and played without stopping. And in the middle of playing
a person suddenly appeared in his mind (naohai li), as if standing right in front of
him. The complexion of this person was dark (aohei); his stature imposing. Very
much carried the air of a king! Wide breadth of mind. Everything he said pointed
to lordship. It was at this time that Confucius realized, this person was a king. The
piece was composed by a king in such a given circumstance.
Later he met with his teacher and told him about this whole process, how
he came to understand (tiyan) this composer. His teacher fell to his knees and
said, “Aiya, you are really my teacher. I teach music after all, and I have never
gotten this far. I only know that when I was learning this piece I asked my teacher
then, who is the author of this piece?” It was the father of the first Zhou king
(Wen Wang), the person who appeared before Confucius in the form of an
apparition.

At the end of the story, Zhou again poses a series of rhetorical questions: “Is love
putting good food on the table everyday? Giving you good clothes to wear? Giving you
whatever it is that you want?” These questions are meant to draw a link between love that
stops at material satisfaction and rearing proper manners with only knowing the content
of a musical piece. Turns out there are differing levels of mother-love, just as there are
differing levels of spiritual involvement in a given activity. A parent could stop at the
first level, or the second or the third, or go directly to the fourth.
The kind of fourth-level love that Zhou Ting has in mind would be hard for many
parents to exercise. Fourth-level love does not come easy, in fact, it may even seem
contrary to folk notions about good parenting. Later, that same Saturday night, Zhou tells
xiv
an exemplary story about two parents who drove their 13 year-old son out to a remote
village. They told him to find a meal on his own, and then abandoned him. Did these
parents not love their son? To the contrary, Zhou assures her class. They were, in fact,
tremendously worried that their son had no sense of self, that he was too introverted and
stifled (yayi). They worried that the junior middle school he was going to attend the
following semester would only intensify these qualities given the enormous size of its
classrooms. Giving their son this lesson in self-sufficiency, Zhou claims, actually helped
him. This would be an example of fourth-level love.
Some parents don’t know how to love at all. In fact, Zhou suggests to the women
gathered in front of her, some forms of mother-love (mu’ai) actually constitute mother-
harm (muhai). She tells them, “Mother-love is not the same! All mothers love [their
children]. This kind of love naturally falls on your head (jianglin zai ni tou shang). But,
some [forms] of mother-love is naturally mother-harm.” Coddling is one example, as
when soothing a child after she or he has fallen on the ground, “Sweetheart, did you hurt
yourself, let mommy have a look.”
1
The tendency to do for a child is another, as when a
mother says to a child who is having trouble with something, “Oh just bring it over here
and I’ll do it for you.” This kind of parenting is harmful because it “obliterates the
process by which children develop understanding (wuxing).”
2

1
This is an example experts commonly invoke, often in comparison with American parents. According to a
psychologist I interviewed, ‘American parents will just say, “no big deal, doesn’t hurt, get up,” whereas
Chinese parents will say, “sweetheart, come here,” like if the child bumps his or her head against a table,
Chinese parents will start scolding at the table, “bad table, you hurt our precious,” and then they’ll spank
the table.’

2
Many commentators in the 1980s and 1990s lamented over the spoiled single child, children who were
doted on and college students who never learned to do their own laundry let alone peel a hard-boiled egg. I
xv
For Zhou Ting, highly cultivated mother-love is love that does not intervene. In
her class, Zhou presents Annie Sullivan as someone to learn from, because in Zhou’s
opinion a mother is a child’s most important teacher. Following a passage from the
chapter “Understanding the meaning of ‘love’” where Keller describes trouble with
stringing different size beads according to a desired pattern, Zhou points out that not only
did Sullivan not lose her temper (fahuo), she patiently stood off to the side. “How many
of you,” Zhou asks her students rhetorically, “would think to let a child work at
something when the child has yet to figure it out?” Rather than tell the child what to do,
or worse off, do for the child, a good domestic teacher teaches by letting a child do for
oneself – something Chinese parents are supposedly incapable of. For this reason,
Chinese parent are advised to work on themselves first.

The title of my dissertation is borrowed from a chapter in Nikolas Rose’s
Governing the Soul (1990), in which he examines the guidance of parental conduct by
popular expertise, as channeled through radio talk shows and child care manuals, as a
form of “government.” He calls that chapter “Adjusting the Bonds of Love,” which I

think these observations are part moral panic, and partly rooted in cultural patterns of care that have
intensified under the one-child policy. The extent to which Chinese parents will do for a child was brought
home to me when I told an informant-friend about an Los Angeles Times article I had read. The article
described an urban park where parents of single adult children sat with placards advertising their child’s
background in an attempt to find a marriage partner for their child. I reported on the article to an informant-
friend, as if this was just the most novel thing I have ever read. But she was not in the least bit surprised.
One author describes Chinese parenting with a good sense of humor in saying, “Chinese parents
are probably the busiest parents in the world. When your kids are young, you have to take care of their
eating, wearing, sleeping, studying, and health. When they’re older, you also have to help them register for
college, take the entrance exam, then their studying in college. After they graduate from high school and
have a job, you also have to find a partner, date, marry, and then take care of a grandchild……”(Huang
2001:62).

xvi
think is a perfect way of characterizing what popular experts in China were doing around
the time I conducted fieldwork in the mid-2000s. The education of children is, according
to many Chinese people, a very “hot issue” that concerns national fate. Zhou Ting is only
one amongst many parent educators, local to Kunming really, who is suggesting that
Chinese parents are doing something wrong, and must adjust the way they love and care
for their child. Her Saturday night “Mother Education Class” represents only one
amongst many channels through which urban Chinese parents receive information on
how to raise a child “correctly.”
Currently, popular advice teaches parents to promote a certain kind of subjectivity
in children (cf. Rose 1990:156). Rather than lecturing, scolding and hitting, the experts
argue, a good parent enables a child to become independent and self-sufficient. A good
parent promotes self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence, all necessary components
of becoming a high “quality” person. In a culture that has long extolled the virtue of
modesty (qianxu), this is not an insignificant shift.
Popular advice for parents is part of a broad education reform movement that
aims to revitalize the nation by raising overall population “quality.” Suzhi jiaoyu gaige,
or the Education for Quality reform, aims to cultivate well-rounded talents with creativity
and practical skill. The reform is supposed to take place in all spheres of education – the
school, society, and the family, and it calls for a reorientation in educational style,
content, and method. Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic research in Kunming, I will
describe the kind of stakes that are involved in educating a child in urban China at the
dawn of the 21
st
century. These stakes are both political and personal, as the national
xvii
project of fostering strong citizens dovetails with parental ambitions for an ideal child.
For the nation-state, they are high because the hope of a better future as embodied by “the
child” is imagined against a background narrative that begins with the Opium War.
3
For
parents the stakes are high because they only have one child, who they must prepare for a
society they characterize in terms of both expanding possibilities and intensifying
uncertainty. Sensing the pressure of population size, while facing the commercialization
of education, the marketization of society, and an incorrigible examination system, many
urban parents feel that the “survival” of their child is rather fragile.
In this dissertation, I will draw from different kinds of data – state policies, public
discourse, popular advice, ethnographic fieldnotes and interviews – to illuminate how the
“macro” and the “micro” intersect. I especially juxtapose popular texts with ethnographic
cases to show how discourse plays an important role in everyday life. Popular advice
offered the parents I knew some direction in how to act as a parent. Some eagerly
consume the advice, because they figure that the society they now live in is nothing like
the one they grew up in. But competitive pressures and practical issues such as scoring
above a particular school’s admission line and ensuring future chances for a respectable
job in an increasingly hierarchical society contradict the advice genre’s insistence on
pressuring a child less and promoting happiness more. Consequently, contradictory social
demands are lived out and balanced in very personal ways. Surely state-directed

3
To give an example, a book on curriculum reform justifies the present curriculum reform in this way:
‘China is an ancient civilization with a long history. It has made an indelible, universally recognized
contribution to the development of human civilization. Even so, since the beginning of the Opium War in
1840, the development of our country has fallen behind that of the developed Western nations due to
various kinds of complicated reasons. To a developing nation like ours, this curriculum reform has a deep
meaning for the revitalization of the Chinese race (zhonghua minzu)”(Zhu 2002:5-6). This quote is taken
from a book a school principal recommended to me as very important in 2004.
xviii
campaigns, the seduction of the popular advice, socioeconomic forces, and historically-
rooted norms shape parental wishes and desires in important ways. But ultimately, it is
the individual parent or parents who must figure out how to negotiate conflicting
demands amid real world contingencies.
1
Introduction: The Child, the State, and the Suzhi Jiaoyu Reforms
In 2006, astronaut and national hero Yang Liwei visited Kunming as part of an
aerospace exhibition displaying a number of relics from the Shenzhou space mission. Li
Shengchun, an 11 year-old I knew, went with his father even though the ticket price was
a hefty 120 RMB for two people. He even got to meet Yang Liwei in person. Later that
night, when Li Shengchun went to his extra-curricular English class, he was the only
student in the class who had something interesting to report about his day. His classmates
were just incredulous, “Mai! Really? You really saw Yang Liwei?” Li Shengchun was
very proud of himself. According to Li Shengchun’s mother, she and her husband are
more than willing to spend this kind of money. “He had something to talk about (you
huati le),” she explained, “If there’s something, these kinds of things, if it’s more,
something bigger, something that’s very attractive (xiyin ren), we will let him go and
participate (canjia), let him go and see. Make it so that he’s not the kind of person that
doesn’t know what other people are talking about.”
The choice Li Shengchun’s mother makes – to spend a lot of money on a cultural
activity – can be interpreted in two ways. If we follow, say, Pierre Bourdieu, we could
argue that she has strategically deployed family resources, converting economic capital
into embodied cultural capital, which will give her son “something to talk about”
amongst his peers. This kind of calculation serves to effect or reinforce the
socioeconomic disparities that plague post-Mao China. If we take a more “person-
centered” perspective, one that attends to this mother’s concerns seriously (Hollan 2001;
Mattingly N.d.), we will begin to see that spending this kind of money is less about being
2
more sophisticated than the next person. Rather, offering a child the opportunity to see
and “participate” in something like an aerospace exhibition helps to ensure that one’s
own child is not the one left behind.
For parents like Li Shengchun’s mother, there is one central question that informs
the work of parenting: in the future, will there be a place for my child in society? What
do I have to do, to ensure that social competition does not unfairly “eliminate” my child?
What can I control, and what is outside of my control? In addition to these questions, Li
Shengchun’s mother holds many other concerns in her mind, ones that are less directed
toward the broader horizons of society and the future than her son’s inner life. If I don’t
sign Li Shengchun’s homework tonight, for he violated my rule that he finish by dinner
time, will his teacher scold him and cause him to lose his “self-respect”(zizun xin) in the
face of his classmates? And what about his status in the classroom? If only he could
“show”(biaoxian) himself a little more, let his peers and teacher know about his “special
qualities”(tedian), for example, the fact that he’s good at calligraphy, maybe his teacher
will pay more attention to him. Meanwhile, I ought to work on my own patience a little
more, scold less, and be the kind of parent popular experts advise me to be. Trying a
more liberal kind of parenting method, is probably good for my child.
The tremendous responsibility that Li Shengchun’s mother has taken on as a
parent, does not express a natural maternal instinct or natural maternal love. Rather, her
ambitions and projects are constituted within a particular historical, political, and
socioeconomic matrix. Childhood became a highly political matter in the post-Mao era,
when a number of state policies tied good childrearing to national revitalization. State
3
policies concerning population quantity and quality, the health and well-being of
children, and education reform have contributed to the creation of subject positions – the
good mother and high quality child – that condition the very possibilities of particular
kinds of action and experience. Given the highly political dimensions of parenting in
China, and the fact that middle-class parents act in ways that effect the socioeconomic
disparities that concern anthropologists of China, is there room for a person-centered
analysis? One that takes the concerns and actions of ordinary people seriously? What
might a person-centered analysis contribute? In this dissertation, I will explore parenting
and popular advice for good parenting in relation to changing political reason in China.
That parents have become responsible for so much, points to a certain kind of
government that may be characterized as neoliberal. Decentralization of state
responsibilities, along with the creation of various forms of self-responsibility,
characterize economic reform and modernization in post-Mao China. However,
neoliberal logic, which finds articulation in the family sphere, turns out to be highly
contradictory and contingent.
Drawing on discursive material and ethnographic research, employing both
humanist and anti-humanist perspectives, I will explain why norms for good parenting
are so seductive on the one hand, and how the intensity of social competition puts parents
in a difficult position of having to negotiate contradictory norms and values on the other.
I will argue that what appears as economic calculation or political effect – e.g. being a
good mother, must also be understood in terms of how social actors attempt to have a
measure of control over their lives. Attending to how they navigate the world in which
4
they find themselves, can reveal the complexity of that world, in all its contingencies.
Parental effort has intensified in relation to a number of social phenomena in Chinese
society, not only new definitions of proper childhood – which centrally feature a child’s
subjective interiority, but also the mismatch between population size and available
opportunities, as well as the politics of cultural capital. Sending a child to an aerospace
exhibition so that he may have “something to talk about” demonstrates a sensitivity to
new norms and social competition. At the same time, it is significant that concern for a
child’s visibility as someone who “knows what others are talking about” appears in
conjunction with China’s quest for global visibility as a nation capable of sending
astronauts into outer space.
The Social Invention of Childhood
This dissertation begins with the idea that “childhood” is a social invention that
involves a categorical and social separation of children from the world of adults; it rests
on imputing a nature that is unique and particular to children (Ariès 1962). The idea
refers to something beyond the biological reality of physical development, and often
serves as a container for social, cultural, and philosophical imaginaries and concerns. The
figure of the child served to express ideas about human nature and the origins of evil in
different traditions of Chinese philosophical thought in various ways. While Mencius
believed that human nature was essentially good, which can be observed in the innocence
of children, Xun Zi believed that man “is born with a fondness for profit,” though the
child appears to be good (quoted in Bai 2005:8). Ming dynasty Neo-Confucian
philosopher Wang Yangming believed that human nature was good, as everyone was
5
naturally equipped with moral intuition (Bai 2005:48). But the purity of a child’s heart,
according to Wang’s follower Li Chi, would be corrupted once “polluted and
contaminated by ‘false’ book learning, pretentious social customs, ordinary worldly
evil…”(Hsiung 2005:225). In Taoist philosophy, the idea of the child symbolized a
number of traits that adults could also embody, indicating that childhood did not always
coincide with a biological period of development. Here, childhood, health culture and
immortality were closely associated (Hsiung 2005:23).
In the modern world, the idea of childhood has come to express a sense of
nationhood or national identity. As historian Caroline Levander explains, “Meaning ‘to
be born,’ the root of nation, ‘natio,’ derives from the idea of the child, and the concept of
nation continues to be understood within the founding context that the child
provides”(2006:7). Nationhood was understood in terms of the child in the formative
years of the United States, the figure of which served to anchor the conceptualization of a
civic selfhood while naturalizing racial hierarchies (Levander 2006). In post-Amin
Uganda, the trope of children helps to symbolize hopes for national prosperity and
international legitimacy. If children may develop through nurturance and care, so too can
a young nation like Uganda (Cheney 2007). National identity in postwar Japan was
understood in terms of the child, a “point of origin” of a uniquely Japanese subjectivity
that was responsible for Japan’s economic success. Recent instability in recessionary
Japan has refocused attention on the child through what anthropologist Andrea Arai
characterizes as “a new series of regulatory mechanisms for the management of the child
and family”(2000:857).
6
In Governing the Soul, Nikolas Rose famously states, “In different ways, at
different times, and by many different routes varying from one section of society to
another, the health, welfare, and rearing of children have been linked in thought and
practice to the destiny of the nation and the responsibilities of the state”(1990:121). In
other words, the child not only serves as a figure for expressing ideas about nationhood, it
is also in and through the management of the child under regulatory mechanisms that
state agendas are achieved. Rose’s perspective is indebted to Jacques Donzelot’s The
Policing of Families, a study of the transformation of the family in relation to the liberal
state in 18
th
and 19
th
century France (1979). Donzelot demonstrates how the family
became a field for the exercise of indirect state power. In the context of growing social
anxieties over poverty, “filth,” abandoned children, juvenile delinquency, prostitution,
social productivity and misuse of social aid amongst the lower classes, the family
provided a “positive solution” to social ills. Philanthropy and compulsory schooling
played a major role in normalizing the family, as did a vast network of institutions
designed to understand and guide the development of children. What Donzelot calls the
“tutelary complex” – made up of professionals such as social workers and child
psychiatrists – served to alleviate pressure on the judicial and penal system, and to
“forestall the drama of police action by replacing the secular arm of the law with the
extended hand of the educator”(1979:97).
The discovery of childhood as a politically expedient means for governing society
happened a very long time ago in Chinese history, at least as early as the consolidation of
the empire in the Han dynasty (206 B.C. – A.D. 220). As Anne Behnke Kinney points
7
out, “Although the Han preserved much of the apparatus of the Legalist Qin state,
Confucian thinkers believed that moral education would serve as a more effective
deterrent to crime than the strict laws and punishments of the Qin regime”(2004:16). In
this context of changing political reason, educational institutions were established
throughout the empire and canonical texts were identified and officially endorsed under
the reign of Wudi (2004:14). Importantly, one of these texts, the Book of Rites, which
had originated in early antiquity, would continue to serve as an authoritative source for
educational theory and practice for the next two thousand years (Bai 2005:16). The Book
of Rites discussed the different stages of childhood, and what adults can expect or begin
to teach. In the first year, a baby should be taught to use his or her right hand, in the third
year a child should be taught how to reply appropriately to adults, in the sixth year a child
should be taught numerals and the names of the points on the compass, and so on, with
expectations for girls versus boys diverging in the seventh year (ibid).
Kinney attributes attention to childhood and education in Han times to the ideal of
merit-based privilege, and the practical need for staffing an expanding bureaucracy. In
this period, pre-Han ideas concerning “fetal education” were further developed (Bai
2005:9). Liu Xiang’s “Traditions of Matronly Deportment” (“Muyi zhuan”), a chapter in
his Traditions of Exemplary Women (Lienü zhuan), broke with earlier ideas concerning
the moral instruction of young children in pushing back the age for education and in
granting mothers an important role: her responsibility for a child’s moral development
began in utero. Rooted in “a concern for auspicious beginnings and ritual correctness,” a
mother was to not only take care in what she saw, ate, heard, and said, but also to govern
8
her own deportment (Kinney 2004:21). After a child was born, a mother was to continue
vigilant watch over a child’s environment up to the adolescent period, a program
presented as “uniformly efficacious” (Kinney 2004:25).
Concern for fetal education was intrinsically connected with the problem of
government. According to Kinney, Han intellectuals were preoccupied with “discovering
the underlying reasons for the rise and fall of dynasties as a means of controlling such
events”(2004:22). The course of any event was understood as determined by the manner
in which it began, and the terms that appear in connection with this idea suggest an
embryo or fetus. In earlier philosophical texts, dating to late Warring States and early
Han, interest in the fetus had less to do with child education per se than understanding
cosmic laws (2004:154-5). Meditating on fetal development could serve as either a
spiritual or a political strategy. “Once the child was viewed as partaking of the
interactions between Heaven and earth,” Kinney tells us, “it became a meaningful
constituent in the state’s ritual concerns”(2004:158). In this view, the conduct of rulers
was understood to have positive or negative consequences for the birth of children in the
general population, that is to say, the failures of a ruler could manifest in miscarriages
and birth defects.
Beginning with the Song dynasty, there was again a concentrated attention to
childhood and children as a politically expedient means for governing society. Neo-
Confucian thinkers promoted moral education with the view that social order and
individual cultivation mutually corresponded, an idea they drew from the ancient text
Great Learning (Bai 2005:34-7), wherein we find the famous pronouncement:
9
In ancient times, those who wished to manifest their bright virtue in the world
first brought order to their states. Those who wished to bring order to their states
first regulated their families. Those who wished to regulate their families first
cultivated themselves. Those who wished to cultivate themselves first rectified
their heart/minds. Those who wished to rectify their heart/minds first made their
intentions sincere. Those who wished to make their intentions sincere first
extended their knowledge. Extending one’s knowledge requires the investigation
of things (gewu). Investigate things, and then your knowledge will be extended.
Once your knowledge is extended your intention will be sincere. Once your
intention is sincere your heart/mind will be rectified. Once your heart/mind is
rectified your self will be cultivated. Once your self is cultivated, your family will
be regulated. Once your family is regulated, your state will be ordered. Once your
state is ordered, the whole world will be at peace. [Quoted in Wan 2004:135]

With the intellectual revival of Confucian thinking and education in the late imperial
period, four more texts were officially endorsed by the state and identified as canonical,
one of which included the Great Learning (Bai 2005:34). Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi felt that
children ought to start with reading the Great Learning, then move onto the Analects,
then Mencius, and finally, the Doctrine of the Mean (Bai 2005:72). Some educators
recognized that canonical texts were beyond the comprehension of most children, and a
number of new primers were written for use in elementary education (xiaoxue) as part of
an endeavor “to remake a Confucian society…” (Bai 2005:37).
Drawing from classic texts like Book of Rites, primers for children provided
models of virtuous behavior, rules for good manners and bodily deportment, and ways to
serve one’s parents in a plainer, sometimes even child-friendly language, such that
“etiquette from the Confucian classics for the first time became accessible at an
elementary level and permeated the whole of society”(Bai 2005:94). When children
cultivated themselves according to ritualized norms, they not only expressed individual
virtue but also contributed to social stability. Meanwhile, the consolidation of pediatric
10
medicine with government support contributed, Ping-chen Hsiung argues, to a “certain
‘child-centeredness’” (2005:43). The state took an active role in promoting child health
by publishing pediatric writing, patronizing individual physicians, and supporting
medical institutions in which a specialization in “youth and child medicine” or
“children’s medicine” emerged (2005:45-6).
State interest in the well-being of the young was rooted in Confucian ideals of
good government. As Hsiung points out, “the Chinese imperial government liked to
uphold the idea that in ruling its realm it needed to protect the people, as a parent would
his or her own children” (2005:44). But the proliferation of interest and attention to
childhood and children in late imperial China can also be attributed to a convergence of
meritocratic ideals that had been in place since Han times, the establishment of the civil
service examination system, and the expansion of the economy in the Song and Ming
dynasties. A publishing industry thrived, and agriculture and industry commercialized
(Hsiung 2005:12, 71). Increased opportunity for social mobility and the expansion of
vocational possibilities put a premium on early childhood education (Hsiung 2005:110).
In sum, the link between childhood and nationhood or statehood is nothing new in
China. It is also a link that is rather different than the one we see in modern liberal
societies wherein governmental interest in the well-being of children and families is
regarded with some distrust. The Chinese word for government is guan, and it refers to
the government of a people by a ruler, superior to his or her inferiors, a parent to his or
her child. Though government as conceived in guan includes control, management or
surveillance, it also indissolubly means “to take care of.” Thus, the discovery of
11
childhood in Chinese history differs from its discovery in Europe, as described by
Philippe Ariès. Not only did it occur earlier, informed by ideas that originated in early
antiquity, it also took place in an organic universe of mutual correspondence. Indeed,
Confucian education came under attack in the 19
th
century as Chinese intellectuals
searched for a solution to national survival in the face of foreign aggression. But the
education of children, along with debates over what constitutes good education, continues
until this day.
Childhood in Modern China
Since the beginning of the economic reforms in the late 1970s, “the child” has
been and continues to be linked in thought and practice to the destiny of the nation
through the notorious one-child policy. Perceiving a threat to goals for economic
modernization in population size, and a mismatch between available resources and need,
the Party-state implemented the one-child policy as a solution. This policy was positioned
to solve, in fact, two population problems at once: size reduction and improvement of
overall population “quality.” In this context, the single child came to embody hope and
became a privileged subject of investment and care, in contrast to the “unwashed masses”
who were supposedly responsible for China’s backwardness (Anagnost 1995).
Concern and attention to children in the present is part of a longer history of
China’s struggle for dignity in the face of foreign powers. Late Qing intellectuals looked
to the West for ideas, with a Chinese translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and
Ethics serving as critical lens for thinking about the national situation (Bai 2005:175).
With another defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, reformers began to argue that the
12
education of children was “critical to China’s survival or extinction” (ibid). The
traditional education system was seen as preoccupying the nation’s youth with useless
studies that did nothing for military strength nor scientific invention. A series of reforms
was promulgated in 1898 in an attempt to abolish the civil service examination system
and establish a modern school system. Liang Qichao, an important reformer in this era,
had concluded that the Chinese were not necessarily inferior to Western people, rather,
the rote learning required in Chinese education stunted the development of a child’s
“brain power” (Bai 2005:187). Furthermore, he felt, Chinese education treated pupils like
“prisoners,” which is harmful to their physical development (Bai 2005:195-6). A set of
regulations announced in 1904 officially abolished the civil service examination system,
and stressed the importance of gymnastics in the primary school curriculum.
Not long after the fall of the Qing dynasty, intellectuals of the New Culture
Movement (1915-1921) located the child – as well as “women”(funü),
“workers”(gongren), and the family – as a site for cultural transformation and national
revitalization.
4
For these intellectuals, modernity could only be achieved by radically
breaking with the past, challenging traditional forms of authority, and promoting social
democracy. Their project was mainly a literary one. Though they worked to reform
writing practices and experimented with realism (Anderson 1990), many New Culture
intellectuals also wrote about and for children. They expressed their concerns over
national strength and character through the figure of the child, as in the essay “Shanghai
Children” wherein Lu Xun contrasts the “tattered” clothing and “lack-lustre expression”

4
See Glosser 2003 for a discussion the family reform debate.
13
of Chinese children to the “splendid, lively foreign children” nearby (quoted in Anagnost
1997a). Some debated proper childhood and embraced the developmental models of child
psychology in ways that categorically separated children from the world of adults. Zhou
Zuoren’s creation of a modern children’s literature is emblematic of this move. In his
view, Chinese adults were unable to understand children and their age-specific needs,
“forc[ing] as many of the ‘classics of the sages and annals of the worthies’ down their
throats as possible…”(quoted in Jones 2002:710). Others worked to reform family
relations and childrearing practices, exemplified in foreign-trained child psychologist
Chen Heqin’s Family education (Jiating Jiaoyu), Lu Xun’s essay “How Are We to Be
Fathers Now?” (Women xianzai zenyang zuo fuqin?), Zhang Zonglin’s “How To Be a
Parent that Conforms to Current Trends” (Zenyang zuo hehu shidai chaoliu de fumu), et
cetera. But this “discovery” of modern childhood would go into hiatus in the Maoist era,
when, as anthropologist Ann Anagnost succinctly puts it: “The rural masses displaced the
child as the principle object of a revolutionary pedagogy”(1997a:213).
A focus on the child was revived in the post-Mao period, as was eugenics in the
form of a campaign that went hand in hand with the implementation of the family
planning policy.
5
Though, eugenic thinking and practice in this period was relevant to not
just intellectuals, but also ordinary people in a way that yoked their intimate and
everyday practices to a collective project (Anagnost 1995). The yousheng youyu, or
“excellent births, excellent rearing” campaign, focused a general concern with population
quality on the body and mind of the individual mother and child. Marriage and even

5
Chinese intellectuals took great interest in eugenics beginning the late 19
th
century. See Sakamoto 2004,
Dikötter 1998.
14
one’s reproductive cycle was and continues to be important state business. To illustrate, a
birth-planning cadre in anthropologist Lisa Rofel’s study of factory women commanded
detailed knowledge of the reproductive status of women in her jurisdiction; she kept
statistical charts well-displayed in her office. Rofel relates, “Li Hua knew, it seemed, the
circumstances of virtually all the workers regarding their marital state and compatibility
with their spouses. It allowed her, she said to determine which kind of birth control to
dispense and how to manage the quality of births”(1999:249).
A preoccupation with “excellent births” was also largely a pedagogical one, i.e.
medical knowledge concerning reproductive health was widely disseminated to the
public. From advice for timing conception so as to conceive intelligent children, to diet
and nutrition during pregnancy, much of this literature gave enormous responsibility to
parents, especially mothers, in the production of quality persons (Milwertz 1997:131;
Dikötter 1998:128, 132-3). Certain aspects of the “excellent births” campaign aimed to
minimize “defective” births in ways that echo eugenic campaigns in the West decades
earlier (Dikötter 1998:160-175). But much of the campaign in post-Mao China
constituted a form of positive eugenics, one that emphasized adding rather than
subtracting, education rather than elimination. In fact, the use of cassette-tapes in fetal
education provide a clear and material manifestation of the way in which “excellent
births” and “excellent rearing” blurred. Developed by a doctor from Beijing Medical
College, one set of three tapes playing Western classical music was to be used at different
stages of reproduction: before conception, during pregnancy, and then during the first
years of a child’s life. These tapes, the doctor concluded in a follow-up research study,
15
birthed and reared more intelligent children who hit developmental milestones earlier
than those in the control group (Milwertz 1997:131-2).
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a strong preoccupation with not only the
nutrition and physical constitution of children, but their intelligence as well. Susan
Champagne found childrearing manuals from the 1980s full of practical advice for
producing intelligence in children. The literature provided “charts and tests so that
parents can assess their children’s intelligence, elaborate etiologies so that the causes of
low and high intelligence can be better understood, and explanations of the terminology
of intelligence, to better help parents classify their own children”(1992:5). Though moral
education was also important, Champagne argues that the preoccupation with intelligence
in the advice literature may be attributed to an idea that intelligence is systematically
attainable and measurable. Intelligence education was to be “administered in formalized
situations through discrete activities which ideally should be carried out on a regular
basis, and according to a fixed schedule”(1992:153). Moral education on the other hand,
is largely situational and cannot be systematized.
A factory-style production of the child, which later education reformers criticize,
was quite literally enacted and then described in a best-selling Harvard Girl Liu Yiting
(2000).
6
Born in 1981, Liu Yiting’s mother had a plan for “scientific” childrearing upon
her daughter’s conception. Liu Weihua, mother and co-author, kept a diary throughout
her daughter’s development from which she draws in writing the book Harvard Girl. To

6
My copy of Harvard Girl was printed October 2004. It was the 64
th
printing, putting the book’s
circulation number at 1,770,000 copies. According to the China Book Business Report (Zhongguo tushu
shang bao), Harvard Girl was a top-ten national best-seller in 2000 and 2001. See
http://www.cbbr.com.cn/info_893_1.htm (accessed July 25, 2008).
16
give some examples: “…when the baby was only two weeks old, Liu began training her
daughter’s attention span by using her fingers and stuffed toys to track the child’s vision.
By the age of nine months, Liu was deliberately putting objects out of Yiting’s reach,
requiring the baby to work ever harder to grasp what she wanted, in order to teach her
persistence and to overcome difficulties”(Woronov 2007:37). When Liu Yiting was
handed over to other caregivers, her mother provided “copies of the manuals she used to
implement early child education, requesting that they read these materials, carry out their
directions on a daily basis, and write frequent reports to her on the child’s
development”(Woronov 2007:38). Childrearing for the authors of Harvard Liu Yiting
was a technocratic science (ibid).
A shift in emphasis occurred in the 1990s from yousheng youyu (“excellent births,
excellent rearing”) to suzhi jiaoyu, variously translated as well-rounded education,
competence education, or Education for Quality. A number of things happened in this
decade: Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour, renewed market reforms, an “economic
takeoff,”
7
privatization of public goods, optimalization of government performance, and a
general – though not complete – movement toward neoliberal governance, “in which the
party-state shifted toward fostering the vitality of its population and cultivating the lives
of its people.”
8
Suzhi jiaoyu appeared in the 1980s in professional education journals and
discussions of education reform, but it was not until 1999 that suzhi jiaoyu was
formalized under a policy issued by the State Council, a “Resolution for Fully Moving

7
Jing Wang 2001:35.

8
Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005:126, 134.
17
Suzhi Jiaoyu Forward” (Kipnis 2006; Woronov 2003). If the “excellent births, excellent
rearing” campaign of the 1980s and the more recent suzhi jiaoyu movement have in
common the goal of producing high quality citizens, they differ in the fact that the suzhi
of suzhi jiaoyu is able to link many disparate domains of governance beyond biological
reproduction and childrearing.
Suzhi discourse is found in domains as disparate as rural development, domestic
migration, private business, corporate culture, and so on (Davies 2007; Friedman 2004;
Hsu 2007; Yan 2003; Zhang 2001). It constructs the problem of national strength and
economic development in terms of human improvement, and promotes self-responsibility
by acting on individual desire. Although suzhi is often invoked as a potential that one can
nurture and cultivate through personal effort,
9
more often than not, suzhi discourse serves
to justify social and geographic hierarchies and even undue use of force (e.g., Friedman
2004; Kipnis 2006, 2007; Murphy 2004). The child – especially the urban child – serves
to sustain suzhi hierarchies in constructing an antithesis between bodies that may serve as
“repositories of value” and bodies that cannot embody value (Anagnost 1995, 2004). As a
recipient of suzhi jiaoyu, the child symbolizes and embodies the hope for national
transformation.
The Concept of Human Quality
Usually translated as “quality,” and used in reference to a person, suzhi has
become a ubiquitous term in late socialist China. It is not exactly a neologism, though its

9
See especially Woronov 2003:5-57 and Yan 2003.
18
meaning has changed tremendously since the late 1970s. Andrew Kipnis provides an
excellent linguistic history:
Zhi means ‘nature, character or matter,’ while su has many meanings including
unadorned, plain, white and essence. Before the late 1970s, suzhi most often
meant the ‘unadorned nature or character of something.’ Such meanings go back
as far as Guanzi ( ) (over 2,000 years before the present). As modern
nature/nurture dichotomies influenced Chinese thought during the 20
th
century,
suzhi became more closely associated with inborn characteristics. [2006:297]

Since the late 1970s however, suzhi lost its association with inborn characteristics. In the
course of the early 1980s, it became interchangeable with the term zhiliang in official
discourses on population issues, which can also be translated as “quality.” That is to say,
the catchphrase renkou zhiliang, or population quality, eventually became renkou suzhi
by the mid-1980s. Kipnis observes,
Despite suzhi’s connotations of innateness, in 1982 the People’s Daily began
using the terms renkou suzhi and renkou zhiliang in synonymous fashion. Once
this usage appeared in such an authoritative source, books and articles by
population specialists began using the terms in a relatively interchangeable
fashion until around 1986, when renkou suzhi begins to predominate. [2006:298]

In addition to population studies and birth control propaganda, suzhi also
appeared in official documents concerning education. For example, a new compulsory
education law issued in 1986 indicated that the improvement of education quality
(zhiliang) would improve the quality (suzhi) of the nation (ibid). The phrase suzhi jiaoyu
appears in print for the first time in 1988, and continued to appear in the following years
in professional education journals such as Middle School Education, Scientific Education
Research, and Compulsory Education Research (Kipnis 2006:299). Suzhi jiaoyu
expresses the education world’s vision for reform – particularly their dissatisfaction with
a widespread preoccupation over preparing students for the national college entrance
19
examination (gaokao) – in a way that corresponds to the wording of the 1986 compulsory
education law (ibid). Education researchers are also well read in Western education
theories, and their idea of suzhi jiaoyu is shaped by what they understand of American
“competence education” (ibid). Importantly, Kipnis points out, “The use of suzhi in
education circles has completely negated the term’s earlier connotations of
innateness”(2006:300). But suzhi is also used to justify hierarchies of all sorts.
Suzhi Jiaoyu or, Education for Quality
Suzhi jiaoyu continues to be an important phrase for not only policy makers and
education reformers, but for ordinary people as well. Following Terry Woronov, I
translate suzhi jiaoyu as Education for Quality, rather than use the more literal “quality
education” because suzhi points not to the quality of the education itself but the embodied
quality it is supposed to create in a human being (2003). Education for Quality
rests on the idea of the whole child. The phrase one commonly sees in the Education for
Quality discourse is whole development, or quanmian fazhan. The high “quality” it aims
to produce is to comprise physical, intellectual, moral, aesthetic and sometimes,
psychological quality. In general, Education for Quality emphasizes hands-on learning
over book learning, process over result, creating an environment over transmission of
knowledge.
At the heart of the Education for Quality movement is a dissatisfaction with
yingshi jiaoyu or Exam-oriented Education. The latter is understood as “stuffing”
children like ducks and producing “test-taking machines.” Rote memorization and
rigorous discipline are keys to success in this examination system, a system Korean and
20
Japanese students are familiar with too. It consists of “cram schools, reference books,
study guides, and above all, tests, tests, tests, and more tests”(Field 1995:56). Critics of
the examination system in China often say that the current system is simply a modern
form of keju, the imperial civil service examination system that originated in the Tang
Dynasty (618-906). This was a standardized, empire-wide mechanism by which
government officials were selected. Memorization was key to success, for, as Miyazaki
Ichisada estimates, a candidate had to memorize over 400 thousand characters to master
the examination curriculum (quoted in Elman 1991:16). Critics of the current
examination system feel that the inordinate amount of material students must be able to
command by the time they take the national college entrance exam (gaokao) is
completely useless, and they worry that too much hinges on one’s ability to produce high
exam scores. This of course echoes the concerns of late Qing reformers like Liang
Qichao, discussed earlier.
The Education for Quality movement grew out of a concern over whether or not
Chinese education produces the kind of citizen who can contribute to national
development and strength, i.e. an individual who possesses globally competitive qualities.
The need for education reform came to the attention of the central government in the
early 1990s, with the State Council promulgating “An Outline for the Reform and
Development of Chinese Education.” This document addresses a broad range of areas for
reform but there is one item that is particularly important for our purposes: “Primary and
middle schools must transform ‘Exam-oriented Education’ into a path for raising national
suzhi, focusing on the entire student population, fully raise the ideological, cultural,
21
scientific, physical, psychological, and labor skill suzhi of students…’(State Council
1993). The phrase “suzhi jiaoyu” is never used in this document, but it is an early
statement on the importance of a well-rounded education at the state level. In 1999, the
State Council issued a document that formalized Education for Quality, “A Resolution
for Fully Moving Suzhi Jiaoyu Forward.” The current state position on Education for
Quality is made explicit in this passage, and reflects a small degree of conceptual
development in its emphasis on innovation:
Implementing suzhi jiaoyu is precisely the way to fully carry out the Party’s
education policy. Taking raising the suzhi of citizens as a basic aim, taking the
cultivation of a spirit for innovation (chuangxin jingshen) and practical ability in
students as a key point, bring up morally, intellectually, physically and
aesthetically well-developed contributors and successors of the socialist cause,
[contributors and successors] “with morals, culture, and discipline.”

Much of this statement is full of language typical to national policies in China, e.g.
“raising successors of the socialist cause,” but the issue of cultivating creative spirit and
practical ability is one that is taken seriously by most of Chinese society, including
popular experts and ordinary parents. It is an orientation that has significant implications
for how the Chinese understand children at the turn of the 21
st
century, what constitutes a
proper childhood, how learning ought to take place, and how adults ought to relate to
children.
In the rest of the section, I will discuss Education for Quality from the perspective
of the State, popular experts, and parents in more detail.
The State Perspective
A number of state policies have placed children at the center of national strategies
for modernization and economic development since the beginning of the reform era in the
22
late 1970s. They include not only the notorious one-child policy, which restricts all Han
Chinese families to one or two children (depending on location), but also a number of
other policies concerning school education and the education of parents. As a socialist
state, the Chinese government takes an active role in engineering society using political
technologies that have existed since the formation of the People’s Republic in 1949.
Various genres of policy-making issue directives and guidelines for action, they include
“notices”(tongzhi), “suggestions”(yijian), “outlines”(gangyao), “resolutions”(jueding),
“action plans”(xingdong jihua), etc. Some documents are promulgated to set concrete
goals to be reached within five-year or ten-year periods.
The 1999 “Resolution for Fully Moving Suzhi Jiaoyu Forward,” first to formalize
Education for Quality in an official document, was written as a response to a broader
education policy, also issued in 1999: “Action Plan for the Vigorous Development of 21
st

Century Education” (Mianxiang 21 shiji jiaoyu zhenxing xingdong jihua) (State Council
1999). This “Action Plan” was written after the 15
th
national congress of the Chinese
Communist Party, with the intention of “putting the strategy of revitalizing the nation
through science and education (kejiao xingguo zhanlüe) into effect.” This is a catchphrase
commonly deployed in official policies, and it refers to Deng Xiaoping’s theory of
socialist modernization: “science and technology is key, education is the foundation.”
The “Action Plan” identifies the promotion of Education for Quality as one of its key
goals, in addition to other goals such as wiping out illiteracy and universalizing nine-year
compulsory education at the national level. It is clearly meant to serve as a plan for
guiding the country into a new century. Like many of state policies, this one begins by
23
noting accomplishments, before stating how much further the country must go: “…the
level of educational development in our country is still on the low side, the education
system, educational concepts and methods, as well as the style of cultivating talents still
does not fit (shiying) with the needs of constructing modernization.”
The 1999 “Resolution for Fully Moving Suzhi Jiaoyu Forward” itself is divided
into four major sections, following a structure common to official policies. The first lists
a number of general statements on the purpose of Education for Quality, how it ought to
permeate not only various levels of schooling but various spheres of education as well;
the importance of moral, physical, and aesthetic education, as well as hands-on skills; and
perhaps, most importantly, the need to reform “intellectual” or “knowledge
education”(zhiyu). Titled “Deepen educational reform, create conditions (tiaojian) for
carrying out suzhi jiaoyu,” the second section lists a number of instructions concerning
infrastructural issues. For example, expanding the scope of higher education, reforming
the national college entrance exam system, adjusting and reforming the curriculum,
conjoining higher education with the rest of the economy, et cetera. The last two major
sections deal with building a high quality (zhiliang) corps of teachers, and allocates
responsibilities to relevant parties.
Starting in 1999, the cause of moving suzhi jiaoyu forward begins to appear in
various other documents concerning other aspects of education, children and the youth. In
August 1999, the Ministry of Education issued a document titled “Recommendations for
Strengthening Psychological Health Education in Primary and Middle School” (Guanyu
jiaqiang zhongxiaoxue xinli jiankang jiaoyu de ruogan yijian). It defines the importance
24
of psychological health education in relation to the Education for Quality reform, quoting
and elaborating on a point that was raised in the 1999 Resolution: “…must cultivate
dauntless will in students, a spirit for working diligently in the face of difficulty, [and]
strengthen the ability of youth to adapt to social life.” A “Guiding Outline” for
psychological health education in 2002 reiterates psychological health education as an
important aspect of Education for Quality (Ministry of Education 2002).
Promoting suzhi jiaoyu and the whole development of students, their
“consciousness for innovation, practical ability and scientific spirit,” is one of the items
under a section on education in a ten year development plan titled “Outline for the
Development of Children in China (2001-2010)” (Zhongguo ertong fazhan gangyao).
Importantly, suzhi jiaoyu was not mentioned in the “1990s Program Outline for the
Development of Children in China” (Jiushi niandai zhongguo ertong fazhan guihua
gangya), issued approximately 10 years earlier in 1992. Although, suzhi itself does
appear a number of times, as in the first sentence of the document: “The children of today
are the subjects of the 21
st
century, the survival, protection and development of children
is the foundation for raising population suzhi…” There is also an item devoted to
highlighting the importance of whole development (i.e. moral, intellectual, and physical).
But otherwise these two “Outlines” for the development of children primarily devote
space to issues such as infant and maternal mortality, malnutrition, universalizing
compulsory education, illiteracy, and constructing healthy social environments for
children.
25
Two important policy documents concerning “family education work”(jiating
jiaoyu gongzuo), which includes the education of parents, reflect a similar development.
The tenth five-year plan for “family education work” (“Quanguo jiating jiaoyu gongzuo
“jiuwu” jihua) issued in 2002 instructs that “family education work” ought to be
implemented in the “spirit”(jingshen) of the 1999 suzhi jiaoyu “Resolution.” But the
ninth five-year plan for “family education work” makes no mention of suzhi jiaoyu
(1996). Nonetheless, suzhi itself is mentioned, as in a sentence found under a discussion
of main goals: “Guide parents in establishing a correct orientation toward childrearing,
[and] grasping scientific education methods, raise the suzhi of parents…” (National
Women’s Federation and the Ministry of Education 1996). (I will discuss this set of
policies more in Chapter One, for these two are most relevant to this dissertation.)
In January 2000, the Ministry of Education issued a policy that specifically
addresses one of the items in the 1999 “Resolution:” reducing the burden of primary and
middle school students’ school work. It was, in fact, an urgent call for all of society to
participate. In the 1999 “Resolution,” reducing burden is discussed in an item that states
the importance of reforming knowledge education (zhiyu) to “cultivating a scientific
spirit and creative thinking habits.” The “Urgent Notice Regarding the Reduction of
Students’ Excessive Burden in Primary Schools,” issued approximately a half year later,
laid out specific rules and regulations for reducing burden and allocating supervisory
responsibilities. Apparently, this aspect of the Education for Quality reform was not
happening fast enough, if at all, and the “excessive burden of students” was seen as a
“serious obstacle to the promotion of suzhi jiaoyu.” The “Urgent Notice” prohibited the
26
use of more than one book in primary school subjects and as well as the use of holiday,
weekend, winter and summer breaks for organizing additional classes; it stated that
teachers should not give first and second graders any kind of book-based homework,
whereas third through sixth graders should not have to do homework for more than an
hour; it recommended the use of a grade system rather than the one-hundred point
system; prohibited mandatory purchasing of tutorial material, books, newspapers and
stationary, to name a few of the many regulations.
The policy received an extra push, receiving the official endorsement and support
of Jiang Zemin, when a teenager in Zhejiang Province murdered his own mother. Oddly
enough, the murder took place only a couple weeks after the “Urgent Notice” was issued,
and an investigation into the teenager’s motives revealed excessive academic burden as
the cause of the crime (see Chapter Three). Jiang Zemin gave a speech at a meeting of the
Standing Committee of the Politburo titled “A Discussion Regarding the Education
Problem” on the first of February in 2000, which was then published in its entirety in a
variety of papers such as the People’s Daily and Guangming Daily to be “studied” by
Party members, government leaders, and educators.
10
In the official documents that
followed, Jiang’s speech is noted as playing a decisive role in truly putting education
issues at the center of governmental and social concern, and for providing a compass for
the reorientation of educational thinking (see Li and Chen 2001).

10
My own copy comes from a book collection titled The Call of Suzhi Jiaoyu. It is important to note that Li
Peng is listed as the first editor, who makes no other contribution in the collection beyond endorsing it with
his name. The fact that the collection is published by Xinhua Chubanshe, part of a larger media system
founded in Yan’an in the early 1940s (Kong 2005), further points to the political weight of the suzhi jiaoyu
reforms.
27
In my view, Jiang’s speech is particularly interesting in that it seemed to truly
reflect a deep concern on his part, and it was full of public stories and popular sayings –
which one would not expect from an official speech. Jiang starts off by listing the cases
that he had recently seen in the news. In addition to the “good student kills mother” case,
which I will discuss in Chapter Three, he mentions another case concerning student on
student murder, and another concerning the murder of a homeroom teacher by a parent. “I
have seen these kinds of things before as well,” Jiang states, “they are truly shocking, and
have stimulated deep reflection in me (yinqi le wo de shensi).” Later in the speech, he
invokes a number of very old sayings such as “prick your thigh with an awl and tie your
hair to a beam”(cigu xuanliang) and “pierce a hole for some light”(chuanbi yinguang).
These two sayings in particular can be traced back to stories from early China about
diligent students who pursued knowledge by any means necessary; they have been used
throughout Chinese history to encourage children to study hard.
11
But Jiang invokes them
to give a warning, clearly, with particular public stories in mind, “If the method is not
right or appropriate, one might get the exact opposite result. We have more than enough
of these lessons, and should learn from previous error. [We] must not confine our youth
in rooms and in books all day, [and we] must let them participate in some social practice,
open their field of vision, and enlarge their social experience”(2001:4).

11
The former saying originates from a story about Sun Jing, who lived in the state of Chu (pre-Han), who
pricked his thigh with an awl and tied his hair to a beam so as to stay awake. The latter saying originates
from a story about Kuang Heng of the former Han, who came from a peasant family but eventually entered
officialdom. His family was so poor he created a hole in a wall that he shared with a neighbor so as to have
some light for studying. In her study of primers for children, Limin Bai observes the use of these two
stories in a Tang Dynasty village school primer Mengqiu (2005:29-30).

28
In sum, the health and education of children are major priorities in late socialist
China. Along with the one-child policy, all of the child or student-centered policies that I
have discussed have modernization or national revitalization as an ultimate agenda. The
economic imperative is primary in each and every one of them. When population policy
was redefined in Marxist terms in the late 1970s, resolving preexisting anti-Neo-
Malthusian unease, population planning and socialist economic development were
mutually aligned (Kane 1987:89). Penny Kane offers a quote from an article later
published in 1981 that she identifies as having laid a theoretical and ideological
foundation:
If it is accepted that social production consists of both material and population
production, it must also be recognized that the law of planned and proportionate
development of the national economy calls not only for the planned development
of material production, but also for planned regulation of population growth, and
that the two must be co-ordinated and adapted to each other. [LIU Zheng quoted
in Kane 1987:89]

Indeed, Deng Xiaoping based development strategy on population facts, and conversely,
understood limitation of population growth as central to development strategy
(Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005:98-99).
The rationale behind the Education for Quality reform also concerns socialist
economic development, although, the population project at hand is not so much about
quantity as it is about quality. The suzhi jiaoyu reforms are less concerned with the
mismatch between available resources, satisfying basic needs, and population size than
with how to release the economic potential found inside the human being. In other words,
it is the mutual alignment of creating human capital and economic development that is
stressed. Education Minister Chen Zhili formulates the relationship as such: “The basic
29
purpose of socialism is to liberate and develop social productivity (shengchan li).
Humans are the most positive (jiji) and lively element in productivity, [they are] the
subject of its liberation and development. Having high suzhi human talents is a country’s
inexhaustible resource…” (2001:4). Chen Zhili, voicing a logic I often seen in many
other recent policy documents, views human talent (rather than population reduction
itself) as the solution to China’s development problem. She states,
Our nation’s population is many, [we have a] poor foundation (di zi bao),
resources are insufficient, therefore, firmly establishing the strategic position of
the preferential development of education, turning our nation’s heavy population
burden into the advantage of a formidable human resource, is putting the demands
of the strategy of revitalizing the nation through science and education and of
sustainable development into effect… . [ibid]

It is important to note that many of the child and student-centered policies that I have
discussed are positioned as achieving goals set forth in either the 8
th
(1991-1995), 9
th

(1996-2000) or 10
th
(2001-2006) “Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social
Development” issued by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. These
five-year plans have been used since the formation of the People’s Republic of China for
centralized economic planning. That the health and education of children have been an
important aspect of recent five-year plans points to the strategic importance of
constructing ideas about and experiences of childhood to the future of the Chinese nation.
The Popular Experts’ Perspective
The word suzhi can be found in popular literature for parents from the 1980s as
the one-child policy was frequently justified in terms of the high quality child a family
could raise with concentrated family resources. But the phrase yousheng youyu,
“excellent births, excellent rearing,” was much more commonly seen. As I mentioned
30
earlier, a shift in emphasis occurred in the 1990s from yousheng youyu to suzhi jiaoyu in
the popular advice literature. Popular expert Sun Yunxiao and a co-author gave a focused
discussion of suzhi jiaoyu in a book that was published in 1997 by the Hubei Children
and Youth Publishing House, it was titled “Education for Quality: Every Child is a
Genius.” This chapter title reflects one of the many ways in which popular ideals
correspond to the way the state understands Education for Quality: every child has
potential, and suzhi jiaoyu can liberate that potential.
Sun Yunxiao is one of the most prominent experts on youth and childhood issues.
He is both a vice director and a researcher at the China Youth Research Center, editor-in-
chief of the popular magazine Children and Youth Research (Shaonian ertong yanjiu),
and has received honors from the State Council for his contributions. The parents I knew
in Kunming know Sun from his books – he writes prolifically, as well as from the
lectures he has given in Kunming. But the credit for widely popularizing the idea of
Education for Quality should also be given to Huang Quanyu, an education consultant
working in both the U.S. and China (Woronov 2007:40). Based on his years as a graduate
student in the United States (he holds a Ph.D. in educational management), Huang wrote
Education for Quality in America (Suzhi Jiaoyu zai Meiguo) (1999) and Family
Education in America (Jiating Jiaoyu zai Meiguo) (2001). These are not theoretical
books, for the most part. Huang fills his accounts with vignettes describing his personal
experience of raising a son in America; it is filled with stories about American
classrooms, family life, extra-curricular education, bake sales, soccer games, and so on.
31
Before I discuss the content of this book, we must note that how ideas about
Education for Quality in general and good parenting in particular get disseminated
throughout Chinese society is part of a bigger story about the marketization of the
publishing industry in China (Kong 2005).
12
In other words, when I speak of “popular
experts,” I am speaking of writers who are either commercially available or have
experienced a degree of commercial success and popular recognition. Under Maoism,
publishing was tightly controlled by the Party-state under a system borrowed from the
Soviet Union. But in the reform era, publishing houses have had to become financially
independent with the withdrawal of government support. What gets published in China is
now less determined by Party interests and ideological agendas than by popular interest
and market demand. Some publishing houses even conduct market research and use
promotional campaigns to not only remain viable but also make a profit. Some give
performance-based contracts to employees and writers to motivate the production of
bestsellers (Kong 2005:5, 45-9).
Publishing houses came to understand with the publication of Huang’s book that
the “flag”(qizhi) of Education for Quality has commercial appeal (Yang Kui 2005).
13
The
success of Huang Quanyu’s Education for Quality in America was not expected, and it
was studied for the making of future bestsellers. Huang’s book made the China Book
Business Report’s top ten bestseller list in 2000, sharing a place in the list with the wildly

12
Thanks to Tami Blumenfield for recommending Kong’s book to me.

13
In fact, the editor behind Harvard Girl Liu Yiting, which I discussed earlier as exemplifying
technoscientific childrearing, got the idea of giving the book a subtitle with the phrase “quality
cultivation”(suzhi peiyang) from Huang’s book (Yang Kui 2005). Harvard Girl has had the most
commercial success in the advice genre to date. From my conversations in the field, I gather that its success
had more to do with the fantasy it fulfills than with promoting ideas about Education for Quality.
32
successful Harry Potter series. Huang himself reports in Family Education in America
that Education for Quality in America was reprinted 18 times in a single year. And if both
legitimate and pirated copies are counted, there were – in 2001 – 700,000 to 800,000
copies in circulation (2001:1-2).
Those working in the education sector of the publishing industry found relief in
the success of books like Education for Quality in America. Textbooks and
supplementary material “constitute the largest industry segment in terms of market
share”(Xin 2005:64). So when the policy for “reducing burden” went into effect in 2000,
those in educational publishing were met with a challenge. The policy specified
restrictions against the organization of book purchasing at schools (Ministry of Education
2000), which is ordinarily a common channel for selling children’s books (Y. Li
2003:90). Li Yuanjun, president of Jieli Publishing House, notes with hope:
Quality education
14
has become a hot topic in China with the change from exam-
based education to quality education and increasing requirements for high quality
talents. The education institutions and publishing industry are exploring new ways
to train people in order to respond to the change. As a result, relevant textbooks of
quality for teachers and books on education are being published and their sales
reflect this promising development. [Y. Li 2003:91]

Li Yuanjun sees in the professional and popular demand for Education for Quality
literature a solution to the challenge that was posed by the “reducing burden” campaign,
which was an additional challenge to what was already a competitive book market. That
Li states the importance of conducting market research into the “psychology” of parents

14
The original article was written in Chinese and subsequently translated into English. It is more than likely
that “quality education” is a translation of suzhi jiaoyu.
33
and children earlier in the article points to the commercial aspect of popular expertise in
reform era China (2003:89).
Now, to return to the content of Huang Quanyu’s Education for Quality in
America.
I choose Huang Quanyu to exemplify the expert’s perspective on Education for
Quality not only because his books’ commercial success provides a measure of his
popularity, but also because his ideas generally correspond to both the official position on
Education for Quality as well as the perspective of other popular experts.
15
Interestingly
enough, it even echoes observations Liang Qichao made in the late Qing, who concluded
that there are no naturally endowed differences between Chinese and Western people,
despite observable differences in number of inventions and literacy rates (Bai 2005:184).
Observing the fact that overseas Chinese students were perfectly capable of achievement,
Liang concluded that the difference was educational. As historian Limin Bai writes,
paraphrasing Liang Qichao, “the intellectual faculties of the Chinese were equal to those
of Western people, but education for young children impeded the development of
Chinese people’s creativity”(2005:184).
In a similar vein, Huang Quanyu starts off his book Education for Quality in
America with the puzzle presented by the fact that Chinese education has yet to produce a
Nobel Prize winner (all ethnically Chinese Nobel Prize winners received their education
in foreign countries). Yet, Chinese middle school students win International Olympic
Knowledge Competitions year after year. For Huang, this points to a blind spot in

15
My own copy was given to me as a gift by a father of one of my case families. He thought that Huang’s
personal background was extremely interesting.
34
China’s education system, especially its inability to cultivate creativity. Like many late
Qing intellectuals before him, Huang Quanyu attributes this inability to the neglect of the
subjective processes of learning, particularly a student’s understanding or wuxing, in the
Chinese education system. “Traditional Chinese culture,” Huang argues, has never
recognized students as subjects (zhuti). Rather, they are taken to be “receptacles of
knowledge,” which puts them in a passive position lacking in subjective awareness (zhuti
yishi) and self-motivation (zhudong jingshen) (1999:27). Education for Quality in
America begins with a chapter on the question of whether or not creativity can be taught.
Huang argues that the answer is no, and tells a story about how he came to see art
education differently.
Before his wife and 3 year-old son joined him in the U.S., he once got a letter in
the mail from his family. It contained a traditional Chinese brush painting, a beautiful
drawing of a bamboo: “with scattered leaves and bending stalks, balanced composition,
fine shading, and perspective”(1999:12). It was so good he could not believe it was
produced by his 3 year-old son. When his wife and son arrived in the U.S. a couple year
later, the couple continued their son’s art education and sent him to an art class organized
by a university. After no more than five classes, their son began to express discontent
with the class and reported that his art teacher did not even teach: “[She] just gives us a
subject and then lets us draw. You just draw however you want to draw, the teacher
doesn’t even care (bu guan). When you’re done the teacher only knows to say ‘Great!
Great’”(1999:16)!
35
At first, the couple did not pay too much attention. But when their son continued
to complain, Huang decides to investigate the matter himself. He uses having to bring his
son something warm to wear as an excuse to visit one day, only to come upon a scene
that looked like utter chaos to him. Huang writes, “The instructors on duty were three art
department graduate students. One male student sat on the podium staring at the ceiling
with his legs crossed, a female student paced around chewing gum, another stared out the
window at the snow absentmindedly”(1999:17). Meanwhile children were drawing while
standing, kneeling, and lying prone. The drawings Huang saw lacked in proportion,
composition, structure, shape and “discipline”(guiju). The students, he felt, did not even
know how to hold a pen (bi). He subsequently withdrew his son from the class, calling it
a kind of class that “leads the young astray”(wuren zidi).
Following a conversation he had with an American primary school art teacher that
had lived and taught art in China, who described how her Chinese students were unable
to draw something without a model, Huang began to rethink art education. He came to
see that his son’s artistic competence was merely the product of a “Xeroxing” process
(fuying de guocheng). He writes, “I began to carefully observe my son, I realized that no
matter what we gave him to draw, he could pretty much draw it to perfection, or you
could say ‘copy’ it, ‘clone’ it. But if you wanted him to creatively draw something
according to an assigned topic, that was difficult”(1999:21). Huang argues that this is
because his son had been taught according to a simple transmission process: a teacher
draws a model on the blackboard, students look with their eyes, and reproduce the
drawing on paper with their hand. (Note the absence of a subjective process in his
36
account, certainly a flattening of how Chinese painting is taught.) Though his son had
technical skill for producing a traditional painting quite elegant for his age, he was
stumped when given free rein. He could reproduce something someone else has already
done, but could not create something of his own. The problem with the “Xeroxing”
process is that one’s heart is not in it (meiyou “xin” de canyu), and what results will not
inspire others.
This story, offered in this first chapter of Education for Quality in America, is
meant to encapsulate the putative differences between Chinese and American education.
The moral is that the seeming chaos of American education is precisely what promotes
creativity. Huang comes to realize that whether or not a child’s piece of art exhibits
proportion, composition and structure is besides the point. By providing little direction,
he claims, American educators encourage children to use their imagination. Huang began
to encourage his son’s imagination, teaching him that whether or not a drawing was
realistic did not matter.
16
At one point, he taught his son how to meaningfully draw from
one’s inner heart-mind (neixin) by listing the various ways he could go about drawing his
likeness: drawing from a photograph, having his son sit for him, or drawing from the
memory he has of his son the morning he left China for the U.S. – the distraught look on
his chubby face as his grandmother held him.
Since then, Huang maintains, the child “slowly began to ‘understand’(wu) some
things…”(1999:22).

16
Cf. Republican era child psychologist Huang Yi’s argument in The Psychology of Children’s Drawings
that the stages of child development are demonstrated in children’s drawings - their progression through
styles of representation, from scribbling, through symbolic and schematic representations, and then finally
realist representation (Jones 2002).
37

Education for Quality in America was so successful that Huang Quanyu, and his
publisher Guangdong Education Publishing House, followed up with a second book:
Family education in America (2001). Not without its own share of success,
17
Huang
claims to have written it in response to the flood of letters and questions he received from
readers, most of them written by parents. Unable to respond to each and every letter,
Huang thought that writing another book would be more efficient. I will discuss three
important themes that emerge in this book, all of which resonate with both the official
position on Education for Quality as well as the perspective of other popular experts.
1.) It is okay to be “ordinary”
Like Jiang Zemin, who stated in his 2000 speech on education: “…one does not
necessarily have to go to college in order to succeed. Society needs multiple kinds of
human talent. ‘Three-hundred and sixty occupations, every occupation has an
optimus’”(2001:5), Huang Quanyu also seeks to widen the definition of success. In the
opening pages of Family Education in America, he clarifies: “This book is not merely for
the cultivation of [a] Harvard genius or [an] Oxford talent, my own child will not
necessarily be able to attend these schools, [so I] really do not dare to speak
irresponsibly. This book is for the proletariat masses, [it] is written for the suzhi jiaoyu of
the children of tens of thousands of ordinary families”(2001:13). To make the idea of
ordinariness compelling, Huang draws comparisons between Chinese and American

17
The second book did not make it to the top ten bestseller list. But the fact that my copy, a second
printing, was made in the same month as the first, taking the number of circulating copies from 30,000 to
60,000, provides a measure of this book’s popularity.
38
education. Whereas Chinese family education, under the prompting of Exam-oriented
Education, aims to cultivate “geniuses”(tiancai), American family education puts more
emphasis on cultivating “real-life successes”(xianshi shenghuo de chenggongzhe). This,
Huang argues, is reflected in the fact that when Chinese schools invite speakers, they
invite “famous people, doctorates, professors, writers, directors (yuanzhang), top-ten this,
outstanding that, etc.,” whereas American schools invite speakers like “doctors, nurses,
police, firefighters, auctioneers, dentists, taxi drivers, lawyers, postal carriers,
etc.”(2001:23).
Ironically, the Education for Quality movement is often introduced as a solution
to the puzzle of why Chinese education has failed to produce a Nobel Prize winner, a
lofty imprimatur of success. Yet, popular writers like Huang Quanyu commonly stress
the value of ordinariness, best expressed in this definitive statement:
The purpose of suzhi jiaoyu is to tap a person’s potential to the greatest limit, so
as to let a person’s suzhi fully develop. Therefore, we should tell our children with
the assumption that justice is on our side (lizhi qizhuang di): “As long as your
potential has been released to its greatest limit, [and] your suzhi has been able to
develop fully, then you have succeeded!” [2001:14]

This seemingly more liberal view of success is intended to create a particular kind of
childhood experience that may lead to greater things. The point is that parents ought to
stay out of the way, and govern indirectly (see Chapter Three).
2.) The importance of interests (xingqu)
Connected to the idea that being ordinary is okay, is the importance of having a
wide breadth of interests without being concerned with result. When Huang Quanyu was
studying in the United States, he befriended an American couple with four children. This
39
family, the couple especially, served as Huang’s “informants” in his ethnographic study
of American family life.
18
Huang often made observations that did not make immediate
sense to him, and he would seek clarification from his friends, getting an “emic”
perspective on American parenting.
In the first chapter of Family Education in America, Huang marvels at his friends’
support of their four children’s many sports activities. Between soccer, basketball,
baseball, gymnastics, figure skating, swimming, diving, and skiing, Huang describes his
friends as “perpetual motion machines,” keeping up with the various games and events of
their four children every weekend. He was especially amazed when he saw how quickly
their four and six-year old learned to ski after a couple hours of practice on flatter snow.
With little weight given to the factor of age difference, Huang humorously contrasts this
vignette with his own attempt at skiing – how he made a spectacle of himself, “throwing
his ‘old’ bones all over the place”(2001:29).
In all seriousness, Huang later asked the mother what the point of participating in
so many sports was. He asked her, “Are you trying to raise professional athletes?” The
answer was negative. Huang’s informant-friend
19
, in fact, is a sports biology professor
and said frankly that she did not think that any of her children had the makings of a
professional athlete. And her son Jake was a case in point, Huang seems to think. He was
short in stature, yet belonged to two different basketball teams. So Huang pursues his

18
Terry Woronov also characterizes his books as “ethnographic” (2007).

19
This term, informant-friend, is a term I will use to describe my own interlocuters. I borrow this phrase
from John Osburg, because ethnographic fieldwork has depended so much on the cultivation of friendships.
40
inquiry further and asks, “Then why do you let them participate in so many sports?
What’s the purpose?”
“Why?” Huang’s friend replies, having to stop for a moment to think – as if she
were reflecting on her own common sense for the first time. Then, she says to Huang,
“One is to cultivate the kids’ self-esteem
20
; two is to exercise their body and their bodily
coordination; three is whole development (quanmian fazhan), cultivate a wide breadth of
interests.” Huang is so impressed that her emphasis was not on result but rather the
experience itself that he writes, “What a model (dianxing) ‘hoping my children will
become people’(wangzi chengren) kind of Education for Quality”(2001:30)!
Whereas Chinese parents wish for their children to become “dragons,” wangzi
chenglong, American parents wish for their children to become “people” in Huang’s
account. While the former is idealistic, the latter is realistic. Indeed, Huang fails to
acknowledge the class bias in privileging an “interest” such as skiing, as well as the fact
that his sample narrowly represents upper middle-class America. But for us to expect him
to have a more critical perspective would be unrealistic on our part; Huang is
participating in a reform movement with practical ends (rather than purely
epistemological ones). Taking inspiration from how Limin Bai rightly notes with respect
to how late Qing intellectuals oversimplified the West (2005:203), I see China’s current
puzzle as only allowing a writer like Huang Quanyu to pay attention to what he could use
and apply for envisioning China’s education reform.

20
In the original Chinese text, Huang Quanyu writes “self-esteem” in English, leaves it untranslated.
41
3.) Encourage rule-breaking behavior
In a chapter titled “What to do when the child takes apart the alarm-clock,” Huang
Quanyu reports that at an international science competition for high school students
sponsored by Intel in the year 2000, the Chinese team only brought home 6 out of 900
possible prizes. He describes the 6/900 fraction as “heart-breaking” and “shameful”
(2001:94). It is a perfect illustration, he feels, of what people call “high points low
ability”(gaofen dineng) – a characterization of China’s examination-based education
system.
It is in this chapter that Huang tries to clarify the relationship of good parenting
(or jiating jiaoyu) to Education for Quality. Resonating with an official formulation, as
seen in the policy documents, Huang also defines suzhi jiaoyu as a “systematic
construction”(xitong gongcheng) that involves all of society, not only schools. For this
reason, he states that it is important for parents to understand its “kernel”(hexin). It does
not end with sending a child off to learn some “hobbies”(ai’hao). Huang contends,
“Many parents spend money they should not be spending on their child in huge bundles,
without blinking. But they are unable to grasp the issue of [something like] taking apart
an alarm clock”(2001:93). This example of the alarm-clock serves to illustrate how a
parent can make or break a child’s curiosity in the course of everyday life, without even
knowing it. Again, Huang draws a comparison between Chinese and American parents to
make his point. Whereas American parents are able to take a “tolerant attitude”(kuanrong
de xintai) toward something like taking apart an alarm-clock – some may even encourage
and commend a child for doing so, Chinese parents will either disapprove, scold, or not
42
even deal with the matter at all, thereby failing to encourage, or even stifling the
development of a child’s sense of curiosity and “spirit for exploration”(tansuo jingshen).
Huang points out that a good parent does not necessarily have to be a high suzhi
scholar. Good parenting simply involves taking the correct attitude, especially, the ability
to embrace rule-breaking behavior. Huang defines the chuang of chuangzao (create-
produce) as breaking with rule or routine (chuanggui). The zao of chuangzao, Huang
defines as “producing something that has realistic meaning (xianshi yiyi).” Therefore,
cultivating meaningful creativity in children means encouraging children to break with
rule or routine (2001:92).
The Perspective of Parents
While doing fieldwork, one of the things I kept hearing, over and over again, was
that Chinese students learn and grasp a lot more knowledge than their American
counterparts. “Things we complete in primary school you don’t complete until the eighth-
grade,” one junior middle school
21
teacher pointed out to me. This comparison often
came at me in the same tone as another commonly made comparison, “We have five-
thousand years of history and you only have a few hundred.”
While these comparisons between Chinese and American students always carried
a hint of pride, my interlocutors would end by saying that in contrast to American
children, “Chinese children lack creativity, they are not good with their hands” and,

21
In this dissertation, I translate chuzhong into junior middle where some scholars translate junior high. I
translate gaozhong into middle school where some scholars use high school. I make this choice because the
two levels are divided differently in China. Junior middle school consists of three years, and middle school
also consists of three years. This system is a legacy of the influence of American Progressivism on
Republican-era China and the Reform Decree of 1922 (Brown 1987:123).

43
“they don’t know what to do with what they learn.” Sometimes, the comparison extended
to parents, as when a young woman said to me, ‘Chinese parents don’t raise their children
as good as American parents do. If a little kid started drawing on the ground, a Chinese
parents would start scolding. But American parents would let the kid draw freely.’
22

These opinions point to the parallels between discursive ideals and popular
understanding.
To further illustrate, the father who gave me my copy of Education for Quality in
America defined the word “outstanding person”(youxiu de ren) in this way:
“Before, our society was not very open/liberalized (kaifang). So not being an
open-liberated society, [our] thinking was stingy and stubborn in many respects.
So then, including our parents, they believed that a child was an outstanding
person if he or she became a scientist, an artist, a pianist, et cetera et cetera et
cetera, all a kind of the-best-in-a-field (jia). But with progress and
opening/liberalization in all directions, we-, starting with us, we feel you know,
there are many opportunities in society. You don’t have to become some kind of
the-best-in-a-field (jia). As long as you have an acquired specialty. And then, you
find a position that suits you, something you find interesting, something you are

22
It is hard to say whether or not I commonly heard such comparisons because I was an American or
because of authors like Huang Quanyu. It is probably a little bit of both. As to the question of why Huang
Quanyu was so popular with ordinary people, I think there are at least two answers. For one, and this is a
point that Terry Woronov makes in her comparison of Harvard Girl Liu Yiting and Education for Quality
in America, these two books are actually part of a relatively new genre of books describing and reflecting a
fascination with American educational practices. Some other titles include How Americans Raise Their
Daughters, How to Raise Your Child to Get into Yale, and Sports and Art Classes in American Schools
(Woronov 2007:29). Huang’s book is also part of another 10 year-old genre of popular reading that
“describes life in America from the perspective of Chinese émigrés,” and such books are “read
domestically as an elliptical critique of Chinese politics (Woronov 2007:42).
I also see another reason for Huang Quanyu’s popularity, which these comparisons have led me to
reflect on. Huang Quanyu’s narrative is a testament to a long-standing opinion that it is not that Chinese
people are inferior to Westerners, rather, differences in strength can be attributed to differences in
educational systems. Huang’s son was a case in point. Kuangyan had trouble keeping up in the classroom
when he first arrived in the United States to join his father. He did not speak any English. But begins to
surpass his American peers very quickly – he becomes fluent in English in three months, wins first place in
a spelling bee not long after, he was his soccer teams most valuable player, etc. Huang’s son’s achievement
in the American school and cultural system is a powerful reminder of what the Chinese have long believed:
environment plays the most important role in a person’s development. These belief is reflected in many
philosophical sayings, proverbs and stories, such as “Mencius’s Mother Moves Three Times.”
44
willing to do, and something that allows you to contribute to society, then you are
a successful person. That is good enough.”

This parent shares the same kind of optimism that Huang Quanyu demonstrates when he
advises parents that they ought to tell a child that as long as one has fully expressed one’s
potential, then one has succeeded. Another parent expressed her definition of success in a
similar way when I asked her to define “become useful”(chengcai): “Becoming useful is,
actually I think becoming useful does not necessarily have accord with something I have
designed for her. Rather, whatever she is interested in, [I want to] let her freely (ziyou)
express it (fahui).” In general, the definition of success according to the ideals of
Education for Quality for both parents and popular experts rests on a certain optimism
that success in life will come as long as a child is allowed to explore his or her interest
and is given a chance to develop that interest into a “specialty.” As long as a person’s
unique potential is expressed, then that person will find his or her appropriate place in
society.
What this means is parents have to do some “excavation” work – they have to
wajue a child’s potential by giving a child many chances to explore and develop personal
interests. Wang Lingling, a popular expert local to Kunming, cites Howard Gardner when
she teaches parents that there are eight kinds of intelligence.
23
She optimistically claims
that “there is surely a specialty that suits your child” because every child is intelligent
(Wang 2004:71). Thus, “…parents must learn to accept a child’s uniqueness and provide

23
Howard Gardner is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A prolific author, Gardner’s
theory was first elaborated in a 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I do not
know which of his works Wang Lingling draws on.

45
help and guidance. […] Create the conditions (chuangzao tiaojian), promote a child’s
development in a area that suits his or her intellectual strengths” (Wang 2004:73).
24

Thus, ordinary parents in Kunming understand carrying out Education for Quality
as sending their child to as many “specialty classes”(techang ban, tese ban) as possible,
and sometimes, finding a coach to teach a particular sport. This practice, as parents
understand it, 1.) fulfills their responsibility for exploring and developing an interest and,
2.) promotes whole development (quanmian fazhan). “Specialties” and “specialty
classes” include badminton, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese chess, the study of Chinese
classics, composition (zuowen), dance, drawing/art, electric keyboard, English, Go,
Olympic math, piano, ping-pong, pipa (Chinese lute), swimming, and violin.
25
Since the
Hongta Sports Center opened in 2000, children in Kunming can also learn ice skating.
26

According to many parents, the point of these various classes is not to raise a professional
artist or professional pianist or what have you. These are considered utilitarian aims.
Rather, the point of specialty education is to build something into the child that will
confer benefits in an unknown future.
The justifications that parents use, and the way they approach their child’s
specialty education, resonates with what the popular experts are currently advocating.

24
How mothers understand their responsibility to “create conditions” is rather complicated. I devote a
chapter to discussing the meaning and practice of “creating conditions,” which includes and goes beyond
pursuing specialty education. See Chapter Five. I will discuss Wang Lingling in greater depth in Chapter
Four.

25
Many of these specialties evoke the kind of cultural education pursued by literati of pre-modern times, as
summarized by the phrase “music, chess, calligraphy and painting”(qin qi shu hua).

26
I could not help but marvel at the grandeur of the Hongta Sports Complex, the day I went ice-skating
with one of my case families. Built by the Hongta cigarette company, this sports center cost 58 million U.S.
dollars to build. See http://www.gokunming.com/en/blog/item/526/chinas_highaltitude_training_centers,
accessed August 5, 2008.
46
But their motivations also point to a kind of cultural politics of class rarely discussed in
popular discourse. In pursuing specialty education for their child, parents are responding
to social pressures and demands that serve to effect social stratification. My friend Wang
Yan told me, ‘It’s not that we want her to be a pianist or artist or dancer. But these things,
will be a good influence in her life later.’ Wang Yan thinks sending her daughter to learn
dance will cultivate good deportment (qizhi). For another friend, specialty education is
related to the achievement of life success, defined in terms of the quality of life rather
than occupation and salary. It ought to contribute to a lifestyle that is not bound to
economic necessity. She explained, “When she grows up, her life should be, you know,
full of pleasure. I don’t want her to be the kind of person who simply pursues success,
who only knows how to work and not how to enjoy.”
From a sociological or anthropological point of view, the Education for Quality
movement serves to not only expand the pool of human capital for the nation, it also
serves to build cultural capital into the body of individual children – thereby effecting and
deepening socioeconomic disparities in Chinese society. But what is at stake in building
cultural capital is much different in late socialist China than in French society, the context
in which Bourdieu formulated his theory of cultural capital (1984). In late socialist China,
class strata is unfixed and a rather messy affair. (For one, wealth and class status do not
correlate.) What this means for middle-class parents is, they do not know what the future
will look like. But if it is going to be anything like the present, then the competition is
sure to be intense. In this context, specialty education serves to create a sense of certainty
in the face of an uncertain future.
47
Social competition in the present is already very intense, a fact that affects
schoolchildren who compete amongst themselves. My friend Wang Yan explains,
“Because it seems like society right now, (clicks tongue) demands that children
not only study hard. Before we only needed to study hard. But kids now [have] to
be developed in every aspect. You know, there are a lot of well-rounded kids
now. Strong in every aspect. And then, it seems like these kids are even better
(geng hao). It seems like [they are] even better. And then they’re more confidant.”

My friend Zhou Huawei expressed something similar, when she explained that music
education is not for the sake of becoming musician. Rather, she simply wants her
daughter to be the kind of person who can appreciate music, be able to feel beauty. Not so
she may have more cultural capital than the next person, but rather, so that she does not
have to be the person who lacks cultural capital. “When she goes off to college and meets
people of various classes (jieceng), she won’t feel bad,” Zhou Huawei explained, “she
won’t feel inferior (zibei).”
27

Consequently, what is practiced under the banner of Education for Quality –
which hopes to relieve pressure on children – has only added a new ingredient to the
mixture of social competition and an extra layer of burden on children. As I repeatedly
heard, “Everybody else is doing it. If you don’t do it, your child will be backward.
There’s no alternative (mei banfa).” Specialty classes are not recognized as having a
direct utilitarian goal but urban parents feel like they have no choice but to participate.
The same goes for having a looser definition of success. Like my friend Zhang Xin puts
it, “Sometimes, as a parent, you think, maybe having a way out/employment (chulu) does
not absolutely depend on going to college. But what parent isn’t going to wish that their

27
Keep in mind that Yunnan Province is seen by the rest of China as backward. People from Kunming
often experience discrimination in big cities like Beijing.
48
own kid can go to college? Sure we say this, but when it’s your turn, no one is willing to
let their own kid get eliminated (taotai).”
There is another way in which parental approaches to specialty education
correspond with, and, at the same time, contradict the ideals of Education for Quality.
Parents commonly claim to respect their child’s interest, and choose classes according to
what a child requests. “Like piano,” Zhang Xin told me with regards to her son, “he
would come home and practice and practice and practice. And then he didn’t want to
practice anymore. He thought it was very monotonous. So I said if you can’t do it, forget
it, who cares.” But they are staying with Olympic math, “Because he is still willing to
learn it. And there is no burden. It’s not like he has to do something when he comes
home. They just take care of business right then and there.”
At the same time, parents also feel that if a child especially requests something,
they ought to stick with it to the end even if there is no enjoyment to be had. After Zhou
Huawei’s daughter Jinjin watched Disney’s The Little Mermaid, she requested swimming
classes. But it turned out that the teacher was very strict – threw students into the pool to
get them swimming, and would smack their fingers with a bamboo stick when they rested
at the edge. Scared to death of her teacher, Jinjin began to negotiate – rather slyly – by
saying, “I don’t feel very well today.” But Zhou Huawei thought it was important that
Jinjin “fulfilled her responsibility”(fu zeren), she even helped the swimming teacher
throw her daughter in. “Because this is something you picked,” Zhou Huawei lectured
her daughter, “I want to let you be a responsible person. Let you know what is called
sticking by your word (xinyong).”
49
By the time these children get to junior middle school, they will probably
discontinue extra-curricular learning because academic pressure will get much heavier.
Academic pressure is already an issue at the level of primary school, and the homework
load already poses a challenge to parental efforts in fostering a child’s “whole
development.” Like the “reducing burden” campaign in particular,
28
Education for
Quality in general faces the constant challenge of China’s incorrigible examination-based
education system.

To sum up the foregoing discussion, Education for Quality, or suzhi jiaoyu, is a
movement that aims to cultivate well-rounded citizens with creative ability and practical
skills, a “talent” who will contribute to national revitalization. Drawing on Western
educational theories, discussion of Education for Quality first appeared in professional
education journals in the 1980s, and was – starting in 1999 – incorporated into official
policies concerning education reform and child development. In the popular advice

28
According to Terry Woronov, who was conducting fieldwork in Beijing the same year the “reducing
burden” policy went into effect, “mention of jianfu in the media and among educators and parents had
reduced to a trickle” by the summer of 2000, approximately half a year after the “Urgent Notice” was
issued. Woronov adds, “By the beginning of 2001 homework assignments were back to their pre-jianfu
levels; by many accounts, many of the government’s efforts to regulate the amount and type of homework
assigned to students had largely been a failure”(2003:111). It seems to have been a classic case of treating
symptoms and not the cause. With the ultimate national college entrance examination (gaokao) left in
place, parents took the responsibility of assigning homework to their child upon themselves to ensure
preparedness for important exam-taking. This was especially the case with families in the middle of the
economic spectrum, according to Woronov, who saw “a college education as the single best investment
they can make in their child’s future…”(2003:164).
By the time I conducted fieldwork in Kunming in the mid-2000s, “reducing burden” was
mentioned as something of the past. I think it did, however, leave a legacy. When I talk about the
tremendous anxiety middle-class parents feel over schooling in the next chapter, and the notion of
pedagogical quality (jiaoxue zhiliang), it is important to keep the “reducing burden” campaign in mind. For
parents and teachers I knew, good schools have the ability to prepare their students for exam-taking in
effective ways, whereas not-so-good schools give inordinate amounts of homework without producing high
scoring students. In Kunming, by the mid-2000s, the issue was not so much homework burden than
pedagogical quality.
50
literature, we see a shift in emphasis from “excellent births, excellent rearing” –
originally a campaign that went hand-in-hand with the one-child policy – to Education
for Quality by the late 1990s. Popularization of the ideals of Education for Quality is
enabled by China’s thriving publishing industry, which has turned the Education for
Quality movement into a marketing strategy that plays on the deepest wishes of ordinary
parents. Consequently, state agendas for raising population quality dovetail nicely with
parental desire for successful children. Many urban parents pursue specialty education to
explore and develop interests, inadvertently intensifying the burden children bear.
In the following section, I will situate this dissertation in relation to a vibrant
conversation taking place in China anthropology. Many China anthropologists have
devoted their efforts to describing shifting forms of power in post-Mao China. The
ethnographic literature commonly shows how state power has been reconfigured in a way
that has profound implications for how people live their lives and conduct themselves.
The Education for Quality movement is a part of this bigger story, and, as Terry
Woronov has already pointed out, constitutes a “strategy of government” (2003). I
discuss this literature in the next section, and will also review the theoretical tradition that
has inspired many China anthropologists, namely, the work of Michel Foucault and the
governmentality school he inspired. The following discussion will offer a tentative
framework for understanding popular expertise and the lived experience of parenting,
which I will draw on as well as move beyond in the course of the dissertation.
51
“Governing By Inaction”
In his book Family Education in America, there is a phrase that Huang Quanyu
invokes when he marvels at how American childrearing does not seem to involve
authoritarian measures: “governing by inaction”(wuwei erzhi). The fact that Huang
invokes a Daoist phrase that comes from the Classic of the Way and Its Power
(Daodejing) to envision a different kind of parenting – as part of a movement that aims to
secure China’s status in the world – points to the hybrid character of Chinese political
reason at the turn of the 21
st
century. There are many ways in which education reforms
correspond to political and economic reforms at the macrolevel; they all share an
emphasis on non-intervention, enabling, promoting, and regulating. Some scholars have
drawn on political theory developed in Western contexts to characterize recent shifts as
“neoliberal,” while others have pointed out how governmental reason in China is not only
a complex hybrid, but also informed by indigenous traditions of artful government.
Indeed the Daodejing, in many ways, offered a political theory. Chapter 48 is
emblematic: “To govern the world well, one must take inaction as the principle”(Gu
1996:203).
29

Starting in the 1980s, Chinese intellectuals, officials, businesses and ordinary
people began to critique administrative intervention – rewards, punishments, quotas, and
commands – as “overly heavy-handed,” producing passive objects of instrumental reason
(Sigley 2006:499). But the 1992 introduction of the term “socialist market

29
My copy of the Daodejing, published by Peking University Press, reflects the
political trend I am about to discuss. In the introduction, the translator credits Lao Zi as being “the
originator of ideas concerning market economy which is under the control of the invisible hand”(1996:47),
suggesting that this is a text that could be consulted in reforming the national economy.
52
economy”(shehui zhuyi shichang jingji) into official policy following Deng Xiaoping’s
Southern Tour represented a significant conceptual shift (Sigley 2006:498). The
economic reforms were reinvigorated in market terms. Even Chinese Marxist
philosophers embraced the market, Gary Sigley states, “once they neutralized the
problem of any contradiction between ‘socialism’ and ‘markets’, [they] generally agreed
that the market was conducive to creating superior subjectivities”(2006:500). For it is
through autonomy and self-interest that the subject, both enterprises and individuals, fully
realizes itself.
Interventionist parenting is understood as stifling and hampering human
development. In Family Education in America, Huang Quanyu argues that Chinese
children are treated like “potted landscapes,” pruned and shaped according to the will of
their parents. American children, on the other hand, grow up in open environments
(kaifang huanjing), outdoor gardens with plenty of sunlight and fertile soil (2001:61).
Similarly, socialist planning was conceived of as stifling the economy and hampering
global integration; official texts in the 1990s argued that the economy ought to be guided
by mechanisms that are intrinsic to the market (Sigley 2006:501-2). This symmetry
between changing forms of government at both the state and family level is not
coincidental. It is the result of shifting conceptions over what it means to govern – which,
in Chinese, happens to be synonymous with “to-parent” – and how best to govern so as to
achieve competitive strength.
53
Biopolitics
In the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault describes a major shift in
the formation of power that began in the seventeenth century, one that accompanied the
first formation of capitalism. For Foucault, more important than “the Protestant Ethic”
was “the entry of life into history” whereby biological life came to be not only something
to know, but also a field for intervention, modification and control ([1976]:141). Whether
this meant improving agricultural techniques, disciplining the body, or managing
biological reproduction, power was enacted in fostering life itself. Foucault sees this as a
reversal of the “subtraction mechanism” by which a sovereign exercised juridical power,
manifested in the “right to appropriate a portion of the wealth, a tax of products, goods
and services, labor and blood, levied on the subjects.” For Foucault, “Power in this
instance was essentially a right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life
itself; it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress
it”([1976]:136). Bio-politics on the other hand involves power that multiplies. It is
characterized by efficiency and optimization.
For Foucault, the entry of biological existence into history was expressed in the
“emergence of the ‘population’ as an economic and political problem: population as
wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own
growth and the resources it commanded”([1976]:26). At the heart of this problem was
sex: fertility, birth rates, age of marriage, sex practices, etc. The proliferation of
discourses over sex in the modern age had more to do with the multiplication of surfaces
for intervention rather than a liberation of repressed sexuality. A preoccupation with sex
produced the very forms of sexuality to be managed; from this preoccupation emerged
54
“four-privileged objects of knowledge… the hysterical woman, the masturbating child,
the Malthusian couple, and the perverse adult”([1976]:105). These subject positions were
formed as points of support for knowledge and control over the female body, sexual
precocity, reproductive fertility, and sexual instinct ([1976]:103-105). Thus for Foucault,
sexuality must not be thought of as a “natural given,” but rather a historical construct that
carried instrumental value in the government of population ([1976]:105).
The argument set forth in The History of Sexuality is indispensable to
understanding the modernization effort in socialist China, where a major population
project has and continues to serve a number of functions that include restoring state
legitimacy, and – in Foucault’s words – “the adjustment of the phenomena of population
to economic processes”([1976]:141).
30
The population project entailed both reducing
population size while raising the “low quality” of China’s masses – both of which the
Party-state understood as major obstacles to economic modernization. It also entailed
projects to know, categorize, and manage ethnic populations, as well as policies for
understanding and controlling geographic movement – both of which bear legacies that
go back to the founding of the People’s Republic. Population was and continues to be an
attractive domain, for this regime holds strong faith in the ability of technoscience to
manage social problems, and, as Greenhalgh and Winckler point out, “‘population’ –
unlike, say, ‘culture,’ – was conventionally defined as a biological entity dictating an

30
Population was also a concern in late imperial and Republican China. But according to Greenhalgh and
Winckler, it was not until the PRC that a Chinese state had institutions at its disposal (2005:31).

55
approach to governance guided by science”(2005:285). Here too, we see biological
existence become a political matter.
Recalling the “hysterical woman, the masturbating child, the Malthusian couple,
and the perverse adult,” specific sites of knowledge and control emerge as points of
support for the government of population in China. They are multiple and include not
only the two categories most relevant to this dissertation – “the quality single child” and
“the good mother” – but also, “the reproductive woman,” “the disabled person,” and
entire demographics such as ethnic minorities groups and “floating populations”
31

(Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005; Kohrman 1999, 2005a; Litzinger 2000; Schein 2000;
Zhang 2001). While the West was and continues to be preoccupied with sexuality, China
is obsessed with suzhi, human quality. Suzhi discourse is found in domains as disparate as
education, rural development, domestic migration, private business corporate culture, and
so on. It constructs the problem of national strength and economic development in terms
of human improvement, governing individuals not through the threat of suppression but
rather the seduction of the “norm.” At the end of the first volume of The History of
Sexuality, Foucault mentions the idea of the “normalizing society” as the “historical
outcome” of bio-power ([1976]:144). In post-Mao China, the normalizing society is
expressed in popular evaluations of a person’s suzhi. Commonly invoked as a potential
that can be nurtured and cultivated through personal effort, suzhi discourse invests
personal responsibility in individuals while furthering economic development (often in
exploitative ways). For example, a company described by Yan Hairong lures young

31
Rural migrant workers.
56
migrant women to Beijing by promising a “free education,” the opportunity to leave
poverty behind, and best of all, raise their suzhi. Yan quips, “In the post-Mao culture of
modernity, prosperous and bustling cities are seen as a ‘comprehensive social university’
(shehui zonghe daxue) in which millions of peasants can go to develop their suzhi at no
cost to the state, requiring no investment”(2003:501)!
The norm of high quality originated in family planning and education reform. In a
manner characteristic of modern biopower as conceived by Foucault, the notion of
quality in China links the micro-level pole of individual bodies to the macro-level pole of
population problems – understood at the beginning of the reform era as causing China’s
inferior position on the global stage. The political deliberation that gave way to the
mandatory one-child policy in 1980 conceived of the population problem as both
quantitative and qualitative. The concern for human quality expressed in the eugenics
campaign, “excellent births, excellent rearing,” mitigated the coercive aspect of the one-
child policy with the norm of the high quality single-child (Milwertz 1997; Greenhalgh
and Winckler 2005). “If the one-child norm was repressive,” Susan Greenhalgh argues,
“the norm of the healthy, educated single child was highly seductive”(2005:217). When
parents “internalize” these norms – closely monitoring, managing, and regimenting their
children – they effectively enact a kind of “self-disciplining” of the family (Greenhalgh
2005:244).
Governmentality, liberalism and neoliberalism
Foucault situates the historic shift in power formation more empirically in lectures
given at the Collège de France, acknowledging that the problems presented by population
57
– health, sanitation, birthrate, longevity, and race – “could not be dissociated from the
framework of political rationality within which they appeared and developed their
urgency”(1997a:73). The framework he has in mind is “liberalism,” which Foucault
understands as a practice of critical reflection on the purpose of government – a form of
reason that has unfolded over the course of many centuries. The questions posed by
liberalism go beyond efficiency and optimization, for example, “Why, in fact, must one
govern… what makes it necessary for there to be a government, and what ends should it
pursue with regard to society in order to justify its existence”(1997a:75)? Such questions
are familiar to us, as they are associated with liberalisms of the twentieth-century. But
critical reflections over the purpose of government, Foucault tells us, go back to the mid-
sixteenth century, which marks the start of an explosion in political treatises containing
not “advice to the prince” but rather discussions on the “art of government.”
In the 1978 lecture “Governmentality,” Foucault describes an early text in this
body of literature, written by a Guillaume de La Perrière. La Perrière was one amongst
many authors writing on the art of government, commonly formulated in opposition to
what was portrayed in Machiavelli’s The Prince. For these authors the art of government
would differ from princely rule in many respects. While sovereign power seeks to draw a
line between the power of the prince and the inhabitants of a territory, the art of
government “is to establish a continuity, in both an upwards and downwards
direction”(1991:91). While the prince was external to his principality, the art of
58
government acts on relations immanent to a society.
32
While the ultimate end of
sovereignty was obedience to the law, the end of government is plural. Foucault quotes
La Perrière as saying: “ ‘government is the right disposition of things, arranged so as to
lead to a convenient end’”(1991:93). He interprets this as pointing to the multiple aims of
government and kinds of persons to be governed, “a whole series of specific
finalities”(1991:95).
One of these finalities is human behavior. Whereas the behavior of territorial
inhabitants does not matter much – “these territories can be fertile or not, the population
dense and sparse, the inhabitants rich or poor, active or lazy” – the art of government
concerns itself with a number of things, men in relation to productive capacity (both
agricultural and biological), men in relation to themselves (ways of acting and thinking),
and men in relation to accident and misfortune (1991:93). Government, simply put, can
be defined as “techniques and procedures for directing human behavior. Government of
children, government of souls and consciences, government of household, of a state, or of
oneself”(Foucault 1997:81).
Foucault’s research on the art of government has inspired a number of thinkers
commonly referred to as the “governmentality theorists.”
33
These thinkers critique
common sense ideas about individual freedom, liberty, and autonomy – arguing that these
things are not natural givens but rather the product of a particular kind of political reason.
The most important of these thinkers for the purpose of this dissertation is Nikolas Rose,

32
For Foucault, “society” was a new concept or “problematic” that enabled questions about the purpose of
government (1997:75).

33
Andrew Kipnis identifies Mitchell Dean, Colin Gordon, Barry Hindess, and Nikolas Rose as belonging to
this camp.
59
who has written extensively on freedom as a political technology, the role of expertise,
and the intensification of subjectivity in liberal societies.
For Rose, freedom is not a natural state of human existence to be protected by a
liberal state; it is a “formula of power”(1999:65). Freedom is “made” through a multitude
of human technologies that inculcate and guide personal desire, aspiration and
responsibility. In this way, political will is not imposed from without but is rather
achieved in and through the social body. Extending Foucault’s idea that normalization is
the outcome of biopower, Rose emphasizes the important role experts play in maintaining
the distance between a liberal state and its citizens. He writes, “For it is experts – first
doctors but later a host of others – who can specify ways of conducting one’s private
affairs that are desirable, not because they are required by a moral code dictated by God
or the Prince, but because they are rational and true”(1999:74-5). With freedom comes
individual “responsibilization,” which depends on the guidance of expert advice
regarding a number of private affairs such as the conduct of one’s home, one’s marriage,
one’s children, oneself, etc.
Subjectivity is not a natural given either. Concern with personal well-being,
happiness, meaningful relationships, and the purpose of life have been incited and
intensified by technologies of government that include the psychological professions.
According to Rose, “Contemporary individuals are incited to live as if making a project
of themselves: they are to work on their emotional world, their domestic and conjugal
arrangements, their relations with employment and their techniques of sexual pleasure, to
develop a ‘style’ of living that will maximize the worth of their existence to
60
themselves”(1996:157). The “intensification of subjectivity” becomes all the more acute
under neoliberalism, which emerged out of a rejection of the welfare state and its
interventionist policies – seen as producing inactive citizens.
34
Here, a conception of an
entrepreneurial self becomes important as does the act of autonomous choice-making.
Norms continue to be important but only as they relate to the value of self-actualization.
35

A self-esteem movement described by Barbara Cruikshank is illustrative.
Spearheaded in 1983 in California, programs for developing self-esteem aimed to solve a
number of social problems, not the least of which included chronic welfare dependency.
The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social
Responsibility was also charged with conducting social science research on self-esteem
and its relationship with social ills. Though the experts had difficulty establishing an
empirical correlation, they invented ways of measuring the lack of self-esteem (1999:92-
3). Self-esteem consequently became linked to active and responsible citizenship. In its
punitive form, the self-esteem movement was expressed, for example, in court
injunctions that ordered participation in therapeutic programs for battered women or
“unfit” mothers. “But just as often,” Cruikshank argues, “women are persuaded to
participate in their own ‘empowerment” without threats”(1999:91). A best-selling book
that was emblematic of the movement encouraged women to find their “inner voices,” to
tell and write their personal narratives as a way to understand their lives (1999:89, 102).

34
Neoliberalism was also formulated as a way to avoid totalitarianism and the imposition of morality by a
state on its citizens. See Rose on Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944
(1999:137). Also see Colin Gordin 1991.

35
For more discussion on the differences between a liberal and a neoliberal state, see Hoffman 2006:555
and Rofel 2007:15-19.
61
In China, the theme of self-actualization and autonomous choice-making plays
out in powerful ways; this is especially the case in the post-graduate labor market. Lisa
Hoffman’s research in Dalian demonstrates the way in which economic development gets
tied to a specific formation of subjectivity. Before the 1980s, labor markets did not exist
as college graduates received job assignments according to the needs of state planning.
The emergence of talent exchange centers and job fairs in China constitute new
“technologies of labor distribution” that shape professional subjectivity according to a
neoliberal logic (2006:551). Graduates freely choose their employers just as employers
freely choose their employees in a system of “mutual choice.” While employers look for
talent, graduates look for opportunities for developing their individual potential.
Describing common interview themes, Hoffman discerns “the emergence of an
increasing commonsense-ness about choice, autonomous decision-making, and career
possibilities…”(2006:557). Her informants situate their job-seeking practices in contrast
to the lack of choice under the planned economy, producing “narratives of freedom” that
presume a retreat of the state (2006:553).
Even state birth planning, which has a reputation for being intrusive and coercive,
has implemented strategies that take a neoliberal approach (Greenhalgh and Winckler
2005). Whereas the Deng era regime (late 1970s to early 1990s) exercised a tremendous
capacity to impose birth limits in a kind of developmental Leninism, leaders during the
Jiang era (roughly 1993-2003) increasingly took a more client-centered approach. Having
accomplished set goals and recognizing the high social and political cost of hard birth
planning, the birth program began to combine coercion with measures that would
62
promote fertility limitation in a positive light. “By the end of the Jiang era,” Greenhalgh
and Winckler argue, “China’s biopolitics… shifted toward fostering the vitality of its
population and cultivating the lives of its people”(2005:134). Experiments with
counseling services and provision of freer choice in contraception were undertaken under
the banner of “informed choice” and “quality care”(2005:150). The administrative
apparatus was streamlined in some localities that “no longer required newly married
couples who wanted to have their first child to apply for permission under an annual
quota,” which had dictated when a particular couple could give birth (2005:152, 154).
And the birth program became “reflexive,”
36
formulating ethical standards and evaluative
systems that included the protection of human rights and ensuring “client satisfaction”
(2005:149, 156). It also broadened its scope to include population issues that fertility
limitation had created, e.g. the aging population and the sex ratio imbalance.

In sum, Foucault’s concept of the biopolitical and subsequent developments on
the art of government have offered China scholars a powerful framework for
understanding the so-called “retreat of the state,” most clearly observable in the
decentralization of fiscal responsibilities, the dissolution of the danwei system, the
privatization of public goods, and the liberalization of the economy. However, drawing
from theories developed in Western contexts can be dangerous for interpreting the
present of China, if appropriated uncritically. Many China scholars make this point and
argue that Chinese governmentality is actually a hybrid form. Lisa Hoffman uses the term

36
Or, critical of the function of government in the manner predicted by governmentality theorist Mitchell
Dean (Greenhalgh and Winckler 2005:149).
63
“patriotic professionalism” to refer to the co-existence of neoliberal practices and Maoist
ideals of serving the nation in post-graduate labor markets (2006). Gary Sigley warns
against using the term “retreat” and suggests “regrouping” to capture what happens after
a retreat – the maneuvers that reorganize forces, plans and people according to new
objectives and circumstances (2006:497). Although an embrace of neoliberalism is
reflected in conceptual shifts from “government”(zhengfu) to “governance”(zhili), from
detailed planning (jihua) to planning that steers (guihua),
37
Sigley argues that Chinese
governmentality is a socialist-neoliberal hybrid and critiques the governmentality
theorists for assuming that the art of government is primarily characterized by
government through freedom. Even in liberal governments of the West, sovereign power
does not completely disappear.
38

In China there is “the continued high status of technoscientific and administrative
reasoning amongst officials and scholars and an accompanying belief in the strong
necessity for the Party-state to remain the primary driving force behind national
development”(Sigley 2006:494). Greenhalgh and Winckler similarly see Chinese
biopolitics as taking a hybrid form, teasing out Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, and neoliberal
logics in state birth planning. The embrace of a neoliberal approach was ironically led by
the Party-state in a Leninist spirit, acting as the “vanguard” of the people (2005:311,
313). “Quality care” and “informed choice” gave more options and promoted
reproductive health, but this neoliberal approach did not in any way include a loosening

37
See pp. 496, 503.

38
Foucault does address this issue in both the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1990) and in the
“Governmentality” lecture (1991). Sigley gives a discussion of the governmentality theorists who do give a
more nuanced account (2006). Also see Agamben (1998).
64
of the one-child limit. For the nation, according to plans and projections, was not yet
ready.
The state continues to “set the agenda” in other ways as well, with consequences
that appear to be conducive to individual freedom and autonomy. The rise of leisure
culture in urban China has been actively promoted by national policies introducing
leisure time (the two-day weekend in 1995, the week-long May First holiday in 2000), as
well as local campaigns teaching municipal citizens how to spend their leisure time
(2001:40, 2001:78). According to Jing Wang, there was both an ideological and
economic component to this: culture becomes a strategic site for subject formation while
consumption of leisure supports the expansion of service industries and tertiary sectors
that have “absorbed surplus labor from state-owned enterprises…”(ibid). But as far as the
public is concerned, leisure culture appears as a sign of China’s long-awaited progress
toward Western ideals in its creation of a putatively egalitarian public sphere and
democratic consumption.
Warning against seeing a “retreat” of the state and a global triumph of
neoliberalism, these critiques highlight the staying power of socialist planning and
political reason, particularly Leninism. Meanwhile, other scholars have made their
critique from a different angle, arguing that an art of government contingent upon the
ethical conduct of individual selves is nothing new in China. In a short conference paper,
Mayfair Yang argues that written texts on the art of government can be found as early as
pre-Qin, before 221 BC. She adds,
As for the shift from concerns for territory to concerns for the governing of things
and people, in ancient China there was probably never such a shift, or the shift
65
occurred very early, for the ancient texts of statecraft were mainly concerned with
governing people and things, whether through punishment, through ritual
conformity and performance, or through morally exemplary acts of the king.
[2004:216-7]
39

Indeed there had been a debate in the Zhou period between Confucians and Legalists over
how to induce compliance, who respectively argued for conditioning versus threat of
punishment. By the consolidation of the Han empire, statecraft synthesized both law and
the use of exemplary models (Munro 1977:137).
Judith Farquhar and Qicheng Zhang’s essay “Biopolitical Beijing” can vividly
illustrate how a particular history can inform the present. In the spirit of governmentality
theory Farquhar and Zhang suggest that the yangsheng practices of elderly Beijingers –
taiji, sword dancing, ballroom dancing, diet and nutrition, emotion control, et cetera – are
highly political practices that may appear apolitical, given the state’s withdrawal of
health-care provisioning. This would appear to be a classic case of responsibilization – or
the exercise of political will in and through the social body. The authors write, “the
strong collectivist state has transformed itself into a rather conventional neoliberal regime
whose relation to life is – or appears to be – simply to ‘let [citizens] live’”(2005:320).
Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Foucault, the authors also suggest that such
practices are haunted by a recent history of state exercises of sovereign power to “take
life.”
40
However, they argue, the convergence of life and power in yangsheng practices
must be understood in a way that theorists of modern power could not anticipate.

39
This paper was originally given at Berkeley’s Center for Chinese Studies Annual Symposium in 2002.
40
In fact, the authors point out, as recent as 1989 with the Tiananmen incident.
66
Yangsheng – which literally means cultivating life – “creates a space apart,” even
while collaborating with the state (2005:323). It enacts a form of power that is
“nonmodern”(2005:304). Many of the popular advice books consulted by practitioners
draw on texts that construct the efficacy of a ruler in terms of his ability to cultivate
himself in exemplary ways, some describe the regimens of Mao-era leaders, some cite
texts that date back to around third century B.C.E. (e.g. Spring and Autumn Annals).
Farquhar and Zhang note,
The ruler envisioned in classic cosmopolitical theory was a superior person both
ethically – that is, in relation to others – and in his very nature. He ruled not as a
despot but as an exemplar, cultivating himself to embody the virtue of the Way
(Tao) and acting only as a kind of crystalline node around which proper social
order would spontaneously coalesce. Thus, in theory, the primary responsibility of
a lord was to cultivate himself; his social power would follow from the
sovereignty he could achieve in his own life. [2005:315]

Clearly elderly practitioners in Beijing are not striving for lordship in consuming self-
cultivation advice. But achieving sovereignty over one’s own life in a way fit for a lord is
generative of power and efficacy, even if only in a personal sense. The idea that social
order will coalesce around the personal power generated through self-cultivation offers
an instructive critique to a reading that would understand yangsheng only in terms of
responsibilization. Furthermore, the texts informing yangsheng practices point to a very
different history and theory of sovereign power, a kind that was entirely continuous, at
least in theory (recall the discontinuity that characterized princely power as conceived by
the anti-Machiavellian authors Foucault describes).
Critiquing what he sees as a tendency to reify neoliberalism in the anthropological
literature on China, Andrew Kipnis also points to cultivation (2006, 2007). For Kipnis,
67
reifications are commonly made by authors looking at the discourse on human quality or
suzhi, who, he argues, assume that suzhi discourse is coterminous with neoliberalism,
avoids discussion of class inequality, and marks the exchange-value of individuals
competing in a market-place (2007). Kipnis argues that one reason why suzhi discourse
cannot be said to be coterminous with neoliberalism has to do with linguistic history. The
term suzhi – which eventually came to predominate over the social scientific term
zhiliang (also means quality) in official discourses on population quality – evokes
Confucian, Chinese Marxist, and popular cultures of cultivation in its close relationship
to the term suyang, or embodied cultivation (2006:307-10). The emphasis on physical,
intellectual, and moral quality – most vividly seen in policies and discourses on how to
raise high quality children – draws from traditions that have long emphasized holistic
development through disciplined training.
These authors, making what might seem like a cultural uniqueness argument, do
not mean to reify “traditional Chinese culture.” Rather, pointing to self-cultivation
practices informed by a particular history helps to interrupt simple reductions of
everything down to a global triumph of neoliberalism. Indeed neoliberalism has been
globally hegemonic and has proliferated widely (Harvey 2005). But, neoliberal logic is
contradictory, contingent, and complex everywhere you go. Going back to the advice
cited in my Preface, and recalling the teacher’s conviction that real mother-love would
teach self-sufficiency in a child (even if it means abandoning him or her in the middle of
a remote village), we can observe multiple things at play in the art of government in late
socialist China. The advice discourages parental intervention in a way that mirrors
68
neoliberal critiques of governmental intervention in the realm of economic development.
Good parenting will ultimately produce the kind of person who can compete on a global
stage and advance the nation’s economic agenda. But the advice draws on very old ideas
about the kind of self-cultivation that excellence in a given practice requires, as modeled
by a young Confucius learning to play a musical instrument. As in advice for life-
cultivation practices described above, the exemplary model takes center stage, pointing to
a time-honored method of guiding human conduct – one that is not simply the outcome of
biopower or a modern art of government that began to take shape in the 16
th
century.
The Chapters
In this dissertation, I contribute to an ongoing conversation in the anthropology of
China concerning Chinese governmentality and neoliberalism. I introduce my research
sites in Chapter 1, and describe my research methods and ethnographic sample. I discuss
the various channels through which popular advice for parents circulate, as well as the
state policies behind the dissemination of expertise. I address the issue of gender in this
chapter, because it is primarily mothers who populate this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I lay
out the practical circumstances urban parents must navigate. The state’s withdrawal of
educational support has led to a phenomenon known as school-selection. When families
find themselves in a neighborhood without a good school, they have the option of paying
“supporting fees” to a school outside of their household registration. Though these fees
are enormous, many middle-class families see school-selection as necessary given
remarkable disparities in the quality of different schools, the intensity of the examination
system, and shrinking future employment opportunities.
69
In Chapter 3, I argue that modeling in the form of public horror stories and
exemplary stories provides the hinge on which the education reform movement turns. I
analyze two particularly well-known stories, and discuss the ways in which they draw on
older narrative practices such as “tales of famous men” (mingren zhuan), socialist
realism, and “speaking bitterness” to construct new categories to be discovered and
understood: psychological health and human potential. In Chapter 4, I argue that the
emotions are a critical terrain on which the personal and the political intersect. Popular
advice for parents stresses a vulnerable heart-spirit (xinling), nestled in the inner recesses
of a child’s heart-mind. This carries implications for how parents are to work on
themselves: they are to cultivate appropriate emotions and manage inappropriate ones,
like anger. Drawing on ethnographic research, I contend that the very emotions that
experts deem harmful have a certain intelligence; they index moral commitments and
contradictions in the social fabric.
In doing ethnographic research, I have found that practical circumstances make
following advice for liberal parenting very difficult. In Chapter 5, I discuss the way
parents speak about their responsibility to their child, specifically, their commitment to
creating or providing conditions (tiaojian). Creating tiaojian can refer to a broad array of
strategies, from paying for extra-curricular classes to constant supervision over a child’s
academic progress. Creating tiaojian, like Hannah Arendt’s conception of the promise,
serves to set up “islands of security” in an “ocean of uncertainty” (1958). But they cannot
ensure much beyond that, as many parents say, what happens once they have created
tiaojian is not up to them. I discuss what I call “genres for managing uncertainty” in
70
Chapter 6. I compare a parenting expert’s theory of good parenting with the theory of one
particularly opinionated father, finding that both envision good parenting in explicitly
economic terms. Rather than see their theories as a form of “calculating rationality” – as
some scholars might do – I argue that it is in and through economic metaphors that
people try to exercise some degree of control over the uncertainties posed by the
socioeconomic changes that riddle late socialist China.
In the final chapter of this dissertation, I will discuss how the concept of nature
and the practice of traveling informs educational theory and parenting advice. I juxtapose
the advice of an educational researcher of national renown with the ongoing work of a
researcher and popular expert I personally knew in Kunming. I especially draw on a
“summer camp” I followed to Beijing, to describe the way significant experience is
formulated in relation to pedagogical goals, cultural identity, and anxieties over the moral
development of children.
71
Chapter 1: The Setting
This dissertation is based on many years of textual research and 11 months of
ethnography conducted in the years 2004 and 2006 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan
Province. Located in southwestern China and bordering Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar,
Yunnan Province is geographically and economically marginal in relation to the rest of
China. Most of rural Yunnan is mired in poverty though many parts have been developed
for ethnic tourism, this is especially the case in northwestern Yunnan. Kunming itself is a
city of approximately 3 million residents, currently undergoing rapid economic
development and urban expansion. It is situated on a plateau more than 6,000 feet above
sea level. Because the climate is unusually pleasant in contrast to other Chinese cities,
Kunming has the nickname “Spring City.” I first visited Kunming in 1998 on my way to
what was then Zhongdian (now officially named “Shangri-La” to attract tourists), and
lived in Kunming as a foreign instructor of ethnographic film history and English in the
Spring semester of 1999.
In addition to visiting and volunteering at schools, attending parenting classes and
public lectures, and talking to local parenting experts and psychological counselors, I
focused my ethnographic efforts on following a small group of 10 families. I met my
families either through introductions from within my own social network and by chance
encounters. I chose to work with families whose children were attending primary school
because the advice genre I am interested in is directed at parents of school-age children.
All of them belong to what some people are calling the “new middle class,” an incipient
formation still in a process of “happening” (Zhang 2008; also see Hsu 2007). Though the
72
“middle class” is by no means a given entity in China, I put my families in this category
based on their consumption power. My ethnographic sample is composed of teachers,
professors, civil servants, office administrators, a nurse, a university-press editor, an
engineer, a policeman, a state-employed scientist, a paralegal, and so on. All of the
families are double-income families, many travel for leisure, some own private cars and
the home they live in, and all devote an enormous amount of their income (and energy) to
the education of their single-child. Born between the late 1960s and early 1970s, these
parents are also educated themselves. They are too young to be members of the “lost
generation,” and most have college degrees.
41

Not all urban parents are as devoted to their child’s education as the ones I got to
know.
42
The parents I will describe only represent those who had the time, energy, and
patience for letting a nosy anthropologist into their life. Many saw an opportunity in
meeting a native English speaker, and were more than eager to talk about parenting in
exchange for “English classes” for their child. They are parents who take their child’s
education very seriously, and the time we spent together was wedged in between their
busy schedules working over-time, taking professional development classes, and going

41
The first generation of single-child parents did belong to the “lost generation,” having lived through the
Cultural Revolution. Many people argued that this generation tried to live out their dreams through their
single-child. This remains somewhat true with the parents I knew, but rather than point to being deprived of
formal education, they point to not having had things like piano lessons.

42
Differences in parenting styles are even more discrepant when comparing urban with rural China. Chi
and Rao’s study on parental beliefs in rural China offers an important challenge to the pervasive idea that
Chinese cultural values facilitate educational attainment. They point out that most studies on Chinese
parental beliefs have been conducted in big cities, yet their conclusions are generalized to “Chinese
culture” (2003:331). Chi and Rao found that children’s education was only one amongst many family
priorities. They report, “if rural parents were short of money, expenses on ancestral halls and gift giving
were given priority over expenditure related to children’s education”(2003:340).

73
out of town for work – not to mention shuttling their child to and fro. One parent I knew,
who represents a different “type,” I met entirely by accident. She was an office manager
who would like to devote more time and energy to her son, but has “social appointments”
(yingchou) almost every night. As her son did homework on the weekends, she went for
facials. When I interviewed her about parenting, she had little to say except that the first
thing a parent ought to do is “participate,” which she does not have the time to do and
feels a lot of regret over. We actually became good friends, which I attribute to the way
we met.
(She came home late one evening to find me sitting on the landing in the stairway
of our apartment building with her 8 year-old son, one floor down from my apartment.
We were coloring with markers on child-sized chairs I brought down. His father had
locked him out of the house for over an hour and he wailed so loud that I could not help
but feel bad for him – and annoyed too. He was being punished for not finishing his
summer homework, and, personally speaking – perhaps with some bias, I did not think
the punishment was fair. This boy had been sent off to live with his grandparents over the
summer, and I wondered if maybe he was the kind of child that needed more direct
supervision than his grandparents could give. Why the father chose to punish him by
locking him out that night is not known to me, but I sense that it was an important event
in the life of this family. About a year later, the couple filed for divorce. When my friend
told me the news, she expected me to understand, ‘His father did not really care about
him, you saw for yourself.’ I tell this story only because normally, a family like this
would not be very interested in someone like me.)
74
This project was initially formulated in a post-1949 China studies archive while
perusing popular magazines and professional mental health journals for dissertation
ideas. I began to collect material from the Universities Services Centre at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong in 2002 and continued to visit the Centre every time I visited
Hong Kong. Wanting to formulate a research project that had something to do with
cultural construction of mental health, I collected anything that mentioned the
“psychological health” of children. In Kunming, I visited and collected more material
from bookstores and school libraries. Friends and informants lent, gave or recommended
things for me to read. I collected a set of primary school textbooks for an experimental
psychological health education class that terminated by the time I arrived for fieldwork,
and then had the opportunity to attend psychological health education classes for
freshmen at Yunnan University. What started out as a general interest in the creation of a
discursive category eventually, in the course of writing, narrowed into an interest in
advice for parents. Most of the experts I discuss in the chapters to follow are “household
names.”
The world of Chinese print media constitutes the other “setting” of this
dissertation. I discuss and examine popular advice as it exists in print because it is so
readily available to urban parents in China, and they are eager consume it. They tell me,
‘You have never been a parent before and you definitely cannot use the methods your
parents used on you.’ As I discussed in the introduction, the publishing industry – eagerly
exploiting market demand – offers parents a bewildering number of titles. I felt this most
keenly shopping at some of Kunming’s book-cities (shucheng), book-superstores. These
75
are multi-story establishments that dedicate a substantial amount of space to books
categorized under education. Some of the major bookstores offer free lectures. I once
attended a lecture on “social transition and psychological adjustment” by a local
psychologist at a Xinhua Bookstore. (It was highly entertaining and engaging, the speaker
had a great sense of humor, and the room was overflowing. I even ran into a parent I
knew.) I noted a good number of talks on education in their lecture schedule in 2004, e.g.
“How to let your child become useful and succeed” and “Excellent thoughts and future
prospects in education.” Based on what I observed at the talk I attended, these probably
ended with a book signing and an opportunity to purchase the speaker’s works as well.
In addition to the commercial channel, urban Chinese parents also receive
information through state and public channels. Parents of school-age children attend
lectures that are organized by their schools. The content of these lectures are very similar
to what readers find in the commercial advice genre, i.e. how to understand and promote
a child’s subjectivity. To illustrate, I once attended a lecture for parents of first year
students at one of Kunming’s keypoint middle schools. The title was “Helping children
pass through adolescence,” and the speaker lectured on the psychological needs of
adolescents and the unique social pressures they face, the change in self-awareness (ziwo
yishi) they will undergo, and of course, how to help them sort out academic difficulties.
In Kunming, parents of children preparing to enter the first grade are required to
attend “pre-school training classes”(xueqian peixun ban).
43
Speakers vary in what they

43
The pre-school training class is the third in a series of required training. The first is required for a
marriage certificate (hunyin zheng), the second for a certificate to give birth (shengyu zheng).

76
concentrate on, and have covered topics such as how to have expectations (zenme yaoqiu
haizi), the importance of showing affection, how to work with the school (peihe xuexiao),
as well as practical advice for academic survival (e.g. making the transition from reading
pinyin to Chinese characters). These training classes are organized by the Women’s
Federation of a given district (qu), and are held a month or two before a child enters
school. They grant a certificate which then allows a parent to proceed with primary
school registration. From what I gather, how a parent feels about this requirement really
depends on whether or not the speaker is engaging. Those who are able to illustrate with
specific cases and stories are usually considered good speakers, it is even better if they
have a good sense of humor.
Besides training classes, official state channels also include the distribution of
free newspapers. Many of the primary school students I knew bring home a paper called
Family Education Digest (Jiating jiaoyu wenzhai), a division of Kunming Daily. Another
free newspaper that had terminated publication right around the time I arrived in
Kunming was Population and Family (Renkou yu jiating), distributed by birth planning
offices. Even though these are state-sponsored papers, they are not much different from
commercial books in content and orientation. In fact, many commercially successful
experts are linked to the state, even if only indirectly. For example, Lu Qin, who I will
discuss in Chapter Three, directs a column in China Youth Daily, and is a member of a
subcommittee of the China Working Committee for Caring about the Next Generation
77
(Zhongguo guanxin xia yi dai gongzuo weiyuanhui).
44
Zhou Hong, who I will also
discuss in the same chapter, is connected to the China Tao Xingzhi Research
Association.
45

Besides these major channels, some of the parents I knew in Kunming also
subscribe or have subscribed to popular magazines such as Must-Read for Parents (Fumu
bidu), Family Education (Jiating jiaoyu), and Child Psychology (Ertong Xinlixue). There
are also many internet web-sites that offer childrearing advice and information.
Sometimes, popular advice books are serialized on web-sites and in newspapers –
indicating that sales figures do not adequately represent readership size. Huang Quanyu’s
Education for Quality in America was serialized in newspapers (Huang 2001:2). In 2004,
Kunming’s most popular newspaper, Spring City Evening News, serialized that year’s top

44
The Working Committee for Caring about the Next Generation is a state initiative that specifically
focuses on developing research and organizing activities that promote “healthy development”(jiankang
chengzhang) in youth. Its purpose and direction is formulated in relation to the slogan “Three Represents,”
which was introduced by Jiang Zeming in 2000 in “an attempt to redefine the Party’s relationship to
society” (Rosen 2004:50). Drug and internet addiction, and a general “pollution” of society constitute some
of the challenges this initiative aims to address. See for example:
http://www.zgggw.gov.cn/templet/default/ShowArticle.jsp?id=2288, accessed August 24, 2008.

45
That Zhou Hong has become so successful has something to do with official endorsements he has
received, see p. 112 in Appreciate Your Child for a narrative account. Zhou Hong is the honorary director
of the Appreciation Education Research Center of the China Tao Xingzhi Research Association. Tao
Xingzhi was an important figure in educational theory and practice in the Republican era. John Dewey was
an important influence on his work, although historians have debated the extent and nature of that influence
(Brown 1987; Keenan 1977; Yao 2002a, 2002b). Tao Xingzhi has had a complicated relationship with the
Chinese Communist Party, and was rehabilitated as a national hero at the beginning of the post-Mao era –
well after his death. Since then, Tao Xingzhi research societies have emerged all over the country. Many
leading members of these societies are high-ranking officials committed to educational reform (Yao
2002b:265-268).
Zhou Hong writes in Appreciate Your Child that Yang Ruiqing, an early supporter and the
principal and founder of a rural Tao Xingzhi-inspired school, enthusiastically said after hearing one of his
talks that it was just like reading one of Tao Xingzhi’s books (2003:112). That Zhou Hong is linked to the
revival of Tao Xingzhi indirectly links him to Wang Yangming, the Ming dynasty philosopher who
advocated child-friendly education. The nature and extent of this link is unclear however, because historical
studies of Tao Xingzhi primarily discuss the influence of Wang Yangming’s philosophy of unity and action
and give little indication that Tao was also influenced by his ideas regarding the education of children
(ibid).
78
ten bestseller, Tell your child, you’re the best!. Television programs, talk shows in
particular, sometimes address issues related to parenting. One informant mentioned a
program named “Psychology Discussion”(Xinli fangtan) as being particularly interesting,
and there is also the more popular “Tell it like it is”(Shi hua shi shuo), which I heard
about on multiple occasions. These two programs are both broadcast on China Central
Television networks.
Lastly, perhaps most importantly, it is also through social channels of
communication that parents circulate print information. The parents I knew advise
younger parents in their extended family, they chat with their neighbors, they recommend
books to each other, and sometimes attend public lectures together. All of the nationally
popular figures I will discuss in the course of this dissertation – Lu Qin, Zhou Hong, Sun
Yunxiao – have all given talks in Kunming. When I hung out with a small group of
friends that I had met simultaneously at a local mothering class, their conversation was
always dominated by stories about their children, and the exchange of recommendations
and practical advice.
That parenting advice flows through so many channels is largely a result of state
interest and efforts in promoting “family education work”(jiating jiaoyu gongzuo).
Discussed in the “1990s Program Outline for the Development of Children in China”
(State Council 1992),
46
and a series of subsequent documents principally authored by the
National Women’s Federation (1996, 2002, 2004), family education work aims to raise

46
The “1990s Outline” was written in response to a United Nations charter on the Rights of Children. The
issues addressed are broad, and include reproductive health, maternal and child health, food and water
safety, and eliminating illiteracy. The issue of disseminating family education knowledge does not come up
until later in the document.

79
the “proficiency” (shuiping) of parents by using multiple channels for the dissemination
of “scientific methods” of education, to provide “correct” knowledge and methods to
parents. The “National Plan for Family Education Work in the Ninth Five-Year Period” is
especially important (National Women’s Federation and the State Education Commission
1996). It gives further directions for running “Parent Schools,” calls for the strengthening
of theoretical research, and “fully utilizing modern communication media to disseminate
family education knowledge.” The document specifically names television stations and
periodicals as having to take responsibility.
Since it would be humanly impossible to give a systematic discussion of the
multiple channels through which advice for parents circulates, I selectively draw on
authors who are known by name and have a certain degree of celebrity. On some
occasions, I use rather recently published books that have not yet – or may not ever –
circulate as widely, if they poignantly and efficiently reflect themes that resonate across
the advice literature. These selections are also commercially sold (I acquired them
shopping at bookstores during fieldwork); some were advertised in Spring City Evening
News. Having perused the literature for many years, I have to agree with my informants
when they say in answer to my questions about who is saying what, “Aiya, it’s all pretty
much the same (dou cha bu duo).” When use I the term “liberal parenting” in this
dissertation, I use it in this spirit, that it to say, to point in a general way to this universe
of advice that can sometimes feel “pretty much the same.”
80
The Gendering of Parental Responsibility
This dissertation will primarily discuss the lived experience of mothers. Though
fathers are also involved in the work of parenting, mothers are overrepresented for two
reasons. The first has to do with the gendered and situated nature of my research
relationships. As a female, I found it much easier to develop friendships with mothers
than with fathers. I called all of the women in my study “jiejie,” or older sister, and they
were indeed right around the age of my consanguineal sister. As a consequence, the
quality of my data between fathers versus mothers is noticeably different. Whereas
fathers tended to give me more cultural information, mothers readily shared in deeper
ways – imparting both information and their personal experience of particular events. Of
course this has nothing to do with any dichotomy between men and reason on the one
hand and women and emotion on the other (though these are indeed indigenous
dichotomies that I shall address in Chapter Four). Fathers who have gone on to write
popular advice books express themselves with great personal depth.
Once at a wedding I attended in Kunming, a young father told me that having a
child can bring a couple together because they then have a shared goal. I responded in
saying, ‘You must be a good father then,’ channeling the popular expectation that men
keep their distance from the domestic sphere. Everyone at the table corrected me and said
that this was really common. One woman in particular explained that Kunming men are
all good fathers. Indeed the point was driven home a few minutes later, when all the men
at the table engaged in a heated discussion about children and the education system,
sharing personal woes over dealing with household-registration, finding the right school,
paying “supporting fees,” etc. (More on this later.) This may not even be specific to
81
Kunming men, or even modern Chinese men. As historian Ping-chen Hsiung states,
“Contrary to the stereotypical impression of gender division in traditional Chinese
domestic life, close communication and collaboration often existed between the two
parents concerning child rearing”(2005:114). In the popular advice literature I will be
looking at, the implied audience is usually both parents in that writers use the term fumu,
or father and mother. Some writers especially encourage fathers to participate and
collaborate once a child is past three years of age or attending primary school, with the
contribution of either parent conceptualized in gendered terms (Sun 2006b:130-146;
Wang 2004:17). Thus, my focus on the experience of mothers in this dissertation should
not indicate an absence of involvement on the part of fathers; the imbalance is partly the
result of a methodological obstacle.
The second reason why women are overrepresented in my study does indeed have
to do with gendered differences in parenting. Mothers are more likely to be proactive
about bringing someone like me into their life. (Native English speaker offering free
classes.) They do a lot more work in pursuing a child’s extracurricular or “specialty”
education. Most of the fathers I knew disapproved of putting unnecessary pressure on a
child when he or she already have so much pressure at school, which leads me to
conclude that the traditional saying “stern father and compassionate mother”(yanfu cimu)
is being reversed. If a child wanted to get out of going to a specialty class, he or she
would have a better chance asking for permission from dad. Some of the mothers I knew
characterized their husband as too “casual”(suiyi) about their child’s education, willing to
simply “go with the flow”(shunqi ziran) as long as school assignments are completed.
82
One informant-friend imagined how her son feels about her versus dad in this way, “My
father is the best. Mom is a meanie, doesn’t let me do this and doesn’t let me do that. And
then, she makes me learn this and makes me learn that. It’s so annoying.”
How to explain this gendered difference? Why do women work so hard to “raise
suzhi” when their full-time jobs already keep them so busy? There are contradictory
forces at play in the gendering of parenthood in urban, middle-class families. Though
some informants insist that fathers are actively involved, others invoke the old
inside/outside binary to explain discrepancies in involvement. Parenting is considered
domestic work, one mother told me, and fathers are more likely to have social
appointments (yingchou), or they have to go out of town more. But even women who
work demanding jobs attend to a child’s extra-curricular education more than fathers do.
One mother I knew worked as an editor at a university press and she often went out of
town and worked past midnight to meet deadlines. Yet, she put the most effort into her
daughter’s extra-curricular education. This means that work itself is not a sufficient
explanation, however, gendered divisions of labor with historical antecedents are playing
out here.
In late imperial China, mothers from elite classes played a major role in their
children’s moral and intellectual development. They not only instructed children in ritual
propriety but also introduced them to the world of literacy (Bray 1997; Ebrey 1993). In
the Republican era the responsibility of women as the domestic educator was fostered by
New Culture feminism, which promoted education for women and scientific domesticity.
Women were to be “virtuous wives and good mothers” for the sake of the nation (Wang
83
1999:68), knowledgeable of not only good housekeeping, but also principles of modern
childrearing as informed by child psychology (Schneider 2008). Women’s magazines
encouraged mothers to teach scientific and historical lessons that would foster a child’s
curiosity, and sense of patriotism (Schneider 2008:11).
“Virtuous wife and good mother” (xianqi liangmu) is a Confucian ideal that was
reintroduced to China by way of Japan in the 19
th
century (Honig and Hershatter
1988:174; Milwertz 1997:162-3). The ideal was attacked during the Cultural Revolution
and then revived at the beginning of the post-Mao period. As in the Republican era, good
mothering entailed guiding a child’s development according to “scientific” norms. But
unlike the Republican era, women were encouraged to put their energy toward managing
a husband’s happiness and ensuring the stability of a marriage; there is not much mention
of good housekeeping. The “virtuous wife and good mother” of the 1980s was a woman
who did not upset the balance of power, an ideal that, Honig and Hershatter argue,
“invariably reflected situations in which the balance of power had tipped toward the
woman”(1988:179).
Women in the post-Mao period inherited a gender ideal that did not exist in the
Republican era: the masculinized female of the Maoist era - the androgynous comrade
whose liberation from feudal gender relations was measured by her equal participation in
public forms of economic production. As Honig and Hershatter state, “From the time the
Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, its leaders firmly believed that paid
employment outside the home was the key to liberating women and building a society
based on genuine gender equality. In the cities of post-Liberation China, then, it was the
84
rule, not the exception, for women to work”(1988: 243).
47
Thus, the post-Maoist revival
of the “virtuous wife and good mother” ideal implied an ability to balance both work and
domestic duties, i.e. educating the only child (Milwertz 1997:165-6). The rising cost of
city living made having a double-income more imperative than ever (Honig and
Hershatter 1988:244).
This was all the more true by the time I did my fieldwork in the mid-2000s. In
addition to rising costs of living, the cost of education is now a tremendous burden for
Chinese parents. Women not only contribute to the household income, they also take on
the additional burden of ensuring the “high quality” of a child. In the context of a
neoliberalizing China, good mothering increasingly involves the power to consume goods
that promise to build quality into a child (Croll 2006; Davis and Sensenbrenner 2000;
Gottschang 2000, 2001). People rarely mention the “virtuous wife and good mother”
ideal, but assumptions regarding who ought to take more responsibility for domestic
matters continue to play out in the way mothers pursue extra-curricular education or
“specialty classes.” Many of the fathers I knew do contribute by taking or driving a child
to and fro. Some personally develop a child’s hobbies in regularly playing badminton or
going fishing with a child. But their hunger for a child’s extra-curricular education simply
is not the same. Now fathers are the compassionate ones (see chapter 6), while mothers
rule sternly, with the tick-tock of a metronome. In this way, gender inequality plays out in
the “casualness” fathers enjoy in their relationship with a child, and in the anxiety
mothers feel over rearing a competitive edge.

47
There are a number of ways in which women were discriminated against in practice however, in both
Maoist and post-Maoist China. See Honig and Hershatter 1988:244-255.
85
The Family Constellation
A discussion of extended kin relations is beyond the scope of this dissertation.
Nonetheless, a few words about grandparents are in order because maternal attitudes
toward grandparents can shed some light on the kind of stakes involved in childrearing.
Only one of my case families lived with a grandparent under the same roof, though some
grandparents provide support by cooking dinner when schedules get too busy – if they
also live in Kunming. But generally, the mothers I knew felt that one must take full
responsibility for a child because grandparents are too doting.
One informant related an incident that she particularly remembers from her son’s
pre-school years. He had stayed over at her parents’ house for a weekend, where he ate
all of his meals in bed. Her father had waited on her son hand and foot. When I expressed
my disbelief, she swore that she was not at all exaggerating. Her son expected the same
kind of treatment when he came home, and she remembers having to physically punish
him for his behavior. Another informant related a recent incident where her husband’s
father, who had been visiting from out of town, had secretly given her 12 year-old son
500 RMB. She happened to catch her son putting a bundle of cash away, and she
persuaded him to return the money to his grandfather. Her son obeyed, but his
grandfather refused to take it, putting her in an awkward position of having to refuse a
gift. She had to explain to her father-in-law about the kind of “opportunities”(jihui) that
this bundle of money implied, having in mind the “disorderly/polluted”(fuza)
environment that surrounds her son’s school. But the two were not able to see eye to eye.
She worried if she was too direct and lacking in human-feeling (renqing), but then
decided that she had to persist, and continued to reason with him. When she related this
86
incident to me, she had no regret over her persistence, but she wondered if her father-in-
law understood her concerns at all.
Families vary in the extent to which grandparents are involved. My friends tell me
that there are many Chinese parents who do not govern/take care of (guan) their child at
all. In these families, grandparents play an important role. In one of my own case
families, a grandmother was very involved, and she played the role of a home tutor
having studied foreign languages and worked as a translator in her youth. When her
granddaughter stayed over during school holidays, she took an active role in monitoring
homework, and gave additional assignments. This girl eventually could not take pressure
from her multiple guardians any more, and it is to her that I will now turn.
87
Chapter 2: Practical Exigencies and the Burden of Learning
Lenin once said: “the force of numerous people’s habits is the most fearful kind of force.” We are
all a unit of this force of the numerous. Whether consciously or not, we have been accomplices in
increasing pressure and increasing burden. Whether you admit it or not, this is the situation.
-- Fu Kejun, parent and reform advocate
I met Mimi in the psychiatric ward of a hospital while waiting to meet with a
doctor I planned to interview. I didn’t expect to make a new friend that day, but Mimi
was outgoing. We were both sitting on opposite sides of the nurse’s station, a place she
had already become comfortable in. With the gentle nudging of one of the doctors there,
she came over to my side and chatted me up. It wasn’t long before she told me, ‘I’ve been
hospitalized because I have too much pressure.’ Turned out she was an in-patient taking
time off from the third grade.
In the course of getting to know Mimi and her mom, Wang Hongjia, I figured out
that there was more to Mimi’s illness than simply school pressure. Nonetheless, Mimi’s
case did seem rather typical from the perspective of China’s parenting experts. As much
as Wang Hongjia had tried to adjust herself as a parent after her daughter’s
hospitalization, she still struck me as the kind of parent experts so frequently lambast. She
even came to see herself as having wrongfully “sculpted” her daughter according to her
own wishes, though admitting that she felt ambivalent (maodun) at the same time. To my
biased, Americanized sensibilities, her methods always seemed overbearing. One time
during dinner, Wang Hongjia kept saying to her daughter ‘Ask older-sister why she’s so
happy and how she manages her time so she can study and play at the same time. Older-
88
sister is already at the doctorate level!’ For this Mimi shot her mom a glaring look, one of
many she gave that night. She then sternly said, ‘Mom, do not use other people as an
excuse to lecture me.’
48

Wang Hongjia tacks between wanting to raise a competitive child and promoting
her daughter’s happiness, the latter of which became important only after Mimi’s
hospitalization. When I met with Wang Hongjia months later to get Mimi’s illness story,
she reported that things were better with Mimi. But it wasn’t because of anything the
hospital had done. Her daughter’s improvement had more to do with a decision she and
Mimi’s father made to move back into his former danwei apartment where Mimi grew
up, having lived in the new apartment for only about a year. At the new housing
compound, they didn’t even know their neighbors and Mimi had no one to play with. At
the time, Wang Hongjia did not mind at all. She thought, “Aiya having no friends is the
best! You have more time to study.”
Wang Hongjia also attributed her daughter’s improvement to her decision to end
Mimi’s extra-curricular classes. Before Mimi got “sick”(shengbing), her schedule was
packed. Saturdays started with English from 8:30 to 12:00. After 12:00, mother and
daughter would have lunch. Then it was off to violin class at 1:30 until 2:30, then
drawing class from 3:00 until 6:00. Sundays were for bathing and getting ready for the
next school week. When Wang Hongjia told me this I said that this must have been
exhausting for her too. But she did not feel this way at the time, and expected Mimi to

48
What Wang Hongjia does here has been described by a study of Chinese socialization as “opportunity
education” (Fung 1999). Based on research conducted in Taiwan, Heidi Fung describes this as a mode of
socialization that puts lessons in concrete rather than abstract terms whenever an opportunity arises. This
kind of parenting has come under criticism in the PRC – people see it as nagging (laodao). The kids I came
to know find it very annoying. And parents know it – they just feel like they can’t help it.
89
feel the same as she: eager. She recalls, ‘At the time I thought, I even said, “I’m not
tired,” I said, “You’re so young, how can you be tired? The competition will be so fierce
later, if you don’t have a specialty, you won’t be able to adapt to society.” I harbored this
kind of goal. So whatever I could let her learn, I would let her learn.’ Wang Hongjia
pursued her daughter’s education with great determination, even if it meant forcing Mimi
to learn things against her will. She confessed that she would scold Mimi if she protested
violin practice, “Aiya, she would cry, she would play holding her tears.”
When I saw Wang Hongjia and Mimi again in 2006, mom continued to insist that
things had turned for the better since Mimi’s illness in 2004. She is now very
“obedient”(guai) and “self-aware”(zijue). She has even asked to take violin and English
classes again. Wary and keeping in mind what happened before, Wang Hongjia asked her
daughter to think about her request carefully, for at least a week, and that if she was
going to pick things up again, she would have to stick to a routine of daily practice. Mimi
enrolled in both violin and English classes once again, but only because she had
requested them herself.
Now that Mimi is in the 6
th
grade, there are new pressures to face and new
expectations to keep in check. When I asked Wang Hongjia whether or not she had to
make any preparations for sending Mimi to junior middle school, she affirmed,
explaining that Mimi was routed for such and such school. She didn’t think the
atmosphere was very good at the school in their neighborhood district and hoped that she
could send Mimi to University Affliliated Middle School (my pseudonym for Kunming’s
most reputable middle school). Wang Hongjia is prepared to pay the 21,000 RMB in fees
90
to do so, but Mimi’s admission would also depend on her ability to score above the
admission line. “What if I can’t get in?” Mimi asked anxiously, after her mom explained
this to me. Wang Hongjia replied, rebuking her daughter, “How can you have so little
confidence!?” Mimi repeated her question again a few minutes later, clearly unsatisfied
with her mom’s first response. This time, Wang Hongjia softened her response, “We’ll
see (zai shuo ba). Just try your best okay?”
School Selection Fever
Mimi and Wang Hongjia’s story reflects the difficult contradiction that lies at the
heart of parenthood in urban China today. Wang Hongjia’s softened “we’ll see, just try
your best” is significant in light of what she had learned from pushing her daughter too
hard a couple years earlier. In 2004, Wang Hongjia had told me that Mimi’s
hospitalization had gotten her “constantly reflecting,” she learned to take “health and
happiness” more seriously after her daughter’s illness. Though Wang Hongjia denies the
psychological therapy they received as a family as having made any contribution, it is
hard to rule out the possibility that – in addition to whatever popular advice she may have
read or heard – her encounter with a psychological profession disciplined her according
to new norms for liberal parenting. But now that Mimi is about to graduate primary
school, Wang Hongjia cannot help but pressure her daughter into passing the entrance
exam of her preferred school.
The contradiction illustrated in this case is partially a contradiction between
neoliberalization in practice on the one hand and the mechanisms that are set up
according to neoliberal theory on the other (as discussed in the introduction). David
91
Harvey’s distinction between neoliberal ideology and the practice of neoliberalization is
helpful here. Harvey states, “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political
economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by
liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional
framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free
trade”(2005:2). First a post-World War II theoretical movement within academic
philosophy and economics, neoliberalism was by the 1970s seen as a solution for
economic problems interventionist state practices could no longer solve. Similarly,
neoliberalism in China was intended as a way to stimulate economic modernization, best
summed up by Deng Xiaoping’s famous statement: “What does it matter if it is a ginger
cat or a black cat as long as it catches the mice?”
Harvey points out that the actual practice of neoliberalization did not advance
human well-being but rather concentrated power in the hands of the few. Harvey argues,
“The market, depicted ideologically as the way to foster competition and innovation,
became a vehicle for the consolidation of monopoly power”(2005:26). This is certainly
the case in China, where the same reforms that were meant to modernize the nation have
also inadvertently created enormous socioeconomic disparities, disparities that constantly
threaten political stability. Furthermore, the same economic reforms that theoretically
depend on a correlation between autonomy and freedom for children on the one hand,
and the cultivation of creativity and innovation on the other, have inadvertently
intensified school competition to such a degree that ensuring a child’s freedom and
autonomy becomes tricky.
92
Like many of the other parents I came to know, Wang Hongjia lives out the
contradiction between changing norms for parenting and remaining the ever vigilant,
pressure-giving parent. Wang Hongjia would like to “school-select”(zexiao) once Mimi
reaches the junior middle school level, because she feels that the school her daughter is
routed for does not have a good “atmosphere.” She is ready to pay the fee and expects
Mimi to pass the entrance exam of the preferred school. (If Mimi attends the junior
middle school in her own residential district, she would not have to take an entrance
exam at all.)
What the Chinese call “school-select” is not unfamiliar to middle-class Americans
who make home-buying decisions based on the reputation of a school district. In China
however, disparities between different schools – between urban and rural schools,
between schools in the same city – has led to an extreme situation that has families
scrambling for better schools and the government scrambling for rectifying solutions. As
one analyst puts it: “In recent years the climate of basic education has worsened by the
day, with the scramble for the best schools becoming more and more intense, the fees for
getting into the best schools getting higher and higher, and the burden of homework very
heavy for primary and high school students”(Yang Dongping 2006b:15).
Under the Compulsory Education Law, every child has a right to nine years of
schooling: six years in primary school (xiaoxue) and three years in junior middle school
(chuzhong). This law also stipulates that children must attend school within their
residential district, without having to take an entrance exam. But given the disparities
between urban schools – ordinary people evaluate schools in terms of student body
93
(shengyuan), teachers (shizi), social environment (huanjing), pedagogical quality (jiaoxue
zhiliang) and rates of promotion (shengxue lü) – many parents find themselves in districts
without acceptable schooling options. Those who have moved to residential quarters in
newly expanded parts of the city often find themselves with no options at all,
49
which was
the case for Mimi’s parents when they moved into their new housing compound. After
their move, a year before Mimi got sick, Mimi continued attending her primary school –
a rather reputable one – even though mornings were, in Wang Hongjia’s words, like
“going to war”(dazhan). Getting up 40, 50 minutes earlier, washing up frantically,
driving into the center of the city through traffic, and not even getting to school on time
eventually took a toll on Mimi.
Technically, it is illegal to attend school outside of one’s household registration
(hukou), but it has become such a pervasive phenomenon, especially at the junior middle
level, that authorities have recognized there is very little they can do. A recent
investigation into the “school-selecting”(zexiao) problem found that in the entire city of
Kunming, there are approximately 20,000 students attending a school outside of their
household registration; these students make up one-third of the total student population in
primary and junior middle schools across the city (Working Committee 2005). These
students could be further divided into three categories according to colloquial terms:
“memo students,” “connections students,” and “banknote students” (Rosen 1997:257),
and have been recognized as a problem since at least 1996 (Zheng 1997).

49
See Li Zhang 2008.
94
“School-selecting” is a governmental problem because it deepens existing
disparities between schools in a vicious cycle wherein high fees are converted into better
educational resources which in turn justifies and attracts high fees. This cycle further
strengthens strong schools while depriving weak schools. The popularity of school-
selecting has also led to dramatic teacher student ratios. In prestigious schools there are
60 to 70 students for every one teacher, which has profound consequences for a student’s
learning experience as teachers simply do not have the time nor energy to attend to
individual needs. School-selecting has led to manipulation of the household registration
system – a long-entrenched state apparatus for social surveillance and control – with
some families using the residential address of a relative, or some keeping old ones after
moving away.
50
Last of all, the school-selecting phenomenon has also led to corruption.
Because it is illegal to charge tuition for compulsory education, schools admit families
that pay a supposedly voluntary “supporting fee”(zanzhufei).
51
“Supporting fees” are
supposedly needed for “survival,” to be applied toward building and improving a school.
But everyone knows that this is not always the case. The local government could not do
anything about this because there was no policy for regulating the acceptance of such fees
in the first place (Working Committee 2005).

50
A cartoon I once came across in the local paper poked fun at the school-selecting phenomenon. It depicts
a teacher going through a stack of papers and coming across a residential address that belongs to a public
toilet, effectively illustrating the lengths to which some parents will go to get their child into the right
school. I have also heard gossip that pokes fun at the phenomenon, as in stories about teachers who follow
their students home when they suspect certain students do not actually live at their registered addresses.

51
Zanzhufei is sometimes translated as “sponsorship fee” (Croll 2006:190).

95
Why is there such a craze to school-select? According to the 2005 investigation
conducted by Working Committee on Education, Science, Culture and Hygiene of the
Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Yunnan Province some of the reasons
include urban expansion, in-migration, number of good schools does not meet popular
demand, and withdrawal of state funding.
52
These factors indicate that school-selection is
largely a consequence of market reform. With regards to withdrawal of state funding,
analysts generally support this as a critical factor in advancing education. One analyst
writes, “Under the planned economy, the emphasis for a long time was on education as a
public good. Only the government could invest in and operate education; the result was
an awkward situation in which the state monopolized and controlled education”(Yang
Dongping 2006a:55). Those who support the marketization of education in general see
diversification of funding through market mechanisms as beneficial in both the public
and private sense. This is especially the case for higher education where the individual
investor is also the beneficiary. Supporters of school-selection in particular argue that
school-selection simply reflects a desire for good schooling on the part of the masses, a
desire that is met through the rational disposal (heli peizhi) of resources through the

52
Other factors listed in the report are: schools attached to factories and mines only accept workers’
children, other children in the area can only school-select; children cared for by grandparents must school-
select in their grandparents’ neighborhood; “jiedu” students, or those attending on a temporary basis are
charged too little, therefore some people school-select through “jiedu.” None of the reasons listed in this
report mention the key-school policy, which has been cited by others as a cause of uneven development
between schools (Yang Dongping 2006b:18, 21). The key-school policy targeted particular schools,
zhongdian xuexiao, for state funding and are favored in administrative rankings. School-selection has
further bolstered the strength of key schools.

96
market system. The collection of school-selection fees, meanwhile, make up for
deficiencies in state funding.
53

Critics argue that school-selection violates the principle of educational equality,
facilitates corruption, and puts too much of a burden on the masses (Working Committee
2005). As one analyst puts it, “Being parent to a primary school graduate who is entering
junior high is a challenge for the household head’s financial resources, social
relationships, and power”(Yang Dongping 2006b:19). I certainly found this to be true.
When I first arrived in Kunming, I was asking naïve questions like “are people worried
about the moral development of children without siblings?” I quickly learned that school-
selection is the most pressing issue for many families. Because the disparities between
schools are so large, many families do not want to send their child to the school in their
residential district, and they will use whatever economic means and social capital they
have to “school-select.” Families with the right social connections or powerful enough to
employ their social networks do so. Those with economic means or access to capital will
fork over the large sum, even if it is a tremendous economic burden. Some will take out
high-interest loans. The most prestigious junior middle school in Kunming, “University
Affliliated Middle School”
54
(UAMS), charged those living outside its district, and

53
‘One point of view is, school-selecting and the collection of school-selecting fees reflects a desire for
quality (youzhi) educational resources on the part of the masses. With the rational deployment of resources
through the market system, the masses’ wish for quality educational resources is satisfied, and to a certain
extent [school-selecting and the collection of school-selecting fees] also makes up for deficiencies of state
provision.’ – 2005 report

54
A pseudonym.

97
families who do not work for the University 21,000 RMB for three years of schooling in
the mid-2000s.
These kinds of fees have put enormous psychological pressure on children all
across the country. One 13 year-old school-selecting student from Yinchuan, Ningxia
Province committed suicide, leaving a note to her parents that said, “You have raised me
for thirteen years and spent lots and lots of money on me! My death will save you
100,000 yuan…” (quoted in Yang Dongping 2006b:19). In addition to high fees,
admission into preferred schools like UAMS also depends on a child’s ability to pass an
entrance exam, even though an entrance exam for the last three years of compulsory
schooling is not technically legal.
55
Mimi’s mom tells me that these exams are
deliberately made to be challenging, in consideration of maintaining a strong student
body (shengyuan). This too puts psychological pressure on children, like Mimi who
wonders what will happen if she does not pass. Even those who have a legal right to
attend schools like UAMS have to pay an extra 10,000 RMB for every point below the
minimum total score line for admission. A faculty member I knew at the University was
extremely anxious during her daughter’s last semester in primary school. If she did not
score above UAMS’s admission line, she would have had to pay unthinkable fees.
School-selection fever is largely an unexpected outcome of the economic reforms
in general, and of the decentralization of fiscal responsibility to local institutions in

55
The use of an entrance exam may have been a “last ditch resort” to ensure that school-selecting students
were not admitted solely on the basis of connections, power, and money. It may have been a way to inject
some degree of meritocracy into a hard to control phenomenon. This was a recommendation that was made
with respect to schools in Beijing in a 1996 article published in Neibu wengao (Zheng 1997:37).

98
particular (i.e. state spending on education).
56
The same economic reform that aims to
achieve national modernization by promoting a new kind of education – Education for
Quality – has also led to a situation wherein an enduring focus on exam performance is
further exacerbated. In other words, “market mechanisms” have concentrated resources in
the hands of few schools, while divesting other schools of theirs. As families scramble for
preferred schools, ready to pay high fees, those high fees are then converted into better
educational resources such as competitive salaries for teachers which in turn justifies high
fees as well as entrance exam requirements that, at the level of junior middle school,
flouts the Compulsory Education Law.
Since a child’s education is such a high priority, families willingly take on the
financial burden of school-selecting fees. The 2005 report puts it very well: “The current
single child policy has led to a widespread social attitude of ‘cannot let the child lose at
the starting line.’ Pursuing quality (youzhi) educational resources and sending one’s child
to a good school has become a kind of necessary choice for parents” (2005). Aware that
educational qualifications are key to “staying ahead” in a rapidly stratifying society in
general, and to eventually finding desirable employment in particular, Kunming parents
pursue good schooling for their child at all costs. Decentralization of fiscal responsibility

56
To put it bluntly, operating a school has become like operating a business. Yang Dongping characterizes
the problem like this: “Against the backdrop of serious shortages of educational funds, educational circles
have for many years promoted what has been called a reform with a “financial perspective,” or an
“economist line.” Its main motive is to make up for the shortage of funds, focusing on innovations for
creating income, doing business, restructuring, going public, and transforming property rights and
marketization to achieve efficiency and growth. It shows little concern for equality in, and quality of,
education”(2006a:59). Actually, school-selection at the junior middle school level is only one aspect of a
much larger problem. The kind of corruption that marketization of education has produced is especially
visible in higher education, with the proliferation of institutions that will give diplomas to anyone that pays,
with the expansion of student enrollment based on ability to pay, etc.

99
has effectively taken place not only in terms of the state vis-à-vis local institutions, but
also in terms of the state vis-à-vis individual families.
Surviving the Competition
I quickly learned at the start of doing fieldwork that some of my assumptions
about childrearing culture under the one-child policy – as informed by secondary
literature and primary sources – were irrelevant to urban middle-class parents in
Kunming. It turned out worries about spoiling, moral development and filial piety are
rather secondary concerns. One friend explained to me, “When parents are rearing their
kids, they’re rearing competitive strength. How to survive in society later.” Seeing how
competitive their own industries have become, parents worry about what their child will
have to face in the future. Wang Hongjia, who works for an insurance company, was
rather typical in thinking: ‘The competition will be so fierce later, if you don’t have a
specialty, you won’t be able to adapt to society.’ She figured that letting Mimi learn as
much as she possibly could would ultimately confer her an adaptive advantage. This
meant consuming as many educational commodities as possible, in the form of English
class on Saturday morning, violin and drawing class the following afternoon.
In addition to concerns over competitive strength, future survival, and adaptive
advantage, parents commonly express their anxiety in terms of the possibility that a child
might be weeded out or eliminated (taotai). These words and phrases have an evolutionist
tinge, but not in a social Darwinist nor neo-Lamarckian sense – evolutionist theories that
were popular with Chinese intellectuals between the end of the 19
th
and early 20
th
century
(Li 2001; Dikötter 1992). Though in a rather vague fashion, these words and phrases
100
combine basic Darwinian and Malthusian ideas to express the sense that China’s
population is enormous, its resources limited. As one mother expressed to me in
imagining her son’s future, “Such a big population. And so few opportunities. Able
people are as common as air.” Thus, those who have a “special” advantage will be the
ones who escape “elimination.”
There has been great interest in and scholarship on how the Chinese party-state
has dealt with its unique population problem (Banister 1987; Greenhalgh 2003, 2008;
Kane 1987). But few people talk about how ordinary Chinese citizens experience
population pressure in their personal lives, how the mismatch between available
resources on the one hand, and number of people competing for those resources on the
other, becomes an individual, not state problem. Kunming is supposed to be one of
China’s most laid back cities, yet even there, ordinary people feel the pressure of
competition. When urban parents push their children, they do so not because of some
drive that is inherent to Chinese “culture.” Rather, their drive stems from an anxiety over
class position in a rapidly stratifying society where educational resources and
employment opportunities are limited. This is especially palpable in Kunming, where the
popular desire for top quality (youzhi) education far exceeds what is available. Parents
also know that desirable jobs are limited and employers continuously raise their bar of
expectations. Surely this phenomenon is not unique to China, but the sheer number of
people competing for desirable jobs makes competition that much more intense. Vanessa
Fong points out, “As the number of job seekers with higher education rose, employers
raised the bar of minimum educational qualifications. ‘Good jobs’ became increasingly
101
elusive, as diplomas, expectations, and consumption demands skyrocketed”(2004:88, my
emphases). The irony in China is, the one-child policy was designed to alleviate
population pressure. But it has also created a generation of youths whose rising education
levels and socialized desire for elite high paying occupations is outpacing the country’s
economic development (Fong 2004:90).
57

Why has the pursuit of education become so important, and why do employers
care so much for educational qualifications? After all, political capital and Party
membership trumped educational achievement in the Maoist era. Carolyn Hsu’s study of
status hierarchies in Harbin can clarify here (2007). Her research found that employers
looked for college degrees even when hiring for positions like restaurant waiter. She
states, “Chinese managers, wanting to impress both their foreign colleagues and their
local customers with the ‘quality’ (suzhi) of their establishments, also relied on academic
criteria”(2007:170). Hsu argues that human capital, commonly spoken of in terms of a
person’s suzhi, has come to have the highest “exchange rate” in comparison to other
forms of capital. She partly attributes this to the way in which Deng Xiaoping formulated
the economic reforms. Deng believed that economic development had to come from
technological breakthroughs rather than increased economies of scale (2007:159). This
immediately put a premium on expertise, which had been denounced during the Cultural
Revolution. Moreover, Deng’s regime recognized that it is human capital, rather than
political capital, that has global currency (2007:178). Thus, Deng’s vision for reform has

57
As their parents’ only hope, even the students Fong identifies as low-achieving and poor had high
aspirations (2004:98). According to Fong, “Youth who had to settle for jobs that offered average Chinese
salaries were devastated, and many who could not even get those jobs refused to work at all”(2004:97).
Also see Hoffman 2006. Recent college graduates enjoy their free choice in choosing their jobs, but they
also felt a strong sense of insecurity with possible unemployment ever looming in the horizon.
102
played an important role in fostering a meritocratic society based on academic
achievement. Hsu found that even factory workers had to take entrance examinations as
companies borrowed practices from academic institutions (2007:170).
This is all to say that Chinese society has become very competitive, and that
human worth is largely measured in terms of academic achievement. The middle class
families I followed, who were still raising primary school age children, feel an acute,
future-oriented anxiety that is produced by a converging awareness of limited resources
and opportunities, and of the reality of a narrow and linear “route to success.” As much as
reformers and policy makers strive to change an educational system that primarily
measures students according to exam performance only, little has changed. Students
continue to be numerically ranked according to their academic performance, and their
future continues to hinge upon how they perform on the ultimate college entrance exam
(gaokao) and the penultimate middle school entrance exam (zhongkao).
The zhongkao determines whether or not one goes on to middle school past the
state-mandated nine-years of compulsory education, and what kind of middle school one
will attend (college prep, professional, vocational, or technical). The gaokao determines
not only the kind of college or university a student will end up at (four-year college,
junior college, or technical college), but also one’s major. There is much anxiety around
these two exams not only because they will determine the course of the rest of one’s life,
but also because both exams test three years of cumulative knowledge in multiple
subjects over the course of three days. A single point can make a world of difference
because students are sorted, or “eliminated,” according to the total score they produce.
103
Middle schools, colleges, universities, and various academic departments have their
minimum score line (fenshu xian): one must score above that line to be eligible for
admission.
This kind of system has led some critics to refer to the admission line as the “line
of life or death” (Sun and Bu 1997:24).
58
It has also created an education system that is
“one-sided,” as teaching and learning is entirely evaluated in terms of a school’s
promotion rates and a student’s ability to pass an exam (Yang Xuewei 1993a, 1993b).
Because only a fraction of students who take the college entrance exam actually get
admitted to an institution of higher learning, reformers criticize the education system as
cultivating a small number of elites rather than educating a nation (Fairbrother 1997).
Schools and teachers inadvertently focus on promising students and “discriminate”
against others in their focus on promotion rates. In the form of unfair treatment, holding
students back, suspension, even expulsion, discrimination is just one in many steps in the
gradual elimination of students (see Man 1997). It begins as early as primary school (see
Chapter Five), and happens even at elite keypoint middle schools – the “good schools” –
who have all the more reason to maintain their reputation.
It is in the context of competitive employment markets and of a competitive
schooling system that I understand Wang Hongjia’s fervor in pursuing specialty

58
The tricky part about entrance exams in China is that students are required to fill out their preferences for
schools and departments in a ranked order before they know how they have done, and before individual
schools reveal their score lines – they change from year to year. Students are encouraged to fill out their
preferences in accordance with predicted scores (gufen) – estimated using practice exams as well as what
they know about score lines of individual schools from previous years. Students have to be realistic about
their prospects in ranking their preferences – as schools tend to choose students who have ranked them as
first choice (Fong 2004: 96). In an interview, the principal of a second-level school in Kunming referred to
students who did not make the score criteria of first-level middle schools, yet did not indicate a preference
for a second level middle-school “dead meat” students (“ ”).
104
education for Mimi and her wish to school-select. As important as the nationalized
college entrance exams are, it is actually the middle school entrance exam that is the most
critical. Unlike the former, which one can take multiple times until a satisfactory score is
achieved, a student may only take the standardized citywide middle school entrance exam
once. For this reason, it is important to receive a good junior middle school education as
these three years will prepare a student for the penultimate zhongkao. And, given the way
education and employment are linked, given limitations in educational resources and
employment opportunities, given China’s enormous population numbers, it is no surprise
that she draws on evolutionist phrasing to express her responsibilities as a parent.
Competition is perceived as extremely intense and the path to success narrow and linear.
People often say that the youth only have one road to take (yi tiao lu) – education – if
they do not want to end up at the bottom of society, picking trash.
59

When I visited Kunming again in 2006, some of the children I had gotten to know
two years earlier were in their last year of junior middle school. I got a sense of the
intensity that surrounds the middle school entrance exam visiting my informant-friend
Yang Ruihong and her teenage son during the National Day holiday (Guoqing Jie). The
National Day holiday is supposed to be a week-long vacation, but Xiaoming was
preparing to go back to school on Wednesday (I saw them on a Monday). Already in
October, Xiaoming was preparing for an entrance exam that would take place at the end

59
Trash picking is often invoked as the occupation one will have if one does not work hard enough; I have
heard adults use it to criticize lazy behavior. At the same time, such invocations are sometimes critiqued as
reflecting the hierarchical nature of Chinese thinking. I once heard a “success story” about a former trash
picker who eventually became one of the richest men in Kunming. This kind of success story seem to
celebrate the democracy of market capitalism.

105
of the school year. As all the adults sat around the coffee table leisurely drinking Pu’er
tea, Xiaoming sat off the side studying math with a family friend who took it upon
himself to tutor him. At one point, my friend Yang Ruihong jokingly asked me to “serve”
her son some of the mooncakes we were eating – as if I could play the role of the kyoiku
mama too.
60
Everyone played on the kyoiku mama joke throughout the day. Once, when
Xiaoming came up against a problem he couldn’t figure out, he yelled for someone to
bring him some tea, “Quick!” An adult in the room gladly obliged, it was as if Xiaoming
was already in the thick of an athletic competition where his only obligation was to
perform.
Disappearance of Childhood?
In an essay entitled “The Child as Laborer and Consumer,” Norma Field critiques
the exploitation of child and maternal labor in what she characterizes as Japan’s
“insatiable” schooling industry (1995). While war, disease, and malnutrition threaten the
welfare of poor children in developing countries, Field argues that rising incidence of
adult diseases such as stress-related baldness indicate that Japanese children suffer from a
kind of “soft violence.” Field invokes a broader American discourse of alarm over the
“disappearance” of childhood when she argues that Japanese childhood has disappeared
with “the emergence of a new continuity between childhood and adulthood through

60
The Chinese equivalent to this phrase would be jiaoyu mama (education mama), but I have never heard
or seen this phrase. Nonetheless, the behavioral pattern the Japanese phrase refers to is not uncommon in
China. The kyoiku mama is the mother whose life revolves around supporting her child as he or she studies.
As Anne Allison puts it, “she does everything from sharpening pencils, making midnight oya shoku
(snacks), and pouring tea for a studying child to consulting with teachers; investigating the range of
schools, tutors, and juku (cram schools) available; and boning up on subjects where her child is
deficient”(1996:106).

106
technocratically ordered labor” (1995:68). Although Field is critical of the exploitative
logic of capitalism, her argument is problematic in that it implicitly relies on a Western
conception of childhood that takes play and freedom as a child’s natural right.
61
She
suggests that labor, of any kind, is an artifice imposed by adult society.
Interestingly enough, it is through Western-influenced eyes that many Chinese
people view their own education system. This is certainly the case with the popular
experts, but it is even the case with urban children, who are just as connected to global
flows of information. They may not go so far as to think that they are the victims of soft
violence, but they question the purpose of their labor. Most urban primary school
students have had at least one class-mate who has returned from living abroad with a
report that American and Canadian children do nothing but play. This gives them a
relativistic perspective on childhood – that childhood just might be different in other
places – that makes them wonder if their labor is arbitrary: why is it that American
children get to play, yet their country is strong, whereas Chinese children are diligent, yet
their country is weak? Hard work and economic prosperity does not seem to correlate in
their minds.
Mimi was no exception in having a relativistic perspective, and she tried to enrich
it by asking me lots questions, often interviewing me better than I interviewed her. In
between asking me what Disneyland has to offer over hot pot one night, Mimi wanted to
know what primary school was like for me: how much homework did you have? When
were you dismissed? When did you have to be at school by? What about high school?

61
Field’s argument is also problematic because it is ahistorical. The examination system in contemporary
Japan was not entirely fashioned in the context of capitalism.
107
Were your teachers strict? Did they scold (ma) you? Are American teachers more strict or
are Chinese teachers more strict? Do you think America is more fun or is China more
fun? Did you like school? I sort of answered her questions in a way that “maintained the
status quo,” because I suspected that doing otherwise would not do any good. When
Mimi asked me how much homework I had in primary school, I said one hour, which
might be an exaggeration. (I remember doing most of my work in class, and then I would
play with my best friend after school or watch T.V. When I told a classroom of fourth
graders this, they “boo’ed” in unison.) Wang Hongjia immediately took my response as
an opportunity for managing Mimi’s perspective. ‘See Mimi,’ she said, ‘it’s not as easy-
going as you think!’
Norma Field’s argument that Japan’s schooling regime threatens the well-being of
Japanese children is indeed compelling, because the experience Japanese students go
through resonates so much with those of Chinese students. But, I would adjust her
argument to say that the childhood that is “at risk” in China is not one we can universally
define in terms of a child’s natural right to play. It is a conception of childhood that is
historically contingent, one that has been “imported” and popularized by advice literature
readily consumed by the mothers in my study group.
62
The school system in China, along
with the nature of competition in Chinese society, “threaten” the kind of childhood they
are supposed to nurture, the kind of childhood that in turn nurtures “high quality citizens
with practical ability and spirit for innovation.”

62
I have put imported in quotes because arguments for liberal parenting have existed earlier in the
philosophy of Wang Yangming and his followers. I am unable to trace a relationship between their ideas
and what parents are reading these days. Popular authors often turn to the West in modeling good
parenting.
108
Popular advice for parents encourages a kind of liberal parenting that respects the
subjectivity of children, and fosters a childhood free of adult demands – as when Huang
Quanyu likens Chinese childhood to growing up in a potted landscape and American
childhood to growing up in an outdoor garden in Family Education in America (2001:61).
This kind of advice is very seductive when the United States is seen as the home of
innovation and a bastion of economic power. Yet, as good as the advice sounds, there are
practical exigencies that parents must deal with in raising a child in market reform China.
These exigencies are shaped by the reality of a number of things: 1.) disparities in the
quality of schools, which drives the school-selection phenomenon and in turn deepens
existing disparities. School-selection puts financial pressure on parents and psychological
pressure on students; 2.) the importance of the college and middle-school entrance exam
influences the entire education system as a whole, training for exam-taking begins at least
as early as the first grade; 3.) the rising educational level of Chinese youths is outpacing
the country’s economic development, opportunities for good jobs are limited and the
competition is high (Fong 2004:90); 4.) China still has an enormous population. Insofar
as urban primary school students are concerned, population pressure is palpable in the
classroom, where one teacher is responsible for 60 to 70 students. This creates a situation
where a child can easily “get lost,” or experience the “discrimination” of teachers and
class-mates (I will discuss this phenomenon in Chapter Five). What I have tried to sketch
out in this chapter is meant to provide some background for understanding how urban
Chinese parents, especially mothers, live out the contradiction between advice for liberal
parenting on the one hand, and raising a competitive child on the other.
109
Before I we turn to the next chapter, let’s look at one more ethnographic case. It
concerns a nine year-old I called “Abby.” I had her over every other Saturday to play
games in English, games I knew from my own childhood like Chutes and Ladders, Go
Fish, and Jeopardy. I had two separate groups over at different times of the day, and
supposedly, Abby liked my activities so much that she wanted to be a part of both groups.
One Saturday in July, she arrived in somewhat of a stink, unusual for Abby who always
seemed to come so eagerly. She started to complain about how tired she was as soon as
she arrived. She told me she had two other English classes in addition to mine, and had a
pile of summer homework to do. I tried to cheer her up by saying, ‘Well if you finish it
now maybe you can play when August comes.’ She retorted, ‘I will have more to do in
August!’
A few months later, I learned why she was complaining that one weekend while
visiting with Abby and her mom and dad after a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner. Abby’s
parents had been explaining that they do disagree about specialty classes in what is
otherwise a very collaborative parenting relationship:
Abby’s mom explained, “Her dad feels that with specialty classes, there’s no need
to go to so many. But I feel like, the reason why the kid turned out as great as she has
today (name hao de zhuangkuang), has to do with going to specialty classes.”
Abby estimated that in the nine years of her life, she must have attended at least
12 different kinds of specialty classes. She tried to list them for me and then threw her
arms into the air, “I can’t even keep track anymore!”
110
Then Abby’s father explained, “The reason why I have this point of view is, I
think with learning specialties, it’s like what the experts (zhuanjia) say, go according to
the kid’s interest, don’t force more burden on them. It’s like they say, the kid’s naiveté
(tongzhen) is still really important. Maybe it’s good enough to create an easy-going
(kuansong) environment that’s beneficial to her body-mind health. Maybe she can’t even
absorb everything you’re trying to teach (guanshu) her with so many specialty classes so
suddenly.”
But they are now chosen according to interest, Abby’s mom said to her own
defense. This was when I thought to ask Abby about that one weekend. Turned out she
still remembered, she knew which weekend I was talking about.
“What happened with you?” her mom wanted to know.
“Well the night before was Friday right? I had gone to an English class. And then
in the morning I went to a calligraphy class! And then in the afternoon I went to your
class!”
Surprised, her mom asked her, “You see going to Teacher Kuan’s as going to
class?”
“Right. I do see it as going to a class!”
“But didn’t you say you really liked what Teacher Kuan was doing?”
“Right! But the vocabulary that Teacher Kuan taught, I have to remember all of
them! And then you test me when I get home! When I can’t answer you scold me! You
say,” Abby begins to impersonate her mom, “‘Aiya! She doesn’t even take money, and
you don’t take it seriously! I’m not letting you go anymore.’”
111
Both Abby’s mom and I were immediately embarrassed by this revelation.
Abby’s mom because she especially loves to keep “face,” and me because I did not mean
to give Abby an opportunity to embarrass her mom. Though, as uncomfortable as I was at
the moment, the revelation was enlightening. I had always felt guilty about being
complicit in the over-scheduling of children; I had scheduled these play times as a way to
build rapport with parents. I organized games so our time together would not be
burdensome, but I snuck in a little vocabulary to please the parents. I had no idea that
Abby was getting tested when she got home. Her mom consumes a lot of the popular
advice that encourages friendship with children, and she always spoke proudly of the
closeness and mutual affection she shared with her daughter, of her respect for her
daughter’s wishes. Despite Abby’s mom’s efforts to be a “friendly” parent, despite my
effort to create a “playful” space, the logic of examination still managed to creep in.

112
Chapter 3: The Horrific and the Exemplary
The heuristic value of scientific analogies is quite like the surprise of metaphor. The difference
seems to be that the scientific analogy is more patiently pursued, being employed to inform an
entire work or movement, where the poet uses his metaphor for a glimpse only.
--Kenneth Burke
One day in early 2000, a teenager beat his mother to death with a hammer in
Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province. The event was not pre-meditated. In fact, some argue that
Xu Li was not conscious at the moment. He acted out of blind rage.
This murder was so incomprehensible the public “machinery of interpretation
went into overdrive.”
63
Grisly details and biographical clues paraded in the service of
debates over the state of the Chinese educational system. Clearly, what shocked the
Chinese public about this news story was the murder itself: a mother died at the hands of
her own son. But what was even more shocking, and also deeply puzzling, was the fact
that this teenager was an achieving, morally upright student. This well publicized story
circulated under the title “good student kills mother” (haoxuesheng shama), and it
stimulated a flurry of questions such as: what would drive a child to do this?, is Xu Li the
one to blame?, what is wrong with our education system?, and do our children have the
psychological quality required for the intense competition of the twenty-first century.’
Often involving youth suicides or homicides, public horror stories such as “good
student kills mother” do important cultural work. In the context of educational reforms in
contemporary China, the collective interpretation of horror stories provides a moral arena

63
I borrow this phrase from New York Times film critic A. O. Scott who wrote this to describe the media
reaction to the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. See “Drawing a Line from Movie to Murder,” April 23.
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in which truths about how to raise and educate children correctly are produced and
naturalized.
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They constitute “negative models,” usually of “bad parenting,” in contrast
to stories about children who, despite limitations or difficulties, manage to ascend to
great heights thanks to “good parenting.” One example of an exemplary story concerns a
woman named Zhou Tingting. Born deaf, Zhou Tingting was destined to live a life of
social exclusion. But due to her father’s painstaking efforts to educate her despite an
unpromising future, Zhou Tingting defied both fate and social expectations. She came to
be known as a genius, skipped two grades at an ordinary primary school, won a national
shijia shaonian title (Top Ten Youth), and went on to study at an American graduate
school. Zhou Tingting’s success catapulted her father, Zhou Hong into stardom, he has
published a number of books describing his “method,” goes on national lecture tours, and
is acting principal at a school for deaf children in Nanjing. Part memoir, Zhou Hong’s
publications and public lectures consistently relate a narrative of overcoming.
While starkly opposite in content, one displaying errors to avoid, the other
wisdom to emulate, horror and exemplary stories provide the hinge on which education
reform turns. In combining incongruous qualities into single figures and in sequencing
events in particular ways, they provoke thought and make moral arguments for attending
to the inner subjectivity of children. Narrative practices associated with “tales of famous
men” (mingren zhuan), socialist realism, and the “speaking bitterness” genre sneak into
these stories. But the narratives I will analyze in this essay diverge from these other forms

64
I was initially inspired by Bryna Goodman’s discussion of how a publicized suicide provided a template
for the production of moral truths, an arena for the questioning of gender relations, capitalism and
modernity in Republican China (2005). Our discussion slightly differs. While hers examines why the
suicide became so significant, mine will focus more on how the truth gets constructed.
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in constructing new categories to be discovered and understood: psychological health and
human potential. Embedded in the popular advice, stories about good and bad parenting
play a critical role in adjusting the bonds of love. They mediate the domain of familial
wishes and the domain of national agendas.
Modeling for the 21
st
Century
The use of models in China is rooted in a theory of learning that presumes
humans learn best when presented with positive models to emulate and negative models
to compare oneself to. “Obviously,” Donald Munro makes clear, “the Chinese are not
unique in using models. However, there is something special in the degree to which
Chinese believe that people of all ages learn by imitation and in the ways in which they
apply that belief”(1977:135). Presentation of models is found in official histories, in the
biographical tradition, in popular sayings, and - in socialist China - state-bestowed
honorific titles (Anagnost 1997; Furth 2007; Li 2001; Munro 1977). When deployed for
the purpose of social engineering, the use of models can be characterized as an art of
government. It aims to persuade rather than coerce, providing concrete personifications
of otherwise abstract principles. The use of models presumes that with models before
them, people will “develop a constant attitude toward the norms, which will ensure
proper conduct even when no one is around”(Munro 1977:137). Even in Maoist China,
often stereotyped as ruling by force, the use of modeling was an important technique of
government. Mao Zedong has been quoted as saying, “it is only through repeated
education by positive and negative examples and through comparisons and contrasts that
revolutionary parties and revolutionary people can temper themselves, become mature
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and make sure of victory”(quoted in Munro 1977:139). Of course one of the best known
models of Maoist China was Lei Feng, an army truck driver who devoted himself to
studying Mao’s writings, furthering the revolutionary cause, and “serving the people”
before his premature death at the age of 22 (M. Zhang 1999:112-5).
In the context of advice literature for parents at the turn of the 21
st
century,
modeling in the form of exemplary and horror stories of good and bad parenting render
the ideals of Education for Quality self-evident and common-sense. The two narratives I
will analyze in this chapter guide parental rather the child conduct, modeling how parents
ought to conduct themselves in a way that does not threaten or obstruct a child’s
psychological health or human potential. They serve the purpose of ensuring that the
resources located in a human child, in the form of potential, are cultivated, enabled and
readily accessible upon maturity in a larger state project that aims to produce
“talents”(rencai).
Imputed potential in children is a projection of their future labor and earning
power in a knowledge-based, market economy. Actualization of that potential is thought
to depend on liberating the child from “restrictions” on their development. The logic of
the education reform movement mirrors the logic of economic reform in many ways.
Just as intellectuals and officials argued that a planned economy restricted economic
development and productivity, leading to what Gary Sigley calls a “regrouping” of
political power, education reformers argue that hierarchical authority limits human
development (Sigley 2006:499). Just as the market came to be understood as “conducive
to forging superior citizens and enterprises” in contrast to the passive subjects of the
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planned economy, education reformers understand suzhi jiaoyu as doing the same in
contrast to the passive subjects of education for exam-taking (ibid). Just as the planned
economy came to be seen as overlooking “the importance of economic levers such as
price, monetary and taxation to shape and guide the economy (Sigley 2006:501),”
education reformers similarly argue that cultivating healthy personalities and a passion
for learning is key to academic success. It is as if these psychological qualities can act as
levers that guide the process of learning. Enable the market; enable the individual.
Linked to the political need to produce active subjects with a spirit of innovation,
linked to a political rationality that seeks to enable rather than restrict, an “intensification
of subjectivity” is pervasive in recent popular advice in China (Rose 1990). Not only are
parents to locate and nurture individual interests and talents – i.e. their potential - in the
name of suzhi jiaoyu (Woronov 2003:151),
65
they must also learn to see their children in
new ways. Good parenting, according to the Chinese experts, attends to the inner life of
the child, and understands children as having psyches full of depth and complexity.
Chinese parents still have much to learn, as they treat their children like “bonsai trees,”
“fine porcelain,” pieces of “private property,” and govern so autocratically that
personality, self-initiative, and creative potential is too easily wiped out. The tendency
towards severity and controlling behavior on the part of many Chinese parents is viewed
as based in hierarchy, and therefore “feudal” and out of step. This was exactly the
problem with Mother Xu.

65
The verb commonly used with the word “potential” in the advice literature is “to excavate”(wajue).
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If Mother Xu is emblematic of bad parenting, whose errors one should learn from,
then Zhou Hong’s recollection of raising his daughter Zhou Tingting, is emblematic of
good parenting. The latter case might be seen as belonging to a large cultural repository
of narratives and proverbs about great learners who achieve despite having every reason
to give up (Elman 1991:17; Kinney 2004:28, 49; Li 2001; M. Zhang 1999). However,
what is unique about this story is its focus not on the learner’s personal attributes (Zhou
Tingting’s), but on a particular style of parental love. Zhou Hong attended to the inner
life of his daughter, and understood her as having a psyche full of depth and complexity.
He, in turn, tells parents that “satisfaction and happiness of the world of the inner heart-
mind (neixin shijie) are… a kind of high-level need” (Zhou 2004:81). Taken together, the
two narratives foster commitments that transform social goods into personal goods,
making a converging moral argument for what parenting ought to entail in twenty-first
century China. While one displays errors to learn from, and the other wisdom to emulate,
both encourage parents to govern themselves rather than their children, so as to create a
space of freedom for self-directed flourishing.
Good Student Kills Mother
Public knowledge of the “good student kills mother” case mainly comes from the
investigative efforts of Lu Qin, a journalist and popular parenting expert. She goes by the
name Intimate Sister (Zhixin Jiejie). Lu established a periodical for children and their
parents (also named Zhixin Jiejie), tours the country giving talks, runs a hotline, and
writes books for a popular audience. Her book Tell Your Child, You’re the Best! was a
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top ten bestseller in 2004 according to the China Book Business Report (Yang Kui
2005).
66

One reason why the Xu Li case is rather unusual is the fact that we have some
understanding of why he did what he did. In other words, the Chinese public rarely has
the opportunity to understand why a good student might be driven to suicide, but in this
case, the offender has told his side of the story in his own words. Lu Qin had the
opportunity to interview Xu Li after the murder, and she has spoken about this interview
both on television and in print. In my analysis, I use her presentation of the interview in a
book chapter in The Call of Education for Quality, an important collection that was
published in the early years of the Education for Quality movement. (Li Peng, the
Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, is listed as first
editor.) To what extent Lu has accurately represented their exchange is not at issue here,
as I am equally if not more interested in how she frames his story for the public.
Lu divides her chapter into sections, each establishing a principle of her
conception of “education for quality.” These include “giving children room to grow,”
“cultivating realistic hopes,” “allowing positive life experiences,” “opening channels of
respectful communication,” and “rearing through affirmation.” The chapter begins with
her arrival in the city of Jinhua. Accompanied by two reporters, Lu Qin wants to “to hear
Xu Li’s story, to understand the hearts and minds (xinling de shijie) of parents and
children in Jinhua, to find the root cause of Jinhua’s tragedy”(2001:221). She evokes

66
In Kunming, this book was also serialized in Spring City Evening News. My own copy, the first printing,
indicates that 200,000 copies were made. That is a significant number for a first run.

119
gloominess in describing heavy clouds and drizzly rain, drawing a symmetry between the
external landscape and the tragedy she is prepared to investigate. After walking down a
stone-slab road, she arrives at a detention house, enclosed by walls that give off cold
drafts.
She meets Xu Li for the first time in a dark room. He wears a blue sweater and a
knit yellow cap. She is surprised to see “that this skinny, lanky, fair-skinned boy with a
nice, peaceful expression is actually someone who murdered his own mother”(ibid). She
sits across from him. Noticing his nervousness, she lets him know that she is Intimate
Sister to break the ice. Xu Li immediately warms up, and agrees to talk about his family
and his mother. He begins by describing what adds up to be an oppressive world - a
household in which he couldn’t keep any secrets, and had phone calls from friends
intercepted. He tells her,
My mother would ask in detail before turning the phone over to me. I talked to
her about this before, but she said: ‘You befriended some bad influences out there
- my words don’t get through to you at all anymore.’ After that, my friends didn’t
dare to call me anymore. They even laughed and said: ‘Xu Li, who dares to call
your house? Your mom’s too much (lihai).’ Sometimes I felt lonely and wanted to
call a class-mate, but my mom would say: ‘If you have something to talk about,
finish it at school, what else is there? Call about what?’ [Lu 2001:223]

Lu thinks to herself, only hatred could cause a child to kill a parent, so she asks
Xu Li if he hated his mom for intercepting his calls. He tells her that he didn’t feel hate,
but felt increasingly stifled (yayi). He continues to describe his mother as someone who
cared only about his studies and not about his extra-curricular interests. In recalling an
instance when he came home ten minutes late from playing ball, he claims that his
mother hit him with a club, belt, and broom.
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When it came to my studies, my parents stood on the front-line [using a war
metaphor]. Their expectations of me were very high – they hoped I would earn a
high enough test score to enter Peking University, Tsinghua University, or at least
Zhejiang University. Given my abilities, this wasn’t realistic. [Lu 2001:224]

Sometime around the beginning of high school, a “raging animosity” slowly
began to grow. Doing well in a key-point class (zhongdian ban) Xu Li had tested into
only sustained and perhaps elevated his mother’s expectations. If less than desirable test
scores came back, Xu Li’s mother would scold and hit him.
I felt like, I had already grown up so much, yet she was still treating me like a
primary student. It was really hard to bear - [I felt] very stifled (yayi). I liked to
play soccer, read, watch television, but mother felt that these would affect my
studies, and always tried to stop me. When class-mates at school were discussing
current events and television shows, I didn’t know anything and there was nothing
I could say. I wanted to read the newspaper, but mother would say that college
examinations weren’t going to test what was in the papers. [Lu 2001:224]

Xu Li continues to describe his daily life as monotonous, unhappy and devoid of
meaning.
Very eager to know the events that led up to the homicide, Lu Qin carefully asks:
“How did the contradiction between yourself and your mother become more intense?”(Lu
2001:225). Xu Li answers by describing the day of the murder; it was just after lunch.
Mother Xu sat in her bedroom, knitting a sweater in front of the television. He wanted to
join her, catch a few minutes of television, but she began to say the usual things:
I’m telling you, if you can’t get into university, I won’t give you a second
opportunity. If you don’t test into the top ten on your finals, I’ll break your legs.
I’m the one who gave birth to you anyway - it doesn’t matter if I beat you to
death… [ibid]

121
Deeply hurt, Xu Li grabbed his backpack and headed toward the front door of the
apartment without a word. On his way out he saw a metal hammer on the shoe cabinet,
and then burst back into the bedroom.
Lu Qin does not ask how he committed the murder, but her elicitation of what he
did afterward brings forth grisly details. After aimlessly wandering the streets for a
couple hours, Xu Li suddenly realized that he should do something to save his mother.
But she had bled profusely and it was already too late to bring her back to life. He stuffed
her body into a suitcase.
Perspective by incongruity
Incongruity, a theme that emerges again and again in this and numerous other
publicly circulated horror stories, produces both an aesthetic and moral effect in the
reader. Incongruity happens to be a popular theme that has persisted in various literary
genres throughout twentieth century China. According to Perry Link, “All sources point
to strong popular interest in the unusual, the marvelous, and the unexpected. Apparently
opposite features are combined in one character, as in a beggar with a grotesque face but
a heart of gold, or an alluring young woman who is also a martial artist who can fling you
twenty feet”(2000:5). Opposing qualities produce a sense of the strange and marvelous
(qi), “important in Chinese storytelling for centuries, [and] depends for its allure on the
natural tension between presentations that are too strange to seem true and the implicit
claim that, nevertheless, they are true”(2000:226).
Incongruity serves to dramatize issues. How does this work? Victor Turner’s
ideas about ritual aesthetics may be instructive here. In his essay on liminality, the inter-
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structural stage within a ritual initiation, Turner identifies three parallel processes in how
sacra, or ritual objects, communicate (1967). The first two, disproportion and
monstrousness, are relevant here. The first process refers to the disproportionate
representation of, say, a nose in relation to other facial features on a mask, or of one
bodily extremity in relation to another on a ritual figurine. In explaining why one feature
may get exaggerated to the diminution of another, Turner argues that “to enlarge or
diminish or discolor in this way is a primordial mode of abstraction. The outstandingly
exaggerated feature is made into an object of reflection”(1967:103). An example of a
figurine of a nursing mother with a distended belly and an exaggerated number of babies
on her back is understood, in conjunction with an attached song, as a symbol upon which
a young Bemba woman contemplates her relationship to both her husband and her
mother, whose respective desires for sex and the increase of matrilineage would be
destructive to herself. The aesthetic is the means, cultural pedagogy the end.
Monstrosity serves a similar thought-provoking purpose in the ritual process.
Borrowing from William James, Turner argues that monsters “teach neophytes to
distinguish clearly between the different factors of reality” by the law of dissociation.
That is to say, the presence of two elements that do not belong together in a unity
produces a dissociation of one thing from another at the same moment it evokes horror.
The response arises by virtue of a recognition that a and b do not belong together. Both,
to quote James, “grow into an object of abstract contemplation”(1967:105). Turner states:
From this standpoint, much of the grotesqueness and monstrosity of liminal sacra
may be seen to be aimed not so much at terrorizing or bemusing neophytes into
submission or out of their wits as at making them vividly and rapidly aware of
what may be called the “factors” of their culture. […] Monsters startle neophytes
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into thinking about objects, persons, relationships, and features of their
environment they have hitherto taken for granted. [ibid]

The usefulness of Turner’s theory for interpreting popular horror stories in China
is quite apparent. While there are certainly differences to be noted between the function
of ritual in small societies versus the function of media in a post-socialist state, in both
contexts ritual or narrative aesthetics offer symbols for reflection abstracting taken-for-
granted cultural elements from their context. In ritual, aesthetics serve to move a group of
initiates from one social category to another; in mass-mediated parenting advice,
aesthetics serve to change deeply rooted educational attitudes and practices.
Kenneth Burke, who gives us the phrase “perspective by incongruity,” observes
that “…any new way of putting the characters of events together is an attempt to convert
people, regardless of whether it go by the name of religion, psychotherapy, or science. It
is impious, by our definition, insofar as it attacks the kinds of linkage already established.
It attempts… to alter the nature of our responses”(1954:86-7). For Burke, incongruities,
mismatches between things and contexts, can effect reorientations and changes in
commitment by offering a new perspective. While Burke’s examples consist of
philosophical works (Nietzsche), artistic movements (Dadaism and Surrealism), and
professional disciplines (biology, economics, psychoanalysis), we could venture to say
that novel combinations in public media stories work to change perspectives, altering
how education and good parenting is conceptualized in post-Mao China.
Xu Li’s story is embedded within a book aimed at disseminating the argument
that the “old way” is no longer the “right way.” It begins with archetypal personas - the
hopeful parent and the youthful teenager - as well as a familiar situation, in which extra-
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curricular activities such as playing ball and making friends become secondary to
studying. But the story that unfolds is anything but quotidian. Besides the obvious shock
of the murder, a catastrophic breach in routine, the power of the story lies in its
manifestation of incongruity. By combining the common and idealized figure of the
curious, youthful and hard-working student with that of a cold-blooded criminal, the story
raises the interpretive problem of where to locate the reason for the crime. Who is to
blame for what happened? Xu Li’s personal narrative gives the reader a sense that he is a
“good kid,” providing substantial evidence for the fact that not only is Xu Li a high
achiever with considerable academic potential, he is also a morally notable character.
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In
answering Lu Qin’s question of whether he has ever done anything that gave him a sense
of pride, Xu Li describes his membership in a “Learning to be like Lei Feng” group:
…I would often go to the home of a lonely elderly lady to help her clean and
cook. Starting in the second year of junior high school, I would go once a week.
This lady didn’t have children and had a hard time walking. We felt bad for her
and thought she needed our help. I thought, there will be a day when I have to live
on my own, so I can’t not know how to cook. Learning to help the old lady, I
could also improve my own skills.
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[Lu 2001:230]

This passage reveals not only a politically active student, modeling himself after the
socialist culture hero Lei Feng, but also an independent and skillful youth who
exemplifies the exact opposite of the spoiled, dependent single child central in popular
imagination.

67
This differs from the Shonen A case that Arai describes in “The ‘Wild Child’ of 1990s Japan”(2000), and
from media coverage of school shootings in the United States, where a child is revealed to have had hidden
disturbances.

68
Xu Li suggests that he was eventually asked to give up this activity too.
125
This figure strongly contrasts with the scene that takes place after the murder.
After Xu Li stuffed his mother into a suitcase, he was “on the run,” sleeping in a local
swimming hall, too afraid to be at home. In order to preserve a sense of ordinariness, he
did, however, return on the weekend, when his father came home from doing business.
“Mother’s corpse was right next door to my room. I constantly felt on edge (xinjing
routiao),” he told Lu Qin. At the end of the weekend, he escaped to a hotel in another
city, where he was finally caught. This narrative configuration of the “fugitive” lends to
the monstrosity of the main character.
However it is the less obvious incongruity in the Xu Li story that reflects the real
horror: his mother’s parenting style. At first glance, she seems rather ordinary. Her
simplistic ambitions are familiar, and her actions resonate with the ubiquitous saying
wangzi chenglong, meaning “hoping my sons [or children] will grow into dragons,” i.e.
be successful in life. But, the education reformers argue, the kind of parenting that
cultivates a child only for exam success will not produce the kind of qualities needed in a
globally integrated market economy – qualities such as self-awareness and spirit for
innovation and enterprise. In Intimate Sister’s narrative reframing, Mother Xu is
simultaneously a recognizable figure and an obstruction to Xu Li’s freedom. Her constant
interception of phone calls left Xu Li feeling increasingly stifled (yayi). Her obsession
with top-flight universities was pursued to the neglect of locating and nurturing other
possible talents. But perhaps the most startling incongruity, one that metynomically links
a child’s “development” to a nation’s “development” is the bit where Mother Xu refuses
to allow Xu Li to read the newspaper or watch TV. Just as the iron curtain was
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responsible for China’s lag, Mother Xu’s restrictions put Xu Li in the situation of having
‘nothing to say’ in the company of friends. He didn’t know anything about current events
or public culture, rendering him unable to socially integrate.
If, as Turner says, disproportion and monstrosity serve to startle neophytes into
reflection, then it comes as no surprise that public horror stories have startled the Chinese
public into a discussion about the problems of the entire education system. The “good
student kills mother” case helped to inspire a short-lived policy in 2000 known as jianfu,
or, reducing the burden. Saturdays classes were prohibited and backpacks were weighed
at school gates as some amongst many measures to reduce academic pressure on
students.
69
Alarmed by the Xu Li case, Jiang Zemin even expressed at a meeting of the
Standing Committee of the Politburo that all responsible parties – from schools to Party
organizations – must work to guide the urgent wishes (poqie yuanwang) of parents in the
right direction (2001:4). He warned that unwavering diligence does have a purpose, but
“[we] must not confine our youth in rooms and in books all day…”(ibid). Jiang also
added that “it isn’t that you must attend university in order to become a talent (rencai).
Society needs multiple kinds of talent. ‘Three-hundred and sixty occupations, every
occupation has an optimus’ (sanbai liushi hang, hang hang chu zhuangyuan)”(2001:5).
What happens in the family has consequences for the nation at large. But
reformers also recognize that changing parenting behavior is contingent upon retooling
the whole entire education system, from curriculum content to admission practices to the

69
Less school did not mean less learning. There was to be a qualitative reorientation of what constitutes
learning. For the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the jianfu movement, see Woronov (2003:111,
144).
127
psychological health of school teachers and so on. The wholesale reform known as the
suzhi jiaoyu gaige is meant to penetrate multiple levels of society, and parental love is
just one site amongst many. Horror stories like the Xu Li case, have and continue to
inspire alarm over the state of education. As one expert stated on CCTV (China Central
Television): “What kind of education is this, with 30% of primary students and 35% of
middle school students having psychological abnormalities, graduate and doctoral
students repeatedly committing crimes? If we don’t turn exam-oriented education into
education for quality, twenty-first century China will definitely be deep in disaster…”
(Sun and Bu 1997:371).
70

Moral coding and diagnosing
The rhetorical power of narrative has long been demonstrated by philosophers,
literary critics and anthropologists. In choosing to narrate some events and not others, in
tying disparate moments in time together in a single plot, stories make moral arguments –
a point Aristotle makes in Poetics (Mattingly 1998b; Rosaldo 1986). In research with
North American occupational therapists, Cheryl Mattingly found that the stories
clinicians told in team meetings not only recounted “the facts,” they also inadvertently
constructed a “good” in morally complex situations. Mattingly writes, “the good is never
explicitly discussed. Rather, it is naturalized in the very process of the telling
itself…”(1998b:289). Similarly, the Illongot hunting stories Renato Rosaldo collected
had a way of rendering the evaluation of particular experiences incontestable. “Rather

70
I do not know what kinds of evaluations went into this statistic. The speaker does not give any
explanation, which makes sense because this was part of a response to a television interview. In this
context, the numbers serve a rhetorical function, as if to punctuate an argument. I have seen the use of
numbers in this way in other print material as well. Numbers such as these carry scientific authority, and
also serve as an expedient way of making an argument.
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than saying that events were terrifying, dangerous, and extraordinary, storytellers often
embed their evaluations in the narrative itself”(1986:116).
In modern China, we see an explicit recognition of the rhetorical power of
narrative, actively deployed in different ways and in different periods for grand social
purposes. Literary culture came to be recognized as a powerful tool for social reform in
early 20
th
century. According to Marston Anderson, Chinese intellectuals “reasoned that
literature could reach a deeper level of cultural response than political manipulation had
succeeded in doing; a new literature, by altering the very worldview of its readers, would,
they hoped, pave the way for a complete transformation of Chinese society”(1990:3).
Initially, Western realism offered promise and embodied many of the ideals that attracted
Chinese intellectuals, e.g. scientism and horizontal social relationships. But they
struggled to indigenize the form in a series of debates that unfolded over a number of
years, until Mao Zedong’s “Talks at the Yan’an Forum” in 1942 established a single
orthodoxy for art and literary practice (Anderson 1990:73; Link 2000:21). Socialist
realism, the dominant genre of the Maoist era, held that literary work should both reflect
reality and serve as an inspired mirror that puts ideals on display (Link 2000:10). As
Anderson puts it, socialist realism was to “reflect and describe reality but also to direct
and propel reality”(1990:57).
Though the dominance of socialist realism would begin to wane in the 1980s, it
does not disappear completely. Anagnost’s discussion of a newspaper article from
Nongmin Ribao [Peasant gazette] offers a compelling reading of the political use of story
in post-Mao China (Anagnost 1997c). The article narrates events that led up to a man’s
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ceremonious winning of a “law-abiding household” plaque. It is a compelling story
because the protagonist, a former horoscope peddler, is an unlikely contender. He pleads
with the party secretary, and wins, not because his plea was successful, but because he
happens to get into a momentary quarrel with another person on the scene, one in which
he reveals a transformation in moral character.
Anagnost argues that the award operates according to a binary code of positive
and negative, which is reflected in the story in the form of antithesis. Zhou, the former
horoscope peddler, traverses the opposition from spontaneity to socialist propriety, a
classic structuring figure in socialist realism that opposes political consciousness to the
pre-political body that easily falls prey to pleasures outside the domain of political
rationality (1997c: 104-5). According to Anagnost, “The symbolic antitheses that are set
up in this short narrative are fundamental to the maintenance of the cultural code, which
is here that of socialist realism”(1997c:113). Unlike the nineteenth century tradition of
realism in the West, which produces an effect of the real at the level of the text through
the individuation of characters, socialist realism aims to produce an effect at the level of
society through creating unambiguous moral positions to be emulated (1997c:115).
Lu Qin’s retelling of Xu Li’s story seems to follow the trajectory of the socialist
realist text as Anagnost conceives it. At one point, Lu asks a morally loaded question,
“Do you know how you were brought up?” Xu Li responds by recalling his mother’s hard
work and sacrifice, which prompted Lu Qin to remind him of the fact that there are many
children much more unfortunate than he. Xu Li begins to sob and says, “I am a beast, I
used my own two hands to ‘send away’ my mother. I regret it so much…”(Lu 2001:226).
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Xu Li in this story traverses the opposition from a teen unable to control his anger to a
teen capable of gratitude, deep remorse, and transforming his mistake into a lesson for
all. At the end of her chapter, Lu Qin shares a letter Xu Li had written to his classmates,
in which he warns his peers to avoid making the same mistake he has and to appreciate
what they already have. “I hope that you will treasure the opportunity to learn, don’t wait
until it is gone to appreciate it,” he wrote, “Class-mates, I think of you. If I am free one
day, I hope that I will see that you have all succeeded, you have all become oak beams of
the nation”(Lu 2001:232).
Nonetheless, I argue that the story does more than put correct moral positions on
display. By presenting a shocking act of unspeakable violence committed by a perfectly
non-violent person, Xu Li’s story reveals a symptom of a social ill. So unspeakable is the
murder that the moment in which it occurs is hidden from narrative view, with Xu Li’s
voice trailing off before he finishes his account of it: “I burst into the bedroom, and…”
We return to his internal landscape after the consummation of the act. He recalls,
After I did what I did, I ran on the street for two hours, I couldn’t understand how
I could do something so cruel. My mind was a blank, my head very dizzy. I was
running and running. Then I suddenly realized, that is my mother! I have to go
save her! By the time I got home, my mom had already lost a lot of blood, and she
could not be brought back to life. [Lu 2001:225]

Xu Li had a lapse in consciousness during the act; he was ruled only by the passion of
anger. This moment of absence, sandwiched between symmetrical states of moral
propriety (a member of the “Learning to be like Lei Feng” group before the crime,
expresses deep remorse after the crime), appears like a symptom, indicting his mother’s
parenting as traumatic. Li Heini, a writer on an ad hoc talk show called Zaishuo jianfu
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[Let’s talk about reducing the burden] expressed her view of the incident: “I think parents
have realized now that their style of education has problems. The kinds of symptoms
appearing in kids are basically similar. Family is the root cause of children’s symptoms.
Regardless what kind of child, one can trace similarly incorrect education methods back
to the parents”(Li and Chen 2001:135).
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The Xu Li case and others like it simultaneously signify errors in parenting and
retroactively constitute a distinct phenomenon to be discovered and understood: the
psychological health of children, which is threatened by parenting that does not adhere to
the principles of “education for quality.” If the narrative aesthetic of incongruity offers
symbols for questioning educational style, then the appearance of the symptom in the
story constructs and naturalizes a truth concerning trauma and deviance from an ideal
state of health. One commentator expressed:
Actually, it might on the surface seem like the kid couldn’t handle the burden [of
his studies], so he killed his own mother. But if you look at it from the perspective
of psychology and education, this precisely reflects a serious psychological
problem in the child. This has already been acknowledged by many psychologists
in the analysis of this case. People also feel that this precisely reflects that
psychological health is ignored in the home (jiating jiaoyu). [Li and Chen
2001:136]

As Jacques Lacan points out, for events to be recognized as being the cause of a
symptom, the event must be put into words (a patient’s story), which determines “the
lifting of the symptom”(1977:46). However, the analysis of the symptom does not reveal
a hidden truth about a traumatic past. Rather the truth lies in the form in which the

71
This quote was taken from a chapter entitled “Who Duels with their Child in their Inner Heart-Mind:
Discussing the Problem of Psychological Education”(Shei zai neixin yu haizi jiaoliang: tantao xinli jiaoyu
wenti), which is a transcription of the show and does not have an author.
132
symptom appears, i.e., the discourse produced in the psychoanalytic transaction in which
a patient’s entire speech is symptomatic. Žižek, a Lacanian theorist, clarifies Lacan’s
conceptualization of the symptom. He writes, “Symptoms are meaningless traces, their
meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depth of the past, but constructed
retroactively – the analysis produces the truth; that is, the signifying frame which gives
the symptoms their symbolic place and meaning”(1989:56).
Public interpretation of the Xu Li story gives the symptom its symbolic place and
meaning. That a good student is driven to act cruelly is symptomatic of bad parenting,
uninformed by expert knowledge and principles of “education for quality.” This
diagnosis depends heavily on the narrative form. If aesthetics help to dramatize issues,
the ‘lifting of symptoms’ in narrative naturalizes connections between cause and effect.
This has to do with the sequencing of events in a particular way, which, as Aristotle has
taught us, has a moral effect. This is because narratives turn “the noise and incidentalness
of everyday life into a compacted causal argument (a plot),” such that one thing after
another becomes one thing because of another (Mattingly 1998a:45).
Thus, the mystery of how a child could be driven to murder is resolved in the
sequencing of events that emerges in Lu Qin’s retelling. Xu Li was driven to murder
because his mother’s hopes were too high, and she gave him little room for growth, failed
to allow positive life experiences, cultivate realistic ideals, communicate with him on
equal terms, and affirm him for his achievements, violating Lu Qin’s principles of
education. The diagnosis is also a moral argument: Xu Li was killed first.
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Inverting Disability
If the “good student kills mother” case offers a negative model that displays
parenting errors to avoid, then Zhou Hong’s recollection of how he raised his daughter
Zhou Tingting constitutes a positive model that offers wisdom to emulate. Mother Xu and
Zhou Hong respectively represent “feudal” parenting and parenting that conforms to the
“modern” ideals of Education for Quality. Whereas Mother Xu is portrayed as constantly
criticizing her son, Zhou Hong portrays himself as a wellspring of love. For Zhou Hong,
parents ought to constantly give positive affirmations, even in times of failure. He uses
his upright thumb, ubiquitous in public photographs of him, to symbolize his version of
parental love. He argues, “Different fingers have different meanings. In raising their
children, some parents constantly use their index finger to jab their child’s head: you
dunce, how can you be so stupid”(2004:39)? The thumb muscles of Chinese parents,
Zhou Hong contends, are in a state of atrophy.
But good parenting for Zhou Hong does not simply involve encouragement and
praise. In fact, he laments that parents often misunderstand him. Appreciating one’s child,
the phrase that encapsulates his entire approach, attends to the inner life. Once Zhou
determined to educate his deaf daughter as if she were perfectly ordinary, he decided that
his first move (zhao) - a verb used in talking about chess or martial arts - was helping his
daughter find a kind of “good-child-feeling” (hao haizi de ganjue).
In Appreciate Your Child [Shangshi ni de haizi], Zhou Hong narrates the time
when Zhou Tingting was just learning to use the abacus. She was the slowest in her
whole entire class, something she readily recognized. “The child already thinks she’s
slow,” he writes, “it’s useless if you criticize her. She will most definitely think, ‘if even
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mom and dad think I’m slow, then I must really be inadequate (bu xing).’ I wanted to
help her find the feeling for abacus, let her believe that she could do it”(2004:45). So
Zhou tells his daughter he’s convinced that she’s fast, entering into a little disagreement
with her, and then disproving her with an experiment. He takes out his watch to time her;
Zhou Tingting begins calculating. He commends her when she gets it right, and reiterates
that he simply didn’t have her skill level when he was her age. Over a period of forty
days, Zhou Tingting’s abacus ability improved by leaps and bounds. Zhou Hong
confesses that the truth was, in the process of this experiment, he repeatedly lied to her. If
she took thirteen minutes to finish a calculation, he would look at his watch, and then tell
her that she finished within twelve minutes and fifty seconds.
In his books and lectures, Zhou Hong argues it was concrete methods such as this
that contributed to Zhou Tingting’s success. Born deaf, not only did Zhou Tingting avoid
going to a deaf school, she also managed to skip two grades, won a Top Ten Youth title,
and went abroad for a master’s degree in the United States. What is so compelling about
their story? There is certainly the obvious attraction of a good success story, but what
makes a good success story?
In the remainder of this essay, I will read Zhou Hong’s narrative in light of the
arguments developed from the “good student kills mother” case. I specifically analyze
one of Zhou Hong’s earlier publications, Appreciate Your Child, a text I encountered in
many ways during dissertation field research. Many of my informants have heard him
speak in Kunming, have read his books, or have at least heard of him. My own copy of
135
Appreciate Your Child was the 23
rd
printing, taking the book’s circulation number to
316,000 in 2003.
While “good student kills mother” and Zhou Hong’s story occupy opposite poles,
I aim to show how both employ similar narrative aesthetics and make a convergent moral
argument about what constitutes good parenting.
Battling Fate
Like the “good student kills mother” story, Zhou Hong’s also features the
narrative aesthetic of incongruity in offering characters that combine opposing qualities:
the disabled but genius child, the education expert with no formal training. Like the
“good student kills mother” story, this narrative also offers abstractions that provoke
thought. If the former begs the question of who and what to blame for Xu Li’s crime, the
latter begs the question of how to explain Zhou Tingting and Zhou Hong’s achievements.
Where this story differs however, is in its offering of a new “template of possibility.”
72

Zhou Hong’s narrative is structured by a relatively one-directional movement from
despair to hope, forming a strong transformative arc.
Zhou Hong begins Appreciate Your Child with an illness story, one that recounts
the cause of Tingting’s deafness, the search for a medical cure, and the experience of
social exclusion and stigma. Within this earlier story is a rather tear-jerking micro-
narrative. When Tingting was in pre-school, she often peed in her pants because she did
not know how to express herself to the teacher. This was not a problem during the spring,
summer, and fall. But as soon as winter arrived, Zhou Hong would burst out of factory

72
I am indebted to Melissa Park for this phrase.
136
gates “burning with anxiety” at the end of a work day. He recalls, “The first thing I would
do when I saw her was feel her pants. If her pants were wet, my heart felt dampened.
Riding home, my tears gushed forth as winter wind blew on [my] daughter’s trembling,
twisting body. It was as if my heart had been pierced by ten thousand arrows”(2003:3-4).
Zhou proceeds to narrate the time he lost control of his bicycle wiping tears from
his eyes. Tingting fell off the bike and hit her head on the muddy ground. Her wailing
attracted the attention of onlookers. Back at home, Zhou washed Tingting’s body from
head to toe. He recalls, “We didn’t have heat, so I used my body to keep her warm.
Miserable tears fell drop by drop onto [my] daughter’s delicate little face as she looked at
me with puzzlement”(2003:4). The prominence of bodily excretions in this little story, in
the form of urine and tears (later mixing with mud), derives meaning and intelligibility
from the “speaking bitterness” genre.
Highly dramatic and emotional, “speaking bitterness” was a narrative technique
deployed during the land reform era. As a part of justifying the redistribution of land and
wealth, revolutionary cadres encouraged peasants to narrate their sufferings and to
recognize their anguish as a product of exploitation. According to Anagnost, the presence
of the body in the form of blood and tears, the latter of which was both narrated and
performatively wept, contributed to the rhetorical power of the “speaking bitterness”
narratives. This “spontaneous truth of the body” linked immediate experience with
unequal systems of economic exchange.
But while “speaking bitterness” narratives aimed to get peasants to see their
suffering in terms of class antagonism rather than “bad fate or personal shortcoming”
137
(Anagnost 1997b:29). Zhou returns to bad fate in telling Tingting’s illness story.
73
“There
is nothing you can do,” one doctor in Shanghai had told him, “No rehabilitation in the
world can help children who are deaf in both ears. Her only way out from now on is to go
to deaf school”(2004:3). This doctor’s declaration seemed to condemn Tingting to a life
of social exclusion, and Zhou Hong describes feeling like darkness had swallowed him
up. He then writes, “Because a parent’s surrender was up to the design of fate (mingyun),
[my] daughter’s life before 3 years of age was steeped in loneliness and tears”(ibid). For
Zhou, even worse than the “bitterness of life” was “not being able to see a thread of
hope”(2003:4).
74

Zhou draws on the myth of Chang’e the moon goddess to describe his impasse,
one so intractable it was other-worldly. In this highly imagistic interpretation of their
situation, Tingting’s exclusion is not only social, but existential as well:
I would sit next to [my] daughter’s bed at night when I couldn’t sleep, [and]
quietly enjoy her precious little face. The more I gazed at Tingting, the more I
saw Chang’e, who wanted to come back to the azure earth that is so full of life, to
feel the calling of the wind, the chirping of birds, the hubbub of trees, but there
was no response ------ as beautiful as the moon is, it still floats in outer space.
Having been thrown into another world, she can’t walk amongst the earth, a
lonely, desolate, soundless world will be with her whole life! How could I
possibly accept this kind of reality? [2003:4]

It was a Japanese television series, titled Xue Yi in Chinese, that stoked a moment
of transformation for Zhou Hong. “At the moment when all hope was lost, [when we
arrived] where mountains and rivers end,” Zhou found inspiration in Da Dao Mao, whose

73
Other anthropologists working in post-Mao China also observe continued use of speaking bitterness
techniques. See Rofel 1999b and Kohrman 2005b.

74
At the end of this illness story, Zhou Hong says that all this bitterness caused a deterioration in Tingting’s
mother’s health, leaving her bed-ridden. We don’t hear about her again after this mention.
138
“endless fatherly love” helped to give the life and death of his terminally ill daughter
meaning and satisfaction. “From then on,” Zhou recalls, “My daughter and I battled with
destiny (mingyun)…”(2003:5).
Between ‘surrendering to the design of fate’ and engaging in a ‘battle with
destiny,’ one which ultimately leads to success, Zhou Hong’s story traverses a dramatic
transformative arc between despair and hope. Zhou Hong undergoes a transformation too.
In reflecting on his daughter’s accomplishments and his own life trajectory, he wonders
how he, “a laosanjie (“three old classes”) graduate, a factory technician, a father who had
nothing do with special education, became the principal of Nanjing Deaf School. The
change of destiny for this father-daughter pair surely was dramatic! How can the destiny
of a father and daughter change in such an earth-shaking manner”(2003:15)?
By repeatedly marking himself as belonging to the laosanjie generation, Zhou
Hong stretches the distance between his status pre- and post-Tingting and intensifies the
incongruity of his character. The term laosanjie refers to the junior high and high school
graduating classes of 1967 – 1969, the generation of urban youths who sacrificed formal
schooling to go down to the countryside in the spirit of socialist modernization. Unlike
the “sent-down youths” of later years, this generation supposedly went voluntarily, before
Mao Zedong’s 22 December 1968 order (Sausmikat 2002:255). Many laosanjie in the
post-Maoist era wear this designation like a “badge of honor,”
75
as many have
successfully gone on to become successful entrepreneurs, company managers and
directors, and see themselves as continuously furthering the modernization of Chinese

75
Stanley Rosen, personal communication.
139
society. According to Sausmikat, “Many laosanjie portray the success of their generation
as a result of their ability to bear hardship, as the product of personal capabilities gained
by sacrificing their youth for the nation”(2002:262-3).
At the same time, not all laosanjie have become successful upon return to the
cities. Hung and Chiu note that because this generation never got to complete their
education, most were hired for manual labor on shop floors (hence Zhou’s “factory
technician” marker). Deep resentment and high rates of hidden unemployment can also
be found amongst the laosanjie generation, many of whom were rendered “redundant”
during the market reforms (Hung and Chiu 2003). Thus, when Zhou Hong invokes the
laosanjie designation, he marks how far he has come, and how his life could have easily
turned out otherwise: “A ‘laosanjie’ like me, many of us are now unemployed. I’m still
considered lucky…”(2004:170). Not only has Zhou Hong been able to avoid
unemployment, he has, ironically, become an expert in human development and a major
player in special education despite lacking any kind of formal training.
The transformation of a disabled child into a genius, a blue-collar worker into an
education expert, combines incongruous qualities into single characters, not unlike the
beggar with a heart of gold or the good student that kills. Zhou Tingting and Zhou
Hong’s unexpected success begs questions just as the “good student kills mother” story
does, i.e. how did this father and daughter achieve success despite their respective social
and physical constraints? Zhou Hong’s narrative also has an additional feature in that it
presents a new template of possibility that is not unlike the “rags to riches” genre
Americans are familiar with. This is not a coincidence. In foregrounding his
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determination and effort in ‘battling destiny,’ Zhou makes a moral argument for the
potency of human effort. Indeed his popularity extends well beyond the education reform
movement and can be linked to the genre of “studying for success” (chenggonxue), which
commonly offers stories of successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Sam Walton of
Wal-mart (Anagnost 2004; Davies 2007). Such stories promote the neoliberal notion that
travel out of one social category into another is possible with sheer effort, a kind of
“neoliberal fable of self-making” that links personal development with economic
development (Anagnost 2004:195). They also partake in a celebration of the individual in
their biographical or autobiographical modes, a related genre that like success literature,
only emerged (or re-emerged) in the post-Maoist era (Farquhar 1996; 2002).
But the simple heroism and one-directional drama in Zhou Hong’s story suggests
that success stories continue to draw upon a narrative practice long familiar to Chinese
story-telling: offering exemplary models to emulate. They “recycle the traditional
Chinese genre of ‘tales of famous men’ (ming ren zhuan)”(Anagnost 2004:195).
Interestingly enough, many of the models in the market reform era have been disabled
people, or, parents or teachers of disabled children. These figures include Zhang Haidi,
Deng Pufang, Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller, and the 19
th
century German Karl Weter –
who was born an “idiot” but defied expectations and eventually became a well-respected
Dante scholar in adulthood thanks to his father’s parenting methods.
76
The fact that these

76
Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller served as exemplary models to learn from in the mothering class I
frequently attended in Kunming (described in the preface.) Keller’s biographical writing is published by a
number of different houses. Karl Weter’s story is also very popular in China. His story inspired the authors
of the immensely popular Harvard Girl Liu Yiting.
Deng Pufang’s story was pivotal in the development of the China Disabled Person’s Federation
(Kohrman 2005b). Interestingly enough, his most well-known biographer is a parent of a disabled child,
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teachers and learners overcame great obstacles exemplifies a long-held belief in the
malleability of the human being, but their stories also serve to construct a new category,
to which I will now turn.
Naturalizing Potential
Keeping in mind Ann Anagnost’s discussion of corporeal politics (1995; 2004),
Zhou Hong’s Appreciate Your Child looks much like manuals such as Harvard Girl Liu
Yiting and Karl Weter’s Education. They all demonstrate how intensive parental labor
and investment can build value into a child, value that can be exchanged in a knowledge-
based economy. The children featured in these success manuals all go on to prestigious
universities and/or professions requiring mental labor. Zhou Hong’s style is quite
different from the other parents in this group, however. Though he too invests great effort
in teaching specific “capacities,” e.g. using the abacus, Appreciate Your Child is less
about how to govern the child than how to govern oneself. Zhou insists that he had no
expectations, an attitude he attributes to emotional labor he conducted upon himself. A
manual like Harvard Girl Liu Yiting on the other hand, is much more product oriented.
As Terry Woronov puts it, the mother of Harvard Girl is more like a factory manager
who turns the raw material of her child into “a high-quality product which receives the
imprimatur of the most highly valued global institution”(2007: 43).
Both Zhou Hong’s narrative and Intimate Sister’s retelling of the Xu Li story
emphasize not the product and rational means of production, but the interior depths of a

which contributed to her motivation to write about him. I have rarely seen Deng Pufang appear in the
advice literature for parents however. Zhou Hong is one exception; he mentions receiving the accolade of
Deng Pufang (2003:31).
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child’s subjectivity. In the “good student kills mother” story, categories such as
psychological health and psychological quality are retroactively constituted in the public
interpretation of the case. Xu Li was killed before his mother was killed because Chinese
parents do not attend to the psychological health of their child. Similarly, Zhou Hong’s
account of how he raised Tingting retroactively constitutes, and thereby naturalizes a
different but related category: potential. If expert reading of “good student kills mother”
reveals a hidden symptom, then Zhou Tingting’s dramatic transformation reveals a
hidden potential. Psychological health and human potential become categories to be
discovered and understood.
In response to queries about ‘how he did it,’ Zhou Hong insists that his method is
accessible to everybody. In order to discover and excavate a child’s hidden potential, a
parent must simply rediscover something “natural” to parenting. He maintains that “this
method is the most mysterious, and the most common. The freshest, and also the most
ancient. Something we already have as parents, yet have not realized. [We] have used it
before, but have unintentionally forgotten it”(2003:17). This something is natural, a state
of mind uncorrupted by the social competition fostered by an exam system that ranks
students with points. For Zhou Hong this natural attitude can be encapsulated by the word
xing,
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or ‘being okay with everything.’ Parents have this attitude during early
socialization, when a young child is just learning to walk and talk. In these early years,
parents “naturally” have no expectations, Zhou argues, as all children will be able to walk
and talk some day. Zhou writes, “Because they firmly believe the child is xing, when the

77
As an adjective, xing can be defined as capable or competent. As a verb, xing can indicate to walk or to
go. But the term has a much broader meaning for Zhou Hong.
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child is learning how to walk, they are able to fully permit failure. […] When the child is
learning how to walk, parents will always encourage their child after ten falls, a hundred
falls, even after a thousand falls”(2003:58).
Speaking to the high ambitions that parents have for school-age children, as
exhibited in Mother Xu’s behavior, parents ought to manage and control their
expectations by finding the “natural” attitude, one that permits failure and unceasingly
gives encouragement. There is no such thing as a bad child, only bad parenting methods –
a point Zhou makes by likening parenting to farming. He writes,
I feel that there is no such thing as a bad crop, only farmers who do not know how
to farm. If a crop is not growing well, we never see a farmer with arms akimbo,
raging at the side of a field: “I work from dawn to dusk, all night and day, all the
bitterness I have eaten, all the sweat I have exuded, haven’t I fulfilled my moral
obligations?! Why won’t you grow taller?!” [2003:37]

If there are only bad parenting methods, then parents ought to criticize not the child but
oneself. Zhou maintains that whenever his daughter had problems, he reflected on
himself and asked himself, not his child, what he had done wrong. This attitude strongly
contrasts with the way Mother Xu is portrayed.
In turning attention back upon oneself, parents are better equipped to shangshi
(appreciate) their child. This is an attitude rooted in an even broader stance toward life,
one able to regard life itself with passion and respect. In this way, Appreciate Your Child
resembles what Foucault has called a “manual for living,” a guide to how one should
practice the conduct of oneself (1988). For Zhou Hong good parenting requires the
cultivation of optimism through concrete, daily exercises. He claims, “I have a habit of
facing myself every morning, reminding myself to live each day with an appreciative
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(zhenxi) state of mind, to welcome each day with gratitude, to enjoy each day…”
(2003:174). Here the object of technical management is not the product but one’s own
existence, rendered an object of inspection, accounting and administration.
78
Making this
point in his talks, parents are often surprised. “Many parents,” Zhou reports, “thought
they would learn some tricks for dealing with their kid. After the talk, they suddenly
realize, it was really about how to deal with oneself (yuanlai shi duifu ziji de)”
(2003:165).
It may seem odd to invoke Foucault here, whose work on Greco-Roman texts led
him to develop the concept “technologies of the self” – commonly understood to refer to
a purely subjective undertaking.
79
But Foucault argues that managing oneself does not in
any way mean a withdrawal into oneself but is rather, conducted in relation to others. He
writes, “What one is, and what one needs to devote one’s attention to as to an ultimate
purpose, is the expression of a principle that is singular in its manifestation within each
person, but universal by the form it assumes in everyone, and collective by the
community bond it establishes between individuals”(1988:93). For the Stoics, the
principle is logos or human reason.
80
For Zhou Hong the principle is appreciation, which
manifests itself as a good attitude toward life in the parent and as the “good-child-
feeling” (hao haizi de ganjue) in the child. This principle not only establishes a bond

78
Cf. Foucault, The Care of the Self, 61-3.

79
By commonly here, I am referring to my peers in anthropology.

80
At the same time, Confucian philosophy – commonly understood as underpinning the sociocentric nature
of human relationships in Chinese society, has it own strong tradition of self-cultivation. In this context, the
principle expressed in self-cultivation is not logos but rather li, or, ordering principle (Tu 1979; H. Wang
2007).

145
between parent and child, it also promises to send a child’s heart-spirit (xinling) into
flight, a metaphor for the release of a child’s “potential.” Parenting grounded in
appreciation, shangshi jiaoyu, “allows for the extension of a child’s heart-spirit (shuzhan
xinling), and develops potential to the greatest extent”(2003:113).
This principle of appreciation is Zhou’s own novel creation. Yet, it also evokes
older traditions of self-cultivation in Confucian thought when it suggests the “mutual
nourishment” of one’s attitude toward life and one’s attitude toward a child.
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This is
where Zhou deviates from the practices that Foucault describes. As Wei-ming Tu puts it,
“Self-cultivation is a precondition for harmonizing human relations; if human relations
are superficially harmonized without the necessary ingredients of self-cultivation, it is
practically unworkable and teleologically misdirected” (1985:55-56). Self-cultivation in
Confucian thought casts the world in a series of concentric circles with the self in the
center. The scheme can be traced to the passage in Great Learning that starts with “In
ancient times, those who wished to manifest their bright virtue in the world first brought
order to their states,” and ends with, “Once your self is cultivated, your family will be
regulated. Once your family is regulated, your state will be ordered. Once your state is
ordered, the whole world will be at peace”(quoted in Wan 2004:135). In this scheme,
with neither start nor end, it is only through the other that self-realization is achieved, and
it is only through self-cultivation that relationships are regulated.
Many China anthropologists have pointed to the way in which post-Mao forms of
governmentality or biopolitics invoke much older traditions of self-cultivation (Farquhar

81
I borrow the phrase “mutual nourishment” from Wei-ming Tu 1985.
146
and Zhang 2005; Kipnis 2006, 2007; M. Yang 2004; also see my introduction). Zhou is
no exception in his emphasis on the principle of appreciation. His account is ultimately a
strategy for how to liberate economically viable human potential, which also happens to
be a dominant theme in the state discourse on Education for Quality. In situating his style
in opposition to what ‘most Chinese parents do,’ in raising an academically successful
daughter who had been destined for a life in the margins, Zhou Hong effectively suggests
that potential exists in all children but remains hidden from view. If he can raise an
academically successful child, why do parents of ordinary children have so much
trouble? Zhou Hong reasons that because most parents use the carrot and stick
judiciously (enwei bingyong), treat their children like private property (siyou caichan),
become greedy and “pull at sprouts to make them grow” (bamiao zhuzhang), children are
disheartened and their potential to flourish suppressed. These attitudes are deeply rooted
for Zhou: “From ancient times until now, China’s hierarchically determined ethical
relationships has led to the stifling of humanity (renxing de yayi)”(2004:160). Certainly
this perspective – a humanism that takes freedom to be a natural state – is in no way
unique. It has also been expressed in critiques of Maoism, thought to have “deferred
China’s ability to reach modernity by impeding Chinese people’s expression of their
human natures”(Rofel 2007:36).
Indeed Zhou Hong is ultimately concerned with the fate of the nation, as many
other education reformers are. The kind of parenting that suppresses potential and ignores
the subjectivity of children cannot produce a self-motivated subject. The way in which
Zhou’s advice links human development to national development is most clear when he
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says, “the key is to let children understand the meaning of competition, [let] the desire to
compete come from their inner heart-minds, cultivate a good state of mind and a healthy
personality. [We] must help children start their ‘engines,’ not push them to
move”(2003:71). The interesting thing here is that the production of the neoliberal
subject seems to depend less on building value into a child by investing in educational
commodities than on a parent’s ability to labor upon oneself, so as to not threaten or
obstruct a child’s human potential. By becoming the kind of parent that understands a
child’s subjective needs, one can ensure that latent resources in a child may be better
cultivated, enabled and made accessible upon maturity.
If, as Yan Hairong and Ann Anagnost argue, the human subject has become a new
“frontier” of “capital accumulation” in the market economy (Yan 2003; Anagnost 2004),
then potential is the resource to be found there. Out of immediate reach, yet accessible
and developable with intersubjective work, anyone involved in human development must
assume new responsibilities, whether parent or teacher or company manager. Although I
have only focused on advice for parents, I do not mean to suggest that there is a new
division of labor. Teachers too ought to work upon themselves in order to see and relate
to their students in new ways. The parenting advice is only one point in the articulation of
a much broader cultural logic,
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one that deploys existing cultural resources to market
capitalist ends. The popularity of Zhou Hong’s ideas is evidence of this, as appreciation is
also applicable in conjugal and work relationships. If “a leader (lingdao) fully trusts,
respects and understands a subordinate, sincerely encourages, tolerates and reminds, then

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Cf. Cruikshank 1999, pp. 101-2.
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it is inevitable that the subordinate will be happy, glowing, and energetic”(2004:160). It
by governing through happiness that a worker or child’s potential may be maximized.
Conclusion
The “good student kills mother” case has provided an important moral arena in
which truths about how to raise and educate children correctly are produced and
naturalized. Zhou Hong, too, was shocked by the case and regrets, “if only Xu Li’s mom
knew a little about shangshi jiaoyu, had mastered the art of communication, the tragedy
could’ve been avoided entirely”(2004:162). Mother Xu’s style symbolizes what many
experts see as “feudal” parenting, which is based in hierarchy and asymmetrical
structures of relating. This kind of parenting fails to attend to the inner subjectivity of
children, it is presumed, and overlooks the importance of psychological levers in shaping
and guiding the process of learning.
Chinese popular advice works to adjust the bonds of love in a way that conforms
parenting style to the political need for citizens who can contribute to building national
strength in the neoliberal era. The advice models parenting that promotes subjectivity in
children in the form of psychological health and, in Zhou Hong’s case, the “good-child-
feeling.” It aims to liberate “human potential,” seen as suppressed or impeded by
“unnatural” (read social) constraints such as hierarchically determined ethical
relationships and a competitive exam system. Stories a littered throughout the advice
literature; they do the cultural work of naturalizing moral truths.
When I say naturalized, I am in no way suggesting that such stories serve to
mystify or obfuscate. They do not play an ideological function that masks Real relations
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of production. Nor does it necessarily mask the shift of responsibilities from state to
individuals. Rather, such stories help to render the ideals of suzhi jiaoyu self-evident and
common-sense because they are able to produce a strong response and can effect changes
in perception in ways simple injunctions could not. Rather than simply stating what “the
good” is, stories have a way of rendering a particular good incontestable (Mattingly
1998b). Moreover, they have a way of fostering commitments that transform social goods
into personal goods. The social power of narrative is something May Fourth intellectuals
and Mao Zedong were well aware of in their struggle for social reform and revolution.
Both Intimate Sister and Zhou Hong employ narrative practices that must be
understood in light of this larger history in their use of socialist realism (Xu Li traverses
an antithesis between spontaneity and socialist propriety), “speaking bitterness”
narratives (the beginning of Zhou Hong’s story is filled with suffering and bodily
excretions), and the negative and positive model. But their stories also diverge from these
other cultural forms in constructing categories such as “psychological health” and
“human potential.” Intimate Sister and Zhou Hong are making a moral argument for how
children ought to be treated – as active, thinking, feeling subjects whose potential can
only be actualized by parents who are able to actively, consciously, and feelingly reflect
upon themselves. It is through the intensification of both the child’s and the parent’s
subjectivity that the aims of Education for Quality are to be achieved, and a well-told
story contributes to that end.
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Chapter 4: “The heart says one thing but the hand does another”
One rainy Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2006, I spent some time with my friend
Wang Yan at her friend Hu Qiuli’s apartment. It was a beehive of activity that day. Hu
Qiuli had converted her balcony into a classroom furnished with child-sized school
furniture where she leads activities for primary school children on the weekends. There
was a group in the morning, and another one after lunch. By the afternoon, some of the
children from the morning group were still there – girls played in Hu Qiuli’s daughter’s
room and boys played video games in the living room. There were a couple of parents
waiting for kids in the afternoon group – one in the kitchen passing the time on a laptop,
and another knitting in the living room. Wang Yan showed up with her 10 year-old
daughter Wu Linlin after she heard I was there. When they arrived, Wu Linlin
immediately joined the boys, while Wang Yan and I chatted.
We chatted about her relationship with her daughter. The two have been arguing a
lot lately, to the point where Wu Linlin will say “ni hai gan…!” – which is close to a
taunt, best translated as “don’t you dare or else.” She tells me that Wu Linlin also likes to
criticize her parenting, and tells her it’s too “simplistic”(danyi), that she ought to get
more creative. I shared that teenagers I have spoken to always criticize my project as
being misguided, how they say, “I think you have it backward. It’s children who are
raising parents, not parents who are raising children.” (My explanation that I focus on
smaller children usually gets me off the hook.) Wang Yan responded by saying that many
parents of teenagers these days try to restrain themselves as much as possible. Because,
‘Kids these days are especially rebellious (nifan).’
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Shortly thereafter, the dynamic she had been describing played out right before
my eyes.
Wu Linlin and Hu Qiuli’s daughter “Phoebe,” also 10 years-old, decided to set up
a game of Chinese checkers in the kitchen. Wang Yan encouraged me to play, and the
three of us were joined by an adorable little second-grader. Wang Yan, still wearing her
long black raincoat, stood against a kitchen counter not more than a couple feet away
from us, “reading” a newspaper. At first, we kept forgetting who was supposed to go
next, and Wang Yan was right there to remind us. We eventually got the sequence of
turns down, but I had to remind Wu Linlin to go every time her turn came up. Sitting
adjacent to the young mother on the laptop, Wu Linlin was completely fascinated with
the computer game going on behind her. Wang Yang echoed my reminders. Once, she
really lost her temper and scolded her daughter in Kunming dialect for always needed
someone to tell her it was her turn. ‘How are you ever going to get anything done when
you are always dividing your mind (fenxin)?!’
Wang Yan barraged her daughter with other reminders, criticisms, and
instructions during our game. Every time, Wu Linlin would casually, and confidently say,
‘I know!’
In the end, Wu Linlin won the checkers game. Turned out, she has no problem
dividing her mind between two things. She proudly announced her triumph to Wang Yan,
who had retreated to the living room by then, boasting that she simply used something
her dad taught her. Needless to say, Wang Yan was happy to hear how the game turned
out.
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I sat back down in the living room with Wang Yan after the game. Wu Linlin and
Phoebe crowded around the computer game the boys were still playing. Wang Yan firmly
instructed her daughter to come over and sit with me. Wu Linlin ignored her. Wang Yan
muttered something under her breath and then raised her voice and said, ‘I didn’t bring
you over here to play!! Phoebe’s already had the chance to interact (jiaoliu) with Teacher
Kuan. Hurry up!’
Wu Linlin made her way over as she said, “you dare to govern/control me (ni gan
guan)!?’
Wu Linlin seemed a little miffed with her mother. And the two of us engaged in
conversation rather obligatorily. When we ran out of things to talk about, Wu Linlin went
into the kitchen to watch another video game.
In what felt to me like a Jekyll and Hyde moment, Wang Yan instantly switched
modes, turned to me and said with the toothy grin I had come to love about her, ‘I’m too
anxious (jinzhang) aren’t I?’
Of all the mothers I knew, Wang Yan struck me as a contradictory parent the
most. I say contradictory not in an evaluative sense here. “Contradictory,” in the
ethnographic context at hand, can be identified as what Unni Wikan has called an
“experiential statement,” which refers to a concept or “concepts people actually employ
when coping with their many concerns”(1991:299). Contradictory, or maodun in
Chinese, is a term Wang Yan uses to describe her experience of being a parent, which, in
my analysis, points to how the contradiction between the ideals of the Education for
Quality movement and the reality of an exam-oriented school system is lived out in
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everyday life. When I nudged her to talk about where the “anxiousness” comes from,
Wang Yan explained that she just wants her daughter to seize opportunity (zhuajin jihui)
when it is there. This is contradictory because I have also heard her express self-blame on
many occasions. Wang Yan feels that her shortcomings as a parent are lack of patience
and a hot temper. These are maternal emotions that have been targeted as a site for
reform in the popular advice literature.
In the domain of childrearing, emotional experience, specifically, becomes a
critical terrain on which the personal and the political intersect. The state agenda for
strengthening the nation by raising population “quality” is mediated through popular
advice that conforms the means by which parents pursue their ambitions to liberalized
norms for parenting. As I demonstrated in the last chapter, Chinese parents are depicted
in reform discourses as using methods that stifle potential, obstructing the development
of the human resources needed for China’s market economy. Parents, especially mothers,
are to adjust the bonds of love by doing “emotion work”(Hochschild 1983; Wikan 1990),
a practice that entails controlling and managing “inappropriate” emotions such as anger,
and, as Jiang Zemin is quoted as saying in the last chapter, “urgent wishes”(poqie
yuanwang).
In this chapter, I will discuss emotion-work as a normative practice, one that
follows “feeling rules” (Hochschild 1983) that help to preserve or promote a particular
social order. The feeling-rules that parents, especially mothers, are subjected to in urban
China are partly discursive effect, produced by both state policies and popular advice. I
will argue that the very emotions that are deemed harmful have a certain intelligence,
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which may sound odd given common sense binaries between the emotions and reason –
found in China and in the West. They index moral commitments and contradictions in the
social fabric the advice literature neglects. My ethnographic research finds urban Chinese
mothers feeling ambivalent about what good parenting constitutes. They have difficulty
controlling “inappropriate” emotions, which points not to some deficiency on their part.
Rather, ambivalent emotional experience is synecdochically related to a broader
historical situation of having to balance the norm for respecting psychological health as
well as the desire to raise a competitive student who will survive difficult odds.
“Good mother, don’t worry, take it easy!”
In the last chapter, I discussed how Zhou Hong’s account offers a positive model
for parenting. His story is full of examples describing how he took a positive attitude
toward his daughter, encouraging her at every turn. He argues that there is no such thing
as a bad child – only bad parenting methods, and claims to have the daily exercise of
reminding himself to enjoy each day.
Before I turn to the ethnographic material, I will discuss another prominent theme
in the advice literature by examining a book titled: Decoding the Password to Your
Child’s Heart-Spirit (Jiang 2006). Structured and written for popular appeal, the author,
Jiang Xuelan, gives advice by telling fictional anecdotes that span a short two to three
pages, and follows each with a commentary. Though much of the popular advice is
addressed to parents in general, this book addresses mothers in particular. Each lesson
promises to “unlock a secret” to a puzzling aspect of children’s behavior. Many make an
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argument for the importance of emotional restraint, and how a parent’s emotional
behavior can have consequences for a child’s development.
The following anecdote falls under question number twelve in the third part:
Why does the kid cut holes into his blanket cover? It serves to reflect how emotional
restraint is important to the broader Education for Quality movement.
It’s time that the wool blanket on Bao Bao’s bed is removed for a
washing.
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Maybe time to switch the thick cotton blanket out for a thinner one
too. All the winter clothes in the closet should be washed clean, and stored away.
The washing machine spins from the early morning well into the
afternoon. Mom hasn’t stopped moving either, the blanket in her hand with little
purple flowers all over it has already become soft with age.
Suddenly, mom is stunned. She discovers little holes randomly cut all over
it, the work of little scissors.
Mom thinks, who else but naughty Bao Bao would do something like this?
Anger fills her, and she rushes into Bao Bao’s room shouting. At this time, Bao
Bao sits cross-legged on the floor, calmly assembling a “Super Police Station”
toy.
“Bao Bao!” she shouts.
“What?” Bao Bao doesn’t even look up, his casual attitude provokes his
mom to the point of anger-fuming-from-the-seven-orifices-in-her-head (qiqiao
shengyan).
“How did your blanket cover grow so many eyes?” Mom continues to ask.
But, because her eyes are bulging like light bulbs, Bao Bao goes right back to
what he’s doing after he shoots her a look.
Refusing to let Bao Bao off the hook, mom asks, “What exactly did you
think you were doing?” She feels like if she doesn’t punish him a little this time,
he might bring the building down next time.
Bao Bao could detect the rage in his mom’s voice, and says timidly: “I
wanted to see how sharp my craft scissors were.”
“Then why are there so many holes all of a sudden?”
“I wanted to see if there were any sleepy bugs inside.”
“What?” Mom couldn’t believe her ears, her son’s idea was just too novel
(qimiao).
She couldn’t stop laughing.

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Bao Bao is a common pet name for children.
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The mother’s emotions are mentioned three times in this story: anger fumes from
the seven orifices in her head, her eyes bulge like light bulbs, and her rage, is detected by
her son. Although the story is too quick to depict any “emotion work,” it does show a
transformation of anger into laughter. In doing so, this short story offers an exemplary
model for emotional restraint, and – with the help of a commentary that follows –
persuades mothers to see that what traditionally gets construed as naughty behavior
(tiaopi) is actually the seed of scientific discovery. The author points out in the
commentary, “In this story, according to customary ways of thinking, Bao Bao is a
naughty destructor, he probably would’ve been scolded, maybe even slapped on the face
with a belt” (Jiang 2006:145). Such punishment would be justified as preemptive action,
as Bao Bao may do something more serious the next time around. But Jiang wants her
readers to understand that Bao Bao was simply acting out an innocent curiosity,
therefore, the mother’s anger is not an appropriate response to his behavior. Jiang
contends, ‘What we pay with is a blanket cover and a shirt, but what we protect is a
creator’s heart-spirit (chuangzaozhe de xinling)’ (2004:145).
This statement is a near identical repeat of an argument Huang Quanyu makes in
his commercial bestseller Family Education in America (2001), discussed in my
introduction. Parents are willing to send their child to many extra-curricular classes, yet
they are unable to tolerate behavior like taking apart an alarm clock. He writes, “It’s
nothing but an alarm-clock, how much can it be worth? How much money do you have to
spend to buy a child’s creativity? A child’s creativity is priceless”(2001:93). While
Huang encourages parents to take a more tolerant attitude toward what he calls “rule-
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breaking”(dapo changgui) behavior, Jiang argues for the importance of emotional
restraint at the very moment one begins to feel anger in the context of everyday life.
This kind of advice must be understood in light of a question puzzling Chinese
educators today: why has Chinese education failed to cultivate globally recognized
scientists? Why is it that Chinese high school students win championships in
International Olympic Knowledge and Math competitions every year, yet no domestically
educated Chinese has ever won the Nobel Prize? In answering these questions, reform
advocates cast their blame everywhere, from schools to parents to Chinese culture. They
frequently employ horror stories and research statistics indexing “poor psychological
health” to argue that Chinese parents are doing something wrong. Not that parents do not
love their child, the experts say, they don’t know how to love their child the “correct”
way (e.g. Zhou 2000:130). They are too “nagging” (laodao), “pull at sprouts to help them
grow” (bamiao zhuzhang), “hate that iron does not become steel” (hen tie bu cheng
gang), “meddle in the affairs of others” (yuezu daipao), “raise filial sons under the club”
(gunbang dixia chu xiaozi), “make mountains out of molehills” (xiaoti dazuo), and treat
their children like “bonsai trees,” “fine porcelain,” pieces of “private property,” and
govern so autocratically that personality, self-initiative, and creative potential is too
easily wiped out. These are all qualities essential to scientific and entrepreneurial success.
Severity and controlling behavior is often deemed as being “feudal.”
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Even Mencius’s

84
The term “feudal” has been used loosely throughout modern China to condemn anything old and
undesirable, and serves as a binary opposite to that which gets identified as “scientific” (Friedman
2004:290).
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mother has not escaped the blame. In a rather extreme reading of the famous story
“Mencius’s Mother Moves Three Times” (Mengmu Sanqian), one education critic writes:
For the sake of her son’s future, Mencius’s mom moved three times. Of course
she didn’t consider whether or not Mencius wanted to leave his little companions,
nor did she bother to ask his opinion, yet Mencius became China’s greatest
philosopher. In the thousands of years of history of the Chinese civilization,
civilization was founded upon running-things-without-the-consultation-of-others
(baoban tidai). [Fu 2005:11]

For this author, authoritarianism is deeply embedded in Chinese civilization and plays a
role in an education system that “lacks in humanity” (haowu renxing).
85

Reform advocates are guided by a naturalized, neoliberal model of the human
being – a wish-having, choice-making actor who bears the potential to flourish given the
freedom to do so. They reject the past to clear the ground for their model, and condemn
ordinary parents at the same time, metonymically associated with a rejected past. This
move has historical parallels with the writing of New Culture intellectuals from the
Republican era, who believed that national progress would depend on a radical rupture

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While Fu Kejun employs “Mencius’s Mother Moves Three Times” to launch a cultural critique, the story
has inspired admiration throughout most of Chinese history, and in most contemporary contexts.

The story
first appeared in Former Han thinker Liu Xiang’s Traditions of Exemplary Women to illustrate his idea of
“gradual transformation”(jianhua), the process by which children develop. According to Kinney, “Liu
Xiang praised the mother for her understanding of how children are gradually imbued with the values and
behaviors of those around them”(2004:23). The story illustrated the importance of environment in shaping
the development of a child, as when the family lived by a cemetery, Mencius learned to wail and bury
things. When Mencius’s mother decided to move into town, Mencius learned to buy and sell things.
Finally, when Mencius’s mother moved them near a school, he learned proper manners and thirsted for
knowledge.
Fu Kejun identifies himself as a freelance writer. But his critique of the education system got a lot
of attention, according to a friend of mine. I have seen Fu’s book The pain in the heart of Chinese parents
serialized on the web-site: http://life.cersp.com, and it has been reprinted three times since 2005, with
21,000 copies in circulation (Wanyan, the distribution company, personal communication). According to
internet rumor, the publishing house in Yunnan that had originally solicited the book decided it was too
sensitive. Other publishing houses across the country saw the book as very important, and an accurate
discussion of the education problem. But they too thought some of the content was too sensitive. A
publishing house based in Shenzhen eventually published the book, but only after highly sensitive portions
were deleted. I will quote from this book a few more times in this dissertation.
159
with past, strategically imagined. In defining a new conception of childhood in a seminal
1920 essay, Zhou Zuoren wrote,
People in the past for the most part were completely unable to understand
children. If they didn’t see them as adults in miniature, and try to force as many of
the ‘classics of the sages and annals of the worthies’ down their throats as
possible, then they saw them as incomplete little people… It’s only now that we
have come to realize that biologically and psychologically, although they differ
from adults to a certain extent, they are still complete individuals, possessed of
their own inner and outer lives. [quoted in Jones 2002:710]

Women’s journals from the 1920s “harangued” its readers about how Chinese people
were not bringing up their children correctly (Schneider 2008:2). Writers connected the
reform of “old customs” to bringing about a new kind of citizen (ibid). Though the
putative problems of Chinese parents implicated both fathers and mothers, mothers were
especially cautioned against spoiling their children, and encouraged to limit their love so
as to raise a hardworking citizen (Schneider 2008:10). At the turn of the 21
st
century,
mothers are especially encouraged to control their anxiousness and anger in the face of
naughty behavior so as to protect a child’s curiosity and creativity.
The gendering of this kind of advice is rooted in a long-standing idea that women
are more sensitive and emotional, which in the context of post-Mao China is expressed in
what Lisa Rofel calls “the allegory of postsocialist modernity” (1999:217-256; 2007:65-
83). The argument is that contrary to doctrinal claims, the Maoist regime did not liberate
women, but rather, repressed natural differences in promoting gender equality and
androgyny. According to this allegory, achieving modernity requires recovering,
embracing, and expressing one’s own gender identity (Rofel 2007:65-83). A new interest
and reflection on femininity was exhibited in arenas such as feminist Li Xiaojiang’s
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women’s museum (ibid), and at the Sixth National Women’s Congress in its promotion
of “the principles of women’s four selfs [sic]” (Croll 1995:150-153). Examining both
ethnographic and textual data, Elisabeth Croll found that women are said to have a rich,
logic-transcending perception, the ability to appreciate hidden details, and a capacity to
care and feel that set them apart from men (1995:153-155).
The “unique” access women have to the sphere of emotions genders childrearing
responsibilities, which also makes mothers vulnerable to blame. Zhou Ting – the
mothering teacher I opened this dissertation with, the one who warns that some forms of
mother-love can actually be mother-harm – believes that women have traits that uniquely
qualify them for promoting subjectivity in children. In the informational brochure for her
mothering class, Zhou maintains that women are of the emotions (qinggan de),
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while
men are of reason (lixing de). Consequently, mothers are in a unique position to fill in the
gaping hole created by China’s overemphasis on schooling and test-taking. She claims in
the brochure: “From the beginning, intelligence education cannot protect the heart-spirit
(xinling), it cannot nourish the sensory-emotions (qinggan). Where mothers surpass all
other kinds of educators is in the education of the heart-spirit.”
Inability to attend to the inner life of a child is attributed to both fathers and
mothers; this putative problem is cultural. But being “too emotional” is a problem
mothers supposedly have in particular. This assumption is expressed in Decoding the
Password with its gendered address and its emphasis on emotional control. Commentary

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It is important to note that the term Zhou Ting uses is qinggan and not qingxu. She explained to me that
whereas qingxu refers to responses to external stimuli in everyday situations, qinggan is a type of emotion
or feeling that has already been sorted by reason; it is a form of cultivated emotion. When I write about her
in the last chapter, I will use the translation sensory-emotion because in her theory qinggan is
fundamentally rooted in embodied sensory experience.
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after commentary, the author speaks to her reader in a soothing tone: “Good mother,
don’t worry, take it easy!” Losing one’s temper, she argues throughout, obstructs
channels of communication between parent and child, which can ultimately lead to
problematic behavior. Good parenting requires the cultivation of tolerance, and the lesson
the reader is supposed to take from “Why does the kid cut holes into his blanket cover?”
is the value of endurance/holding back (ren).
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How, then, do mothers manage the responsibility for monitoring their emotions
and behavior? The following case studies will illustrate.

Case 1: The heart says one thing but the hand does another
I met Wang Yan in a local, privately-run mothering class that was not cheap to
enroll in. She works in an administrative office and her husband is a civil servant, yet

87
When we look at the history of advice for parents in Western countries, we also find parallels in the
gendering of parental blame. Mothers were commonly seen as a threat, even blamed as a source of
pathology in children in their “natural” tendency to “over-mother” or show too much affection (Gleason
1999:64-5, 78). This was particularly the case when John B. Watson’s behaviorism dominated popular
advice in the 1920 and 1930s (Grant 1998; Weiss 1985). His Psychological Care of Infant and Child had a
chapter on “The Danger of Too Much Mother Love,” where Watson “criticized mothers’ propensity to kiss
and hug their children, recommending instead that parents communicate their affection through a sturdy
handshake”(Grant 1998:45). Watson felt that mother love was an obstacle to scientific childrearing, and
behavior was something a parent could “program” – like a technician (Grant 1998:42). Even the permissive
Dr. Spock, who famously told mothers “you know more than you think you do,” saw mother love as a
potential threat. A mother’s ability to monitor her own behavior, he felt, bore directly on a child’s ability to
“self-realize” (Weiss 1985:291-3).
In the U.S., emotional aspects of maternal work go back to at least the early 19
th
century. Lydia
Child’s The Mother’s Book told mothers to govern their feelings and keep their hearts pure (Sunley
1955:151). Maternal associations disseminated literature that encouraged mothers to be calm and to
maintain bonds of affection with their children; Calvinist prescriptions for “breaking the will” of the child
were being questioned at this time. At meetings, impatience was a frequent topic of discussion, and
“[w]omen were learning that their emotional behavior could have significant effects on the spiritual welfare
of their families”(Grant 1998:29).
In Japan, the “absent father” and “the idle housewife” are held as responsible for problems in the
Japanese family, including childhood syndromes such as “school-refusal” (Lock 1993). Meanwhile, the
fervor of the “education mama”(kyoiku mama) could, the medical experts feel, easily turn into
“childrearing neurosis” (Lock 1993:110; White 2002:108).
Clearly all of these parallels point to a common history of how childhood serves as a strategic site
for pursuing modernity.
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they spent lavishly on their daughter’s education, who was eight years old when we first
met. Wang Yan impressed me with her dedication, and is, in many ways, the typical
urban Chinese mother who sends her daughter off to all sorts of classes over the
weekend: dance, art, English, Olympic math, and ping pong. She is the mother I describe
in the opening of this chapter.
I knew, back in 2004, that she reads many popular advice books. So I asked her if
there was an author or book that influenced her most. Her response frustrated me at first.
Like many parents, she gave me the short answer of ‘well every kid is different.’ But I
pushed for an answer anyway, and she told me about Zhou Hong, the advocate of
“appreciation education.” Wang Yan explained that after reading Zhou Hong she stopped
measuring her daughter according to exam scores, and claims that this has allowed her
daughter to approach test-taking without pressure. However, she pointed out that how
much you can apply something like “appreciation education” depends on your
“personality.” I ask her to explain.
Wang Yan: Because after taking care of (guan) her for a while, I don’t have such
good patience. I tell you Teacher Kuan. Sometimes I even feel, aiya (clicks her
tongue), if only my patience was better, this kid could be even more excellent
(youxiu), even better. But I don’t have patience. Ooooh, if she doesn’t listen,
[She raises a hand up as if about to slap somebody.]

Teresa Kuan: [giggles] I really like your description.

WY: That’s how it is. My heart says, “Don’t hit. It’s not good to hit.” That hand-,

TK: Have patience. Have patience.

WY: Ah, have patience. But that hand still wants to go across. And then I start
roaring (hou).

TK: It’s like your hand is not your hand!
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WY: Ah, it’s like my hand is not my hand. My heart says, “Don’t hit, don’t hit.”
But my hand still wants to go across. Aiya, sometimes I don’t even know if,
(clicks her tongue) what the matter is exactly. Sometimes, what I’m thinking in
my heart is not the same with what I end up doing. […] What’s in my heart-, it’s
not like, don’t some people have regrets after the fact? I’m not that kind of
person. I’m the kind of person that knows what I’m supposed to be doing at that
moment. […] Humans are already emotional (qingxu hua) to begin with. I also
think I, I absolutely acknowledge this-, this is my weakness. I’m very emotional I
tell you. Aiya, when I’m really patient, I even admire myself. If my patience isn’t
good, ai, two wrong words, I-, I -, I-, I can’t restrain myself (ren bu zhu).

In her circle of friends, Wang Yan is a person to envy. Her daughter Wu Linlin is
noticeably bright. Unlike many urban Chinese children, she truly enjoys her extra-
curricular classes. She isn’t bending from the heavy duty to keep learning more. She not
only goes with eagerness, but excels. Wu Linlin also loves to read, a quality many of
Wang Yan’s friends understand as having to do with the fact that Wang Yan carried out
“early education” (qimeng jiaoyu) when Wu Linlin was just a toddler. Wang Yan taught
her daughter how to read by turning character acquisition into a game, scattering
flashcards face-down on the floor and challenging Wu Linlin with finding certain words.
Given the fact that Wang Yan has managed to cultivate a bright girl with a thirst for
learning, I was puzzled by something she said to her daughter in front of me once.
Coming back from dinner one night, Wang Yan made an example out of me, and
very anxiously so. ‘See Teacher Kuan, see how happy she is? How she does things
happily? You should learn from Teacher Kuan and happily learn (xuexi)!’ This surprised
me at the time, because I had been under the impression that everything came so naturally
to her and her daughter. A person to envy, a daughter who excels. Why did she have to
remind her daughter to take a happy attitude? I asked her about this later and she
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explained that Wu Linlin does not take criticism well, and maybe her own hopes are too
high.
WY: She doesn’t know how to manage her time. She-, at home we’ve installed
one of those swings, so she loves to loaf around on that. “You can loaf on that
when you’re done with your homework,” so I say, “Wu Linlin, you should go and
play some piano now. You should go and,” do this or that. So this must irritate
her. You’re telling her so it must irritate her. Then she ignores you. So then you
have to roar (hou) at her. So there’s this problem. And I don’t know how I should
solve this problem.
I want her to cultivate the kind of habit where she, she goes and plays
piano on her own, that would be good. For her to manage her time on her own. “I
should do this, this and this.” This is what I hope. But maybe this hope is really,
sometimes adults we think, we can’t even do this ourselves, how can children do
it? It’s really contradictory, parents are really contradictory (maodun).

A sense of contradiction is something many parents expressed to me. For Wang
Yan, who knows in her heart what she’s “supposed” to do, the contradiction is
experienced at the level of the body. While her heart tells her one thing, her hand does
another. Though she would like to exercise more patience, and solve the problem of
having to “roar” at her daughter, Wang Yan also feels that her “personality” does not
allow for it. She blames herself for not having enough patience, and wonders if her
daughter Wu Linlin might be even more excellent were she able to restrain her emotions.
She wishes she could be more like her friend Hu Qiuli, who seems to always have
patience and whose daughter Phoebe is especially obedient. Hu Qiuli is so patient she has
even converted her apartment balcony into a classroom and “takes care of children” on
the weekends.
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I never got to talk to Hu Qiuli about what she is doing. When I first met her in 2004, she had just gotten
laid off from her job as an office administrator. Her interest in children’s education began to develop that
year working as an assistant to a local expert I knew in Kunming. She eventually had a falling out with that
teacher. But by 2006, she began to employ she had learned working as an assistant in the weekend classes
she held in her own home, which she described to me on the phone as “taking care of kids”(dai haizi).
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Even though Wang Yan has been saying for years that she has a temper problem,
it seems clear that she acts just as anxiously as ever. The conversation I quote above took
place two years before the Chinese checkers game I describe at the beginning of this
chapter. On a different occasion, Wang Yan explained to me that she feels compelled to
say something as soon as she sees problematic behavior. She feels like it is her duty, and
does not want anyone to ever say that she did not teach her daughter anything.
Case 2: It’s clearly a situation you should be angry about
Wen Hui is good friends with Wang Yan. Their two children are the same age,
attend the same primary school and extra-curricular English class. When I first met her,
she often jokingly spoke of her son Li Shengchun as being too “obedient,” and too
thoughtful – as if it were something to complain about. She told me this story once about
her son picking up a purse she absent-mindedly left behind. She wondered if a boy should
be so attentive so she said to him, ‘It’s a piece of junk anyway just leave it there!’ When
Li Shengchun purchased a map of the United States on a class field trip, and pinned both
the map and the envelope it came in on the wall at home, he told his mother that maybe
the map could help him understand why the United States was so economically
developed. Surprised that Li Shengchun could think such a thing she wondered to Wang
Yan, ‘Shouldn’t children just be happy?’
But when Li Shengchun entered the third grade, the nature of her concerns
changed. Li Shengchun was having tremendous difficulty in his Chinese class, as this is

Wang Yan and Hu Qiuli do a lot of co-parenting. In fact, Hu Qiuli has a bunk bed in her living
room that Wu Linlin sleeps on when her mother is too busy with work to pick her up from school. Hu Qiuli
lives in a more convenient part of the city whereas Wang Yan lives much farther north, in one of
Kunming’s newly developed areas.
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the grade teachers stop using pinyin, or Romanization to teach reading. Lin Shengchun
was starting to act up. A shy, introverted, and thoughtful boy suddenly began to rebel, act
wildly, and say hurtful things to his mother. (I noticed his change in behavior too, when
he practically turned my apartment upside down one weekend during our “English class,”
referring to himself as “Sun Wufeng” as he blew chalk dust everywhere in a martial
stance, pulling things out of my closest, typing wildly on my computer…) So one night
Wen Hui consulted the teacher of the mothering class where I met Wang Yan about this
problem. It was not until then that she took interest in this teacher; she was not an
“enrolled member” herself.
Curious to know whether or not she remembered this meeting, I asked her on my
follow-up research trip two years later if anyone in particular influenced her parenting
method. Turned out, she also mentioned Zhou Hong right away. Not as a direct answer to
my question but rather as an example of why advice is hard to apply. She relayed an
example Zhou Hong gave at a public lecture in Kunming in great detail – how he
commended his daughter for getting one out of ten math problems right – and the lesson
the audience was supposed to learn.
Wen Hui: [Afterwards, I went home and felt] like, “Aiyo, no good. I must, I
thought a little. Should I go and be like this with my kid?” And then I felt like
aiya, why did I used to, uhhhh, I would scold, sometimes I would even lose my
temper (fahuo), even spanked (da) him a couple times. This kind of thing has
happened. And then I would feel, “Aiyo why would I be like this?” Mai, and then
you would start to see, start to think, just use [Zhou Hong’s] method. [He calls it]
appreciate so appreciate! And then, mai. But it didn’t work. Two days of it and he
just stopped listening. (I chuckle.) Aiya, no good.

TK: What do you mean? Didn’t listen to appreciation? Or didn’t listen to any
[training/teaching (jiaoxun)?

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WH: [He would just say to you, if you said, “Aiya Li Shengchun! Li Shengchun
you did such a good job! Aiya!” This and that. “Ai, mom, you’re full of it.”

I asked Wen Hui if she thought that maybe her son didn’t find her praise to be
sincere. She told me that maybe it was because he was already too old for this kind of
praise, even though Zhou Hong’s daughter at the time of his story and Wen Hui’s son at
the time she heard the lecture were just about the same age.
WH: Maybe it’s because the kid is already big. I-, maybe it’s because he’s big
now. So you know, I think he’d think, “Aiya.” He has his own opinions!

TK: Whether you say black or white doesn’t really matter.

WH: Anh! He has his own opin-, and he really understands adult speech. He really
understands. What you mean when you say something. (Clicks her tongue)
Actually he can hear it all himself. So sometimes saying [praising words] out loud
aiya, I even feel like aiya, how did I, [why would I] say something like that? It’s
clearly a situation you should be angry about yet you change to not-angry?!

Though Wen Hui wondered earlier in this interview if she might spoil her son too
much, by bending her own rules here and there, in what follows, she complains that she
must monitor everything, somewhat contradicting earlier statements about how
independent he is.
WH: The most headache [inducing thing] is, for example in the eyes of other
people, they feel, aiya, your kid is pretty excellent. But we personally feel like,
the him that we see, mai, are only things that make you mad. Really! Aiyo. He will
make you angry every day. Every day. Aiya. He won’t you know, take things
and… according to how you imagine it. Do the things he’s supposed to, arrange
the things he’s supposed to arrange. He’s always wanting to, aiya, take it easy
here, mess with that there. If you don’t monitor (jiandu) him, you don’t monitor
him, [______________.

TK: [Ah, so you still have to, you have work to do.

WH: Still have to monitor.

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TK: You still have to monitor him.

WH: Right right right right right.

TK: Like he can’t take his sweet time brushing his teeth, these kinds of things?

WH: Still have to monitor him.

TK: Or like with going to sleep, he can’t wait until midnight to sleep?

WH: Ah. Right! So you want him to go to bed at exactly 10:00. He won’t do it
unless you monitor him! Otherwise there’s no way he could [do the things you
want him to]. He doesn’t have a sense of time. He could stay up all night if he
wanted to. Mai, he doesn’t care.

Like Wang Yan, Wen Hui wishes that her son would attend to his responsibilities
on his own. Though Wen Hui does not express a sense of contradiction at the level of the
body like Wang Yan, she describes second-guessing herself twice. First, after hearing
Zhou Hong’s talk about “appreciation education,” she wonders how she could have
scolded and even spanked her son. She even remembers one of Zhou Hong’s examples in
great detail, i.e. how he commended his daughter on getting one out of ten math problems
right. Then, after trying “appreciation” in the form of praise she wonders how she could
have acted not-angry when anger was the correct response. Even her son could detect her
ambivalence, and would tell her “you’re full of it.”
Case 3: Sometimes you’re left with no other choice
I met Zhou Huawei at a small business in my neighborhood, a shop that offered
business cards, fax services, photo-copying, and word processing services on yellowing
machines as flies buzzed overhead. Though this shop served a number of apartment yards
in the area, it turned out that she lived in the building right next to me in my yard. After
some chatting, we figured out that we could be useful to each other. I was American and
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could teach her 7-year-old daughter some English, and she was more than happy to chat
with me about parenting. The first time I interviewed her, she brought over an outline of
topics she wanted to cover on a white index card, along with a pile of popular materials,
including a stack of recent copies of the local newspaper Spring City Evening News,
which was printing excerpts from Intimate Sister’s Tell Your Child, You’re the Best!.
Zhou Huawei took pride in telling me a story about sticking up for her daughter
when her daughter got in trouble for falling asleep in class. She wants for them to be
“intimate friends” such that, “If she has something to talk about she can talk to me.” At
the same time, Zhou Huawei admits that she can have a rather “anxious personality”
(xingge ji). This led her to puzzle over what exactly constitutes “family violence” (jiating
baoli), pointing at the materials sitting on my coffee table. She said, “If you don’t give
her this kind of lesson (jiaoxun), it would be hard for her to become-useful (chengcai).”
She presented two contrasting examples. First, there is the famous Chinese
playwright Cao Yu, who was an incredibly tolerant parent, and never hit or scolded his
three children. He would always talk nicely to his children. “But not one of them made
something of themselves (chengqi),” Zhou Huawei pointed out, “Not one.” Meanwhile,
the internationally acclaimed pianist Lang Lang was forced to play piano since
childhood. Zhou Huawei related one specific scenario she had read from a newspaper.
One day, Lang Lang’s father stepped out for some errands, and came back to find his son
playing with other kids when he was supposed to be practicing. He immediately grabbed
a bottle of poison and said, “If you don’t want to practice, you drink half, I drink half.
Your mom can die with us too.” This bottle of poison continued to sit on top of the piano.
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Zhou Huawei recognized how cruel this father was. In fact, the public was
shocked when the story came out and it became a hot topic of debate. A training school
even refused Lang Lang’s admission based on what had been publicized. The mentor he
wanted to study with did not want to be responsible for his success, or for his entire
family. But while recognizing the extremeness of his measures, Zhou Huawei pointed out
that the father’s severity did produce an internationally acclaimed pianist. Now, both of
Lang Lang’s parents live comfortably.
Zhou Huawei: Like this kind-, Lang Lang was hit to this point. He became
something after all this hitting. He was probably spanked pretty hard! He-, but he
became something. This is one result. Some people, you hit them but they don’t
become anything. On top of that, they’ll kill their parents off. And they don’t
want to live either. Because they feel like they can’t stand it anymore. This exists
too. But I feel, this is probably, is this called family violence? There are some that
become something, and some that don’t.

TK: Is it family violence or a parenting method?

ZHW: I know.

TK: Hard to say?

ZHW: Yeah. So sometimes, I also feel, this kid of mine I also feel, I’ve already
told her once. I think she’s heard. So she probably won’t do it again today. Two
days pass, and she commits the same problem. Then, if she doesn’t listen again,
sometimes, there’s nothing else you can do (meiyou banfa). You’re left with
having to give her a lesson (jiaoxun). You’re left with having to hit her, scold her.
This way she’ll remember. Aiya, my kid is really like this! And she remembers.
But, I’m not saying that I will hit her right away, hit her as soon as she does
something wrong. That’s not how it is. [Only] if it happens a lot. It’s not that we
hit her willy-nilly, just want her to hurt a little bit. Not to hit her until she
[inaudible].

TK: To the point that she bleeds flowers (liuxue kaihua).

ZHW: Anh, bleed flowers like you say. Pull her ears off, that kind of thing. It’s
just to let her hurt just a little bit. To have a little pain of the flesh. Let her
remember this lesson.
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So this, I don’t really know if this family-, like this kind of style, if it’s
suitable. But I just feel, if you don’t punish (shoushi) her at all, it would really be
hard for her to-, and it’s not like in America, right? One person can go to work,
and one person can not work. Can stay at home, and specialize in having patience,
to parent. If this was the case I could moderate. I would pour my entire heart into
my kid. But that’s not me. I have a pile of stuff to do.

Like Wang Yan, Zhou Huawei also describes a limit to her patience. In an ideal
world (as symbolized by the United States), she might be able to be the kind of parent
experts tell her to be. In the practical world of having to both work and raise a child,
Zhou Huawei faces a conflict that is illustrated in terms of an ambiguity surrounding two
contrasting models: Cao Yu the playwright and the father of Lang Lang the pianist. Both
models are simultaneously positive and negative. Cao Yu is closer to the kind of parent
experts idealize, but his children did not achieve. Lang Lang’s father used methods
people find horrifying, but he cultivated an acclaimed musician.
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The ambiguity
surrounding these two models prompts Zhou Huawei to puzzle over what constitutes
“family violence.”
The Rule of Emotional Management
In the last chapter, I quoted a passage from Zhou Hong’s Appreciate Your Child,
where he describes the surprise parents feel when they realize that his talks do not teach
“tricks” for dealing with a child, but concern rather, how parents ought to deal with
themselves. His advice reflects a broader trend in the advice literature that encourages the

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In Zhou Huawei’s account, the public found Lang Lang’s father’s parenting method horrifying. If the
details of the story were not so dramatic, e.g. bottle of poison on the piano, the public might be more
sympathetic. Zhou Huawei’s ambivalence reflects a cultural idea that by spanking a child, you are actually
doing him or her a favor. Historian Ping-chen Hsiung explains it very well, “Late Imperial popular wisdom
held that severe discipline in child training was a proxy for parental attention and social importance. The
most-favored child literally bore the heaviest blow. Parents believed that the deepest of pain and horror not
only demonstrated supreme concern but also ensured permanent memories, gave irreplaceable lessons, left
unique psychological imprints, and in the end perhaps yielded virtue, talent, and even gratitude”(2005:202).
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government of oneself rather than the government of a child. The example I gave from
Decoding the Password points to the kind of “emotion work” mothers are supposed to
do, one aspect of parental self-government. The fictional mother in our story somehow
transforms her anger into laughter, thereby “protecting” her son’s creative spirit. In the
commentary following the lesson, the author teaches her readers that “the leading text for
modern childrearing should start with the character for restraint (ren).” And she reminds
them not to get angry when they encounter seemingly “naughty” behavior: “Remember:
when you encounter this kind of thing, do not lose your temper (fahuo)” (Jiang 2006:144,
145)!
In China, there is a long history of textual constructions of maternal responsibility
for emotional regulation, but this responsibility concerned pregnant and nursing women.
Fetal education required mothers to monitor what she was affected by. Han dynasty
thinker Liu Xiang claimed that “if a woman was affected (gan) by good things, her child
would be good, and if by bad things, the child would be bad”(Kinney 2004:21). Ming-
Qing doctors expressed concerns not so much over the moral development of the fetus,
but rather infant diseases. Charlotte Furth tells us, “To be moved by emotions, especially
passion or anger, to give way to lust, or to indulge in rich food or drink was to risk
pathological fire within, endangering the child’s health and well-being in utero and
making it susceptible to disease in infancy”(1995:171). Responsibility for emotional
regulation continued after the birth of a child, as a mother’s emotional state was
understood as influencing the quality of breast-milk. A Ming dynasty medical text titled
Precious Guide for Saving the Young lists ten kinds of illness causing breast-milk, of
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which four are related to a mother’s emotional state: exhilarated milk, angry milk,
exasperated milk, and licentious milk (Hsiung 2005:81-2).
Unlike pre-modern prescriptions for emotional regulation however, advice given
in manuals like Decoding the Password and Zhou Hong’s Appreciate Your Child
concerns a parent or mother’s ability to regulate her emotions in relation to a school-age
child. This responsibility is not rooted in a material symbiosis; it is supposed to create an
intersubjective bond.
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Our fictional Bao Bao is in the first grade, and the author
dedicates an entire section to addressing practical issues related to parenting a school-age
child: Why do children lock up their door when they do homework? Why won’t the kid
let mom look through his homework booklet? Why the kid refuses to go to school. Why
the kid refuses to think when doing homework. Why the kid becomes weary of reading
aloud. Why the kid will secretly forge a parent’s signature. And so on. The point here is
that mothers ought to provide nurturing support, not give additional pressure, at the start
of what will be a long and competitive race (cf. Allison 1993). This support ought to be
based on an understanding of the child’s heart-spirit.
If the general circumference of autonomy and freedom has expanded for an urban
Chinese child, such that she or he can exercise some choice over what to learn, to play or
not play the piano, or to cut holes into a blanket, it is not the result of Chinese parents
casting off their feudal, authoritarian fetters, but is rather, “the mobile outcome of a
multitude of human technologies” (Rose 1999:55). By human technologies, we are

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With regards to advice for emotional regulation in pediatric advice from the late imperial period, Furth
points out, “Despite the shared body substances that blurred boundaries between mother and child down
through weaning, the symbiosis between mother and babe was material in nature, not sentimentalized as a
trope of family intimacy”(1995:177).
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referring to a concept Foucault offers in his discussion of advice manuals from the
ancient Greco-Roman world: “technologies of the self” involve regulative exercises upon
the self that include examination, inspection, reflection, taking inventory, et cetera
(Foucault 1986). These practices are those “by which individuals seek to improve
themselves and their lives”(Rose 1996:95). Though they may seem to belong to the
private sphere of one’s existence, technologies of the self actually belong to the sphere of
artful government.
If we accept Foucault’s definition that technologies of the self refer to “the
procedures, which no doubt exist in every civilization, suggested or prescribed to
individuals in order to determine their identity, maintain it, or transform it in terms of a
certain number of ends, through relations of self-mastery or self-knowledge”(1997:87),
then we can argue that what anthropologists call “emotion work” is a variation on this
theme. Emotion-work is a phrase sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined in the seminal The
Managed Heart to analyze the way in which emotions are managed and transformed for
social purposes. Based on her study of the work flight attendants do, Hochschild defined
emotion work as labor that “requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain
the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others…”(1983:7). If
the work of flight attendants entails suppressing anger in order to create customer
satisfaction – as measured by passengers’ “sense of being cared for in a convivial and
safe place,” then the work of mothers entails suppressing anger to create a sense of safety
for children. They must remember not to lose their temper lest they “injure” the child’s
heart-spirit. Where the flight attendant has to work to feel appropriate emotions in the
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face of insulting passenger behavior, the Chinese mother is supposed to do the same in
the face of “naughty,” or “lazy” behavior. In Wang Yan’s case, she would like to achieve
patience because her “roaring” makes her daughter irritated, which is a problem because
her daughter will then simply ignore her.
Across cultures, we find that some emotions are thought to be “bad” while others
are thought to be “good.” Emotion-work transforms “bad” or socially inappropriate
emotions into socially appropriate ones. In a Toraja community Douglan Hollan lived in,
anger is thought to be disruptive to relationships between humans and between human
vis-à-vis the supernatural world (1988). The Toraja have a number of informal strategies
for “cooling” their anger, thereby creating the public appearance of a “warm, friendly,
and hospitable” community (Hollan 1988:56). The Balinese suppress sadness, understood
to threaten one’s health and the health of others (Wikan 1990). One must manage the
heart and turn sadness into laughter by putting on a cheerful “bright face,” which in turn
can shape one’s inner state. The grace and composure Balinese are well-known for
actually requires a “great deal of emotional work”(Wikan 1990:29). The Utku have
strong sanctions against anger and volatility, so antithetical to their central value of care
(Briggs 1970). They practice emotional control by releasing tension with joking and
laughter, blending criticism with warmth and cheer, and dispel the anger of others with
expressions of care. In turn of the 21
st
century China, parents are to suppress anger in the
event it arises. The term the Chinese use to describe losing one’s temper is fahuo, which
means, if literally translated, to bring fire into existence. According to the lesson from
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Decoding the Password, anger is a bad emotion that ought to be suppressed by “holding
it back”(ren).
Emotion-work begins with a recognition of the existence of “feeling rules,” which
according to Hochschild are, “culture’s most powerful tools for directing
action”(1983:56). Feeling rules are found in the “pinch between ‘what I do feel’ and
‘what I should feel’”(1983:57). They are a big part of the very experience of having
feelings, evidenced by the way college students interviewed by Hochschild talked about
emotional events: “I psyched myself up, I squashed my anger down, I tried hard not to
feel disappointed, I forced myself to have a good time, I mustered up some gratitude, I
put a damper on my love for her, I snapped myself out of the depression”(quoted in
1983:38-9). In China, a society in transition, new feeling rules are actively promoted
through channels such as advice literature, the partial success of which is evinced in
Wang Yan’s statement, “I’m the kind of person that knows what I’m supposed to be
doing at that moment,” contrasting herself to parents who do not have any regrets over
losing their patience. Wen Hui recalls the pinch she felt between the “do” and the
“should” after hearing a Zhou Hong lecture. She wondered if it was right for her to lose
her temper (fahuo), which sometimes led her to spank her son. Zhou Huawei knows that
she has an “anxious personality”(xingge ji) which sometimes gets in the way of the
friendship she tries to cultivate with her daughter. She expresses her sense of the
“should” in terms of the patience she could achieve, if only the circumstances were ideal:
“it’s not like in America, right? One person can go to work, and one person can not work.
Can stay at home, and specialize in having patience, to parent.”
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Feeling-rules and emotion-work is not simply a mechanism for preserving or
promoting a particular social order however. Wikan makes this clear when she states,
“Balinese part ways with the air hostesses in that control and conscious shaping [of
feelings] are seen as a moral good”(1990:139). Whereas Hochschild’s flight attendants
manage their emotions as a part of a commercial service, Wikan’s Balinese do so as a
“formula for living.” Turning sadness into laughter – which in turn changes inner states –
contributes not only to social harmony, it is also beneficial for one’s own health, for
protection against sorcery and mockery, and for one’s sense of self-respect in a complex
social world where there is “so much to care about.” To argue that emotional regulation is
not simply a mechanism of social control, Wikan writes,
Consider a person, any person, engaged in ordinary, multiple pursuits involving of
necessity interaction with dozens of others through the day, and the predicament
is there - how to steer, move, be with safety in the world, salvaging respect while
securing practical ends: making a living, attaining a position, nourishing cherished
bonds, preserving mental calm. [1990:108]

The same is true for emotional regulation in the context of my own material – it is seen as
a moral good, as least where the popular experts are concerned. When the author of
Decoding the Password enjoins mothers to restrain themselves (ren) when they encounter
anger-inducing behavior, she invokes an ethical practice long familiar to Chinese people.
Meanwhile, for Zhou Hong, good parenting depends on cultivating an appreciative state
of mind, one that mutually nourishes one’s child and oneself. Zhou contends, “Whether
the world is heaven or hell, has to do not with the world, but with your attitude”
(2000:173). The same goes for how one views one’s child: whether a child is good or
bad, is also a matter of attitude. Thus, emotion-work can have broader implications for
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practicing self-cultivation. In fact, one mother I knew, Hu Qiuli – who is the envy of all
her friends for her seemingly unlimited store of patience, said to her friends on one
occasion, ‘Actually, reading these books and going to classes is not really about how to
raise a child, there are personal benefits (haochu)…’
Whether or not all the mothers in my study can fully achieve emotional regulation
is another matter entirely, because their practical world requires a vigilant stance. (My
friends saw Hu Qiuli’s patience as exceptional.) It is not easy for them to follow the kind
of “don’t worry”(bie zhaoji) advice found in manuals Decoding the Password. I argue
that this is not because they are somehow deficient, or not trying hard enough. There is a
broader historical explanation to which I will now turn.
The Intelligence of Ambivalence
When Wang Yan says, “This is my weakness, I’m very emotional I tell you,” she
invokes a common sense notion that the emotions cannot be reasonable. Familiar to both
Americans and Chinese alike, this notion is rooted in a binary opposition between reason
and emotion. Moreover, when both Wang Yan and Zhou Huawei attribute their lack of
patience to their “personality,” they speak as if emotional experience was primarily an
individual matter. This too is a common sense notion. In this section, I am going to argue
two things: 1.) the same emotions that popular experts problematize – anger and
anxiousness – have a certain intelligence; 2.) emotions belong to situations, they index
the distance between what a person wants on the one hand and environmental constraints
on the other.
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We know from a rich body of literature that the emotions are social events
indistinct from thought, that they tell us something about our involvement with the world,
and even negotiate with, and act upon that world (Chodorow 1999; Levy 1984; Lutz
1988; Lutz and White 1986; Nussbaum 2006; Rosaldo 1984; Shweder 2003). Taking
inspiration from this literature, I argue that an “inappropriate” emotion can readily index
practical obligations and commitments the advice literature neglects. In fact, it can be an
intelligent perception of the particularities that belong to a situation. When Wen Hui turns
around and wonders how she could have effused words of praise, her second-guess does
not simply concern the relationship between a felt emotion and outward expression. More
importantly, it is a perception of an incongruity between emotion and situation: “It’s
clearly a situation you should be angry about yet you change to not-angry?!”
In arguing that a “motive,” that which gives rise to an action, and a situation
cannot be thought of as distinct, Kenneth Burke uses an alarm clock to illustrate. He
writes:
A man, let us say, must arise at a certain hour each morning. This need of arising
(based upon such contingencies as office hours, distance of his home from his
place of business, time required to dress and have breakfast) is a situation. He sets
an alarm clock to arouse him at the desired time. The ringing of the clock thus
becomes the motive of his rising. Yet when it rings, its sound is but a shorthand
term for the situation which we have just described. The man acts as he does
because the clock has said, in brief translation: “This is the time for you to arise
since you live at such-and-such distance from your office, the trip requires so-
and-so many minutes”…etc. [1954:221]

In Burke’s example, the action of the man rising has the “motive” of an alarm, the
ringing of which has a synecdochical quality: it is but a shorthand term for a situation.
Now let’s borrow this example to consider the fact that Wen Hui finds herself getting
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“angry every day,” an emotion she is supposed to “hold back.” Let’s call her anger
“parental alarm,” and consider her alarm as synecdochical: a shorthand for a situation.
When Wen Hui feels like she must constantly monitor her son, governing when he
brushes his teeth and when he goes to bed at night, she is not simply nagging or
exercising her authority over him. Her alarm-like reminders to brush and sleep at a
certain hour is a shorthand term for the various contingencies that make up a situation,
wherein, Li Shengchun has eight more hours before he must get up again to go to school,
which takes about 30 minutes on foot and by bus. If he is late, his teacher will scold him
in front of a classroom of 60 other students, which might cause him to lose face, fall out
of favor with his teacher, maybe even inflict an injury to his self-esteem.
Of course I added elements of the subjunctive here, what could happen if Li
Shengchun’s trip to school is not completed in time. Wen Hui’s alarm is a shorthand term
for a situation made up of various practical contingencies. But a situation includes more
than the practical aspects of how many minutes a trip will require and how long it takes
to eat breakfast. Any situation includes possible consequences, that is, what could happen
if ordinary practical measures are not completed (or completed in time). The subjunctive
elements I take liberty in adding here are cobbled together from stories Wen Hui has told
about the time she forgot to sign a homework assignment (thereby getting her son in
trouble), a story about the son of a friend who fell out of a teacher’s favor (he ended up
having to transfer middle schools), et cetera. The subjunctive elements are immediate
possibilities that inform the situation.
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Now, if “angry every day” speaks to the particularities of the situation of getting a
child to school on time, what shall we make of the ambivalence my informants express?
What is ambivalence a shorthand for? What kind of situation does ambivalence perceive?
How should we interpret Zhou Huawei’s puzzle over whether she should be more like
Cao Yu the playwright, or Lang Lang’s father? Or Wang Yan’s confession that “parents
are really contradictory”(maodun)? Vanessa Fong discusses contradictory parental
behavior in her essay “Parent-Child Communication Problems and the Perceived
Inadequacies of Chinese Only Children”(2007). Fong found that parents in Dalian hold
mutually contradictory expectations of their children (teenagers actually): obedience,
caring/sociableness, independence, and excellence. The first two clash with the latter two
– as when one teenager’s internalization of the values of excellence and independence
frustrated her parents’ desire that she care more for family activities, or when one well-
liked teenager’s internalization of caring/sociableness conflicted with his parents’ wish
that he’d be more ambitious.
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Fong notes, “Recognizing that their society was an uneasy
mixture of Confucianism, socialism, and capitalism, parents I knew in Dalian tried to
teach their children values that would enable them to fulfill all the roles that would be
expected of them”(2007:110).
Parents also have different roles they are expected to fulfill.

91
Fong argues that the cultural models behind these values get lost in “transmission,” and attributes the
tension between parents and teenagers to a “mismatch between parents’ and children’s cultural
models”(2007:115), differing strategies for reconciling conflicting models, as well as an “illusion of
wholeness” that “prevented parents from emphasizing the context sensitive quality of valued practices”
(2007:113). According to Fong, the cultural models parents hold in mind are complex and context-
sensitive, but they speak of values in simple and seemingly inflexible terms. She writes, “the parents I
knew in Dalian talked as if they always lived by the same set of values, even though they actually followed
different, often contradictory principles in different contexts. Parents’ tendency to claim wholeness and
integration despite the contradictions and fragmentation in their child socialization practices resulted in
inconsistencies that children found frustrating”(2007:112).
182
I argue that their feeling of ambivalence is related to having to tack between
competing claims or values. In fact, ambivalence is a mode of intelligent perception, one
that holds multiple situations and commitments within a single frame. As Lutz and White
have pointed out:
The ambivalence, ambiguity, and complexity of much emotional experience and
interaction is caused by [a] multiplicity of perspectives on events as well as by
contradictions within ideological or value systems, by the incompleteness of the
information people have about an event, and by the fact that much emotion is
about the anticipation of future and hence unknown events or consequences.
[1986:427-8]

While borrowing from Lutz and White’s insight that we turn our focus away from
emotional categories themselves and toward events and broader social processes, we shall
make a small adjustment to the phrase “caused by.” For our purposes, we shall say that
the ambivalence experienced in raising a child is synecdochically related to a broader
historical situation that presents an intractable contradiction. Feeling “contradictory” is
but a shorthand term for the fact that urban Chinese parents must raise a psychologically
healthy child and a competitive student who will survive difficult odds. Zhou Huawei’s
puzzle illustrates this best: one must discipline a child when necessary, how else will she
or he become useful? At the same time, too much discipline, and the child could explode.
This possibility has become immediate with the publicity of the “good student kills
mother” case, which informs Zhou Huawei’s thinking. She makes this clear when she
says, “Some people, you hit them but they don’t become anything. On top of that, they’ll
kill their parents off.” This is a generation of parents who have come to question what
constitutes good parenting.
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The moral conflict my informants feel must be understood in terms of the
imaginative horizons they simultaneously behold, both belong to the broader historical
situation. The first horizon is mediated by the metaphor of the child’s heart-spirit
(xinling), an entity that sits in the inner recesses of a child’s heart-mind (xin).
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In some
contexts, xinling can refer to the “soul,” in a secular sense. Chinese translations of the
Chicken Soup for the Soul book series use xinling as a translation for soul. For my
purposes, I translate xinling as heart-spirit to bring out a second meaning in the word ling.
This character is often found in compounds that mean clever, bright, or intelligent. But
ling is also found in compounds denoting anomalous creatures such as sprites, fairies, and
elves. I use the term “heart-spirit” because the way xinling appears in the advice literature
is evocative of a living organism.
This living creature is commonly described as innocent and vulnerable, parents
have to take extra care to protect and ensure its healthful flourishing. Sometimes it has
physiological needs. “Intimate Sister” writes in Tell Your Child You’re the Best!,
“Forgiveness provides oxygen for the growth of the child’s heart-spirit” (Lu 2004:85).
Sometimes it is an organism that needs a home. In Appreciate Your Child, Zhou Hong
titles a section: “A child who has no one to have heart-to-hearts with is like a heart-spirit
with no home” (2004:96). At times, the world of the heart-spirit is described as a physical
location. The phrase used for understanding a child’s heart-spirit is literally to “walk
into”(zoujin). This location is often characterized as hidden, accessible only when one
regulates the emotions properly. The author of Decoding the Password tells the reader in

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The word xin has in the past denoted the physical organ of the heart, traditionally understood as the seat
of consciousness from which the cognitive, the emotional, and the virtues originate.
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her preface that she will, “repeatedly reiterate the attitude of ‘don’t worry, go slowly’ so
that we may more accurately discover what children are thinking about, what they are
doing, and what exactly ‘the secret of childhood’ is” (Jiang 2006:2).
93

Sometimes the world of the heart-spirit is an agricultural one, requiring
observation and care. A psychological health manual for primary school-age children
likens self-awareness to tending the wheat field in which the heart-spirit lives, both need
a watchful eye and cultivation (Zhou and Xiong 2003: 35).
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Sometimes this world is
described as having its own meteorological phenomena. Intimate Sister likens having
future dreams to letting sunshine beam into the heart-spirit’s world (2004: 99), addressing
a child’s emotional problems is like breaking apart a dense fog (Zhou and Xiong
2003:67), and failing to teach a child how to love causes the heart-spirit world to go arid
(Zhou and Xiong 2003:199). This first horizon, the world of the child’s heart-spirit, helps
to construct the importance of psychological health, the neglect of which can beget
terrible consequences.
There is a distinctly different imaginative horizon that conflicts with this one.
While the world of the heart-spirit is characterized by depth, interiority, and marked
boundaries, the conflicting horizon is filled with images mediated by numbers. This
second horizon, so unlike the first, is vast, unbounded, future-oriented and tremendously

93
Jiang is not explicit about whether or not she’s playing on Maria Montessori’s title The Secret of
Childhood. But this is very likely as the Montessori method is becoming popular in China and The Secret of
Childhood has been translated into Chinese.

94
This book was co-authored by a psychologist I knew in Kunming. Xiong Yan, second author, does a
variety of work in addition to research and writing, e.g. family therapy, public speaking, and summer camp
organization. This manual was advertised in Spring City Evening News in 2004. Even if this book did not
reach a wide audience, it is reflective of the view of a popular psychologist in Kunming. Xiong Yan is an
incredibly engaging person and speaker. I can only imagine that she has been nothing but influential.
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uncertain. The one thing I heard about most during fieldwork was how enormous China’s
total human population is. Zhou Huawei has said to me, “It’s too brutal. 13 hundred
million people. America only has 2 hundred million, we still have another 11 trying to
compete with you! This kind of pressure is extremely heavy. If I let my kid go, I’m doing
her harm.” Another parent put it like this, “Every year the number of births in our country
is as big as the population of Australia. The number of primary schools students is a
couple hundred million, three or four hundred million. Right? Isn’t that the size of a
country?” Just the other year, 10 million high school students took the college entrance
exams. The mother who told me this exclaimed, “That’s a whole entire country! 10
million people!” Fu Kejun, who authored a book titled The pain in the hearts of Chinese
parents,
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laments that in the city of Beijing alone, there were 98,000 graduating primary
school students. And at least half of their parents couldn’t bear to “resign themselves to
the random selection of fate” (yaohao de mingyun) by sending their child to a bad school
(2005:233).
96
With only 10,000 seats available for incoming students at Beijing’s key-
point schools, at least 40,000 students and their 40,000 families was sorely disappointed.
Finally, there is the problem of school tuition. Household registration and/or
failure to get the right exam score can restrict a student from attending a good school.
Many parents pay a “supporting fee” (zanzhu fei) to get their child into a preferred school
– a strategy that must be situated in the context of the school-selection (zexiao)
phenomenon, the increasing disparity in pedagogical quality between schools, and the

95
See footnote no. 85 for more background on this book.

96
Yaohao literally means to throw numbers, to throw dice, to gamble.
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way in which commercialization of education has further exacerbated an already
competitive schooling system. The preferred junior middle school in Kunming charged
30,000 RMB for three years of schooling in the mid-2000s; even families who had a legal
right to attend this school had to pay an undocumented 10,000 RMB for every point short
of the entrance exam’s admission line (fenshu xian), that is the say, the minimum total a
student must produce in order to be eligible for admission.
97
If an average double-income
family only brings in less than 20,000 RMB a year, paying 30,000 RMB for three years
of tuition is rather astronomical.
The point here is not to wonder about the accuracy of these numbers, but rather to
consider how these numbers shape how futures are imagined. In their enormity, they
shape uncertainty about a future in which the success of one’s child could be determined
by the “random selection of fate,” such that parents must take every measure to buck the
chances. These measures include sending one’s child to as many extra-curricular classes
as possible, and vigilantly governing everyday habits and behavior. While popular
experts urge parents to exercise some restraint, to promote and preserve a happy
“childhood” for their child, many parents are unwilling to take the risk. Fu Kejun writes
in his incisive critique of China’s education system:
Try “reform” and see what you get. Other people’s kids are doing their
homework, will you let your kid off the hook to play? Other people’s kids are
scrambling for their exams, will you let your kid watch T.V., play games? The
teacher has assigned this and that homework, you rack your brain and still can’t

97
Review chapter two for more explanation of the use of admission lines in entrance examinations and laws
concerning entrance exams and compulsory education. Here, I purposefully give a more cursory sketch
because this is what parents have in mind when they imagine a child’s future. Parents of primary school
students do not have a detailed understanding of how admission works at the junior middle school level,
and form impressions based on what friends report. In my conversations with parents I knew, it seems that
the numbers “10,000” and “30,000” are the ones they remember most.
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figure out the weird and odd problems (guai ti, pian ti).
98
So you tell your kid,
precious, don’t tire yourself out, there’s no point in doing these, let’s do
something else. Are you willing to try? If you’re willing to experiment like this,
that will be the end of your kid! Your kid will be treated as a “bad student”
(chasheng), kicked out of the classroom, kicked out of school. Your kid will be
eliminated (taotai). [2005:31]

Given that academic success is still measured with examination scores, that
classrooms, from primary to middle school, are 50 to 70 students large, schoolchildren in
Kunming learn in an incredibly competitive environment. (Ironically, Kunming is
supposed to be one of China’s most laid back cities.) Teachers too bear enormous
pressure to produce high scoring students, and have little patience for deviance. Reforms
efforts to create a student-centered curriculum that facilitates active learning are usually
difficult to implement due to classroom size and limited resources. At the same time,
many Chinese maintain that an examination system makes the most sense given
population size, and is still the fairest in a culture where advancement is too easily curried
with favors. Thus, between ensuring a childhood and attending to psychological health,
and cultivating virtuous learning habits and endowing a competitive edge in a child,
urban Chinese parents are faced with a moral conflict between incommensurable goods.
99

Borrowing from Martha Nussbaum’s insight that “bewilderment and hesitation may
actually be marks of fine attention” (1990:182), I argue that the ambivalence my
informants feel over losing one’s temper and sometimes having to spank is an intelligent
perception of this conflict.

98
Fu laments that these kinds of problems are pointless, yet teachers use them to strengthen test-taking
skills.

99
I do not mean to say that psychological health is an intrinsic good. However, it has been naturalized as an
intrinsic good in public discourses concerning education reform.
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Conclusion
Maternal responsibility for emotional regulation is neither new, nor unique to
Chinese history. However, the shaping of this responsibility in turn of the 21
st
century
China is unique to this period and to late socialist Chinese society. The parent-child
dynamic is a matter of state concern, and has been targeted by a series of policies issued
by the State Council and the National Women’s Federation, from the 1990s on. The
parent-child dynamic is also a focus of popular concern, fed by a commercial print
industry that has thrived with the market reforms (Kong 2005).
100
In this context,
emotional experience becomes a critical terrain on which the personal and the political
intersect. Parents, especially mothers, are to monitor their own conduct and emotions so
as to promote subjectivity in their child.
The success of the dissemination of expertise is indicated by my informants’
familiarity with popular figures and their arguments – which is partly a result of state
interest and effort in popularizing “scientific knowledge” about family education. But this
success is only partial, for popular expertise competes against the practical demands of
raising a child in a crowded and competitive education system. For the mothers I came to
know, the conflict between parenting that practices restraint on the one hand, and
parenting that pursues survival and excellence against difficult odds on the other, is
experienced at the level of emotional experience. They are left to resolve this social and
historical contradiction in personal terms.

100
I discuss these policies and the commercial aspects of advice literature in Chapter One.
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Chapter 5: Creating and Providing “Conditions”
Thirteen hundred million people living in China, 10 million middle school
students taking the college entrance exam, 98,000 graduating primary school students in
one city, three to four hundred million primary school students, 30,000 yuan in school
fees, these totals convey how odds are perceived, and pose, for urban Chinese parents and
their children, the problem of how to stand out against the crowd. How to be outstanding
in a classroom of 60, 70 other classmates who also want to be outstanding? How to
eventually find a good job in a competitive market? How to ensure a good life with risks
all about? These questions highlight the uncertainties that surround raising a child in
urban China, questions that concern the issue of control. What can I control as a parent?
What is within my sphere of influence? What am I responsible for? Many of the mothers
I knew answered these questions in a strategy of action they referred to as “creating” or
“providing” tiaojian.
Tiaojian is invoked in a wide variety of contexts and can be translated as
“condition” or “circumstance.” It can refer to the conditions of a physical space. As when
a rental agent flatly said to me after showing an apartment I could not hide
disappointment toward: “Around here, tiaojian is simply like this (jiu shi zheyang).” It
can also refer to environmental conditions such as weather, as in ziran tiaojian. Or it can
refer to a person’s physical constitution, as when athletic potential is discussed in terms
of biological (shengli) tiaojian (Huang 2001:30). But more often than not, in my
experience, tiaojian refers to social conditions or circumstances such as a person’s
economic status or financial situation, as when father told me that he regretted not having
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the “economic conditions”(jingji tiaojian) to live on the first rather than seventh floor, so
that his toddler could play outside more. Tiaojian can refer to a person’s family
background in the newly stratified society. Whereas jieceng is a more formal and
differentiated way of talking about socioeconomic differences,
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tiaojian is unspecific.
Either one’s family background is good (jiating tiaojian hao), or it is not so good (jiating
tiaojian bu tai hao). Jieceng on the other hand, can be differentiated into “salary/waged-
based stratum”(gongxin jieceng), “middle-propertied stratum”(zhongchan jieceng),
102

“elite stratum”(jingyin jieceng), etc. I rarely heard the term jieceng used in my fieldwork,
tiaojian was much more common.
When invoked in conversations about children and education, tiaojian serves to
link economic means to one’s ability to access information, education, and opportunity.
For example, families who can afford to pay the “supporting fees” for school-selection
are families with good conditions (tiaojian hao de jiating). Tiaojian also links economic
means to the physical spaces of human development, as when a parent is quoted as saying
that a small living space means that “conditions for studying is not so good” (Family
Education Digest 2004). This link is also suggested in the quote I gave above, where the
floor one lives on determines a child’s opportunity for play.

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Jieceng is not as political as jieji, used in class struggles in the Maoist era. Li Zhang explains, “This
vernacular term allows one to speak about various newly emerged socioeconomic differences without
quickly resorting either to a set of preformulated, historically specific categories such as ‘capitalists’ versus
‘proletarians’ largely determined by one’s position in the relations of production, or to the Maoist
conceptualization of class as a form of political consciousness” (2008:26).

102
Whereas the group referred to as gongxin jieceng has been around much longer and can refer to those
who are still working in jobs that resemble employment under the danwei system – i.e. stable pay and
stable employment, zhongchan jieceng is a relatively new social formation largely defined by consumption
power (L. Zhang 2008). I am less clear on who exactly jingyin jieceng refers to, as research in this area is
still very new, and boundaries not fixed. I can only say that it at least includes wealthy entrepreneurs and
scientists.
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Learning opportunities themselves can be referred to as tiaojian, as when one
mother scolded her shy son for not practicing his English with me, “Such good
conditions!”
Coming from a family with good conditions is not necessarily advantageous to a
child however. This is the case insofar as well-being is concerned because families with
good economic tiaojian tend to over-pack their child’s learning schedule. One friend
explained, ‘Like my niece, she doesn’t even have time to eat a piece of watermelon.’
Children from families with good conditions also lack certain skills and virtues. A
kindergarten principal told me that children from families with very good conditions
typically lack independence, whereas children who do not come from a family with good
conditions might be more independent, though they are more likely to have an inferiority
complex (zibei gan). The 21 year-old clerk at my neighborhood convenience store, who
described her own tiaojian as not too good, felt that city kids don’t seem to know how to
do anything. She reiterated this point many times once, when she told me that she
regularly sent money to her parents who still live in the countryside. The many
exemplary stories concerning children who grew up under very poor conditions (tiaojian
hen cha de jiating), yet manage to test into Peking and Tsinghua University, argue that
good economic conditions can sometimes be a limitation.
Teachers use tiaojian when speaking about professional infrastructure, as when a
junior middle school geography teacher lamented that his tiaojian had limitations.
Sometimes he would like to print material off the internet but is not able to do so.
Tiaojian in this sense is often what makes a good school a good school in popular
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understanding. It is equipped and has good facilities, e.g. computer and science
laboratories, television monitors for every classroom, a running track, et cetera.
Policy documents are littered with calls for creating or providing tiaojian, so as to
facilitate the implementation of particular directives. The 1999 resolution for Education
for Quality devotes an entire section to creating conditions. It lists a number of areas for
reform, some of which include admission and examination reform, curriculum reform,
and reintegrating higher education with various industries (Ministry of Education 1999).
In discussing the importance of extra-curricular activities to cultivating well-roundedness
in students, the document also asks that “various domains of society” “provide the
necessary conditions”(tigong biyao de tiaojian) so that students may participate in
practical activities (ibid).
Tiaojian can refer to the macro-level conditions that determine an individual’s
opportunities: the social, historical, and geographical. People often expressed surprise
that I chose Yunnan Province over other more developed areas for my study. Being a
poor, minority area far from China’s cultural and economic centers, tiaojian in Yunnan
are limited (you xianzhi). And parents in Kunming supposedly do not have the same
access to information parents in other cities have. When it comes to examinations scores,
Yunnanese students score far lower than students from other parts of the country. The
tiaojian for learning is not so good in Kunming, one university teacher explained to me.
Middle school students from Yunnan Province are at an immediate disadvantage in
taking the college entrance exams: quality of education is not nationally competitive,
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local opportunities for higher education are limited, and universities outside Yunnan
maintain quotas that work against Yunnanese students.
Sometimes, tiaojian can refer to the sum total of everything that has conditioned a
particular (socially constructed) aspect of human development, as when tiaojian is
modified by the terms social and historical. A study of population quality published by
the CCP states, “A population’s psychological suzhi is inevitably conditioned (zhiyue) by
social and historical tiaojian” (Wu 1991:146). The market economy is a also condition,
as when one parenting expert specifically gives advice for domestic education “under the
conditions of the market economy” (Wang 2004).
Tiaojian can also refer to conditioning at the level of the body, as when one
popular expert advises that taking an after-lunch nap ‘ensures the basic tiaojian for
effective learning in the afternoon’ (Jiang 2004:40). Ensuring that a child eats enough and
eats the right food can be referred to in terms of tiaojian, as in “baochi yingyang
tiaojian.”
These various ways of invoking tiaojian extends an enduring emphasis on the role
of natural, social, and economic environments in shaping human development in Chinese
philosophy and educational theories (Bai 2005:11-5).
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It also resonates with Hannah
Arendt’s argument in The Human Condition:
In addition to the conditions under which life is given to man on earth, and partly
out of them, men constantly create their own, self-made conditions, which, their

103
But what I will discuss in the chapter to follow is also historically specific in that it constructs an
important role for human agency in the differentiation of society, and takes contingency as a key problem.
This seems new to me. In Confucian philosophy as interpreted by Wei-ming Tu, “…the greatest challenge
of man is not to confront what is beyond human possibility, so vividly portrayed in the Greek tragedies, but
to bring to pass the message that the ultimate meaning of life is in the ordinary existence of man”(1979:72).
The historically specific character of tiaojian will become more clear in the course of the chapter.
194
human origin and their variability notwithstanding, possess the same conditioning
power as natural things. Whatever touches or enters into a sustained relationship
with human life immediately assumes the character of a condition of human
existence. …human existence is conditioned existence… .” [1998(1958):9]

In my conversations with parents and teachers, in popular parenting advice, and in
national policies for education reform, human development is recognized as conditioned
development. Conditions, or tiaojian, include anything that touches or enters into a
relationship with a human life, from weather to architecture to socioeconomic
differentiation… even taking a nap. While some tiaojian are natural and most are
manmade, all forms of tiaojian posses a conditioning power.
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When parents invoke tiaojian, they recognize that the life and future of a child is
conditioned, and that some conditions must be created or actively provided. This evokes
the old story about Mencius’s mother moving three times, which has and continues to
model parental responsibility. When they lived near a cemetery, Mencius learned to wail
and bury things; when they moved into town, Mencius learned to buy and sell things;
when they moved near a school, Mencius learned proper manners and thirsted for
knowledge. But the parental discourse on tiaojian is historically specific in that it
constitutes a recognition and response to the limits of agentive influence; it is shaped by
factors specific to the market reform era. In this chapter, I will argue that when parents
speak of their responsibility in terms of creating or providing tiaojian, they refer to

104
There is another interesting parallel between Arendt’s argument in The Human Condition and the
discourse of tiaojian. Just as Arendt argues against the possibility of discovering human nature, embarking,
instead, on a philosophy of human action within conditioned constraints, the Chinese rarely sympathize
with arguments for in-born intelligence and aptitudes, and instead emphasize the importance of
environment.

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something I will call “intersubjective infrastructure.” Tiaojian does indeed mean
infrastructure in the context of school management and development, i.e. hard equipment
and teaching facilities – computers, television monitors, and laboratories – constitute a
school’s tiaojian. It also means infrastructure in the context of educational policy
documents, as in the official resolution for Education for Quality cited above. The
resolution outlines the kind of educational infrastructures needed for realizing reform
goals, like item number nine under the section “creating tiaojian for implementing
Education for Quality”: “Adjust the existing structure of the education system, expand
the scope of middle school and higher education, broaden the road for human talent
development, retard the pressure surrounding advancement-in-schooling” (Ministry of
Education 1999). Similar to the importance of an infrastructure such as a system of roads
to the functioning of a society, implementation of the education reform also depends on a
kind of road building, that is, a broadening of the “road to success.”
An example of an “intersubjective infrastructure” in terms of an individual child
is likeability. Likeability is somewhat like a bridge, for if a child is not liked, he or she
will exist in social isolation. It is, in other words, important to a child’s social
functioning. Self-respect is another kind of “intersubjective infrastructure,” also
important to social functioning. Once they are built, a parent could rest assured, though
they may have to do some maintenance work here and there.
Drawing on three ethnographic cases, I will describe the way in which the
impetus to build “intersubjective infrastructures” is situated within specific life events. In
all three cases, a child gets lost in a classroom, no longer visible as a who but rather as a
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what (Arendt [1958]): a bad student, lazy, just so-so. I will demonstrate how this kind of
event can reveal the power of contingency, an issue that is always at the forefront of the
minds of parents. This sense of contingency is largely shaped by their perception of
China’s demographic situation, by the idea that one must compete against 13 hundred
million other people. The 60 to 70 student large classroom is only a smaller microcosm of
a much larger unpredictable world, in which parents have only one “chip” to gamble.
Thus, I will argue, creating and providing tiaojian, building intersubjective
infrastructures, is like what Hannah Arendt calls making a promise. These infrastructures
serve to set up “islands of security” in an “ocean of uncertainty” (Arendt [1958]:237).
The effort involved in creating and providing tiaojian is something one can control in a
world where one can otherwise control rather little. It is within one’s own domain of
possible action.
Creating and Providing Tiaojian
Over lunch one day, I had this conversation with a mother of an eight year-old
girl. Let’s call her Mrs. Huang.
Mrs. Huang: Parents now were all born in the 1960s, 1970s. Think about it, like
I’m thinking, in this lifetime, I, I, I haven’t really learned anything, I didn’t have
the tiaojian for learning. So right now, I want to create tiaojian for her [my
daughter] to learn. Let her not regret (houhui) and say, “Ah, my parents didn’t
create these tiaojian for me,” right? So now, I’ve created them for you. If you
pick it up or don’t pick it up (xue de cheng he xue bu cheng), that’s another
matter. But the point is, you won’t regret (houhui).

TK: You have fulfilled your responsibility.

Mrs. Huang: Ah, right right. [Your] parents have tried their best to [fulfill] their
responsibility.

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Mrs. Huang went on to explain that Chinese parents care for their children well into
adulthood – even middle-age, and we eventually got around to talking about Xu Li, the
teenager I discussed in my second chapter. She knew the story quite well, and cited a
television show where Intimate Sister talked about his case. Mrs. Huang was much more
sympathetic to Xu Li’s mother than Intimate Sister is, and felt that she was only looking
out for her son’s best interest.
Mrs. Huang: She was looking out for his best interest (shi wei ta hao). See, there’s
another thing about Chinese parents when it comes to their kid. In order to let the
kid be a useful person (zuo yige you yong de ren), [that parent] will keep letting
him/her, instill (chuanshou)… one thing is intellectual cultivation. Another is to
let the kid be able to be self-sufficient later when he/she is grown up. He/she has
to find a job after all. Think about it, right now work is very hard to find. Right? If
you don’t have ability how are you going to look? You have to create the tiaojian
and let him/her have a definite [level of] ability. [Mother Xu’s] intention (chufa
dian) was good. But, can the kid take it (jieshou)? When he [Xu Li] accepted it,
he-, he then felt regret/it was already too late (ta ye houhui le).

The kind of responsibility that Mrs. Huang feels toward her daughter is shaped by
her perception of her own past, as shaped by present values, and also by what she
imagines the future to hold. “Right now work is very hard to find,” she states. A child’s
future employment is a matter that an individual parent has little control over save their
ability to create tiaojian in the present. The first time Mrs. Huang invokes creating
tiaojian here, she is referring to paying money for extra-curricular classes in hobbies such
as piano, violin, and English, or for some kind of sport (tiyu). She says she has not
learned anything in her own lifetime, though this is not technically true. In fact, she is an
educator by profession and teaches accounting to college undergraduates. What she has
not learned are the “cultural” skills that have come to be so highly valued in the reform
era. These skills confer human capital in the form of quality (suzhi).
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Parents I spoke to commonly talk about how they did not have the tiaojian for
extra-curricular learning that is now so readily available to their own children. Having
multiple children to care for, their own parents had neither the economic conditions nor
the energy, “meiyou jingji, ye meiyou jingli.” (The past is rarely ever directly described
in terms of poverty.) The kind of regret Mrs. Huang hopes to forestall in her own
daughter might be interpreted as a displacement of one’s own regret over lost educational
opportunities. Many China scholars have written about “the lost generation,” born
between 1948 and 1957, who have experienced a series of deprivations throughout their
lifetime, the most important of which included the suspension of education during the
Cultural Revolution (e.g. Hung and Chiu 2003). But this is not the generation my study
parents belong to, yet, they too they too feel a sense of regret.
What this speaks to is an anxiety over the intensity of competition in the present,
an intensity that working adults sense in observing the entry of increasingly well-
educated and well-skilled college graduates into the workforce. They embody high levels
of human capital, higher than their own. The second time Mrs. Huang invokes tiaojian
here, she more explicitly links a parent’s responsibility for creating tiaojian to surviving
social competition. Whereas the state enterprise system had guaranteed a family’s
security in the past, parents know that under the market economy system, employment is
by no means secure.
Though creating and providing tiaojian may confer fitness in competition, it does
not offer a total guarantee. In invoking tiaojian, Mrs. Huang acknowledges the
vulnerability of a parent’s efforts. Just because one sends a child off to learn this or that
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“specialty” does not mean the child will pick it up, let alone even like the new hobby.
And just because a parent works to create tiaojian in the form of constant supervision, as
was the case for Mother Xu, does not mean the child will respond in a positive way. (Xu
Li certainly did not respond well to his mother’s style of care.) When parents say that
what happens after tiaojian are created is not up to them, they point to the limit
contingency puts on their agentive influence. As Mrs. Huang states, “So now, I’ve
created [tiaojian] for you. If you pick it [what you’re learning] up or don’t pick it up,
that’s another matter, but the point is, you won’t regret.”
Actually, Mrs. Huang has no way of knowing what her daughter will regret in the
future. Maybe her daughter will regret not having had a carefree childhood. But because
no one knows for certain what the future may hold, especially in a rapidly transforming
society like Chinese society, the strategy of creating tiaojian is best characterized as a
kind of “promise.” According to Hannah Arendt, the human capacity for action, to give
birth to something new, is primarily fraught with two predicaments for which there are
two remedies. For one, an agent has no control over what happens to what one sets into
motion, because action is always cast into a web of already existing human relationships
composed of an innumerable number of distinct and unique individuals with their distinct
and unique intentions ([1958]:184). The remedy for this, what Arendt calls the
“predicament of irreversibility,” is forgiveness ([1958]:237). The second predicament has
to do with the fact that an agent has no knowledge of the future. The remedy here, Arendt
says, “is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises”(ibid).
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Promises are enacted in the present as a way to exert some measure of control
over the unpredictable future. They set up “islands of security” in an “ocean of
uncertainty” (Arendt [1958]:237). The kinds of promise Arendt has in mind are contracts
and treaties, a binding agreement between a plural community of individuals. In the
context of creating tiaojian, the promise involves an agreement that goes something like
this: “I’ve tried my best, given the means I have at my disposal. Don’t blame me for not
trying later.” What is important is the initiative taken, but what happens thereafter is felt
to be outside a parent’s sphere of control. This is the reason why Mrs. Huang has
sympathy for Xu Li’s mother, her intention was good (chufa dian shi hao de). But she
cannot help that action is always cast into a web of already existing relationships one has
not created. In the specific case of Xu Li and his mother, it so happened that Xu Li was
not the kind of kid that could take (jieshou) Mother Xu’s style of care.
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On Regret
There are many parallels between Arendt’s theory of human action and the
discourse of tiaojian, but Arendt does not give an account of regret, which is a significant
element in the latter. One can exercise the capacity to forgive as a solution to the
“predicament of irreversibility,” and one can make promises to create “islands of
security” in the absence of knowing the future. For Arendt, these are further actions one

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Again, there is another interesting parallel between Arendt’s argument in The Human Condition and the
discourse of tiaojian. Arendt, who understands action as an important part of being human, places great
importance on initiative in her definition of human action. She privileges the beginning rather than the
completion. Chinese parents also place great importance on initiative, especially when they speak about
chufa dian, which literally means starting point. They also recognize that result is not as important, morally
speaking, because it is not something they can control.

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can take in the already complicated web of human affairs. But can regret be a kind of
capacity or form of action?
Creating tiaojian seeks to set up “islands of security” in an “ocean of
uncertainty,” but the experience of what Bernard Williams calls agent-regret often forms
the impetus behind creating tiaojian. In Moral Luck, Williams distinguishes between two
kinds of regret (1981). Regret in general involves the thought “how much better if it had
been otherwise” in regards to a state of affairs. General regret can be felt by anyone who
knows about a particular state of affairs (1981:28). The second kind of regret Williams
calls “‘agent-regret,’ which a person can feel only towards his own past actions (or, at
most, actions in which he regards himself as a participant)” (ibid). So, general regret and
agent-regret differ in that the latter is experienced from a first-person perspective, and
involves psychological content not found in general regret. But what really differentiates
general regret from agent-regret, Williams argues, is its expression. Agent-regret can
express itself in the wish to take appropriate action, for example – in the case of
Williams’s hypothetical truck driver who runs over a child – compensation.
Thus, agent-regret carves out a space for taking action in the present with a
backward glance: “I will do this in the absence of my capacity to undo the past.” The
projection of agent-regret into the future can also shape present action: “I will do this
now so I do not have any regrets in the future.” This is the case with Mrs. Huang, who
feels general regret over what her own parents were not able to do. She creates tiaojian
for her daughter in the present so as to preempt her own agent-regret in the future.
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In other ethnographic cases, to which I will now turn, agent-regret can contribute
to a revision of one’s responsibilities and commitments. This process must be understood
in light of Williams’s argument that, “[t]he sentiment of agent-regret is by no means
restricted to voluntary agency. It can extend far beyond what one intentionally did to
almost anything for which one was causally responsible in virtue of something one
intentionally did” (1981:27-8). This is especially the case for the ethnographic study at
hand, for Chinese parents must deal with multiple goods and projects. As I demonstrated
in the last chapter, urban parents tack between the two incommensurable goods of
attending to psychological health and raising a competitive child. In this chapter, the
incommensurable goods are duty to one’s child, and duty to one’s work. The pursuit of
one good entails risking the other. Therefore, the experience of agent-regret is not as
simple as “if only I had acted otherwise,” because actors realize that, “[o]ne’s history as
an agent is a web in which anything that is the product of the will is surrounded and held
up and partly formed by things that are not…” (Williams 1981:30). And because the
affair of childrearing is complicated by complications in reform era Chinese society,
creating tiaojian can really be no more than a promise, a kind of agreement, that says: “I
will do as I can, but what happens thereafter is not up to me, because I cannot predict the
future. But at least, I am hoping, I will not leave behind a past I will wish to undo.”
Because I never got to know Mrs. Huang very well, we must now leave her, and
turn to more specific cases that will demonstrate how the experience of agent-regret has
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served as an impetus for creating tiaojian, and how specific life events reveal the
vulnerability of valued goods to worldly contingency.
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Case 1: I’m trying my best
I met Zhang Xin the same night I met Wang Yan (from the last chapter). Wang
Yan, Wen Hui and Zhang Xin are all good friends, as are their children. Zhang Xin’s son
Deng Siwen is a year younger than Wang Yan and Wen Hui’s children, seven years-old
when he and I first met. Like her friends, Zhang Xin puts a lot of effort into her son. This
group of women, avid consumers of the parenting literature, believe in the importance of
creating a learning environment and the idea that a parent’s responsibility does not end
with dropping the kid off at school or bringing the kid to specialty classes. One ought to
take a participatory role in a child’s learning; parents and children ought to “grow up
together”(tongbu chengzhang). One thing Zhang Xin worked particularly hard at, was
creating an English-speaking environment beyond the classroom. While friends and
colleagues sometimes take the night off to go out or go to the gym, Zhang Xin stays
home with her son to study from his New Concept English book. Even though Zhang Xin
confesses that it is hard for her to put sentences together, she often tried to dialogue with
her son, and I, entirely in English.
But I eventually learned that Zhang Xin did not always have this kind of time,
something she feels agent-regret over. For the first six years of Deng Siwen’s life, Zhang
Xin was occupied. In her mid-20s, right around 1996 when Siwen was born, she decided
to go back to school because expectations for higher degrees in the workplace were

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Cheryl Mattingly’s work has deeply shaped my interest in vulnerability and uncertainty. See for example
2006a, 2006b, and N.d.
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increasing. (She currently works as a nurse in a large hospital in Kunming.) She went
back and studied the high school curriculum, and participated in the national college
entrance exam as she only had a diploma from a technical high school (zhongzhuan). She
went on to college from there and then to Beijing for advanced studies (jinxiu) before she
finally had time to parent. In the meanwhile, her husband was also constantly out of town
so the couple hired a nanny and sent their son to pre-school at a very young age.
Zhang Xin believes that those many years of not being able to have a relationship
has made Siwen ill-tempered, a problem already endemic to only-children in China. She
told me a story about a fight that occurred between Siwen and his three year-old cousin –
Zhang Xin’s younger sister’s son. Siwen was sitting on the sofa and his little cousin did
something that accidentally knocked Siwen’s head against the wall. The impact made an
audible “thunk,” and sent Siwen into a rage. According to Zhang Xin, Siwen began
kicking his cousin relentlessly, six or seven years his junior, accusing him of intentionally
wanting to hurt him. Zhang Xin immediately tried to resolve the conflict and tried to
reason with her son. But Siwen was unstoppable. Zhang Xin lost her temper and resorted
to giving her son a taste of his own medicine.
Feeling tremendous regret over her own response, Zhang Xin said to her son (who
was sitting with us at the time and interjecting testimony and protest), “Mommy
shouldn’t have been like that either, right? But mommy had already tried to reason with
you, if I didn’t-, adopt [some] action there wasn’t any way for you to calm down!! I felt, I
felt like I had no other choice (meiyou banfa).” She asked me what she should have done,
and went on to say this:
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Zhang Xin: That’s why I feel like it actually isn’t easy for a parent to really,
(clicks tongue), well raise a child to adulthood, oh? Because he, he’s also exposed
to a lot of outside things (waimian de shiwu). You have to pay attention to his
development. Avoid distortion (waiqu). Right now kids, some kids are very smart.
If the kid does something bad out there, sometimes he won’t come home and tell
you truthfully. (clicks tongue) This kind of thing is very dangerous. Like my
classmate’s, she also works at the Hospital, now her situation, let’s see she’s-

Teresa Kuan: The kind of kids you’re talking about are older right?

ZX: Pretty much around Deng Siwen’s age. That kid’s temper is, is, I feel is, it
isn’t good. (clicks tongue) His mother is also very dutiful (jinze). Because she
also, the father also, is also,

TK: [Oh, divorced.

ZX: [Divorced. She is raising the kid by herself. Also very exhausting.

TK: Right right right. Right.

ZX: Mmm. That kid, because some situations, he used to be at the same school as
Deng Siwen. And then he had to transfer.

TK: Because of what?

ZX: Because in class he would, he was actually quite naughty. And so he didn’t
give the teacher a good impression. The teacher was especially, especially you
know, maybe sometimes,

TK: Not fair to him.

ZX: Right right right. Simply felt like, “You’re just that kind of kid. That kind of,
you’re the bad type.” This is the worst [scenario]. I feel like teachers, [teachers in
China,

TK: [Once a teacher makes this kind of determination…

ZX: Right! A set determination is not good. Right. So she-, she felt like this
wasn’t good. Her son shouldn’t be in this classroom anymore, this is harmful to a
child’s development. Even though he, because he basically-, some of his
classmates especially, especially liked to, such young children, (lowers voice
considerably) I’m really not clear, and that was the fourth grade at the time, and
[they] would gamble. [It’s] really strange (zhen qiguai).

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TK: Really?!

ZX: Because there are some kids that come from really rich families. They give
their kids a lot of spending money. A lot so sometimes, the kids will gamble
between themselves. Maybe, with, so her son hung out with those kids. (clicks
tongue) And so he received some bad, negative influences. So maybe this kid
learned some of those bad habits. So sometimes, bamaodui,
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those things,
[things from the adult world,

TK: [(laughs) I’ve heard of bamaodui.

ZX: And then, unh! Thank goodness, thank goodness his mother, his mother felt
that it was not good. This child cannot stay in this class like this anymore. If he
stays any longer the outcome won’t be good. It’ll destroy the child’s life. Because
I think with such a good kid, he could still change. He’s only going along because
it’s fun, he doesn’t know anything. Right? But if he continues, and gets deeper
then it’ll be very dangerous. So she transferred him to a different district.
Afterwards I asked her about her situation again once they got over here,
and [she said] things were much better. I think leaving this kind of environment is
very important.

Zhang Xin goes on to explain that the “really rich families” she is thinking of, are
those that come from the countryside and have suddenly gotten very rich. (Otherwise
known as the “nouveau riche,” which usually refers to entrepreneurs who have
successfully exploited particular market niches as the Chinese economy underwent
liberalization.) Zhang Xin feels that classrooms are increasingly being polluted by
children of wealthy peasants who lack “quality” (suzhi). In the opinion of teachers and
parents like Zhang Xin who take childrearing very seriously, these children are simply
handed over to the schools by parents who provide very little guidance at home. For this
reason, Zhang Xin feels that a good school is important, and parents play an important
role in how a child turns out. She continues:

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Gangs that bully for money.
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ZX: So, the point is we also try, what we can do at home we try our best to do.
What we can do, what we can do for him, should do for him, I’ve done it all! And
I don’t have any regrets. (To her son in a sweet voice) One day, if he-, [when
he’s] grown up, has made something of himself, I will feel very happy then, ah?

TK: Right right right.

ZX: If he, if things turn out otherwise (ruguo zenme yang le), later, [and] I look
back on things, I won’t have any regrets. I feel will like (clicks tongue), I’ve tried
my best. If that’s the case, I can only feel that I’ve really failed, oh? If my
education method is that kind of, I’ve really failed, this child. I don’t wish that he
becomes anything, (clicks tongue), just, grow up and that’s good enough, (to her
son) right?

Deng Siwen: Your education method really is a failure. [You] don’t even have
patience.

Zhang Xin laughs, though I cannot tell if it is a nervous laugh or not. I laugh too,
and tell Siwen that he sure knows how to make a joke. A part of me feels that he is
poking fun at all the puzzling adults do over “education methods.” It reminds of
something Wang Yan’s daughter says to her when they fight, ‘Mom, I think you should
use a better method to educate me.’ Parenting has become such a hot topic that even
children have joined in on the debate, by giving their feedback. At the same time, I think
Zhang Xin’s laugh is bittersweet, because they had already exchanged gestures of
reconciliation after the incident. She admitted to being out of bounds (tai guofen), for
which her son said, “Mommy I forgive you”(mama wo yuanliang ni). He also admitted
his wrong, which Zhang Xin accepted.
Rather than admit to her wrong again, Zhang Xin tries to make very clear that she
is doing the best that she can:
“Point is everything mommy should do [mommy’s] done, don’t you think? I’ve
done everything I was supposed to. And I haven’t wronged you. And I don’t have
any regrets. Down the line, what you need to put effort into yourself, you ought to
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put in effort yourself. What you know is important, what you should put effort
into, then you put in effort. Because that’s how it is in China, ah? Such a big
population. Yet so few opportunities. Able-persons are as common as air. That’s
why I tell you, it’ll be even scarier for their generation. Our employment
environment, their environment later is very grim.”

Moving from the particular to the general, from a story about losing her temper, to
the one about a friend’s gambling son, to the situation of the nouveau riche in Kunming,
and finally to the broader problem of what Siwen will have to face in the future, this case
illustrates a parent’s sense that raising a child from birth to adulthood is fraught with
uncertainty. This is especially the case for parents of boys, who are more likely to be
seduced by gambling, internet addiction, fighting, and falling victim to bamaodui (gangs
that bully for money). In the story about her classmate’s son, Zhang Xin suggests that the
child had also learned to be a part of a bamaodui, which is somewhat confusing given the
fact that these groups tend to be composed of teenagers who are no longer in school,
“society” kids. Regardless, whether or not the child in this story participated in bullying
in addition to gambling is besides the point. Here Zhang Xin expresses anxiety over the
“pollution” of children by “society” phenomena. It is partly an anxiety over class
boundaries as well as an anxiety over the limits contingency will pose to the efficacy of
her efforts. It is not easy to raise a child to adulthood, as Zhang Xin says, he’s “exposed
to a lot of outside things.”
Losing a child to factors in “society” is not the only danger that makes the pursuit
of the good life for one’s child vulnerable. One must also ensure that a child’s teacher,
most especially the homeroom teacher (banzhuren), does not develop a negative
impression of one’s child, as this can have immediate and far-reaching consequences for
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a developing life. Being labeled as the “bad type” is the worst case scenario, as core
curriculum teachers follow their students up to graduation. Because there is so much at
stake in these relationships, a teacher is an ally at best, and an adversary at worst. In the
case of Zhang Xin’s friend, it was important that she not only get her son away from
negative peer influences, but also away from a teacher that had already determined that
he was “the bad type.” “A set determination is not good,” Zhang Xin explained. Upon
transferring to a different school district and beginning anew, things turned for the better
for this classmate and her son.
I call what happened to this boy getting lost in a classroom, a phenomenon in
which a student is no longer a who but a what. Schoolteachers in China have a reputation
for being “mean”(xiong). I have even heard a student compare her teacher to a gang boss
(laoda) once, for ruling through fear. We can partly attribute this to the disciplinary style
of so-called traditional pedagogy, and partly to the practical necessity of maintaining
order in 60-70 person large classrooms. But mean is one thing, getting the “bad type”
label is another. According to Hannah Arendt, the distinctiveness of unique individuals is
disclosed in action, which is only possible in the presence of others – the public realm.
The Greek polis serves as her exemplar ([1958]). Only “appearance,” or action – taking
initiative, putting something into motion, confers a reality to human existence beyond
mere biological necessity and utilitarian value. Arendt argues, “With word and deed we
insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second
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birth…”([1958]:176).
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Human action – word and deed – discloses the who someone is,
a unique and distinct individual who is not “the same as anyone else who ever lived,
lives, or will live”([1958]:8). To assume the qualities of a what however, is the exact
opposite of appearance (because appearance is characterized by utter originality). When a
child is labeled as a “bad type,” he or she is only a list of characteristics that can be
applied to any number of other students. The “bad” student is no longer visible.
For Arendt, the slippage between the who and the what – which easily happens –
is a major predicament in the realm of human affairs in general. We can also argue that
this is an enduring predicament for classroom educators the world over. Of course, in the
classrooms of Chinese cities, the predicament is that much thornier given the number of
students that compose a classroom. There are that many more students who have to be
“seen and heard” (Arendt [1958]). From a parent’s perspective, getting lost in a
classroom and losing visibility is very alarming. If he or she can get lost in a classroom,
what could and will happen once they reach the adult world? If visibility is vulnerable
here, how much more vulnerable will it be in the future?
Getting lost in a classroom has not happened to Siwen just yet, but it is an
immediate possibility. A colleague once jokingly said to me that “all Chinese parents are
neurotic.” Sure, maybe. But what seems to be truer is that many Chinese parents
constantly live in the subjunctive, the realm of the what could happen and what could go

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Cf. Limin Bai’s discussion of Xun Zi’s theory of man as expressed in the word sheng : “There are two
meanings of this word: the first means life and the second, to produce. In Chinese philosophy, the first
meaning of sheng was an acknowledgement of man’s innate endowment that was not acquired but gifted
from Heaven. It was from this perspective, that the early philosophers argued that man shared his
characteristics with animals. Yet the second meaning of sheng referred only to man, whose ability to
produce and to learn differentiated him from other animals”(2005:6).
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wrong. The kind of story Zhang Xin tells about her friend’s son is quite common in my
experience. Parents often tell stories about nearby-others – friends, co-workers, children
of friends and co-workers (zhouwei de pengyou, zhouwei de haizi) – as a way to consider
possibilities for their own lives, what Martha Nussbaum calls “things such as might
happen.” They help people consider “the vulnerability of human beings to reversals and
sufferings” (Nussbaum 2006:241). Like the Greek tragedies Aristotle and Nussbaum
write of, they often depict people trying their best to act well in the face of chance
reversals that can interrupt a personal project to achieve some kind of ethical good. The
protagonists are familiar and easy to identify with. For Zhang Xin, the story about her
friend’s son taking up gambling hits close to home for many reasons. Having gone to
school together, now working for the same employer, and having sons of the same age
who, previously, attended the same school, Zhang Xin and her friend already live parallel
lives. This friend is also a very “dutiful” (jinze) mother, something Zhang Xin identifies
with. What happens to her friend are immediate possibilities for her own life.
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Short of being able to foretell our own future, we turn to stories to explore
possibilities, both good and bad. Cheryl Mattingly points out, “One needs narrative to
contemplate the world in its complexities and to decipher how one should navigate one’s
way in it. For narrative is just that form which is build on surprise, chance, contingency,

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Subjunctivity is a defining feature of narrative. Where “the historian speaks of what has happened, the
poet of the kind of thing that can happen” (Aristotle 1970:32-3). Good stories subjunctivize reality,
“trafficking in human possibilities rather than in settled certainties” (Bruner 1986:26). They succeed by
“exploring the indeterminacy of reality and stimulating such exploration in the reader” (Good 1994:153).
For, in the act of reading, readers must continually revise their expectations as they wander through a text
(Iser 1978). And as it is in reading, so it is in life (Kohrman 2005:171-199; Mattingly 1998a, 2006a). This
is because the relationship between narrative and life-as-lived is not as discontinuous as some might argue.
Surely life is not tidy like a story, David Carr argues, “Things do not always work out as planned, but this
only adds an element of the same contingency and suspense to life that we find in stories” (1997:13).
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the anomalous event”(1998a:128). Stories can underscore how the unknown lurks just
around the corner, or how good fortune can turn bad, "not thanks to wickedness but
because of some mistake of great weight and consequence…” (Aristotle 1970:38). Stories
explore the limits of responsible moral agency. Sometimes possessing a sense of duty,
and acting upon it, is not enough. As Nussbaum writes with regards to Aristotle’s
position on the significance of tragedy, “a good person could fall short of full eudaimonia
[flourishing] because of events not under that person’s control. First, the person could be
impeded from acting well – either altogether, or during a portion of his or her
life”(2001:380).
This is true for both Zhang Xin and her friend, who has experienced the
unexpected turn of divorce, and consequently single-parenting. Divorce is still much
more stigmatized in China in comparison to the West, and may carry negative
repercussions for a child’s development (Liu et. al 2000). For Zhang Xin, career
development has impeded her from being a better parent which, as she sees it, has left her
son ill-tempered (manifest in the cousin-kicking incident). And though she is still married
to Deng Siwen’s father, Zhang Xin also feels like a single-parent because her husband is
constantly out of town, sometimes for as long as nine months. This contributes to
tensions between their parenting styles, for Zhang Xin’s husband, she feels, spoils their
son too much. Noticing that older children of other friends have turned out every which
way, Zhang Xin feels that there are many things outside of her control. This was the
moral of the gambling boy story, which, in Zhang Xin’s opinion, is very anomalous:
“zhen qiguai.”
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Zhang Xin’s current philosophy for parenting is that her duty is to provide
tiaojian, according to the best tiaojian she has at hand. “I think the starting of point
(chufa dian) of every parent is like this,” she said. She cannot undo her absence in her
son’s first six years of life, which may have made him ill-tempered, and channels her
agent-regret into making effort in the present. Zhang Xin now does everything she
possibly can to be a better parent, whether it involves punishing him when he behaves
badly, even if it breaks her heart, sending him to extra-curricular classes, or studying New
Concept English with him every night. “If things turn out otherwise,” she says, she can at
least look back without regret. And she expects that Siwen will not have regrets either,
“If you don’t pick something up, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. Just don’t
blame me later [for not trying].” Such tiaojian providing is like Arendt’s promise, an
“island of security” in an “ocean of uncertainty.”
Though China’s demographic situation, along with the increasing complexity of
society, presents tremendous uncertainty, how much effort one can put in, is relatively
more manageable. For this reason, Zhang Xin reminds her son of his duty and why he has
little choice in how he fulfills that duty, downplaying the regret she does in fact feel:
“I’ve done everything I was supposed to, and I haven’t wronged you. And I don’t have
any regrets. What you need to put effort into in the future, then it’s up to you. […]
Because that’s how it is in China, ah? Such a big population. And so few opportunities.
Able-persons are as common as air.”
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Case 2: You can’t let your teacher have anything to say about you
Yang Ruihong and her husband, Yang Zhonghai (they coincidentally share the
same last name), are unlike many of the other parents I followed. I never saw them raise
their voice or “nag” Xiaoming, 12 years-old when I first met him in 2004. They never
said things like ‘study hard and you can do x, y, z,’ which was rather common with other
families (‘study hard and you can visit Teacher Kuan in America!’). Many of the families
I followed were affectionate but this was particularly the case for the Yang family.
Xiaoming, though already in his pre-teen and then teenage years, and getting quite tall,
was always draping himself all over his parents. There was a lot of physical and
emotional affection between them, and they spoke some kind of secret discourse I was
never able to make out.
But it would be a mistake to assume that his parents were of the laissez-faire type
from all the mutual affection they share. Yang Ruihong does not buy all the business
about not spanking one’s child. “Why do you think Xiaoming is so obedient (guai)?” she
once asked rhetorically.
Xiaoming is enrolled in a variety of extra-curricular activities and classes:
basketball, composition writing, the study of Chinese classics, and of course English. His
involvement is an expression of Yang Ruihong’s sense of parental responsibility, the
creation and provision of the tiaojian for success. She once told me, “We feel like
creating tiaojian is our responsibility. And then learning is the kid’s responsibility.” But
her notion of this responsibility was expanded, due to one particular episode that caused
her agent-regret, to include exercising constant vigilance over homework assignments.
Yang Ruihong may not necessarily think that a single piece of homework is all that
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important, but she must act as if it is. This is certainly not unique to China, but the need
for vigilance here is intensified by factors specific to the school system in China.
“When he was in the third or fourth grade, we didn’t have much time to
monitor/take care of him (guan). And then maybe, maybe, when his teachers or we
weren’t paying attention, his passion for learning was hurt,” she began. Xiaoming was
taking all night to finish homework that should have been finished within an hour. Yet he
would still turn in unfinished assignments to Chinese class and incorrect answers to math
class. At the time, Yang Ruihong wasn’t sure if he had an intellect problem (zhili wenti)
or if he figured he could get away with turning in unfinished homework.
Yang Ruihong (YRH): So afterwards, the [math] teacher criticized him. I think
the teacher said, I don’t know what was said exactly, he’s never told me. And then
he (clicks the tongue), I just thought that when he was doing his homework, this
problem, I thought he was having a really hard time. Then I sought out the teacher
and discussed this. She said, (sucks in air) this problem of his, one is he doesn’t
ask questions, another is he doesn’t enthusiastically speak up (jiji fayan) in class. I
talked to the teacher and the teacher said he doesn’t have a sense of responsibility,
lazy. Doesn’t want to do it, et cetera et cetera. He’s just being lazy. I think if you
say this kind of thing a lot, maybe it’s a little [harmful] to a kid’s psychology
(xinli). “Oh well I’m inadequate. I’m lazy anyway.” And won’t be willing to… As
soon as the teacher said this to me, I felt speechless. [What is this-

TK: [You didn’t agree with her.

YRH: Unh. But with the teacher, you know, I didn’t agree with this kind of
method. I think kids, of course they’re going to be naughty, of course they will do
things that they aren’t supposed to do. But how to, not hurt their self-respect
(zizun xin), I think it’s really important.

In this second case, a parent describes her own child’s experience of getting lost
in a classroom, an event that Yang Ruihong attributes – speaking in terms of a we –
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to having been busy at work. She does not know how it happened exactly, but only that
her son was having a really hard time doing his schoolwork at home. He was “just
especially slow.”
Yang Ruihong had two guesses for the problem, either he had an intellect problem
or he was just being naughty. The teacher, on the other hand had already made up his/her
mind (gender not clear): Xiaoming doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t enthusiastically speak
up, doesn’t have a sense of responsibility, and is just being lazy. Xiaoming, in the eyes of
this teacher, had definitively become a whole suite of whats. Not only was he a “bad
student,” in terms of marks, but he also had characteristics that are much worse than
naughtiness and intellectual deficiency. Naughtiness is more innocent than laziness as it
is understood to be a childhood trait, and intellectual deficiency is not a moral deficiency.
On a different occasion, Yang Ruihong explained to me that a teacher’s impression is
very important because ‘they treat good students a certain way and bad students another.’
This echoes the kind of concern Zhang Xin expressed in our first case, “a set
determination is not good.”
YRH: I didn’t know how it could be. He didn’t talk to me about it either. But
when [he] was doing his homework, it was just the same. At home I saw for
myself, just especially slow. And then I talked to the teacher, twice. But I thought
(tongue clicks), we weren’t communicating so well. The teacher thought the
problem was the kid’s laziness, this kind of problem. But I thought, it should be a
problem of how to muster up (diaodong) his enthusiasm (jijixing) and passion
(reqing). If you let him feel like he is simply a certain kind of person in class or in
front of his classmates, he won’t have any motivation (dongli).

TK: Right. He will feel like, “Okay. This is how I am.”

YRH: There’s also, “I don’t want to be like this.” He also earnestly feels, “I don’t
want to be like this.” But he will have that psychological barrier (xinli zhang’ai)
once he’s in that environment. That’s why, later I said, the first step, forget what
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the problem might be, must finish every homework assignment the teacher gives.
Don’t give the teacher a reason to bring up this homework problem ever again. I
would keep him company while he did his homework until 11:00, 12:00 at night.
Sometimes 1:00 in the morning! My heavens.

TK: Aiyo.

YRH: It wasn’t because the teacher gave a lot of homework. He just had difficulty
doing it. And it’s not that he doesn’t know how to do it. At that time you know, he
would sit himself in front of the desk, but then it was like, for one character, he
had to look so many times! Actually he knows how to write that character. But
that brain didn’t know how to direct his hand (laughs). Aiyo, once it got a little
late, he was just very tired and would want to sleep. “You want to sleep? No way,
let’s go running. Let’s go downstairs for a lap and finish after that. Still not okay?
Let’s go run, wake up a little. Wake up a little. Or wash your face, and [then] that
wouldn’t work…

Yang Ruihong monitored her son like this every night for a month or two. But it
was not because she wanted to improve his marks necessarily, or teach him the kind of
discipline homework requires. Her intention was political, in Arendt’s sense of the word,
it was an issue of how to ensure his “appearance” in the public space of his classroom. As
she says, “forget what the problem might be, must finish every homework assignment.”
What was at stake was his self-respect, which affects how and if he appears. “If you let
him feel like he is simply a certain kind of person in class or in front of his classmates,”
Yang Ruihong thought, “he won’t have any motivation (dongli).” With the aim of
ensuring his capacity for action in the context of his classroom, for taking initiative and
setting things into motion, Yang Ruihong quite literally coached her son in the manner a
coach might train a boxer – stimulating the senses with cold water and physical motion in
the wee hours.
I asked if she thought she was tutoring him at the time, not completely
understanding the point of her story. She clarified,
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YRH: Well not tutor (fudao) exactly. Actually he knows how to do it all. He was
just slow. Just, looking at this stuff, and then he would go to write, and he would
keep getting it wrong. Like the word for good, he would keep writing another
character. I actually think it was a kind of, psychological barrier. It was hard for
him to do these things. Not that he had… anything. [Just a psychological-

TK: [Not that he didn’t know how to write ‘good,’ but

YRH: Regardless of what the problem actually is, you have to finish your
teacher’s, so the teacher doesn’t have anything to say about your homework
problem, let your teacher feel like you’re still… And then, slowly, homework
time was shortened. I had already tried many methods. […] But nothing, nothing
was effective. He was just unable to hurry up. Aiya I was worried. At that time,
my scalp was numb (laughs).

In the end, Yang Ruihong felt that it wasn’t an intellect problem but rather a
situation where things had taken the wrong course, starting with Xiaoming slacking off a
little. Xiaoming’s math teacher may have said something harmful to him subsequently,
which hurt his self-respect, engendering a “fear of school.” Yang Ruihong even felt that
he had reached the point of “sick of learning” (yanxue), a psychological barrier that made
completing homework assignments extremely difficult. She even asked Xiaoming if he
wanted to see a “psychological doctor”(xinli yisheng) about his difficulties.
Like Zhang Xin’s story, this second case involves a lapse in parental involvement
and agent-regret. Whereas Zhang Xin blames herself for her son’s ill-temper, Yang
Ruihong sums up this episode as such: “This situation, you know, [it was] when I had
neglected, when I hadn’t noticed, that he got to this very terrible place (hen zaogao de
dibu).” I believe this was a significant episode for mother and son, as Yang Ruihong told
me a briefer version of this story the first time we met, many months before I sat her
down for this interview. When we first met, she explained to me that one of the reasons
why it is not easy to apply popular advice is the fact that parents have to work so much.
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By the time she gets home, she is too tired to ‘actually figure out what a certain problem
is all about.’
Her parenting philosophy had been pretty typical. “We feel like creating tiaojian
is our responsibility. And then studying is the kid’s responsibility.” Of course working,
bringing in dual incomes, provides the basic foundation for creating tiaojian. But this lost
in a classroom event demonstrated to Yang Ruihong that responsibility does not end
there, and her notion of creating tiaojian expanded. Xiaoming’s school has an excellent
reputation and attracts a large number of school-selecting students (Xiaoming attends the
school “legally” as he lives in the district), which contributes to the large number of
students per classroom. Xiaoming had 68 classmates; it is no wonder he so easily got lost.
This is a concern, for the future is populated by even more people. If one can get
lost in a classroom, what will the adult world be like? The lost in a classroom episode
expanded Yang Ruihong’s notion of creating tiaojian to include ensuring a child’s
likeability in the eye’s of a teacher and self-respect in the face of classmates. This kind of
tiaojian, an intersubjective infrastructure, would serve to ensure Xiaoming’s social
functioning in the world of his classroom.
Case 3: She’s getting better now, slicker
Unlike many of the other children in her daughter’s first grade classroom, Zhao
Jinjin had not yet learned counting and character recognition. Zhou Huawei and her
husband simply did not have time. But once she saw that Jinjin’s teacher was not treating
her fairly, and that Jinjin was unhappy with how she measured up against her peers, Zhou
Huawei immediately capitalized on her own assets, she is a college humanities teacher
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after all. She helped her daughter “sweeten up” compositions that eventually got
published in two local newspapers, and effectively transformed her status in the
classroom for the better. Like Yang Ruihong’s story, Zhou Huawei’s begins with a lapse
in parental involvement.
Zhou Huawei: [When Jinjin was in pre-school], everyone was one busy mess. So
we thought, “It’s just pre-school.” Just let her mix in there. Right? Just let her,
you know like they say, let things run their course (zisheng zimie). But once she
got to primary school, we realized, she was starting behind everybody else (qipao
luohou le). [She] really was not the same. I don’t know what it’s like in America,
I doubt that parents squawk about pouring in all kinds of things during pre-school.
There is a lot of that here! I suddenly realized that my kid, she belonged to, the
bottom (xiayou). On top of that she was small in physique, and not very pretty.

TK: (laughing) She’s adorable and pretty.

ZHW: And then their teacher looked at her, and thought she was just mediocre
(yibanban). Would often pick on her. Would often scold (jiaoxun) her. On top of
that she was rather timid when she first went in. She’s getting slicker as she gets
older. We call it slicker (you yidian). More experienced. More daring, unafraid to
talk back to the teacher. She didn’t dare when she first went in. And her grades
weren’t good when she first went in. Because, [I] never taught her anything. How
can you compare her with those who have been taught? Right? She didn’t
recognize characters. The first half of the year, she was like this the first semester
of school. She felt very stifled (yayi). She often felt sad over not getting 100 on a
test. Would cry. Because everyone else got 100. Because everyone else has
learned before! How can you be like someone who has learned before? Right? Of
course she’s going to be different. So she was very sad. So then, I noticed this and
I was sad too. I could only help her, ascend. There was only this. Because if she
has pressure, I have pressure. This pressure is two-sided. It’s not that I give the
pressure to the kid, and I don’t have any pressure. I have pressure too. So I
immediately, right? I’m gathering things as fast as I can. I want to improve her
grades.

Zhou Huawei learned the importance of staying vigilant when it became clear that
her daughter had already fallen behind at “the starting line” (luohou zai qipao qian
shang). Jinjin did not enter primary school with the kind of skills many of her peers
already had. Like the child discussed in our second case, Jinjin was not much favored by
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her teacher, who “thought she was just mediocre” and would therefore often “pick on
her” and “scold her.” Seeing that she could no longer “let things run their course,” Zhou
Huawei immediately drew on her own assets to improve her daughter’s standing in class.
As an educator herself, this was “something very easy” (xiaocai yidie). Though she does
not exactly invoke tiaojian in recounting this event, Zhou Huawei has indeed referred to
her own abilities as a kind of tiaojian, as in, “I have this tiaojian,” or “we have this
tiaojian,” when referring to the collective effort she makes with her husband (a professor
of science). Jinjin consequently managed to score a hundred on a math exam before the
end of the first grade and gained a sense of self-confidence. By the second grade, Jinjin
completely transformed her standing in class by publishing compositions in local
newspapers.
ZHW: She published! She got 50 kuai in royalties. We got it already. And then,
she was very proud! Extremely proud!

TK: Really?

ZHW: Unh, extremely proud. And then, their teacher suddenly saw her,

TK: Differently.

ZHW: Differently. Because, when you publish in the newspaper like this, their
homeroom teacher teaches Chinese. This bring benefit to their teacher. There’s a
sense of success because it’s her own student. And then you know, [it] adds points
to their class.

TK: Because it will say so and so from the second grade from such and such
primary school.

ZHW: Eh! Eh! Zhao Jinjin, and then this and that, this is for point-keeping. This
establishes a foundation for the outstanding homeroom teacher. So this got
published. And she suddenly changed. She felt this was very,

TK: Her self-confidence really…
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ZHW: Became much stronger.

TK: Established.

ZHW: Right, right. And then her teacher saw her differently too. So when her
teacher’s leading, you know, calls on her, or the way the teacher treats her, the
kind of attitude she has, it leads the other students, how they should treat her too.
A teacher’s attitude definitely shapes the attitudes of students. She said in the past,
when she went to school, she played by herself. The people around her rarely
played with her. Like if she brought a lot of fun toys to play with, because one
time they had a special interest class, she brought some [toys]. Like if she has a
magazine, she’s the only one looking at it. No one’s paying attention to her
(laughs). It’s different now. As soon as she brings something, everyone’s fighting
to see what it is. They just want to hang out with her. It’s like they think she is,
how to say, someone worth befriending. That’s how they saw her. See, this, see,
our environment is like this.

When Zhou Huawei says, “see, our environment is like this,” she points to the
political nature of classroom relationships, between a student and his or her teacher, and
between students themselves. People tell me that children worship their mother in early
childhood, and then their teachers in primary school. This certainly seems to be true in
the way people describe the influence a teacher can have on peer to peer relationships in
the classroom. Like Yang Ruihong, the mother I discussed in the last case, Zhou
Huawei’s efforts in tutoring her daughter, in helping her publish, did not so much aim to
raise a child’s achievement record than to ensure a child’s appearance in the public space
of the classroom. When Jinjin first entered the first grade, she had difficulty making
friends. No one paid attention to her and her teacher did not treat her well. But with an
improvement in test scores, and with two publications in a local newspaper – which listed
her grade, her classroom number and the name of her school, thereby bringing honor to
her homeroom teacher – Jinjin’s social status changed. Her teacher began to see and treat
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her differently, and her classmates consequently followed. Jinjin, a small, skinny, and
timid girl became “someone worth befriending.”
Zhou Huawei explained to me that there are a number of ways a parent might try
to curry favor with a teacher and ensure “extra care” (gewai guanzhao). They might treat
a teacher to a facial, or go shopping together. Those who send their child to what is called
“little lunch table”(xiao fanzhuo) can especially count on “extra care.” The teacher will
feed and monitor/take care of your child during the lunch break, for a hefty fee. Zhou
Huawei, who always struck me as unusually direct, contended that this was to be
expected, “They have a kind of economic relationship. They have a kind of profit-seeking
relationship (huoli de guanxi).” Zhou Huawei is not at all interested in playing such
games. When I asked if it was true that parents give red-envelopes (carrying cold hard
cash) to teachers, Zhou Huawei said, “Absolutely. [But] I won’t even give a blade of
grass to her.” She describes her relationship to Jinjin’s teacher as circumspect (jinshen),
and does not want to “mix” with her any more than she needs to. But she is also perfectly
aware of the importance of a teacher’s impression, which she illustrated for me with a
story about a nearby-other.
One of Jinjin’s classmates, who sits right behind Jinjin, had very low social status.
Supposedly, the kid once said to Jinjin, “I am nice to everyone. But no one is nice to me.”
Zhou Huawei is not totally clear on the details of the situation, but only knows that this
kid might be a low-achieving student. The situation was so bad this student even wished
to transfer schools. To make matters worse, something terrible had happened recently.
Apparently this student comes from a family with very good tiaojian: both parents drive
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private cars, and a nanny brings him or her to school and back home everyday. Around
mid-Autumn festival, this classmate’s parents sent an expensive box of mooncakes with
the kid to give to the teacher as a gift. Zhou Huawei relates, “maybe the kid didn’t know
how to give a gift,” and did not understand the cultural taboo against public gift-giving.
But he or she presented the gift in front of everyone, and the teacher rejected it, just as
publicly. “With this,” Zhou Huawei points out to me, “this person’s status in the class is
even lower, just not anything (bu shi zenmeyang). Think about it, this is really sad. This
kind of thing can really injure a person.”
It is significant that Zhou Huawei tells me this story. As I argued earlier, stories
about nearby-others (zhouwei de…), in this case, a child’s classmate, can reveal how
people consider life possibilities, “things such as might happen”(Nussbaum 2006). Of
course Zhou Huawei does not have much in common with the parents in this story (one is
a company boss and the other works at a bank), but her daughter has been in a similar
situation of getting lost in a classroom. Knowing the classroom “environment” is what it
is, she wants Jinjin to have good social relationships, and feels more than willing to help
“build a foundation” (jianding jichu), which, we could infer, is not unlike creating
tiaojian.
Zhou Huawei has professional experience in publication, and has the social
connections to make it happen. She has this tiaojian, a condition that allows her to ensure
her daughter’s appearance in the classroom. But what Zhou Huawei did, “sweetening
up” Jinjin’s compositions, would probably be disparaged by the popular experts as
“meddling in the affairs of others” (yuezu daipao), or literally, “cooking in someone
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else’s kitchen.” One of Jinjin’s two compositions is especially unusual for a second
grader. It is titled “Memoirs of an Official” (Dang Guan Ji), and it recounts Jinjin’s
experience of being “the world’s smallest official.” The appointment came after some
improvement in her academic performance, an experience she often complained about to
her mom. As the “the world’s smallest official,” she didn’t understand why she had to
work so hard while officials above her did nothing. Jinjin complained to her mother about
it. So Zhou Huawei encouraged her daughter to express her feelings and taught her the art
of social satire: if you have grievances, you can express them indirectly with humor. In
the essay, “the P.E. weiyuan go and climb the jungle gym, for the sake of strengthening
one’s muscles; the art weiyuan in the corridor wiggle their necks, wiggle their butts, for
the sake of beautifying their physique; the learning weiyuan take huge gulps of fresh air,
for the sake of taking inspiration from nature… ,” meanwhile the author drenches herself
in sweat fulfilling her duties as a lowly “assistant to the chief” (fu zuzhang).
110

According to Zhou Huawei, the teacher liked this composition so much she read it
out loud to the class, and the entire room roared with laughter because so much of it was
actually true. But, it was also obvious that Jinjin did not write this on her own.
ZHW: Of course you’re going to say, other people say it too, your kid published
something in the second grade, it’s actually fake. She can’t possibly write
something so good! That’s for sure, I can admit that. You think her teacher
doesn’t know? Of course she knows! Who doesn’t know who was responsible?
They all know! But, but, this is something very easy for me.

Whether she had “meddled” in Jinjin’s affairs or not is beside the point. The purpose of
this project was to ensure her daughter’s visibility in the classroom, to allow her to appear

110
In order to protect the anonymity of my informant, I have not cited the original source.
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as a likeable person, distinct and irreplaceable. With a public performance, an
intersubjective infrastructure was established: Jinjin was no longer just mediocre to her
teacher, her peers, and herself. From here, Zhou Huawei can maybe really just let things
“run their course.”
What is at stake here?
In their study of population policies since the founding of the People’s Republic
in 1949, Greenhalgh and Winckler remark that “China’s population planners have
achieved a degree of totalistic control over a society’s demographic affairs that may be
unique in human history”(2005:4). “Engineering” is no mere metaphor, but an apt
description of the complex of apparatuses that are in place for carrying out population
goals. Vividly illustrating statecraft at work the authors note: “The ever great number and
bulk of yearbooks, encyclopedias, chronologies, and other compendia put out by the birth
commission and its subsidiary organizations to document their activities attest to [the]
build-up of state capacity…” (2005:287). At the same time, Greenhalgh and Winckler
point out, what has been remarkable about population control in China is less the
“control” aspect than the “popular legitimacy of the larger project”(2005:288). Although
rising standards of living, costs of education, and the practical demand for double
incomes have made having many children undesirable for city dwellers, policy and
individual preference did not exactly coincide. In a study conducted in Beijing and
Shenyang in the 1990s, Milwertz found that a significant portion of women would have
preferred to have two children rather than one (1997). This discrepancy between
preference and actual number of children, Milwertz argues, does not, however, indicate
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non-acceptance of the policy. Women in her study expressed that fertility control is good
for the nation, and good for child rearing, a finding that reflects the success of
propaganda work that explicitly linked reducing population quantity to raising population
quality. As Greenhalgh and Winckler point out, “The state’s norms on population quality,
far from suppressing desire, stimulated desire by tapping into widespread parental
aspirations for the upward mobility (and future filiality) of their one (or two) children. If
the one-child norm was repressive, the norm of the healthy, educated single child was
highly seductive” (2005:217).
In the context of economic liberalization, childhood and childrearing has largely
been defined by consumer culture. Davis and Sensenbrenner note two “revolutions” in
urban childhood, the first being the demographic, and the second being commercial.
Parents in their 1996 study spent about 600 RMB purchasing necessities for “what was
becoming a typical Shanghai childhood”(2000:59), a pattern of consumption that starkly
contrasted their own childhood. Many commodities on the market - infant formula,
nutritional supplements, educational toys, and test-prep materials - have and continue to
offer the promise of enhancing the physical and mental potential of a child (Champagne
1993; Gottschang 2000, 2001; Woronov 2003). Paying for extra-curricular education,
using economic tiaojian to provide or create tiaojian, has become rather widespread.
Even public education, which purports to be free for the first nine years under
compulsory education laws, has become commercialized with the school-selection
phenomenon. A good education comes at a very high price for those who do not live in
the neighborhood of one’s preferred school. In Kunming, the “supporting fee” for the
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city’s most prestigious junior middle school was 21,000 RMB for three years in the mid-
2000s. They are even higher in other Chinese cities. The “supporting fee” for junior
middle schools in Beijing can reach as high as 50,000 RMB (Croll 2006:191).
Now, because childhood and parenthood is overtly overdetermined by the macro-
level forces of nation-building and market capital, I could, in the spirit of Foucault,
interpret the kind of effort described in this chapter as a kind of “political effect.” Paying
for extra-curricular classes, helping a child with homework, and tutoring a child for
exams can surely be understood as a kind of effort driven by an ambition and anxiety for
raising “quality.” I could say that these mothers have internalized ideological norms,
playing the role of the “good mother,” and that their effort is an outcome of biopower and
the liberalization of government. By taking on personal responsibility for their child’s
future livelihood, which had previously been secured by the state, they also further
economic development. I could discuss the creation and provision of tiaojian as a kind of
economic behavior, a form of consumption and a mode of investment that seeks to
transubstantiate monetary capital into human capital (Anagnost 1997a). Indeed Ann
Anagnost observes that “the child” has become a “repository of stored value” in China
(1997a:197). Urban parents bank on “capital inputs” in the form of nutritional
supplements, educational toys, and test-prep materials to “produce the value” necessary
to survival at the level of the body (also see Anagnost 2004).
These interpretations are viable, for the experience of parenthood is shaped within
the context of China’s population project and economic liberalization. But these
interpretations, I will provisionally say, would only offer what Kenneth Burke calls “the
229
statistical motive,” a social scientific generalization that would be “foreign” to the
various individuals in question. The statistical motive is different from the individual
motive. Burke’s example is migration: “One man will tell you that he went west to avoid
his creditors, another that he had always intended to do so ever since reading certain
adventure stories in his youth, another that he migrated because Aunt Mary died, etc. The
‘statistical motive’ will contain a generalization foreign to all these particular
motives”(1954:219). Similarly, with respect to the efforts I describe in this chapter,
individual motives can be as different as “I don’t want this teacher to have anything to
say about you” or “I don’t want you to be friendless like that classmate that sits behind
you.” The individual motives of the parents discussed, in contrast to statistical motives,
belong to particular situations involving particular individuals.
In anthropology, we make a similar distinction between statistical and individual
motive when we say “experience-far” versus “experience-near,” a distinction borrowed
from psychoanalysis in the reconceptualization of culture (Geertz 1983). The difference
between the two approaches is the difference between speaking in terms of “object
cathexis” or speaking in terms of “love” (Geertz 1983:57).
111
For Clifford Geertz, the

111
Geertz makes this distinction in his essay “From the Native’s Point of View” in discussing one of the
many ways anthropologists move between the part and the whole. In this essay, Geertz also considers the
epistemological issues raised by the discovery of Malinowski’s personal diary, which revealed how much
distance Malinowski actually felt between himself and his informants. Geertz’s work paved the way for
later innovations that privileged the particular in anthropology (e.g. Lila Abu-Lughod’s textual innovations,
her use of first person voice and the narrative form), but he was suspicious of whether or not an
anthropologist could ever really do experience-near analysis. “The ethnographer does not, and,” Geertz
opines, “largely cannot, perceive what his informants perceive” (1983:58).
Clearly what I discuss in this section was part of the broader post-modern movement in
anthropology which came to be highly suspicious of generalizations, and critical of the unequal power
relations between anthropologists and their subjects. I will not review this literature because we are all
familiar with it by now.

230
study of cultural experience involves looking at symbolic artifacts, that is to say, the
conceptual and material artifacts people create to represent or make sense of their
experience (Geertz 1983; also see Turner and Bruner 1986). In psychological
anthropology, “experience-near” modes of data collection, description and analysis are
described as “person-centered” (Hollan 2001; LeVine 1982). Douglas Hollan includes
under this rubric ethnographies that pay close attention to how experience is reported,
revealed in action, and mediated through bodily sensations (Hollan 2001:52). Medical
anthropologists Arthur and Joan Kleinman make the distinction in critiquing the way in
which experience undergoes what they call “professional transformation,” which
anthropologists and biomedical professionals are both guilty of. They argue:
The interpretation of some person’s or group’s suffering as the reproduction of
oppressive relationships of production, the symbolization of dynamic conflicts in
the interior of the self, or as resistance to authority, is a transformation of
everyday experience of the same order as those pathologizing reconstructions
within biomedicine. [1995:96]

The Kleinmans advocate an approach that involves paying close attention to “local moral
worlds,” wherein experience can be understood as an intersubjective medium defined by
“what is vitally at stake for groups and individuals” (1995:97, my emphasis). Unni
Wikan advocates something similar, in arguing that an experience-near analysis takes
people to be “actors with multiple, compelling concerns and precious stakes to
defend…”(1990:13; 1991). Her study of Bali, famous in anthropological literature for
theatricality and cultural coherency, reveals the kind of hard work Balinese do in
maintaining social composure.
231
The approach I have taken in this chapter involves interpreting “what is at stake,”
by paying attention to what people report about significant events. But what is meant by
“at stake”? Acknowledging “at-stakeness” takes human purpose and plan-making
seriously. As Cheryl Mattingly argues, social life consists of carrying out socially located
commitments and projects. What may look from the outside like conformity to social
roles are, “from the actor’s perspective, not a matter of slotting oneself into the relevant
social category but attempting to become a certain sort of person” (1998a:69-70).
Importantly, projects undergo constant revision, as one will inevitably encounter the
unexpected. Thus, I argue, interpreting “at-stakeness” also considers the problem of
resistance – that which subverts an agent’s project. “Human conditions,” the Kleinmans
write, having suffering in mind, “constrain lived experience. They offer a resistance in
the flow of life to the elaboration of life plans” (1995:98). Indeed Heidegger understood
human existence and subjectivity as constituted by “care”(Sorge, Besorgen, Fürsorge).
He states, “One is, after all, what one takes care of” (1996[1927]:296). And what Da-
sein
112
encounters in the world, things and objects, is characterized by resistance: “…Da-
sein understands itself in its abandonment to a ‘world’ of which it never becomes master”
(1996[1927]:326).
Resistance, I gather, can include many subspecies of more or less related
problems, e.g. contingency, vulnerability, chance reversal, ignorance of the future, and
partial knowledge of situations. (For example, an enduring problem for the Balinese

112
Literally, “there being.” In the context of Being and Time, Da-Sein refers to a living creature who
reflects on its Being, and whose existence can only be understood in the phenomenon in which it is cast out
into the world.

232
according to Wikan involves never being able to know another person’s true intentions.)
Things often fall out of the clear blue sky for no apparent reason: they were not detected
by the radar of expectation, and one may feel that one does not deserve what has befallen
upon oneself.
113
When Xiaoming’s teacher told her that her son was lazy and lacked a
sense of responsibility, Yang Ruihong was speechless. She had never been in such a
situation before, and must have felt like the label, an undeserved one at that, fell out of
the clear blue sky. When Zhang Xin talked about her friend’s son, his gambling had the
character of a befalling. Not only did she feel that childhood gambling is anomalous,
“qiguai,” she also felt that her friend, being a dutiful mother, did not deserve this kind of
surprise. When Zhou Huawei learned that her daughter was “xiayou,” at the bottom of the
class, it too had the had the character of a befalling. She had planned to simply let things
“run their course,” until she saw that things had run off-course.
The kind of approach that asks “what is at stake” is suspicious of the power of
structural and cultural determination, but it does not assume that agency is pure either, or
that there is such a thing as human freedom.
114
This approach is phenomenological in
that it makes interpretations based on the phenomenal evidence at hand: the ethnographic
fact. It does not begin with the assumption that there is something for the social scientist

113
My use of “blue sky” is borrowed from Stephen Toulmin and his discussion of the medical and legal
case. The “case” for Toulmin is not only defined by its specificity but by the “misadventures” that have
affected particular people. Misadventures “befall” on the individuals involved in a case. He writes, “The
use of the word ‘befall’ in place of ‘happen’ may look archaic, but it has the virtue of marking the fact that
misadventures fall out of a blue sky, as happenings that we did not foresee and could not avoid”
(2001:112).

114
Writing about radical empiricism and its significance for anthropology, Michael Jackson contends, “The
task of anthropology is to recover the sense in which experience is situated within relationships and
between persons if the lifeworld is to be explored as a field of intersubjectivity and not reduced to objective
structures or subjective intentions” (1996:26).

233
to discover, invisible to agents themselves (Jackson 1989, 1996).
115
For example, I
understand the work that mothers do not as a demonstration of the way in which the
production of the high quality child depends on the extraction of their labor. Rather, I
begin by taking their projects seriously, and consider the kinds of resistance they face.
Following Unni Wikan and Gordon Mathews, I use their experiential statements as an
analytical framework (Mathews 2000; Wikan 1991). What does creating or providing
tiaojian point to?
To do an anthropology of “lived experience,” Wikan argues that we must “elevate
experiential statements to key analytical status…”(1991:291). “So much to care about,” a
statement that comes out of her ethnography, is more than just description. It is employed
as an analytical category for understanding how the different aspects of Balinese life –
styles of conduct, relationships with others, sickness and health, sorcery and magic –
require “simultaneous handling” with limited resources (1990:18, 26, 27). Gordon
Mathews does something similar in Global Culture/Individual Identity, wherein the
experiential statement shikata ga nai (Japanese), mòuh baahnfaat là (Cantonese), and
“there’s nothing I can do about it” is elevated to the status of an analytical category.
Drawing from his comparative ethnography on cultural identity amongst Japanese artists,
Hong Kong intellectuals and Americans practicing religion, Mathews argues that there
are three levels of cultural experience. The first is the level of habitus; the third refers to
the choices people make in “shopping” for their identity in a globalizing world. The
second level expresses the idea that “[m]uch human behavior is based not on the

115
Cf. Kenneth Burke’s discussion on what all the modern sciences have in common (1954).
234
underlying values we hold, but on our compliance to the pressures exerted by the social
world around us, which can be resisted only at a high price”(14). At the second level,
there is a conscious recognition of forces extrinsic to individual control; this is a level
where actors are neither simple receptacles of culture nor masterful agents.
In this chapter, I have taken the experiential statement – create/provide tiaojian –
as an analytical framework. This is an experiential statement that points to a larger
cultural discourse, specific to the reform era, on economic and human development. The
word tiaojian itself, which can be translated “condition” or “circumstance,” is invoked in
a wide variety of ethnographic contexts to refer to each and every possible condition that
“touches or enters into a sustained relationship with human life” (Arendt [1958]:9).
Tiaojian can refer to nutrition, climate, spatial environment, economic status, social class,
a particular social history, and so on. The discourse of tiaojian – an extension of an
enduring emphasis on environment, recognizes that “human existence is conditioned
existence,” and that conditioning conditions include both the natural and man-made
(ibid).
116
When parents speak about creating or providing tiaojian, they recognize that
human development is conditioned development, that everything that touches or enters
into a sustained relationship with their child will have a conditioning effect. They also
recognize that in the absence of state provisioning, they bear the responsibility alone.
The discourse of creating tiaojian also shares other similarities with Arendt’s
theory of the human condition. Both privilege the initiative taken in beginning an action

116
For Arendt, economic development is an example of a man-made condition. It is also the outcome of the
human capacity for action, starting something new. She was particularly interested in the historical shift
that happened when economic value became disconnected from land.
235
rather than the completion of an action. Like Zhang Xin says, providing tiaojian
according to the best tiaojian at hand is the “starting point”(chufa dian) of every parent.
But what happens after thereafter is understood as outside of a parent’s control. Both
arguments recognize the ever-present problem of contingency. For Arendt, action is
always cast into a web of relationships one did not create; for my informant-friends,
effort is the one thing an individual can control in a highly contingent world. Regardless
of one’s effort, a child could turn out “distorted” thanks to “outside things”(waiwu) from
the complicated adult world. And, a child could easily get lost in the public world of
appearance, and undeservedly acquire the traits of a what rather than the qualities of a
who.
For some of the parents discussed in this chapter, the sense of contingency is
expressed in stories about nearby others, a fourth-grader who took up gambling, a first-
grader who had no friends. For some of the parents discussed in this chapter, contingency
was experienced first hand when one’s own child suddenly got lost in a classroom, taking
on an undeserved label that not only threatened a child’s social functioning in the
classroom, but also their survival in a crowded and competitive schooling system.
Regret often provides the justification or impetus for creating tiaojian or for the
expansion of one’s idea of what creating tiaojian ought to entail. Time and again, parents
invoke regret. They feel a general regret over their own family’s lack of tiaojian in the
past, and therefore create tiaojian for their own child in the present so as to forestall that
child’s regret in the future (actually, their own projected agent-regret). Creating tiaojian
usually refers to paying for extra-curricular classes that are meant to convert economic
236
capital into human capital, conferring a competitive edge in the body of a child. But it can
also refer to the effort a parent makes in helping a child with homework, monitoring their
studies, tutoring for exams, etc. Agent-regret played an important role in Yang Ruihong’s
expansion and revision of her sense of responsibility, which was expressed in her effort
to coach her son every night into the wee hours for a month or two. Agent-regret, which
Zhang Xin downplays in the presence of her son, informs her parenting style in the
present with a backward glance. She would rather study New Concept English with her
son than go to the gym like some of her friends and colleagues do in their free time. She
intends to try her best now, knowing how stiff the competition will be for her son in the
future. Creating tiaojian is like Arendt’s promise, it sets up “islands of security” in an
“ocean of uncertainty.”
In addition to drawing on some philosophical literature, I tried to further bring to
light what is at stake in creating tiaojian by giving it another name: building
“intersubjective infrastructure.” Tiaojian indeed refers to infrastructure in some contexts,
especially in the context of school management and education policy-making. And an
intersubjective infrastructure such as likeability and self-respect are indeed like bridges, a
kind of infrastructure in the most conventional sense. Without friends, without self-
respect, a child will exist in social isolation. Of course when parents create tiaojian, they
are not literally installing hard equipment or building facilities. But they are doing the
important work of ensuring a child’s social functioning, just as bridges and road systems
ensure the functioning of a society or as a communication system ensures the functioning
of a company. We know from the three ethnographic cases and from stories about
237
nearby-others that falling out of a teacher’s favor can have terrible consequences insofar
as one’s social status and academic development is concerned. Xiaoming experienced
some kind of injury to his self-respect that culminated a state of “sick of school”(yanxue),
and he could not complete homework assignments he should have found easy. Jinjin’s
classmate is so disliked by her teacher and classmates that she wished to transfer schools.
The classmate was even publicly humiliated by their teacher when she publicly rejected a
gift.
117

When parents ensure a child’s likeability and self-respect, they ensure that their
child can remain visible, a student worth investing effort into, a classmate worth
befriending. Once an intersubjective infrastructure is set up, they can, perhaps, really
allow things to take their course. The cases I have drawn from weigh heavier on the side
of homework and exam help. But the common practice of sending children to extra-
curricular classes, which could easily be interpreted in more “statistical” terms, also
concerns likeability and self-respect in what has become an intensely competitive society
where “elimination” is an ever-present concern. And certainly children compare and
compete amongst themselves.

117
My point here is not to demonize teachers in China, who have their share of burden and difficulty. They
too are caught in a system they can do little to change. Like their students, they too are evaluated in terms
of points, exam averages, student promotion rates, etc. They are caught between the reality of the exam-
oriented system and the ideals of well-rounded education. They either have limited resources or must meet
high expectations for maintaining the reputation of a school, both of which compromise the kind of student-
centered teaching favored by education reform advocates (Wang C. 2004). These issues may contribute to
the kinds of misrecognition parents sometimes feel, a problem that has even attracted attention at the state
level. The revision of the Compulsory Education Law specifies that “there [shall] be no demonstration of
prejudice toward students because of personality characteristics” (Yang 2006b:29), a problem all of our
three parents have experienced.

238
Based on statistical probability we can predict that the three children discussed in
the three cases will probably turn out just fine despite everything. The very effort their
parents make to ensure the right “conditions” is precisely what effects social inequality
and economic disparity. These are urban middle-class children who have tremendous
advantage over their rural counterparts. But from the point of view of lived experience,
success is not guaranteed. As Ann Anagnost rightly points out, “even those who hold
relatively privileged positions within the new economic order are no less caught up in a
competitive struggle for survival that puts the subject permanently at the brink of chasm”
(2004:206).
Before I end the chapter, I will re-quote something I quoted at the end of the
preceding chapter, because I think we are now better equipped to appreciate of what is at
stake for urban Chinese parents, and why norms for liberal parenting are so difficult to
realize:
Try “reform” and see what you get. Other people’s kids are doing their
homework, will you let your kid off the hook to play? Other people’s kids are
scrambling for their exams, will you let your kid watch T.V., play games? The
teacher has assigned this and that homework, you rack your brain and still can’t
figure out the weird and odd problems (guai ti, pian ti) So you tell your kid,
precious, don’t tire yourself out, there’s no point in doing these, let’s do
something else. Are you willing to try? If you’re willing to experiment like this,
that will be the end of your kid! Your kid will be treated as a “bad student”
(chasheng), kicked out of the classroom, kicked out of school. Your kid will be
eliminated (taotai). [Fu 2005:31]

239
Chapter 6: Investing in Human Capital, Conserving the Life Energies
Of course Dinka hope that their rites will suspend the natural course of events. Of course they
hope that rain rituals will cause rain, healing rituals avert death, harvest rituals produce crops. But
instrumental efficacy is not the only kind of efficacy to be derived from their symbolic action.
The other kind is achieved in the action itself, in the assertions it makes and the experience which
bears its imprinting.
-- Mary Douglas
The classic Marxist definition of ideology is encapsulated in the phrase “they do
not know it, but they are doing it” (quoted in Žižek 1989: 28). This conception presumes
that people act in ways that reproduce relations of capitalist production without knowing
that they are doing so, and that ideology masks or distorts so-called reality in the minds
of social actors. Related to the Marxist conception of ideology is the idea of the fetish,
which helps to conceal objective social relations of production (Žižek 1989:49). Money is
a classic example. Supposedly, people mistake wealth as intrinsic to money when in fact
it is no more than “a condensation, a materialization of a network of social relations”
(Žižek 1989: 31).
The Marxist argument is often invoked to interpret parenthood or motherhood in
capitalist countries. Some have argued that motherhood itself is an ideology that serves to
mask the oppressive conditions under which mothers produce children (Allison 1996;
Field 1995; Rothman 2004; Taylor 2004
118
). Under capitalism, Rothman argues, “we are
no longer talking about mothers and babies at all – we are talking about laborers and their

118
Taylor’s collection of essays Consuming Motherhood offers a variety of perspectives on the issue, not all
make the ideological argument.
240
products” (Rothman 1994:149). When Japanese mothers prepare an elaborate obentō for
their child to take to preschool, Allison argues, they have “freely internalized” an
ideology that serves to introduce and discipline a child to and for the Japanese school
system (Allison 1996). Arguing that both women and children form a laboring team,
toiling within the Japanese school system, Field adds that “the most significant site of
labor for most [Japanese] women is the home, where they will supervise the training of
the next generation of workers”(62).
As I began to suggest in the last chapter, I could interpret the work that Chinese
mothers do in similar terms, as parenthood and childhood in China has, with the
economic expansion of the 1990s, largely been defined in terms of consumerism. Many
parents I knew understand their responsibility in terms of deploying economic tiaojian to
create or provide tiaojian, which, can be defined as a strategy that converts monetary
capital into embodied capital in the form of suzhi, while serving to effect social
differentiation and inequality. Indeed, Ann Anagnost describes parental effort in terms of
“investment” making, commodities like dairy products as “capital inputs,” and children
as “repositories” of stored value (1997a). The use of the commodity form to effect a
bodily transformation, she argues, is “a form of fetishism which endows material things
with magical powers to effect miraculous changes”(1997a:218). This kind of analysis
suggests that parents are doing something without knowing what they are actually doing:
furthering economic development and producing high quality individuals for the good of
241
the nation.
119
But, as I argued in the last chapter, creating and providing tiaojian – paying
for extra-curricular classes and monitoring a child’s academic progress – is better
understood in terms of managing uncertainty in an already crowded and increasingly
competitive social world. For this reason, I suggest a reformulation of the classic Marxist
pronouncement: “they know it, and they have no choice but to do it.”
Urban parents are aware of the social relations of production, and of the kind of
privilege their child has over their rural counterpart. But they, mothers especially, cannot
help but want to seize on available resources so as to maximize their own child’s
opportunities, because they feel little security about the kind of future their kid might
face. Their effort to give their child a competitive edge has less to do with a mistaken
belief in the intrinsic value of suzhi-building commodities than with their wish to obviate
a child’s elimination. If the consumption of various nutritional and educational goods
constitutes a form of fetishism, as Anagnost would have it, it has less to do with
instrumental efficacy than with an attempt to exert some measure of control over
contingency – not unlike the Kuranko who create fetishes to “body-forth” uncertainties in
ways that make them manageable (Jackson 1998:81-2), or the Dinka, whose rain rituals
achieve something “in the act itself, in the assertions it makes…” (Douglas [1966]:69).
In this chapter, I discuss two conceptions of good parenting, juxtaposing the
advice of one particularly popular parenting expert in Kunming, Teacher Wang, with the
position of one ordinary father, Mr. Deng. Keeping in mind that the management of

119
To be fair, Anagnost’s argument is more complex than I portray it to be here. She is sensitive to the
lived problem of uncertainty and does suggest that fetishism serves as a strategy for managing uncertainty.
She does not develop this argument however, which I intend to do in this chapter.

242
uncertainty is practiced in relation to culturally specific idioms, in Africa, for example –
they include fetishes, rituals, clan spirits, cursing, and sorcery (Douglas [1966]; Jackson
1998; Whyte 1997), I will argue that it is in and through economic thinking and behavior
that these two individuals offer or exert some measure of control over the contingencies
posed by social competition in post-Mao China. Both individuals use economically-
oriented language to speak about the work of parenting. One invokes the terms invest
(touzi), profit (shouyi), asset (zichan), produce (chanchu), production unit (shengchan
danwei), and human capital (renli ziben) (Wang 2004), the other invokes overdraw
(touzhi) and expend/expenditure (xiaohao). I identify their terms as “metaphors” that
serve as purposive guides, and I will argue that both conceptions of good parenting share
a common key metaphor: human capital. Drawing on both Western and Chinese
metaphor theory, I will argue that human capital is especially potent for guiding action
because, in the context of my data, it reiterates connections between things, namely,
macro-level phenomena and human choices.
Taken together, the cases will challenge the idea that the work of parenting
operates under a kind of “false consciousness,” as the Marxists would have it. They
suggest that in is in and through economic thinking and behavior that people try to have
some say over their own lives. This might seem like a ridiculous proposition considering
the fact that there is good evidence that educational investment yields tangible benefits.
(Though we could also argue that divination and ritual yield tangible benefits too.) But,
life is not lived in the direction that social scientists work. Phenomenologically speaking,
life is lived in ignorance, not completed mathematical calculations. We do not and cannot
243
be sure of how things will turn out. Thus, we resort to symbolic means to navigate
between uncertainty and control. As Burke has pointed out:
Even in the ‘best possible of worlds,’ the need for symbolic tinkering would
continue. One must erect a vast symbolic synthesis, a rationale of imaginative and
conceptual imagery that ‘locates’ the various aspects of experience. This
symbolism guides social purpose: it provides one with ‘cues’ as to what he should
try to get, how he should try to get it, and how he should ‘resign himself’ to a
renunciation of the things he can’t get. [(1937):179]

The Family Replaces the Commune as a Production Unit
Wang Lingling is a native Kunming-person who publishes nationally and lectures
locally at a wide variety of venues, from Parent Schools organized by the Women’s
Federation to privately-organized events. By all accounts, she is well-liked and respected.
One mother told me that Teacher Wang “has a lot of love”(hen you aixin); she doesn’t
charge any money for phone consultations. Another expressed admiration, noting that she
was once a “rusticated youth”(zhiqing). One teacher told me that unlike other experts
who speak too abstractly at lectures for parents at the middle school she works at,
Teacher Wang is able to keep her audience’s attention. A university teacher who had
never met her before, shared an anecdote she read in Kunming Daily with me: Teacher
Wang used to bath her infant in the outdoor courtyard where she lived, with the intention
of tempering (duanlian) her daughter’s bodily strength. Every time she started
downstairs, her neighbors would sneer, “The crazy one’s coming down.” This anecdote is
ironic in light of the fact that her daughter, who was raised and schooled in Kunming, got
into People’s University in Beijing (Renmin Daxue) despite unfair admission quotas that
limit the chances of students from Kunming.
244
I met Teacher Wang at a dinner one of my informant-friends arranged. It was
attended by seven other women, all mothers, three of them officially “enrolled” in my
study. Teacher Wang was the last to arrive and when she did, everybody stood up and all
of our many dishes suddenly appeared. One of my informant-friends (Wen Hui), who had
been sitting to my left immediately vacated her seat so that I could sit next to Teacher
Wang.
After everyone introduced themselves, dinner and conversation commenced.
Topics of conversation concerned the education of children, alternating between
discussion and Teacher Wang taking specific questions from individual mothers. “What
do Ma Jia Jue and Liu Haiyang have in common?”
120
“Why travel and go to McDonald’s
and KFC?” “Howard Gardner found that humans have eight kinds of intelligence.” “How
do I get my daughter to be more efficient?” “Do I have my daughter signed up for too
much?” “When should a parent stop governing/taking care (guan) of a child?” “Is it bad
for a boy to spend too much time with his mother?” “Did encouraging your daughter to
be social conflict with study time?” “Did you ever hit and scold your daughter?” “What
should I do about my daughter’s rebellion?” “My daughter roughhouses with boys.
Should I explain the sexes to her?” “My son worries he isn’t good at anything, what
should I do?” “I forgot to sign my son’s homework and his teacher punished him for it.”
Wang had an answer or suggestion for every question and concern. Her advice to
parents does not differ a whole lot from many other popular Chinese experts, especially

120
Ma Jiajue was a Yunnan University student who was executed for murdering four of his class-mates. Liu
Haiyang, also a university student, threw acid on bears in a zoo. The reasons for their crimes have been
hotly debated.
245
with regards to the importance of psychological health, respecting children and their
developmental stages, their rights and dignity. Where she differs from other popular
experts is her emphasis on spending procedures, the economic practices by which one
creates tiaojian. Having studied history and politics, a faculty member at Yunnan Finance
and Trade College, Teacher Wang is sharply aware of the socioeconomic conditions that
shape parenthood in China today. In a pamphlet she distributes at her talks, Teacher
Wang writes, ‘Family is not only no longer a life unit within [the] planned economy, a
cell of society, it is the production unit (shengchan danwei) within the market economy,
it has the function of investing and producing (touzi chanchu)’(2004:1-2). In other words,
the family has replaced the commune as a production unit, which means that the
responsibility of parents is much greater. Parents are not only responsible for the many
aspects of a child’s psychological development, but also for managing resources and
making choices about educational investments. Teacher Wang has no qualms about
mixing motherhood with consumption. Good parents spend money, particularly, money
on cultivating “specialty”(techang) – “music, dance, performance, and various kind of
Education for Quality (suzhi jiaoyu) training classes” (2004:63). She adds,
Parents know, it won’t be enough to rely on book knowledge in the future. When
the child of another family surpasses one’s own child, one’s own child could
forever be behind. For the child’s future, [one] must persist in learning no matter
how tired [one] is. No matter how frugally [one has to] live, [one] must ensure
investment in a child’s learning, because this is for a child’s tomorrow, so that
one’s child can live even better than today. There will be payback (huibao) from
investing in a child’s future, however small, it is all worth it. [ibid]

With this advice, Teacher Wang advocates the consumption of extra-curricular
educational goods in terms rational calculation, and argues that spending constitutes an
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investment that will yield a payback or return (huibao) in the future. This is rather
interesting because often in capitalist societies, people feel uneasy mixing rational
calculation with parenting.
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But perhaps because Teacher Wang belongs to a generation
where Marxist-thinking was a kind of common sense, she has no qualms about making
economic objectives very explicit. Rather than industrial production quotas, it is now
human “quality” that is at stake. There are no romantic notions about the family
constituting a space apart from economic life, as is the case for North America and
Europe.
In her pamphlet, she explicitly draws on economic theory to promote the
importance of investing in education. She explains:
Nobel Prize winner Schultz has endowed a significant economic character to
education with his “Human Capital Theory.” Degree and direction of educational
investment corresponds with the increase and appreciation of human capital (renli
ziben). The goal of educational investment is profit (shouyi). Speaking in abstract

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Classical economic theory presumes that economic exchange takes place between self-interested,
calculating strangers, not between parents or friends. For this reason, when Theodore Schultz introduces the
collection Economics of the Family, he anticipates that some readers will be offended. He notes that the
“highly personal activities and purposes of parents may seem to be far beyond the realm of the economic
calculus”(1974:4). As anthropologist Janelle Taylor points out in her introduction to Consuming
Motherhood, the opposition between “love” and “money” in the American view is a persistent one. She
writes, “Motherhood is supposed to be a special kind of human relationship, uniquely important because
uniquely free of the kind of calculating instrumentality associated with the consumption of
objects”(2004:3).
With respect to how childhood and motherhood under capitalism is discussed in the
anthropological and sociological literature, the structural opposition between calculating instrumentality on
the one hand, and the intimacy of the family on the other, continues to play out. In the literature I sketched
out above, there is a presumption that the logic of capitalist economic production finds expression in
parental love and effort, yet, “they do not know it” (Marx as quoted in Žižek 1989: 28). But historically and
cross-culturally speaking, people have and continue to be perfectly aware of the economic value of
children, and do not have a need to separate concern and care for children from economic production.
Quantity of children, and their good health, concerns the welfare of a social or family unit. It would be no
great insight on the part of a social scientist to discover this relationship, especially if one is looking at an
agricultural society where the need for human labor is obvious. Of course, in China, the economic value of
children was overtly expressed in the phrase “yang’er fanglao,” or, raising sons for old-age security.

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terms, this profit is expressed in terms of the increase in human capital, a kind of
intangible asset (zichan), hard to take shape. [2004:66]

In its original context, Theodore Schultz’s human capital theory sought to reframe public
spending on education as a kind of investment, challenging a view that saw such
spending as a kind of “consumption” that took away from public funds (1981:20-1, 34).
Similarly, Wang seeks to convince parents that there is a solid rationale behind spending
on education. The “profit”(shouyi) that comes from investment is not direct, but rather,
comes later in a child’s life – when he or she goes tests into a keypoint middle school,
then moves onto higher education, which leads to employment in the “professional labor
market” (zhuanye laodong shichang) (2004:65-7). Just as managers of monetary capital
ought to calculate wisely, so should parents given the fact that the family has replaced the
commune as a “production unit”(shengchan danwei).
In the pamphlet she hands out, she makes two important divisions between what
parents are responsible for: preparing “hardware”(yingjian) and “software”(ruanjian).
While the latter section discusses interpersonal relations, behavioral and subjective
qualities (nature of children, rights, dignity, habits, abilities, sociality, and moral virtues),
the section on hardware, for the most part, frames the discussion of spending and
educational investments. In the pamphlet she writes, “educational investment must be
scientific, maximum gain with relatively little investment”(66). One example of a piece
of practical advice concerns when not to spend: Wang lists and describes a number of
web-sites offering free services as an alternative to costly private tutors and buxi classes.
In another section (2004:70), Wang even offers a mathematical equation that reads:
talent = (grades + diploma) x suzhi
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Wang’s advice for rational calculation should not be seen as simply a means to a
greater economic end, however, i.e. a certain degree of wealth. Like many urban parents,
Teacher Wang is very sensitive to the issue of social survival. She writes, “Those who
have not received a good education will not even have the power of choice under the
market economy”(2004:66). She is also sensitive to the issue of face.
Unlike Schultz, Wang also encourages spending on non-educational goods which
she puts in the categories of “social spending”(shejiao xiaofei) and “entertainment
spending”(yule xiaofei). When it comes to birthdays and holidays, children will need to
give cards and gifts to friends and teachers. Wang tells parents, “…these things have all
become the inevitable expenditures of children”(63). Some will have to throw a birthday
party, to reciprocate for another birthday party. Each must be better than the one before.
Wang explains that if you do not participate, “then it means that you have no
relationships, no position, no friends”(64). Wang is also hip to pop culture and explains
that children have already turned from Hong Kong and Taiwan pop stars toward those
from Korea. From H.O.T. to NRG to Baby V.O.X., children swoon over Korean boy
bands and girl groups. This entails a significant amount of spending, from posters to
concert tickets. Buying music, playing video games, watching the latest movies all
determine whether or not children will have “something to talk about” amongst their
peers (2004:64). Even if parents do not support this kind of spending, Wang explains that
children will save their breakfast and lunch money.
This advice is significant because Chinese parents would not normally think that
there is a solid rationale behind spending on non-educational goods. Surely, some urban
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parents have no problem supporting a child’s spending habits (a teenager once told me
that some of her classmates get a new mobile phone every time a new model comes out,
some even get as much as 600 RMB monthly allowance), but they do not necessarily
have what Teacher Wang calls “preparing hardware”(yingjian zhunbei) in mind. The
advice is also significant because many Chinese parents do not understand or support a
child’s adoration of pop stars, which, in local language, has even come to be satirized.
Children take commercial popular culture so seriously that their adoration has even come
to assume the form of an “-ism,” as in “chasing star-ism”(zhuixing zhuyi), which plays on
the “-ism” of socialism (shehui zhuyi). Other parents do not support social spending at all,
let alone socializing with peers. One particularly strict parent I knew forbade her 12 year
old son from attending any birthday parties, as she felt that socializing is the business of
adults.
For Teacher Wang, reservations about consumption are unreasonable. She
advocates this kind of spending, but not because there is something intrinsic to the
commodities themselves. Rather, it is in and through consumption that social
relationships are fostered and maintained. For one, Wang hopes that by explaining these
things, she can narrow the generation gap between parents and children. Two, she hopes
to show parents that by resisting the social reality of having to consume, one risks making
one’s child an outcast. Non-educational spending is just as important as educational
spending, for, participating in consumption is a matter of “face”(mianzi), something that
even children have to worry about.
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At the dinner I attended, Wang explains that the attraction children have for
Western fast-food does not concern a value intrinsic to the food, their self-confidence is
at stake. Rather than deny a meal at McDonald’s, she suggests, communicate with them
and discover the root of their desire. This advice is in the pamphlet as well:
Eat some Western fast-food, wear some name-brand, use some luxury goods, go
to tourist destinations, there are more choices in the lives of children. There is no
need to inhibit the desires of children. […] For the most part parents have no other
choice, they can only satisfy [the desire]. Otherwise, [your] child will have no
face in a group, their self-respect will be harmed. The loss caused by an attack on
self-respect is hard to estimate. [2004:64]

Self-confidence (zixin xin), or belief in oneself literally, is a topic of frequent occurrence
as is its opposite: inferiority complex (zibei gan). In the section headed by the
aforementioned equation, talent = (grades + diploma) x suzhi, Wang states: “What a child
will do in the future when they’re grown up is not important. What is important is that the
child has some kind of hobby. When other children are flaunting their own hobbies, your
child will not feel inferior”(2004:70-1). In 2004, the cost of China’s growing inequality
was made especially clear when Ma Jiajue, a poor Yunnan University student from the
countryside murdered four of his class-mates. In a poem he supposedly wrote from jail,
he describes how he was made to feel inferior - the mockery he suffered for dressing and
acting differently. While class-mates rented apartments to cohabit with girlfriends, Ma
Jiajue could barely even afford a cell phone let alone a pair of slippers. Wang has Ma
Jiajue in mind when she emphasizes the dangers of losing self-respect and feeling
inferior.
Surely much of Wang’s advice serves to effect socioeconomic differentiation,
ensuring (and reinforcing) the growing distance between urban and rural citizens.
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Anagnost argues, “By means of the very practices intended to enhance its development,
the child’s body comes to express not only concerns for the national future, but also fears
about the loss of class position on the part of urban parents, who experience an intense
anxiety about their ability to maintain a foothold in an elite class”(1997a:217). Indeed
Wang promotes what Bourdieu would call the creation of cultural capital, which would
serve to distinguish its possessors while offering better access to economic opportunities
(1986). From Wang’s perspective however, the issue is less about differentiating oneself
than finding a sense of security. She once asked me rhetorically, ‘Parents, who spent
most of their childhood in a planned economy, find it hard to find certainty in the present,
how can they feel any sense of certainty about the future?’
For Teacher Wang, parents have no choice but to make consumption choices. She
asks, “In this [social transition] period, we and our children have been tied to the crazy
chariot (fengkuang de zhanche) that is the market economy. What course to follow”
(2004:1)? This question is at the heart of a parent’s dilemma, as far as Wang is
concerned, having to make choices. Contrarily, in the planned economy, one only need to
follow the Party line and everything would be okay. I have heard Teacher Wang say
many times, ‘You can count on the milk being there, you can count on the bread being
there.’ Your child did not have to go to college to find employment under the planned
economy, his or her livelihood was secured in your work-unit or danwei. In contrast, she
writes in her pamphlet, the market economy “will not be moved by tears”(bu xiangxin
yanlei) (2004:2). For Chinese children who ‘face the cruelty of the market economy’s
survival of the fittest as soon as they are born’(2004:3), life is a “long-distance
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race”(chang juli saipao) where differences get starker and starker only towards the end
(2004:2).
It is in this context that ensuring a child’s self-confidence – by spending money –
becomes paramount. Rational calculation is not simply a means to a greater economic
good (a certain degree of wealth). It is a strategy for managing uncertainty. In my view, it
is for this reason that Teacher Wang is so popular with parents in Kunming, she seems to
understand the kind of dilemma parents face in raising a child amid intense competition.
Of course parents want their child to be happy. Of course they would like for their child
to have a good life. And of course they want their child to have a respectable occupation
in the future. But what is most pressing is the immediate problem of trying to remain
socially visible. In the last chapter, I argued that for parents, creating tiaojian has the
purpose of ensuring a child’s self-respect and likeability in the face of classmates and
teachers. Teacher Wang is sensitive to this issue too. In fact, ensuring that a child is
likable is also a part of her discussion of “preparing hardware”(yingjian zhunbei), for
teachers often make determinations based on “personality”(xingge) (2004:77). Even
students at the best schools can find themselves in an environment adverse to learning.
Wang points out: “… a group of children who all go to the same really good school eat
the same rice. But, that doesn’t mean that every child will develop really well in this kind
of environment. Every social environment has differentiations. Just as in an organization,
some are cadres, some are commoners”(2004:76). How a teacher sees a child has
enormous consequences for development and achievement.
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One of the practices Wang advises against is giving gifts to a child’s teacher to
ensure “special care”(tebie de guanhuai) (2004:77). Gift giving, Wang stresses, in place
of a cultivating a good personality can only create a “vicious cycle” where a teacher
commends falsely, thereby attracting the dislike of classmates which “places the child in
an even worse situation” (2004:77).
That Wang places spending money and cultivating a likeable personality under
the same section – “preparing hardware”(yingjian zhunbei) – indicates that investing
money and energy is more a matter of security amidst uncertainty than one of economic
instrumentality. Like the parents she advises, she is sensitive to the issue of social
visibility, and the possibility of what I call getting lost in a classroom.
Two people are in a forest, here comes a tiger
“In the face of the loss of the power to do,” Michael Jackson tells us, “one still
retains the power to undo, for action is never merely a matter of making a material
difference to the way things are; it includes the work of the imagination whereby reality
is continually rethought and reconstrued” (1998:203). In Mr. Deng’s case, he has chosen
to exercise the power of not doing, in the face of having the moral responsibility to do a
lot. Much to his wife’s frustration, he repudiates the importance of sending a child to
extra-curricular classes, and of selecting the right school. We met Mr. Deng’s wife in the
last chapter, Zhang Xin. She is the mother who expressed regret over being absent during
her son’s first six years of life, attributing this fact to her son’s “strange personality.”
While Zhang Xin feels that one ought to try one’s hardest, her husband wants to
‘let him go.’ Many father in my case families feel more casual about a child’s education.
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But Mr. Deng is not simply casual, he adamantly rejects having to learn too much. Like
Teacher Wang, Mr. Deng also conceives of a child’s life as a long-distance race. Unlike
Teacher Wang, who feels that small differences will only become larger later in the race,
Mr. Deng insists that winning the race depends on conserving one’s energy. While Wang
encourages spending, Deng insists on saving. In an interview I did, he consistently
reiterated that he does not want to “overdraw”(touzhi) on his son’s motivation, his
emotions, and his intelligence. He says, “Taking the latter fifty years of a person’s whole
life, and you press it all into the first twelve years, and take care of this kid at this time,
this isn’t realistic and it isn’t scientific.” At stake is a person’s psychological resources. If
talent and skills constitute human capital for Wang, to be created through monetary
investment, it is the life energies (huoli) for Deng, a limited resource to be conserved.
As I pointed out in the last chapter, how people tells stories can reveal how a
person considers life possibilities. Mr. Deng is no exception. He gave many examples
suggesting that real success comes later in life, something schooling does not have any
direct correlation with. He points out that China’s many millionaires and billionaires did
not go to school, and that best-selling authors did not study literature. He’s also observed
in his own field that education does not necessarily translate into career success. Top
leaders are those that have ability, not good grades. He invokes an academician at the
Chinese Academy of the Sciences:
Deng: He experienced too many successful failures. His experience is extremely
rich. He’s organized the biggest construction projects. Someone with a doctorate,
who dares to give him millions of yuan to direct? But people are willing to give it
to this guy, he’s led tens of thousands of workers, he’s already led thousands of
people by 27 years old, to do work. He has experience, he knows how to manage
people. He also knows how to use money. He also knows how to use power. So
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he has, what they call emotional intelligence. His emotional intelligence is very
high, he knows how to manage people, manage things, manage money. While
these, those students who have made it to Tsinghua [University], learning various
kinds of engineering skills-, those who have passed through the entire curriculum,
all you have is knowledge (zhili). Is someone going to tell you to organize
millions of yuan?

What is at stake in Mr. Deng’s reasoning is a subject of much debate in China,
one concerning “the relationship between an academic record society (xueli shehui), a
society where promotions are based on connections [and “real” talent and ability], and the
need for lifelong learning”(Rosen 1999:5). The academician Deng speaks of did not “do
well” at the level of higher education. But because he has had rich life experience, and
high emotional intelligence, he has risen to the top. Deng sets this in contrast to the
adolescents who start training early on, the Olympic math champions who completely
lose interest in math by the time they reach adulthood. “Why?” Deng asks, “It’s like I
was saying, he’s already overdrawn (touzhi) on his knowledge. He’s also overdrawn on
his emotions. He doesn’t even want to think about math.”
For Deng, the risk of overdrawing could entail something more severe. He gave a
number of examples of people who have died from overwork: ITs in Shenzhen in their
20s, a company CEO who died of a heart-attack at 38, and a 36 year-old general manager
at Shanghai Volkswagen who leaped out from the 17
th
floor of a building. While the
demands of competition can lead to loss of interest in children, for adults, the demands of
economic productivity can sometimes lead to death.
Deng: They’re all dead. Died from overwork. This cohort, they were just saying,
Chinese science-and-technology, aren’t scientists either, because they couldn’t
run any longer in the second half of the race. But there are those that suffer too.
And died from working too hard. On the other hand we also feel, that’s also
China’s elite class. China’s elite are too diligent. Even more so than the Japanese.
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Have given up their rest. And then as soon as you look, like her [referring to his
wife], her brother-in-law, worker! A mechanic. Hasn’t had a day of rest since last
year. Your boss gives you a task, your manager gives you a task, produce a task.
If you don’t go over-time, don’t work on Saturday, Sunday, there’s no way you
can finish.

For Deng, there is a deep cultural logic that has shaped everything - from
education, to work, to economic policies. The same logic that informs the exploitation of
environmental resources also informs the exploitation of human resources, or the life
energies. He invokes the rush to industrialize during the Great Leap Forward, and more
recent developmental projects to make his point.
Deng: We’ve taken all of China’s big rivers, whatever we could dam we’ve
dammed. It’s pretty much all done. […] So we can only go and seize in the Third
World. That’s why our businesses have all rushed out. Road building, China’s
pretty much built all the highways she can build. So we can only build roads
outside.

TK: Go to Southeast Asia.

Deng: Ah. We don’t go to Southeast Asia anymore! Now we’re going to South
America and Africa. We’re building electric stations in South America and
Africa. Drilling oil in South America, right over to Africa. Excavating steel ores
in South America right over to Africa. So right now, so these ways of doing
things and you get to our children and, none of the things they’re learning are
useful. Wait until he encounters, what he will face in the future is something no
one can predict. What’s the best for him right now? Take care of his body, ensure
his life energy (huoli). Ensure his curiosity. Or his enthusiasm. That’s enough.
After new things appear in the future, at that time everybody else has already
expended (xiaohao) their talents-and-intelligence. To the point where they’re sick
of learning, that’ll be the time for him to go. That’s my opinion.

Mr. Deng travels the world and the span of history to explain, and justify, his
parenting style. His perspective is of course unique to his professional background and
his own complicity in the development of the third world, and he draws a symmetry
between relations of production in the world and relations of production at home easily.
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For Deng, there is an economic logic that structures not only the extraction of natural
resources but also the human “expenditure”(xiaohao) of life energy. This came to China
late, Mr. Deng notes – having Britain’s industrial revolution in mind. But China already
had a cultural practice that informs, he feels, the needless expenditure of life energy: the
imperial civil service examination system. In his opinion, success in this system
depended on knowing things, better than any one else, that had no practical value in the
officialdom. The current exam-oriented education system is a continuation of an old
tradition, and in his view:
“You have no choice but to cope with Chinese education, [it] wants to pick out a
small portion of people who can live well out of the [population] of Chinese
people. And then another portion who have no way to live well. In order for the
other portion to live well. In this situation, [China has] adopted a kind of, the
fairest, because test-taking is only test-taking, only comparing intelligence is
fair.”

As emphatic as Mr. Deng is about his point of view, that he is right to ‘let his son
go,’ he admits that he is not as free to act as he wishes. He finds some consolation in the
fact that his colleagues also feel the same way about child rearing, as informed by their
years of study and professional experience. He says, “We all feel it’s terrible. So it’s just
like this right now. But it’s useless to know, you still have to let [your kid] go and study.
You know clearly that this is completely irrational, but you still have to execute.” Like
the mothers in a previous chapter, he too feels ambivalent (maodun). He puts the reality
of competition like this, again, in life and death terms:
“So people have this story, this story people tell: two people are in a forest, let’s
say two Chinese people. We don’t even have to mention foreigners. Two Chinese
people are in a forest. The tiger has come. In the beginning both of them are
running. Later one of them, gave up. Said, ‘Aiya, I can’t. How can we outrun a
tiger? A tiger is fast. We’re not even long-distance running champions, [we] can’t
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win this race.’ The other person now, very smart. “Outrun the tiger that’s for sure!
Neither of us can outrun the tiger. But as long as I run faster than you that’s good
enough. Once the tiger eats you, I can live.” So I don’t need to be a long-distance
running champion, I don’t have to have the ability to run long-distance. And my
speed doesn’t have to be high either. As long as I can outrun you, that’s good
enough.”

In this allegory, the tiger is social competition, one that aims to select the excellent out of
a large population of people. Those who are not selected are then “eliminated”(taotai), or
eaten. Mr. Deng does not want his son to be “eliminated,” but he doesn’t want to
overdraw on his life energies either. So he shouldn’t run his fastest, but only fast enough
to survive.
This is an extremely delicate balance he is trying to strike. If the balance tips too
far in one direction or another, the repercussions are not easy to predict. I could not help
but wonder what it was like for Mr. Deng’s son to be part of a four-some wherein he was
the least, to speak in Chinese terms, “excellent.” Their four mothers met each other at an
extra-curricular English school for kids. Because they got along so well themselves, they
often brought their children together. Two are elected class monitors (banzhang), and the
other is unusually obedient and enthusiastic about learning. That Mr. Deng’s son Deng
Siwen scored 40 out of 100 points on one particular test was everybody’s business. ‘Of
course his mother is worried about him!’ one of the others exclaimed to me, her own
daughter scored 80 on the same test.
I could not help but feel concern for Deng Siwen myself. Every other Sunday I
had Deng Siwen and his three “playmates,” or I should say learning-mates, over at my
apartment. I had an arrangement with the four mothers that I would teach their children
English with games. I used games from my own childhood, e.g. “Simon Says,” “Go
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Fish,” and re-created “Memory” and “Chutes and Ladders” with white paper and colored
markers. While these games worked well with other groups, it was particularly difficult
with this one. American children’s games are all competitive, with winners and losers.
Deng Siwen was often the “loser,” last to get to the top in “Chutes and Ladders” for
example. It wasn’t that he wasn’t able to answer the questions I created, which allowed
players to move one, three or fives steps ahead. Deng Siwen just wasn’t interested in
getting ahead. When he was in a space where he could take the “ladder” to skip a number
of steps, he chose not to. On a different day, he simply packed his backpack after losing
interest in a game, and left right in the middle. “I don’t want to play anymore,” he stated
simply. His refusal and resistance frustrated me, as a “teacher,” mostly because it had a
direct effect on the other children.
His attitude also had a direct effect on his social relationships. My suspicion that
my competitive games were not good for him was confirmed when I learned from one of
the other mothers that the day we played “Chutes and Ladders,” two of his playmates ran
downstairs from my apartment bragging about who won and who came in last (he came
in last). Deng Siwen refused to come to my apartment again after that, which the other
mothers did not look upon too well. How could he have so little ability to bear failure
(chengshou shibai)? they wondered. Life is full of them. Consequently, on a different
play-date (led by a different English teacher), Deng Siwen was not invited. In fact, his
mother Zhang Xin was sometimes not invited to events she probably would have liked to
attend. For example, three of the four mothers were present at the dinner with Teacher
Wang, and the one who arranged the dinner, normally very good friends with Zhang Xin,
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explained to me that she did not invite Zhang Xin because there were simply already too
many people.
What this indicates is that the intensity of social competition can even be
expressed in relationships between good friends. I sensed that Zhang Xin’s friends saw
her son Deng Siwen as a bad influence, and did not always include them for this reason.
Can his refusal to compete be attributed to his father’s values?
It is important to Zhang Xin that she has her husband’s support. Because he is so
often out of town, she feels like a single-parent, which may be just as well given their
disagreement. She says, “Sometimes, I feel when I’m with him at home, if his dad isn’t
around, sometimes, I think he’s quite obedient (guai). So I say maybe one person is better
than two, especially if you have different ideas, don’t want to disagree when educating a
kid, then it’s even more hard, ah?” Zhang Xin feels that her husband “spoils” their son
too much, making it difficult for her to teach him particular values and abilities.
At the same time, this couple might agree more than they admit. On the way to
dinner one night, Mr. Deng played a game with his son (as they held hands in the
backseat). He sort of “interviewed” his son, something he also likes to do with Deng
Siwen’s school-mates when he’s waiting at the gate after-school. The conversation went
something like this:
‘What do you think is better, going to school or playing?’
‘Definitely not going to school!’ Deng Siwen said.
I joined in and asked, ‘Well what would do you with all the free time?’
‘Do the things I like to do!’
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‘But you live in China so you have no choice,’ his father said, ‘you must learn a
few things and make yourself stand out.’
This conversation moves from the playful to the pedagogical. Actually Mr. Deng
already knows what the answer is, as he’s posed this question to schoolchildren many
times before. But he acts like he doesn’t know, and creates a suspended space where his
son can resist school discipline, only to tell him he has no choice but to work hard. Mr.
Deng and his wife actually converge on the view that hard work is not a matter of choice,
it may not even necessarily be for an immediate good. It is simply a brute necessity.
Recall from the last chapter, Zhang Xin said to her son: “What you know is important,
what you should put effort into, then you put in effort. Because that’s how it is in China.”
Mr. Deng must execute even though he would like to do otherwise, “Because the choices
[my son] faces are really, really cruel.”
As much as Mr. Deng would like to simply let his son go, he does indeed
“execute” in his own ways. When I first visited their home, Deng Siwen gave me a tour
of his bedroom. In addition to everything else that bespoke of his middle-class childhood
– toys upon toys, books upon books, and glossy studio photographs of him in various
costumes – there were yellow post-it notes everywhere. Every post-it note had a different
English term scribbled on it, not by – to my surprise – his mother, but by his father, Mr.
Deng. He is indeed ambivalent.
Two Genres for Managing Uncertainty
In the two cases presented, good parenting is formulated in explicitly economic
terms. One invokes the terms invest (touzi), profit (shouyi), asset (zichan), produce
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(chanchu), production unit (shengchan danwei), and human capital (renli ziben) (Wang
2004), the other invokes overdraw (touzhi) and expend/expenditure (xiaohao). While
Teacher Wang’s use of economically-oriented language is deliberate – informed by her
acquaintance with Theodore Schultz’s theory of human capital and her faculty work
teaching economics at Yunnan Finance and Trade College, Mr. Deng’s use is perhaps
less deliberate – though it is certainly shaped by his professional background.
I argue that the economically-oriented terms found in these two versions of good
parenting are metaphors. And they all point to one common key metaphor: human capital.
Mr. Deng does not actually use the term human capital as Teacher Wang does, but his
concern with conserving his son’s life energy - enthusiasm, emotions, and intelligence,
constructs a theory of human capital that sees the above as nonrenewable resources that
can run out. I juxtapose the two views so as to better illuminate what is at stake in the
rational calculation that Teacher Wang encourages, and the fervor with which mothers
pursue extra-curricular education for their children. I argue that we should not mistake
Wang’s advice nor maternal fervor as an obsession with success and a certain degree of
wealth, rather, what they are really concerned about is surviving the competition and
exercising some measure of control over a child’s fate. Mr. Deng shares the same
concern, but has a different strategy. For Teacher Wang and the many mothers who
practice what she teaches, survival depends on creating human capital through monetary
investment, while for Mr. Deng, survival depends on conserving the life energies, one’s
psychological resources.
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I argue that the idea of human capital is metaphorical in the sense that capital, in
its conventional sense, refers to money, or to seeds and farming implements in agrarian
contexts – neither of which can be embodied by the human being. Similarly, to speak of
the family as a “production unit”(Wang), or of “overdrawing” on life energies (Deng), is
to conceive of matters in metaphorical terms.
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Production units in Maoist China did not
produce human beings, but rather material goods and industrial products. Overdrawing,
in its literal sense, refers to taking out more money from a bank account than one has
saved, or getting paid salary one has yet to earn – one cannot literally withdraw one’s
stock of life energies. These metaphors support a number of related premises that inform
theories of metaphor: metaphor is a mode of thought that conceives of “one thing in
terms of another”(Lakoff and Johnson 1980:36); it is a process by which “[t]hings or
ideas which were remote appear now as close” (Ricoeur 1979:145); it is the “application
of the name of a thing to something else” (Aristotle 1970); it creates new links between
incongruous things (Burke 1954). I argue that the terms I have identified as metaphors in
our two cases forge “unlikely” congruities between unlikely categories and experiences.
In its original theoretical context, the theory of human capital indeed conceives of
one thing in terms of another. Theodore Schultz, who Teacher Wang draws on, drew an
analogy between material and human capital in arguing that the latter also “entails
acquisition and maintenance costs”(Schultz 1981:13). Schultz has in mind child care,
nutrition, clothing, housing, medical services, and care of oneself, which we do not

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In the 1996 edition of the Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, “touzhi” had a three-part definition. In the 2005
edition, a fourth definition was added: “a metaphor for the over-expenditure of energy (jingshen) and
physical strength…” (Ning Yu, personal communication)
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normally think of as being a kind of “maintenance,” because maintenance is usually
something one does with inanimate objects such as machines. In conceiving and
reasoning about human capital in this way, borrowing its meaning from something
tangible, Schultz renders the idea of human capital tangible. How Schultz conceives of
human capital is similar to how “labor” and “time” is conceived. In their seminal
Metaphors We Live By, Lakoff and Johnson consider “labour is a resource” and “time is a
resource” as metaphors “culturally grounded in our experience with material resources”
(1980:65). Both labor and time are immaterial. But like a material resource such as coal,
labor and time are also used in producing a product, can be quantified and given a value,
and get “used up progressively as the purpose is served” (1980:65). They constitute what
Lakoff and Johnson call “ontological metaphors,” rendering something intangible into an
entity amenable to human purpose (1980:25-9, 66). By speaking of labor and time as if
they were discrete entities, we can reason about them” (1980:25).
In the same way, I argue, speaking about human capital and life energies as if
they were discrete entities allows Teacher Wang and Mr. Deng to reason about them.
Like “labor” and “time,” these immaterial aspects of experience are grounded in their
cultural experiences with material production. Wang’s conception of human capital is
grounded in her personal experience of life under Maoist socialism, when production
quotas determined the output of material and industrial goods. Now that communes have
been dismantled, she argues that it is the family that has become a “production
unit”(shengchan danwei), responsible for the output of individuals high in human capital.
Mr. Deng’s conception of human capital – his idea that a person has a stock of
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psychological resources, such as enthusiasm, which can be used up progressively – is
grounded in his professional involvement in developing infrastructure for harnessing
energy in Southeast Asia. Just as developmental logic can extract natural resources to
depletion, the demands of economic productivity in urban China can result in the total
“expenditure”(xiaohao) of a person’s life energy.
The Pragmatic Value of Metaphor
When Lakoff and Johnson identify “ontological metaphors” as rendering
something intangible in entities amenable to human purpose, they point to a rather
underemphasized aspect of the metaphorical process. Metaphors do not only have
cognitive value, but a pragmatic one too. This is certainly the case with the metaphor of
human capital – as conceived in its original theoretical context, as used explicitly by
Teacher Wang, and as constructed by Mr. Deng in his concern with a person’s stock of
life energy. Specifically, the metaphor of human capital serves to offer a purposive guide
for managing and controlling uncertainty.
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In its original theoretical context, human capital is understood as allowing farmers
to control for risk, to subdue the impersonal forces of nature, “host to thousands of

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Actually, one could argue that economic theory itself emerged as a mode of managing the uncertainty
that surrounds resources. This argument has been made in the medical anthropology literature with regard
to biomedicine. Like non-Western divination and healing practices and agentive uses of biomedicine, even
the very institution of biomedicine serves an existential need to manage and control uncertainty that
surrounds good health (Whyte 1997; Jenkins, et. al. 2005; Mogensen 2005). As Schultz contends:
“Fundamental economic theory has general applicability, in the sense that it is not restricted to a particular
society, culture, or country, whether small or large, poor or rich. All people are constrained by scarce
resources. The things they want are not free; they thus choose to use the resources available to them that
best serve their preferences”(1981:141). At the heart of economic theory is the need to resolve the human
problem of need versus scarcity, constraint versus purposive action. In its original context, Schultz’s theory
of human capital helped to resolve a problem posed by the needs of a population and land scarcity. Schultz
argued that the key to economic productivity does not depend on land, but rather “the acquired abilities of
people…”(1981:xi).

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species that are hostile to the endeavors of farmers”(Schultz 1981:17). Embodied human
capital allows farmers “to perceive, interpret, and respond to new events in a context of
risk…” (1981:25). For Teacher Wang and Mr. Deng, the risk lies in the impersonal force
of market capitalism rather than nature. Though the risk is not as severe as famine, which
farmers face, it can be as severe as loss of self-confidence or unemployment (Wang), and
loss of interest or death from overwork (Deng). By conceiving of human capital as a
tangible entity that one can create with monetary investment, an entity that Wang also
refers to as an “asset”(zichan), she offers parents, who have the economic resources, a
sense of control over the risks posed by competition. By conceiving of life energy as a
tangible entity that one can conserve rather than “overdraw”(touzhi) on or
“expend”(xiaohao), Mr. Deng feels a measure of control over the impersonal force of
developmental logic by going easy on his son.
But the reason why the metaphor of human capital can serve as a purposive guide
is not sufficiently explained with Western metaphor theory. Drawing on Chinese
metaphor theory, I want to argue that its potency is related to the fact that this metaphor is
less “novel,” as Western metaphor theory would have it, than “reiterative.” In an essay
titled “Metaphor and Bi,” Michelle Yeh asks whether or not metaphor is a universal
feature of poetic discourse. She finds that metaphor in Western poetics, with its
“emphasis on tension, disparity, and incompatibility”(252), is rather at odds with the use
of bi in classical Chinese poetics. Bi “suggests a matching of two members of the same
kind”(245-6), a more prominent feature in Chinese poetics. This feature contrasts
Western uses of metaphor in a number of ways, the most important of which, with
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respect to the discussion at hand, is its ability to cast the world in terms of affinity and
correspondence. Yeh argues, “To bi, to create an analogy or metaphor, is […] to present a
pair of images that are paradigmatic of the ontological correspondence or ‘resonance’
between things in the organic universe. Instead of the tension and disjunction that we
have observed in the Western concept of metaphor, bi presumes affinity and
complementarity”(250). While metaphor demonstrates the creative genius of its creator
(or user) in Western poetics, the Chinese bi “reiterates” immanent connections between
things (250).
The economic terms used in our two cases, which I have identified as having the
quality of a metaphor, reiterate the socioeconomic logic that shapes social life in post-
Mao China. Surely the “human capital” metaphor derives its meaning from material
capital (Schultz and Wang) and natural resources (Deng), and therefore has a “structure
of transference…”(Yeh 245). But it also casts the world in terms of affinity and
correspondence. (Target and source domain are not categorically incongruous.) Use of
this metaphor is a perception of a single principle, one that informs not only tangible
material production, but also human reproduction. For Deng, it is the principle of energy
exploitation – observed in both human development and in the global political economy
that links China to Southeast Asia, South America and Africa. For Wang, it is the
principle of cost and benefit. As in farm or factory production, so in family reproduction:
one must spend and invest to be economically viable. Both principles are variations on
the broader logic of market capitalism. For both individuals, this logic is impersonal and
inhuman. For Wang, the market economy is a “crazy chariot”(fengkuang de zhanche) that
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“cannot be moved by tears”(bu xiangxin yanlei). For Deng the market economy will
exploit to utter depletion, just as all the rivers in China have been dammed, all the oil in
South America has been drilled, and all the steel ores in South America have been
excavated.
Yet, while the logic perceived is inhuman, Wang and Deng’s theories of human
capital suggest that the movement of capital ultimately depends on human choices. In this
way, the human capital metaphor holds pragmatic value and offers a guide to action. One
can actively create it, or actively conserve it.
Between Teacher Wang and Mr. Deng, we have two very different genres of
managing uncertainty, or, two very different acts of “symbolic synthesis” (Burke [1937]).
Both genres recognize given constraints while offering the possibility of a measure of
control. For Wang, you can control your fate with organized effort. For Deng, there is
little you can control, but you can conserve your life energies. Teacher Wang’s version of
good parenting is hopeful for those who follow her recommendations, tragic for those
who do not. Mr. Deng’s version of good parenting starts with a tragic view: what you are
supposed to do as a child in urban China is worthless, yet hopeful in suggesting that
things will sort themselves out eventually. Accumulation of life experience will bestow
good things.
Children and Economic Value
What happened to the economic value of children in relation to old-age security,
overtly expressed in the old saying yang’er fanglao? In urban China currently, parents are
less overtly interested in the value of children in this sense, than in building value into a
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child, that is to say, increasing their human capital or suzhi by selecting good schools and
sending them to extra-curricular classes. Few of the parents I knew expect that their
efforts will one day be returned with filial piety (the case for rural China is different).
Though they commonly see selfishness as a widespread problem amongst urban only-
children, they also blame themselves. Many feel that they have reared their child in a way
that does not foster caring for others (guanxin bieren). They identify this as an outcome
of rising standards of living, and as an outcome of the one-child policy. Most urban
children have grown up with many adults orbiting around them (weirao). During family
meals, an important site for practicing care for others, parents have become accustomed
to giving their child the best food on the table. They feel satisfaction simply in seeing
their child eat something. Urban parents of primary school age children also lower their
expectations for old-age care seeing how older children of older friends have turned out.
They see in grown only-children a defiant sense of independence, and they see how
career paths can geographically separate families rather permanently. Some parents feel
that it is not fair to expect a child to return care in old-age. As one mother said to me,
“You could not possibly-, as an only-child, especially if both married children are only-
children. If the man is an only child and the woman is also an only child, that’s a family
that has to take care of four elderly people. Can they do it? They can’t do it.” This mother
expects that China might one day have retirement homes for the elderly.
Some children do indeed have the virtues that might translate into filial piety in
the future, and their parents feel lucky because the effort to confer a competitive edge in a
child tends to overshadow everything else. Of course Chinese parents wish for their son
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or daughter to be a more caring person, but as Vanessa Fong found in her research with
parents of teenagers, this value is fundamentally at odds with the values of independence
and excellence (2007). Some of the parents I came to know in Kunming, those who
sometimes see their child as not caring about others enough, express regret over paying
so much more attention to school and “specialty” education to the neglect of this aspect.
But this is not a matter of choice as far as they are concerned, mei banfa they would say.
The time-honored virtue of care for others and filiality has taken a backseat
because urban parents see the future of their child as even less secure than their own.
They are too busy making sure that a child survives the competition and stands out from
the crowd as a student worth investing effort into. Wang Yan, who sometimes wishes that
her bright and talented daughter was a more caring person, genuinely feels satisfied,
overall, especially when she looks around her, at her friend Wen Hui’s son – who hates to
read, at another friend’s kid – who has been asked to transfer to a different school despite
his caring heart, and at her co-workers – some of whom get summoned into a teacher’s
office everyday to be admonished for something a child did or did not do. Wang Yan said
to me very thoughtfully:
“Actually I feel very satisfied, really very satisfied. Sometimes I feel like, you
know (clicks her tongue), [I just] hope that her life can be better. Hope that she,
that she lives even better later. Actually, you know, us parents, we have jobs.
Right? We’re working people. And then, food and clothing, we won’t really lack
anything. But, the child’s life you know, she hasn’t even walked much. [Her life]
has just begun. So right now basically, (clicks her tongue), we still stress
studying. Actually the issue with scores, you have no choice (mei banfa) but to
care.”

Zhou Huawei, another mother in my study, never mentioned care for others or
filiality when she spoke at length about the goal of educating a child with me. Not only
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does she not expect her daughter to provide old-age care, she has even purchased
insurance for her, so as to give her “a certain level of economic security”(jingji shang gei
ta yiding de baozhang) in adulthood. When Zhou Huawei urges her husband to take a
more active role in parenting, she reminds him of the nature of competition their daughter
faces. Like Mr. Deng, her husband does not feel a need for intensive parenting, especially
at the lower levels of primary school. “Aiya, [her homework], it’s so easy, we don’t need
to…” Zhou Huawei quotes him as saying. But she has had to point out to him that it is
not as easy as he thinks, and she draws on stories about nearby-others to persuade him –
those of older friends who are facing the complicated financial choices involved in
selecting a good school. She relates, “[I told him], only by letting our child have a good
future can we feel satisfied and smile. If the child does not have a good future, then that’s
really sad.” What is a good future for Zhou Huawei? She explained her conception in this
way, “as long as she is not picking trash, those kinds of occupations.” She made very
clear after saying this that she does not mean to demean people who fill these
occupational roles. But she also does not think it is realistic to expect a parent not to
harbor such a wish.
Actually, I have heard many people invoke trash-picking as one possible outcome
of an unsuccessful life. This is more symbolic than anything else, and it points to two
things: one, an anxiety over social differentiation at a moment in which class divisions
have yet to solidify and two, a sense that a child’s future could be very vulnerable to
undeserved reversals, such as, falling out of favor with a teacher, missing one point on an
entrance exam, and unemployment in adulthood.
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Conclusion
Because childhood and family life in post-Mao China has been so definitively
shaped by political and global economic processes, a person-centered approach toward
the lived experience of parenting is not immediately obvious. At the same time, the
economic language that an anthropologist like Ann Anagnost uses in analyzing parental
effort is not exactly experience-far either, though one might assume that it is. Parents are
well aware of the commercialization of education, that consumption is a form of
investment, and that raising a high quality child contributes to the national good. It may
look from the outside as if all the effort mothers make is an internalization of ideological
norms. But it is less accurate to say, “they do not know it, but they are doing it”(Marx
quoted in Žižek 1989: 28), than to say, I suggest, “they know it, and they have no choice
but to do it.”
We should not assume that a concern with economic well-being is an indication
of a growing materialism in China, as some observers seem to think. Rather, as I argued
in the last chapter, creating tiaojian is a matter of moral responsibility. It is important for
parents to feel as if they have tried everything possible, within their domain of action, to
ensure a fair chance for their child. This is something Teacher Wang is sensitive to and
something Mr. Deng struggles with. As Kenneth Burke points out, “Property and
propriety are not etymologically so close by mere accident. Morals and property are
integrally related. They are obverse and reverse of the same coin. They both equip us for
living” ([1935]:212). It is easy to prioritize one before the other, especially in a discipline
that has historically emphasized norms and behavior over human drama and action. To
give a classic example of this tension in anthropology, consider this: before Renato
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Rosaldo lost his wife and colleague Michelle in a tragic fieldwork accident, he
understood headhunting as a way of “balancing the books,” exchanging one death for
another (1993:3). It was not until he had the personal experience of loss that he
understood “emotional force” as an important way of understanding social life.
In this chapter, I have tried to argue that it is in and through economic thinking
and behavior that people try to have some say over a child’s life. Because it so happens
that readily available cultural idioms are so economically-oriented in post-Mao China,
what people invoke for the purpose of exercising personal efficacy over impersonal
forces might appear as ideological.
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Chapter 7: “Read ten thousand books, walk ten thousand miles”
In 1993, educational researcher Sun Yunxiao published an essay that shook the
public in the popular magazine Reader (Duzhe). Entitled “A Summer Camp’s Trial of
Strength,” the essay reported on an Inner Mongolia trek in which over a hundred children
from Japan and China participated, ages 11 through 16. In Sun’s view, the trek “revealed
the many weaknesses of Chinese children…”(2006c[1993]:191). When a Chinese trekker
got sick, she was whisked back to base camp. When a Japanese boy got sick, he refused
to take a rest. While the Japanese children cooked their dinner on the campfire, the
Chinese children wondered why no one was bringing them food. While the backpacks of
the Japanese children bulged with food and camping equipment, Chinese children carried
very little, some even eating the stores of others after exhausting their own supplies.
While the trek received broad support from Japanese society, with government officials
and businessmen sending their children along, Chinese parents gave their praise and
verbal support but recoiled when it came to sending their own child along. Sun
concludes, if education is the key to having a globally competitive edge, “how can China
not be backward (luowu)” (2006c[1993]:192).
As anthropologist Vanessa Fong notes, “Trial of Strength” was often used to
support the argument that Chinese children are deeply flawed. It was a popularly cited
media item that belonged to a larger discourse characterizing the only child as:
…timid, uncooperative, careless about others’ property, hostile to others, unable
to care for themselves, disrespectful to elders, and poorly mannered… moody,
bad tempered, self-aggrandizing, delinquent, neurotic, and emotional… eccentric,
offensive, selfish, dependent, willful, delicate, weak willed, lazy, and dishonest…
egocentric, uncooperative, incompetent, and unpopular… finicky, selfish, jealous,
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complacent, petty, obstinate, vain, aloof, conceited, unscrupulous, hostile and
psychologically disturbed. [Fong 2007:87]

But Sun Yunxiao was also criticized for making an unfair comparison. “After all,” Fong
writes, citing a critique published in Beijing Youth News, “the camping trip was
organized by Japanese enthusiasts for a largely Japanese group with much more camping
experience than their Chinese counterparts”(2007:88). Some critics even went so far as to
accuse Sun of being a liar and traitor for “throwing dirty water on China’s
children”(quoted in Sun and Bu 1997:6). Yet, despite the controversy that followed,
many parents concurred with the message in “A Summer Camp’s Trial of Strength.”
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What made this essay so powerful? Why did this one stand out from the litany of
conclusions about the shortcomings of China’s only children, a pervasive theme in the
1990s? The answer has to do with the backdrop of the report: the “wild” grasslands of
Inner Mongolia. That Sun called the trek a “trial of strength” reveals an assumption on
his part that the grasslands was neutral ground. Like a boxing ring – nothing but a
platform wherein sparring partners are separated off from everything but individually
embodied strength – nature is also thought to be separate here. Neither favorable to the
Japanese or the Chinese children, the grasslands tested embodied will power and practical
skill. Every time a parent interfered or a child asked for assistance, it not only
demonstrated weakness on the part of the child or the parent, but the overall weakness of
the Chinese nation. When Sun wrote, “We express our love in letting children avoid
bitterness, but little do we know that this causes them to lose their life skills (shengcun
nengli)”(2006[1993]:192), he tapped into widespread concern over Chinese education

124
See Fong 2007.
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(for failing to teach real world ability), and over China’s children (they lack of life
experience). Though the essay was often invoked to sound an alarm over the flaws of the
only child, it more importantly helped to problematize education and childrearing.
Following a comparison between a Japanese guardian and a Chinese parent – the latter of
whom picked a child up in a car because of unfavorable trekking conditions – Sun begs
this question: “We often complain that China’s only children are delicate, lack
independence and a spirit for suffering, but whose bottoms should we be spanking?”
This chapter will discuss how the concept of nature and the practice of traveling
informs educational theory and parenting advice in China. It was against the background
of nature and traveling that Sun Yunxiao was able to cast a problem – near and dear to
many reform advocates – into sharp relief. And it is in nature or traveling that Education
for Quality ideals are best achieved.
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Sun’s essay in Reader was actually an abridged
version of a longer article on the history of the summer camp (2006b:79-80), and part of
a much broader interest in the pedagogical value of direct experience that is not unique to
Sun alone. Zhou Ting, a popular expert I personally knew in Kunming, understands direct
experience as a basic building block in moral development, the bedrock of other kinds of
achievement (i.e. success in life). I had the opportunity to follow a “summer camp” she
organized, witnessing how she worked to shape the participants’ travel experience first-
hand, how the trip shaped her while confirming the convictions in which her advice to

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Recall that in a speech on the education problem, Jiang Zemin stated: [We] must not confine our youth
in rooms and in books all day, [and we] must let them participate in some social practice, open their field of
vision, and enlarge their social experience”(2001:4). A policy document on psychological health education
emphasized “dauntless will” and a “spirit for diligence in the face of difficulty” (Ministry of Education
1999). Direct experience and traveling are well poised for addressing these state-level concerns.

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parents is rooted. Sun and Zhou have in common a very broad view of what significant
experience can include. From playing in dirt or walking in the rain to visiting historically
significant destinations, nature or travel offers a much needed “inversion” of everyday
life (Graburn 2001; Urry 1990): the daily drudgery of homework and exams. It not only
serves to “define and relieve the ordinary”(Graburn 2001:43), it also offers a kind of
pedagogy that serves to actualize state agendas for cultivating well-rounded citizens in
culturally specific ways.
Return to Nature
Sun Yunxiao is perhaps the most well-known figure in China’s education reform
movement. Based in Beijing, Sun is a prominent expert on youth and childhood issues, a
vice director and a researcher at the China Youth Research Center, editor-in-chief of the
popular magazine Children and Youth Research (Shaonian ertong yanjiu), and has
received honors from the State Council for his work. The parents I knew in Kunming
know Sun from his books – he writes prolifically, as well as from the lectures he has
given in Kunming. Sun has written, edited, co-authored, co-edited over 30 books.
In this section, I will draw from two recently published advice books; both are
meant to represent “the best” or “quintessence” of 23 years of experience (23 nian jiajiao
jinghua).
Sun Yunxiao is a major advocate for the importance of direct experience in
general, and for summer camps in particular. Following a quoted entry on summer camps
in a Chinese edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, Suns writes in Good Child, Good
Habits, “120 years of summer camp experience shows that there is a lot of mutual
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recognition of the meaning and purpose of summer camps in many countries. That is to
say, everyone feels that summer camp is a kind of return to nature that integrates
entertainment and education”(2006b:81). Sun describes the American summer camp
industry as mature, Japan’s industry as having transformed the American summer camp,
and China’s industry as being in a period of exploration (tansuo) (ibid). Although China’s
industry does not have the same amount of experience in comparison to its American
counterpart, Sun notes that “summer camp has become an unintelligible kaleidoscope”
(2006b:79). He cites a Beijing Youth Daily critique of a summer camp in Shanghai in
trying to offer an orthodox definition of what summer camp ought to entail. The camp
was called “A Summer Camp for Aristocrats (guizhu),” in which children were taught to
play golf. Sun also disapproves of academically oriented summer camps, for, “activities
should not simply reiterate school and everyday life, it is precisely the opposite. A
summer camp’s first mission is to let children try an experience that is entirely different
from school and everyday life…”(2006b:82). I have heard of such academically oriented
summer camps myself. For example, one travel agency in Kunming offers a package
called “Experience Beijing and Go to College”(Tiyan Beijing shang daxue).
In offering his definition, Sun writes, “Education is the spirit of summer camp
from beginning to end. Education is also the most basic character of all summer camps,
even if this education may be concealed and does not leave a trace”(2006:81). Clearly
addressing parents here, Sun then offers pieces of concrete advice for choosing a summer
camp: consider the special characteristics of the child, consider the child’s wishes, choose
according to the family’s [economic] situation, and diligently investigate the summer
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camp’s professionalism (2006:82). Sun wants parents to broaden their understanding of
education, and embrace the kind of direct experience that summer camp can offer.
It is undeniable that Sun’s advice reflects a class and geographic bias, which is
further demonstrated by his anxiety over urban life and its effect on child development.
Under a section titled “Be Close with Nature” in Good Parent, Good Methods, Sun tells a
story about a dandelion that inspired passion for learning in a third grade classroom,
effectively extolling the virtue of nature in the education of children.
One day in April, a third grader discovered a dandelion on the side of the road, he
picked this flower and brought it to his class. “Where did you find it?” Hearing
that this was growing in the crack of some concrete by the side of the road,
classmates could help but feel moved by the dandelion’s life-strength. Suddenly,
the dandelion became the center of classroom discussion. One male student knew
a few things thanks to his father, who researches plant life. He told his classmates
that this dandelion was a Western dandelion. Subsequently the classmates decided
to look for local dandelions after school. Parents were also spurred on, using
weekend time to look for dandelions with their child in the suburbs. They even
went to the library to do research, and learned that there are seven more types of
dandelions in addition to Western and local dandelions… . Dandelion suddenly
became something that all the students in the class cared most about. [2006a:178]

The dandelion in this story serves as a synecdoche of the power of nature to inspire
learning in children. It not only stimulates a discussion about its life force, but also an
interest in classification, thanks to one particular student’s background knowledge. In this
way, the entire story is a miniature of the modern scientific process – the imagination of
which is central to the Education for Quality reforms. The story begins with curiosity,
stimulated by nature, and ends with its domestication for human purposes. At the end, the
class’s teacher has each student plant a dandelion seed in an empty milk carton, and a
“record of the dandelion’s growth was expressed in poems and compositions written by
the children”(2006a:178).
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On a more latent level, the dandelion also serves to symbolize Sun’s feelings
about the effect of urbanization on children. Like the dandelion – found in a crack of
some concrete by the side of the road, children too find themselves in an unnatural
concrete environment. Furthermore, its spontaneous appearance in the classroom, marked
by the word “suddenly”(yixia) in the text, evokes the kind of spontaneity that seems to be
lacking in the lives of urban children. Sun contends, “Everything starts from childhood.
They say that [those who are] closest to nature, most easily have rich feelings; [those who
are] most naughty and like to move around, feel the most joy toward life. People who
have both rich feelings and are naughty and like to move around are the most passionate
and creative types of people”(2006a:179). Later in the same section, Sun describes a
memory of children playing on dirt piles at a camp he organized in the countryside. The
camp had originally designed a variety of activities for its campers, but the children were
most interested in the pile of dirt that had been dug out for a fish pond. Sun describes the
horseplay that ensued, then asks rhetorically, “What’s so fun about a big pile of dirt?”
before answering, “It is actually very simple, children want to return to
nature…”(2006a:184-5).
In addition to summer camp and spontaneous romps in a pile of dirt, Sun Yunxiao
also advocates domestic travel. This is explicit in a chapter in Good Child, Good Habits
titled “Cultivating a habit of reading in children is like installing a motor in your child’s
mind.” The chapter begins with practical advice for how to cultivate a love for reading in
children, e.g. visit bookstores often and strategically disperse books throughout the home
(“put a few little books in the bathroom too”), which is then followed by a section on the
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importance of traveling. Why the importance of domestic travel appears in relation to
reading habits has to do with the mutual intertwining of literary history and geographic
place or landscape in China (Brook 1998; Nyíri 2006; Strassberg 1993). Sun maintains,
“My daughter likes to read, [so] we traveled all over the country to bring what she has
read to life, and to let her review the vestiges of history in nature”(2006b:43). He tells a
story about a trip they took to the Three Gorges when his daughter was a teenager. At the
time, she loved stories about the Three Kingdoms period, and especially admired Zhuge
Liang and Guan Yu.
In Sun Yunxiao’s account, the trip was essentially a literary pilgrimage. When
they passed through Jingzhou, Sun told his daughter a story about Guan Yu. When they
cruised down through Three Gorges, the family talked about all the historical figures who
have made the same journey, sitting on the deck of the tour boat “draped in moonlight”
(2006b:44). This spontaneously inspired his daughter to recite a poem by Li Bai about the
ancient city Baidi, which prompted his wife to recall the fact that Mao Zedong was also
inspired to recite the same poem when he traveled down the Yangtze River in 1958.
When they reached Fengjie County, Sun’s daughter recalled the death of Peng Yongwu,
the real life prototype of a character in the revolutionary novel Red Cliff (Hongyan). They
went to Red Cliff Village when they arrived in Chongqing, and visited the prison cell in
which Peng Yongwu’s mate, also known as Sister Jiang, was imprisoned after capture by
Guomingdang forces. After the trip, Sun concludes that his daughter must have felt the
trip was like reading a wordless book. He continues, “By integrating books with words
and books without words, [we] let the child truly experience (ganshou) how art and
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literature is right next to us, [and] experience the magnificent history of the Chinese
nation. I think this is the real secret to reading”(2006b:46).
At the end of this section, which takes the old saying “read ten thousand books,
walk ten thousand miles” as its title, Sun gives three pieces of advice: go out and travel
with a plan – integrate recently read books, encourage children to read reference material,
and provide narration at scenic spots (jingdian). If parents do not already have some
knowledge about a destination, Sun recommends that they do some preliminary research
before departure.
I know few parents who follow this kind of advice to the letter. The motivation
behind taking vacation trips vary between parents, from “I just want the kid to take it
easy”(fangsong) to “I want to let the kid understand the outside world”(liaojie waimian)
to “I want to broaden a child’s field of vision”(kaikuo yanjie). Zhou Huawei, who I have
discussed in earlier chapters, is the only parent I know who coordinates vacations with
what her daughter studies in school. Even though they are a modest income family, she
takes Jinjin on a trip every year. In the summer of 2004, she took Jinjin to Guilin because
Jinjin had just studied an essay about Guilin’s “mountains and waters”(shanshui). (She
invited me along too.) Zhou Huawei had Jinjin keep a travel journal, which she would
read/check periodically throughout the trip. She also did things like buy Jinjin a Buddhist
bracelet thinking this could stimulate some interest in the topic of religion, which she
plans to develop by encouraging Jinjin to do some internet research. When she explained
this to me, she clarified that China is not a religious country. The point is to give Jinjin a
more ‘comprehensive understanding of society.’
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The one person who has most articulated an admiration for Sun Yunxiao is Zhou
Ting, a popular expert I knew in Kunming. In a meeting she a group of children she took
to Beijing, following the trip, she held Sun up as a role model. It was part of a lecture on
the meaning of “celebrity”(mingliu) – which she hopes her participants will strive to be.
She expressed,
“I was just talking to [so and so’s] dad about our country’s highest level expert
(dingji) in youth research, Teacher Sun Yunxiao. Many of you are familiar with
him. Wu Linlin
126
has even taken a picture with Teacher Sun Yunxiao, right? So
this teacher is a celebrity. Why? He cares about the development of all of China’s
children and youth. If we didn’t have his many theories, if he didn’t travel all over
the country to give talks, there wouldn’t be so many parents paying attention to
their child’s education. He calls out to every family, every teacher, to care about
children, to educate children. So Sun Yunxiao this kind of person is what? A
celebrity. Yours truly is 30-something years-old. The goal of yours truly is also to
be a celebrity too. So we have something in common. What do you guys say?”

Of course Teacher Zhou’s assessment here is purified for her audience. Zhou is a younger
and less established researcher who respects Sun Yunxiao’s work, but she also seeks to
move beyond it. She especially takes issue with a relationship Sun posits between good
habits and life destiny (a reading habit is one example). In Zhou’s opinion, Sun does not
sufficiently explain where good habits come from, and she sees herself as filling this gap
in offering a theory of “sensory-emotional experience”(qinggan tiyan).
127

126
Wu Linlin is the daughter of a parent I discuss in Chapter Three. Her mother has heard Sun Yunxiao
speak and must have taken her daughter along.

127
In common usage, qinggan means something closer to the emotions, but I use the translation “sensory-
emotional,” which I take to be something between a bodily feeling and an emotion, because for Zhou,
human emotions have a sensuous and bodily basis. Because they spend most of their life in either an
apartment or in a classroom behind a study desk, Zhou feels that urban Chinese children have few
opportunities to have “sensory-emotional experiences,” or, qinggan tiyan. Importantly, the word she uses
for experience (there are many in Chinese) includes the character for “body.”

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Educating the Emotions
Zhou Ting is an educational researcher and a faculty member at Yunnan
University who feels as strongly about direct experience and travel as Sun Yunxiao. I
have already mentioned her few times throughout this dissertation, and met a number of
parents, teenagers and children through knowing her. My landlord had introduced me;
they were once neighbors. At the time, Zhou was teaching a Saturday night class that she
named “Mother Education Class”(Muqin Jiaoyu Ketang) in a large rented space on the
top floor of an office building across the street from Yunnan University. The promotional
brochure for her class indicates her motivation very clearly. The Ma Jiajue incident,
which took place earlier that year, demonstrated the lack of attention to educating the
emotions in Chinese education. Ma Jiajue was highly intelligent, a biotechnology student
at Yunnan University who murdered four of his classmates, wrapped them in newspapers
and stuffed them into separate closets – over a dispute that arose in a card game.
Interpretations and opinions regarding the case widely diverge. For most, Ma
Jiajue deserves sympathy. Ma was a poor student from the countryside, and he was fed
up with feeling marginalized and made fun of. According to his class advisor: “He did
not have a cell phone, and ate and dressed simply. The gap between the rich and poor
between students in college made him feel like he was lesser in so many ways. He felt
low self-esteem, became sensitive, weak, and closed-off (fengbi)…”(Dushi Ribao, March
19, 2004). A poem Ma wrote after his capture especially garnered sympathy. In it he
describes being so poor he went barefoot and avoided class until he received his financial
aid. Only then did he buy a pair of slippers to wear. He describes being
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“discriminated”(qishi) against, for dressing weird and carrying himself strangely. Once,
someone urinated on his bed as a joke.
Oddly enough however, three of the four victims came from the same kind of
background as he. Thus, for some others, poverty is no excuse for murder, especially the
murder of one’s own friends. Some people feel that Ma should have taken more
responsibility for his psychological health.
Zhou Ting mentioned Ma Jiajue multiple times during our first conversation, and
he is mentioned twice in her promotional brochure. To give an example of how she was
shocked by the case, I quote: “…if the education of a child only stresses academic
achievement, then the child will inevitably lose many developmental opportunities.
Because this age saves a secure and happy life environment for children who have
received education of the heart-spirit (xinling) and sensory-emotions (qinggan).”
Ma Jiajue was also a motivating factor in a “summer camp” Zhou organized in the
summer of 2004. When we met, Zhou Ting was engaged in two research projects on the
relationship between reading and “molding character”(renge suzao). She was
collaborating with a primary school but felt dissatisfied with the results. Zhou felt that the
project needed to be a 24 hour thing, and she asked the school for more funds. The State
Council had issued guidelines for strengthening the moral education of youth, shortly
after the Ma Jiajue incident. Zhou thought she could easily get support with such a recent
call for action, but her request was denied. Consequently, she took matters into her own
hands and organized a trip to Beijing where she would continue her inquiry into the
question of how to mold character. As I later heard her tell a newspaper reporter who
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interviewed her about this Beijing trip, ‘I could not wait. There’s going to be another
murder for all we now. The upper levels want you to carry out [moral education work],
but people at the lower levels don’t support you. How many people can I affect just
teaching a mothering class?’
Early July 2004, Zhou Ting set off to Beijing with three assistants, 25 children,
and an anthropologist following close behind. (I took an airplane separately and met them
in Beijing.) This trip was a convergence of the willingness of many Kunming parents to
broaden their child’s breadth of experience (jianshi) and Zhou’s interest in practice-based
theory. She called the trip “Heart-Spirit Pillar”(Xinling Zhu), and told the participants –
ages varied between seven and fifteen – a story that would give the journey a narrative
frame. The heart-spirit is located within a structure of planks covered by rock, mud, and
sand. As a child grows up and receives education, rock mud and sand begins to fall away.
“Character education,” “heart-spirit education,” and “sensory-emotional education” serve
to install windows onto the structure, each having its own name, e.g. tolerance
(kuanrong), care (aixin), et cetera. Children who do not have windows are selfish and
weak. For Zhou Ting, stimulating the seven senses is the first step in character education.
These senses include not only sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, but also the sense of
one’s internal organs and muscular movement. To understand how she makes this
connection, I will discuss a particular lesson she taught in the Mother Education Class a
month or so after the Beijing trip.
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Sensory Experience and Moral Development
Zhou Ting uses If I had Three Days of Light in her mother education class, a
collection of Helen Keller’s writing as compiled and published by Huawen Publishing
House. She reads directly from the book while her students follow along, stopping to
comment along the way so as to draw out relevant significance family education. That
Zhou selects this book should not be surprising. As I argued in Chapter Two, in China,
exemplary stories in general and models of good parenting in particular commonly
feature disabled people. Zhou reads this book with adults but she also recommends it for
children and youth. She is not alone. According to the book jacket of the class’s copy of
If I had Three Days of Light, the book was selected by the Central Committee of the
Youth League as “Best Youth Reading”(zuijia qingnian duwu). Sun Yunxiao also
recommends the book for children as good reading material in Good Child, Good Habits,
“Deaf and blind Helen did not let disability overpower her, she still successfully
graduated college”(2006b:51).
In my Preface, I discussed how Zhou uses Annie Sullivan as an exemplar of non-
interventionist education. She stood off to the side, Zhou pointed out, when Keller
struggled to string beads onto a necklace. In the following example, Keller serves to
illustrate how sensory experience is connected to moral development. Here, Zhou draws a
parallel between a young Helen Keller and Chinese children. Lack of life experience
disables children just as Keller was disabled by blindness and deafness. Just as Keller did
not know that things had names before she met Sullivan, China’s children do not know
really basic things. Zhou reports that she has met children who truly have no idea what
bamboo is, because they have never seen it. Only after some time with Sullivan did
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Keller come to realize that “every thing in the world each has its own name”(2004:20).
After this passage, Zhou warns the mothers sitting in front of her, “Maybe your children
are not so clear either.”
Keller’s inability to communicate and connect with the world around her resulted
in wild temper tantrums, not unlike the tantrums that China’s only children supposedly
throw. In the book Zhou reads with her class, Keller describes one particular tantrum she
threw. Feeling confused over the words “cup” and “water,” she threw a porcelain doll
that Sullivan had given her on the ground, shattering it to pieces. At the time, she felt
neither shame nor remorse. Keller wrote, “In my dark and silent world, there was no
gentleness nor empathy”(2004:21). Following this passage, Teacher Zhou makes the
comment that it is only natural that Keller was unable to experience such emotions, as
“sensory-emotions are built from the seven [sensory] channels.”
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Like Sun Yunxiao, Zhou also feels that “nature” – broadly defined – offers a
solution to China’s education problems. She diverges from Sun in her explicit
theorization of sensory experience, best engaged in nature, in relation to moral
development. After Keller destroys her new porcelain doll, Sullivan sweeps the pieces to
the side and takes her pupil outdoors. She leads Keller to a well house to clarify what
water is. Putting her hand under a cold running stream, Sullivan spells out water in the
palm of Keller’s other hand. This moment was transformative for Keller, who realized
that what Sullivan had been doing on her palm was not merely a game. She recalls, “a
mysterious feeling surged in my heart, I suddenly understood the mystery of language-

128
July 3, 2004
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words, knew “water” was the cool and novel thing that was streaming over my
hand”(2004:21). Though a well house does not constitute “nature” in a strict sense,
Teacher Zhou frames this lesson as taking place in nature (da ziran).
Teacher Zhou comments, “Why is it that what you can’t learn at home you can
learn once you’re out of the house? It’s too monotonous at home. There are no things-of-
the-world (shiwu) at hand.” Just as Sullivan’s attempt at teaching Keller to distinguish
between “water” and “cup” failed inside the house, Zhou argues that China’s children
cannot learn about things-of-the-world at school either. For this reason, Zhou tells the
mothers in front of her that they need to provide novel sensory experiences, “let the child
live a life they haven’t lived before. Let your child come to know more concepts in more
environments.”
Keller’s transformation at the fountain was not simply a matter of learning that
things had names. For Teacher Zhou, it was also the first time she had a sensory-
emotional experience. Back at the house, Keller suddenly felt deep remorse for what she
had done to the doll. She recalls,
Back inside, every thing I touched seemed to have life. I thought about the doll
that I destroyed, felt my way over to the stove, picked up the pieces. [I] wanted to
put them back together again, but no matter how I tried I couldn’t. Thinking about
what I had done, I felt tremendous regret over what had already been done. My
eyes filled with tears for the first time in my life. [2004:21]

Keller’s transformation in the well house had many levels. In addition to feeling regret
and even compassion for the doll she had just destroyed, everything she touched now
teemed with life. Her ability to see the world in a new way was also linked to her ability
to finally have moral emotions. Sullivan helped Keller walk out of the dark, out from
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total enclosure within a totally subjective world into an intersubjective world of others.
She found Keller’s “switch”(annui), Teacher Zhou points out. The moment at the
fountain transformed young Helen into someone who “eagerly anticipated the next day,”
knowing that another lesson awaits (2004:21). As in Sun Yunxiao’s dandelion example,
“nature” stimulated a passion for learning. In her commentary Teacher Zhou describes
Keller’s newfound passion using the term du, as if the problem is one of plumbing. Like
the water that streamed out of the fountain, Keller’s passion for learning is now gushing
forth so vigorously that you could not stop her even if you tried (du dou du bu zhu).
If a dandelion and a dirt pile served to symbolize nature for Sun Yunxiao, water
serves the same purpose for Zhou Ting. Whether it is streaming from a fountain or falling
from the sky, water offers sensory experience. The same night, commenting on a passage
in Keller’s chapter “Be Close to Nature,”
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Teacher Zhou launches into a story about
running into one of her students from the Mother Education Class and this student’s five
year-old son in the pouring rain:
“[This mother] dressed her child in a small raincoat. Mother is carrying the
umbrella. It was raining hard! Most mothers would not do this kind of thing. Took
the child from Green Lake over there, and walked over to the front of Yunnan
University over here. Aiyo! I thought, if I could let all the mothers under the sky
be like this and do this kind of thing, I really think, our China might have some
hope after all.”

The story suggests that this mother took her son on a walk in the pouring rain for no
reason at all, except to have the life experience of walking in the rain. Teacher Zhou
reports that the expression on their faces said that “they were completely enjoying

129
Note that Sun Yunxiao gives the same title to a section in this Good Parents, Good Methods. He has
indeed read the Chinese edited If I had Three Days of Light, so his use of the same title may be borrowed.
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nature.” This mother is exemplary because she is protective enough to dress him up in a
raincoat and galoshes, and to carry an umbrella over them. But she is not so
overprotective so as to shield her son from a fact of life, rain in this case.
The Beijing Trip
For Zhou Ting, two kinds of experience can educate the sensory-emotions. One is
reading, the other is traveling. The two are intertwined in that only individuals who know
how to sense, observe, and experience the world can write good literature. It is also
writers, Zhou feels, who are the most developed as human beings. Early July 2004, Zhou
introduced the Beijing trip to her Mother Education Class, and passed out a registration
form. She differentiated herself from other summer camps organized by travel agencies
in Kunming, naming “Experience Beijing and Go to College”(Tiyan Beijing shang
daxue) in particular. She directs her adult students’ attention to the top of the registration
form, which reads “A trip to Beijing for ‘children’s sensory-emotional experience
(qinggan tiyan) of China’s cultural achievements.’” Evoking Sun Yunxiao’s notion of the
wordless book, she explained that the trip will allow the children to “read”(yuedu)
Chinese history right on-site (xianchang). Because Chinese culture is “sensory-
emotional”(qinggan de), the children will have an opportunity to expand their range of
sensory-emotions in experiencing Beijing, which she will “adjust”(tiaozheng),
“expand”(zhankai), and “guide”(fudao) along the way.
We visited a number of destinations during the trip, for example, the Summer
Palace, the Imperial Garden, the Great Wall, Peking University, Mao’s Masoleum,
national museums and so on.
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There was one particular instance in which Teacher Zhou “reads” a destination
on-site and “guides” experience. This instance merits focused discussion.
It took place at the end of a muggy day in mid-July at the Summer Palace. It was
crowded, and the weather had been stiflingly hot. Teacher Zhou spontaneously stops the
children at the side of Kunming Lake on their way toward the exit. She wants everyone to
appreciate the view and the dramatic change in weather. It had suddenly become much
cooler as the sun had retreated behind a blanket of clouds and a wind had begun to blow.
Zhou asks the children if they could describe the kind of wind in the air. She suggests
“gentle breeze,” and one child jokingly answers with “typhoon.” Other possibilities are
offered, and Zhou gives a summary in saying, “Oh, everyone is expressing themselves
differently. Everyone is writing their essays differently.”
She instructs them to pay focused attention on their feeling (ganshou), and then
directs their attention across the lake. “Please look at the little island and then at 17-Arch
Bridge from this angle,” she says to them.
There is a pause. Children gaze obediently, and a few goof off. Zhou continues,
“At this moment, all of the natural conditions (ziran tiaojian), weather, view,
quality (secai), et cetera, how is this affecting your state of mind? Especially the
things that teacher wants you to do. It isn’t that you cannot understanding, it isn’t
that you cannot accept [my instructions]. Compare your state of mind at the time
with what you are feeling now. If I were to ask you to do something now, would
you be willing to do it, or would you be unwilling?”

A sixth-grade boy answers in a perfunctory and sing-song fashion, “Will-ing!”
poking a little fun at the exercise.
Zhou states that she does not need an answer and begins to give an improvised
monologue. She spontaneously invents a novel idea.
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“This kind of beautiful, calm and peaceful state of mind (xinjing), I’ll tell you,
you can’t buy this with money, [we] only have these few minutes, here and now.
If it were noon, under a scorching sun, [and] you’re being drenched [with sweat],
you wouldn’t even be in the mood for experiencing this nature (da ziran). You’d
be wiping sweat, drinking water, replacing water. How would your attention be
on your state of mind? How would you have a good state of mind? That’s why
you are making deposits into your state-of-mind-bank (xinqing yinhang) right
now.”

Addressing the kids who are not paying attention, Zhou says, “Some people have their
doors open and can deposit bundles and bundles, but they’re not willing, still busy with
other business (shengyi).”
Zhou instructs the children to store the moment in their banks because it is
something that will influence them for the rest of their lives. She tells them that Empress
Dowager Ci Xi did not like to live in the Forbidden City, and preferred to spend her time
here for good reason. The Empress came here to nourish her state of mind.
At this point, the just mentioned “state-of-mind bank”(xinqing yinhang) evolves
into “sensory-emotional bank”(qinggan yinhang). Zhou continues to say,
“Open up your sensory-emotional bank (qinggan yinhang) right now. The view
right now, is giving you bundles of sensory-emotional banknotes to store in your
bank. The renminbi that you can really see is not valuable. What’s valuable is
your sensory-emotional banknotes. Such a beautiful view, this is what you call
valuable. Take it if you want it. But you have to use your heart, your sensory-
emotions to make deposits.”

A large crowd has gathered around us by now. One mother-son pair not belonging
to our group follows Zhou’s instructions diligently, more so than some of the children in
our group. Meanwhile, the wind blows loudly against my camcorder microphone.
Integrating the moment at hand and what she knows about the Chinese curriculum
in schools, Zhou instructs her kids to,
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“Take a broad view (fangyan wangqu). Look at how the water in front of you
twinkles like jade (lingling). ‘Ripples on the surface of the water’(bibo dangyang)
those phrases, this is it, the image before your eyes. What’s in your books, what
you learned in your textbooks, still have to pass a [inaudible]. I’m telling you,
why is it that some people cannot experience the most beautiful things described
when they’re learning literature? It’s because they don’t have this image in their
sensory-emotional bank.”

At first glance, it may seem odd that Teacher Zhou would invent the concept of
the “sensory-emotional banknote”(qinggan chaopiao), because the emotions and
commerce do not normally go together. If you asked her why she chose such a metaphor,
she would probably point to its practical convenience. Her academic background is in
aesthetics and literature so she is familiar with narrative technique. A banknote is both
concrete and ubiquitous. It effectively renders an otherwise abstract theory into
something more tangible – her theory that moral development starts with embodied
experience. Human beings receive their information from the outside world through
seven portals, Zhou argues, and that information should be beautiful – like Kunming
Lake. At the end of her monologue, she explains that deposits are made by opening the
seven channels (tongdao). Putting what the children are supposed to do in concrete terms,
she states, “Your sensory-emotional channels are your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, your
sense of movement. Including your sense of your insides. Most ordinary people rarely
use these channels for making deposits into their sensory-emotional banks.”
Zhou wants her group to remember this very moment, to store the moment in their
“sensory-emotional bank” so as to have a good state of mind in the face of daily tasks and
difficulties.
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From a theoretical point of view, it is no coincidence that experience is married
with money here. Because mobility for leisure and cultural capital are highly correlated,
the children at the side of Kunming Lake are quite literally acquiring or accumulating a
non-economic form of capital. If, as Bourdieu has pointed out, cultural capital is
“external wealth converted into an integral part of the person, into a habitus,” then we
could argue that that is exactly what the children are asked to create (1986:244-5). The
economic wealth that allowed these 25 children to travel from Kunming to Beijing was to
be converted into an embodied form of wealth, to be stored in a “sensory-emotional
bank.” This acquisition will further their “distinction” and deepen the opportunity gap
between urban and rural children.
But it would be a mistake to understand what is happening here only in such
terms. Zhou’s invention of “sensory-emotional banknotes” serves to guide the travel
experience in a culturally specific way. It is a pragmatic solution to educational
conundrums that include children’s lack of interest in school and their detachment from
the world around them. At the side of Kunming Lake, Zhou instructs her students on how
to experience a particular view. Not unlike their predecessors in imperial China –
traveling literati – these children are asked to perform a “canonical view,” to make a
connection between literary history and the scenery before their eyes (Brook 1998; Nyíri
2006; Strassberg 1993).
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Zhou quotes the phrases “twinkling pieces of jade”(lingling)

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In the Song dynasty, travel and moral cultivation became linked with the Neo-Confucian emphasis on
the practice of gewu, “the classification of things.” As Strassberg explains, “The comprehension of
universal principles in the world and in the mind through a combination of empirical inquiry and self-
scrutiny was the key to perfecting the Noble Man and his ability to create social and political order. On a
more mundane level, this philosophical outlook was reflected in a greater motivation to observe and record
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and “ripples on the surface of the water”(bibo dangyang), which schoolchildren learn in
their textbooks,
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to organize what might otherwise be a fleeting experience in a way
that connects them to their daily labor of learning. If they experience the moment with
their heart, these children – Zhou hopes – might start to care more about their
responsibilities… to themselves, to parents, to teachers, and to their nation.
In asking them to clear their thoughts and to observe their sensations and their
feelings, Zhou is essentially leading a group exercise in self-cultivation. In addition to
this exercise’s significance for a child’s attitude toward school, it is also meant to serve as
a solution to an immediate problem. For this group of children from Kunming, the tour of
Beijing has actually been one filled with hardship. Lacking the kind of facilities and
means of transportation available to commercial summer camps, Zhou, her three
assistants and the 25 children stayed in a tiny bungalow, took cold showers, used a
neighborhood toilet, and traveled by public bus. Trying to squeeze as many sites as
possible into a short amount of time, meals were not always consistent. Some children
developed bloody blisters on their feet from walking, others had developed skin rashes
from the humidity – something Kunming people do not experience in their own city. It is

the world”(1993:46). By the end of the Song, a canon of travel writing emerged and pilgrimage sites
identified and inscribed (1993:56).

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I have not been able to locate these phrases in school textbooks, but it is important to point out that
schoolchildren are often taught set phrases for describing particular places in their language classes
(Woronov 2003:245-51). Terry Woronov found in her research: “Almost all yuwen (Chinese language)
lessons after first grade require students to complete fill-in-the-blank exercises, virtually all of which
consist of locating, memorizing, and completing adjectival or adverbial phrases in the text. In the earlier
grades, these phrases largely consist of what we would call clichés – children are required to memorize that
Gobi desert sand is “burning hot” and that the Manchurian (Dongbei) forest resembles “a sea of trees.”
More commonly, however, students are required to memorize details of famous locations, many of which
are in Beijing: Beihai Park, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, The Great Hall of the People.
According to the text, these places are all beautiful – and they are beautiful in very specific ways, each of
which requires a set descriptive phrase”(2003:246).
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also in preparation for a long bus ride that Zhou wants her students to take this moment
seriously. At the end of her monologue by the lake, Zhou promises that this kind of view,
if stored properly, can treat hurt, hunger, thirst and, most importantly, one’s state of mind.
Before concluding the lesson Zhou proclaims, “Having seen all this, the next time you’re
in pain, think a little, and go into your sensory-emotional bank right away and move these
things out (banchu zhege dongxi lai). Your state of mind will immediately return to the
feeling you now have.”
Did the children successfully make deposits, and did they ever withdraw from
their sensory-emotional bank? In my observation of the children I continued to follow
after the trip, I never once heard a child use the terminology that Zhou invented at the
side of Kunming Lake. In fact, some were already weary of all her lecturing at this point.
But that does not mean the moment did not have an effect on them. As they say in
Chinese, how a particular experience influences a child’s life is “qianyi mohua,” or
imperceptible. From Teacher Zhou’s point of view, the children – overall – moved her to
tears time and again. Their ability to “eat bitterness”(chiku) or bear hardship further
confirmed a conviction she has always had: the problem with children in today’s China
has to do with their environment, particularly the coddling of parents. Zhou was so proud
of her group she told their parents the day they returned to Kunming that the children
walked at least 300 kilometers on their own. On the train ride back, someone had offered
to help them with luggage (e.g. food, personal luggage, and one folding sleep cushion per
child – someone even carried the cushion I never ended up using), but the children
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insisted on doing it themselves. They even chose to take the public bus back to Teacher
Zhou’s base.
The lesson by Kunming Lake was an important moment in the development of
Zhou’s ability to govern a large group of children. (Here I mean govern in the sense of
guan.) Surely the lesson was meant to help the group deal with and endure difficulty, but
it was also simultaneously a solution for Zhou’s own difficulty. As soon as they departed
Kunming for Beijing, Zhou suddenly found herself responsible for 25 children, more than
she had planned for, many of whom she had never met before. In addition to narrating the
trip, managing her assistants, thinking about her research questions, et cetera, she had to
make sure that each child ate enough, brushed their teeth, made their bed, and so on. On
the second or third day of the trip, she had already lost her voice. By teaching them self-
cultivation as mediated by the metaphor of a banknote (and a megaphone), she took an
important step in governing the group in an efficient way. After all, she began her
monologue with asking, “If I were to ask you to do something now, would you be willing
to do it, or would you be unwilling?”
There was another important moment in Zhou’s development, which began at The
Military Museum of China (Zhongguo junshi bowuguan). She was inspired by Mao
Zedong’s story as represented at the museum, and identified with his love for literary arts.
Zhou concluded that Mao was a great leader because his emotional intelligence
(qingshang) was very high, and she then decided to ‘let the masses’ lead. She
experimented with this idea a few days later when we visited Peking Union Medical
College Hospital (PUMCH, Xiehe Yiyuan). The night before, Teacher Zhou divided the
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group into seven smaller groups and evenly distributed age differences between them.
Each group was given a map of Beijing, complete with bus route information. The
assignment was for each group to figure out a bus route, and then to eventually give a
report on PUMCH, e.g. number of beds, recognized departments, etc. Zhou wanted her
group to have an experience of a great comprehensive hospital, to which Kunming’s most
reputable hospital – she feels – pales in comparison. Zhou wanted her group to be near its
concentration of “top specialists”(dingji zhuanjia).
The next morning, standing on a piece of grass by the bus stop, each group
presented their travel plan to Teacher Zhou. Most of the groups did not present
acceptable plans because they had only figured out the bus line that stops outside of
PUMCH and not which lines to take before that. Zhou commended one group for their
idea for hiring a driver, which she considered plausible. But the group that “won” offered
a complete itinerary for travel by bus.
Despite the fact that the winning itinerary turned out to be incomplete, Zhou was
very satisfied with the exercise. In her Mother Education Class a couple months later, she
claimed that the group led her to PUMCH. She also proudly described how a couple of
the teenage boys had snuck out with a map and “conducted research”(gao yanjiu) with a
neighborhood shopkeeper under the pretense of having to go to the bathroom. “Letting go
(fangshou) of those kids and letting them do things,” she reported, “I was very relaxed at
that moment.” For Zhou, this exercise demonstrated what children can accomplish if they
were only given the space to do so. Which is why, she advised the mothers sitting in front
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of her, “Whatever the matter is, leave your children some space, do not substitute for
them (ti ta qu zuo).”
That day at PUMCH, one of the teenagers in the group felt especially
accomplished: Chao Hongliang. The instruction for the exercise was to give a report on
number of beds, recognized departments, etc. But Chao Hongliang managed to not only
gather information, he also found his way to the office of a hospital director, who gave
him a short interview and a personally autographed glossy brochure. I had actually
followed Chao Hongliang myself, it all started when he was interviewing a staff member
at a reception desk in one of the hospital’s many buildings. Chao Hongliang’s
interviewee very patiently entertained his many questions; she figured it was a project a
teacher had been assigned. She even told him where to find one of the directors. Of
course the ease Chao Hongliang had with the assignment in comparison with other
children in the group can be attributed to his age (15 years-old). When an 11 year-old
arrived at the same reception desk, she asked “what departments have cured the most
people?” rather than “which of your departments are most outstanding (chuse)?” The
second way of putting the question would be more appropriate of course.
Having struggled with accessing research subjects located in the professional
world myself, I was impressed with Chao Hongliang’s effort. That he got total strangers
to answer his questions, without having had a guanxi
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introduction, says something
about his social ability – as well as the willingness of adults to accommodate “research-
style learning”(yanjiu xing xuexi), which is becoming rather common with the Education

132
Social network
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for Quality movement. Chao Hongliang reached the top of the hospital’s bureaucratic
hierarchy, an experience that was not only social but spatial as well. The director’s office
was located on the 9
th
floor of a building, away from the traffic of health-care. At this
point, Chao Hongliang paired up with another teenager from our group, and they
interviewed the director together. They phrased their inquiry in an appropriate language –
explained that their teacher had assigned a project, and wanted them to understand
(liaojie) PUMCH.
When everyone regrouped with Teacher Zhou later, Chao Hongliang happily
announced that they had ‘something very special (jingdian).’ It was the autographed
brochure, a boon from their adventure through the hospital. Teacher Zhou commended
them. She even mentioned “the formal interview in the director’s office” to a newspaper
reporter who wrote a feature on her in Yunnan Daily the following year.
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Back in Kunming, an epilogue of sorts
I left Teacher Zhou’s group a couple days after our visit to PUMCH because I
was scheduled to teach English at a “summer camp” in Kunming. When I saw Wu Linlin,
Wang Yan’s 8 year-old daughter for the first time after the trip, she told me, ‘Teacher
Kuan, after you left a lot of unbelievable things happened.’ I asked her, ‘Like what?’ Wu
Linlin replied, ‘You would be very sad if I told you.’ Because I had heard from another
participant that one of the younger boys had nearly fallen into a river on one occasion, I
asked Wu Linlin if this was what she was thinking of. She said no, and then reported that

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“Zhou Ting: From a ‘3F Young Woman’ to a Catcher of the Heart-Spirit”(Zhou Ting: cong “3F
nülang” dao xinling bushou), April 15, 2005, Yunnan Daily,
http://www.yndaily.com/html/20050415/news_84_193540.html, accessed August 10, 2006.
302
Teacher Zhou and her assistant Teacher Hu got into an argument, ‘Teacher Hu even
cried!’
The question of how parents and children “responded” to this trip is a complicated
matter, situated in the unexpected challenges everyone faced. Back in Kunming, I learned
that many parents, who had so eagerly sent their child on this trip because they thought it
would be a good exercise (duanlian), had many negative opinions about Teacher Zhou.
Their reasons were many. Some felt that Teacher Zhou should not have carried out adult
arguments in front of children. Some expressed discontent over not being able to get in
touch with their child by phone. Some felt that Zhou charged too much money
considering the accommodations they had in Beijing, and that subjecting children to cold
showers endangered their health. One parent even called the bungalow they stayed in a
“prison.” The participants certainly had their complaints too. The public toilet was foul,
they felt exhausted, the teenagers hated having to wear matching baseball caps, and
though no one explicitly complained about this to me, I knew from their body language
that Teacher Zhou talks a little too much sometimes.
Yet, I also heard and observed contradicting things. Some parents were happy to
report changes in their children, especially, improved daily habits. Zhou had maintained a
tight morning schedule so as to get 25 participants washed up and ready to go. She also
had to adjust eating habits to the needs of the group. When Teacher Zhou first met the
youngest participant, a little 7 year-old girl named Yao Liwen, she ate a single grain of
rice per bite. By the trip, Yao Liwen’s “speed” became much quicker. Some parents
reported that their child did not feel like they were “suffering” – as they had worried, and
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thought the trip was a lot of fun (hao wan).
134
Some children seemed to have integrated
some of Zhou’s favorite vocabulary into their own, e.g. “heart-spirit”(xinling),
“celebrity”(mingliu). And one 8 year-old boy, Deng Siwen, who held a grudge against
Teacher Zhou for scolding him harshly on one occasion during the trip, seemed to have
integrated his experience of the China Science and Technology Museum into his
repertoire of knowledge. One day after I had lunch with him and his family, he “tested”
me on my knowledge of China’s four great inventions. He had spent a lot of time on the
pre-modern science and technology floor the day we visited that museum.
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Some parents continued going to Zhou’s Mother Education Class. One parent,
who did not approve of certain things that transpired during the Beijing trip, was still
eager to sign her daughter up for other activities later that year. Even Hu Qiuli, the
assistant who had many conflicts with Zhou during the trip, began to organize activities

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This was something I often observed during the trip, especially at the end of the day when Zhou went for
a much deserved foot massage. All the younger participants would just go bananas back at the bungalow,
bouncing all over the walls. When I commented on how lively everyone was one night, a teenager tried to
persuade me to stay with them rather than go back to my hotel room. She thought that I would be “lonely,”
when I could be having “fun” with them. Her invitation moved me because that bungalow literally looked
like a sardine can once everyone rolled out their sleep cushions.

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When Deng Siwen played this “testing” game with me, I exclaimed to his mother, who had disapproved
of the intensity of the trip, that this was something he learned in Beijing. Then Deng Siwen said, ‘I most
especially dislike Teacher Zhou.’ Which his mother translated as, ‘He’s really afraid of her.’ So I said to
Deng Siwen, ‘Actually Teacher Zhou really likes you.’ Then he complained, ‘We ate out everyday and
never ate at home.’ Then his mother said, ‘These children sure don’t know how to eat-bitterness.’
This conversation is interesting for two reasons. First, Deng Siwen did not directly address the
issue he had with Teacher Zhou. She scolded him once for standing in the middle of a rushing flow of
human traffic at the Forbidden City, which she perceived as very dangerous. He wanted to go home very
badly after that. So it’s interesting that that he expresses his discontent in terms of not eating home-cooked
meals, which actually isn’t even true as many dinners were eaten back at the bungalow. They were cooked
by two of Teacher Zhou’s three assistants with spices and sauces brought from Kunming.
Second, Deng Siwen’s mother’s comment that children cannot eat bitterness points to the kind of
ambivalence that many of these parents felt about just how much suffering a child ought to endure. That
children can not bear hardship is a widespread opinion in urban China, but when that hardship became a
reality for their child in Beijing, many parents were very uneasy.
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for children which, she told me, ‘was something Teacher Zhou inspired her to do (gei wo
de qifa).’
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This is a rather remarkable transformation because Hu Qiuli had met Teacher
Zhou as an “unemployed”(xiagang) worker of a work-unit that had nothing to do with
children or education.
I think that there will continue to be mixed opinions about Teacher Zhou in
Kunming, which I attribute to parental ambivalence over what education ought to cost
and Zhou’s difficulty in getting state support. That Zhou charged too much money
seemed, in the end, to be the biggest sticking point for parents, many of whom think
educational and business interests should not be mixed at all. This clashes with Zhou’s
view that she deserves to have a salary for her hard work and the fact that operating her
base costs a lot of money. Regardless of these opinions however, Zhou has something
very important working in her favor: her two sons.
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After the Beijing trip, I heard one
parent talking to many other parents – some of whom had sent their child to Beijing with
Zhou, about what great problem-solvers they are. (These boys were also on the Beijing
trip.) This young mother had participated in a hiking trip Zhou organized for parents of
small children. She described how Zhou’s sons swashbuckled their way through unpaved
paths, pushed away fallen trees, and helped young participants make their way through
the forest. When the sky had darkened at the end of the day, and many hikers were
blistering from poisonous plants, participating parents were grateful to have Zhou’s two

136
In my opinion, Hu Qiuli stoked everyone’s disapproval back in Kunming. Because the conflict she had
with Teacher Zhou was experienced from a subordinate position, as an “assistant” on the trip, I sensed that
she was trying to recover some self-respect. Because many of the parents who sent their child on the trip
were friends of hers, she was in a good position for encouraging ill feelings.

137
Zhou has a biological son and a step-son. In 2004, one was 12 years-old and the other was 15 years-old.
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sons around. This is important, for popular recognition of authority on matters of
parenting in China heavily depends on that expert’s success in raising his or her own
child.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have described the way in which the concept of nature and the
practice of travel informs educational theory and parenting advice. For both of the experts
discussed in this chapter, the world beyond a child’s ordinary, everyday life can both
reveal developmental problems and, if the experience is guided, improve upon a child.
Though Sun Yunxiao’s name is associated with the Education for Quality movement
whereas Zhou Ting deploys a different set of terminology, both share the view that direct
experience and a good challenge is critically important to the development of a child’s
creativity and practical ability. Both Sun and Zhou imbue the “summer camp” journey
with tremendous future-oriented significance, linking personal transformation to national
transformation. Where Sun links the events of the Inner Mongolia trek to the question of
“how can China not be backwards,” Zhou tells her participants that having experienced
the “difficulty”(molian) they had in Beijing, they are now destined to be
“celebrities”(mingliu). In a meeting with her participants back in Kunming, where
Teacher Zhou reviewed a lesson she had taught earlier about the bigger significance of
their trip, she stated, “You are all the celebrities of the future. But I’m not talking about
being a pop star. I’m talking about someone who plays a big role in pushing the
development of society, in advancing humanity, a talent (rencai) who plays a definite
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role.” Then she asks her group, “So tell me again children, what will we become?” They
exclaim in unison, “Celebrities!”
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Thus, the work of both Sun Yunxiao and Zhou Ting – and the kind of experiences
they hope to create on a large social scale through dispensing advice and organizing
activities – is shot through with political significance. Sun Yunxiao has received honors
from the State Council. And as for Zhou Ting, recall how she expressed in a Mother
Education Class that if only all Chinese mothers were capable of taking their child for a
spontaneous walk in the rain, “our China might have some hope after all.” However, it is
also important to point out, the significance of nature – broadly conceived, of direct
experience and domestic travel, concerns more than simply cultivating a well-rounded,
well-educated, globally competitive citizen. Rather, travel offers a culturally specific
mode of appreciating literary history and cultural identity at a particular historical
moment, one marked by some moral uncertainty. Sun Yunxiao’s recollection of his
family’s tour down the Three Gorges reads like a literary pilgrimage that brought stories
from the Three Kingdoms and stories from the Communist revolution alive. Importantly,
when Sun’s family visited the prison cell of a Communist hero, he had the following
conversation with his daughter.
“Why were Sister Jiang and them not afraid of torture (zhemo)? Why were they
not even afraid of death?”

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At least two of the younger children became class monitors (banzhang). Many went on to keypoint
middle schools in Kunming. One of the teenagers I especially kept in touch with, aims to go to college in
Beijing.

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Sun answered, “This is called the power of belief, the power of character
(renge).”
“Are people today capable of doing this?”
“Yes, but they would have to practice asceticism (xiulian) for some time first.”
Zhou Ting’s lesson by Kunming Lake was an exercise in performing a canonical
view that linked the travelers to their Chinese language curriculum; it was also meant to
be an exercise in self-cultivation. If only Ma Jiajue was able to keep his calm in the face
of challenge, by having a nourishing image to draw upon, maybe – Zhou Ting would
probably say – he would not have been capable of a multiple homicide.
Parents back in Kunming varied in their opinions about Teacher Zhou and her
Beijing trip. Nonetheless, everyone agreed on one thing: China’s children need more
duanlian, a tempering of the body and of the will. As Terry Woronov found in her
research in Beijing, “Children’s perceived inability to tolerate hardships and setbacks was
a site for much adult grumbling about ‘kids these days,’ and was a popular topic of
newspaper columns and editorials”(2003:68). This sentiment was prevalent in Kunming
too, one that can be traced back to Sun Yunxiao’s 1993 report on the Inner Mongolia
trek. When a couple of parents from the Beijing trip compared notes at a dinner I was at,
they chatted about observable changes and whether or not their child had actually learned
anything. It was not long before the conversation turned to Sun Yunxiao, and another
comparison Sun recently conducted, again, between Chinese and Japanese children.
These parents cited his report that the Chinese participants carried mobile phones in their
pockets and called home to complain every time they encountered difficulty. Revealing
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the extent to which individual subjectivity, personal transformation, public discourse, and
nation strength are all tied together in an intricate knot, the conversation ended with the
comment, ‘Japanese people simply have stronger will power (yizhi li). There’s nothing
you can do about it (mei banfa).’

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Conclusion
When I set out to do ethnographic fieldwork, I had the aim of understanding the
social processes behind the construction of the idea “psychological health.” I originally
formulated my dissertation proposal at The Universities Service Centre for China Studies,
a post-1949 archive located in Hong Kong. Browsing through professional journals and
popular magazines, I noticed that the term “psychological health”(xinli jiankang)
frequently appeared in relation to a specific demographic: children. When I first arrived
in Kunming, I spoke to many psychiatrists and psychological counselors, and eventually
learned that the issue of children’s “psychological health” was not so much a clinical or
therapeutic issue to be solved by those trained in the “psy disciplines”(Rose 1996).
Rather, children’s “psychological health” is prominently an educational issue, that is, it
belongs to a broader education reform movement that aims to produce well-rounded
individuals.
I began to direct my attention to popular advice for parents, focusing especially on
national bestsellers as well as local experts in Kunming. Based on Susan Champagne’s
research on advice manuals from the 1980s (1992), Terry Woronov’s discussion of
Harvard Girl (2007), and what I have personally gleaned from literature from the 1980s
and early 1990s, I concluded that there was a significant shift in orientation by the late
1990s. Currently popular advice is less about nutrition and how to rear intelligence and
good manners than how parents ought to focus on themselves. Parents are to govern
themselves, control their hopes, regulate their emotions, and appreciate their child.
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I situate this shift in relation to changes in political reason, and argue that advice
for governing parental emotions and conduct operates as a strategy of government – one
we could characterize as having neoliberal characteristics. Gary Sigley’s work on
Chinese governmentality has been important for setting up this first theoretical argument
(2006), because there are many parallels between state government reform and the
education reform movement, of which parenting advice is only one piece. Both areas of
reform share an emphasis on non-interventionist methods, so as to enable and promote
active subjectivity and self-responsibility. Both areas of reform emphasize internal levers.
Just as the planned economy came to be seen as ignoring economic levers intrinsic to the
market, Chinese educational styles and methods have come to be seen as ignoring
psychological levers intrinsic to the child, for example, curiosity.
That popular media in the form of newspapers, television, magazines and so on
serve to disseminate norms for good parenting confirms Nikolas Rose’s insights about the
role expertise plays in indirect forms of government (1990; 1996). But what Rose does
not address is the role that stories play in naturalizing moral norms. The popular experts
that Chinese parents know by name are not doctors or medical professionals giving
clinically-informed advice. Rather, they can tell a compelling story, some of them are
professional journalists. For this reason, I argue that government as I have observed it in
post-Mao China, draws on a governmental art that has been around since more than two
thousand years ago – that is to say, the shaping and guiding of conduct and behavior
through the presentation of exemplary models.
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In my discussion, they have appeared in the figure of a young Confucius learning
to play an instrument, in the figure of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller, a deaf-mute girl who
goes on to graduate school in the United States, a fictional mother who restrains her anger
when she discovers holes in a blanket, Japanese children adept at wilderness trekking,
and Japanese parents who do not interfere. In providing concrete personifications of
otherwise abstract principles, the exemplary model continues to shape, guide, and direct
conduct in Chinese society, pointing to an art of government that cannot be simply
identified as neoliberal.
These models point to a prominent contradiction in the advice genre. As much as
popular experts advocate a liberal kind of parenting that preserves a happy childhood by
regulating adult expectations, often, the models they use encourage the pursuit of
excellence, thereby contradicting the ideal that success ought to be loosely defined. The
literature is indeed liberal, in the sense that it liberally uses all available resources to
achieve one goal: the high suzhi subject.
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Here, I am reminded of Deng Xiaoping’s
famous phrase, “What does it matter if it is a ginger cat or a black cat as long as it catches
the mice?” which helped to introduce the hybrid concept “market socialism.” It is no
wonder so many parents I knew expressed a feeling of ambivalence. The advice generally
encourages them to be patient and tolerant, just as it feeds their aspirations, expanding
and intensifying their responsibilities all the while.
My main argument complicates the first one. In doing ethnographic research, I
have observed various factors that complicate the effort to reform education. I find that

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Thanks to Lili Lai, Jason Ingersoll, and John Osburg for helping me with this point.
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the intensity of social competition, which is produced by a convergence between a
stubborn exam-oriented education system, the commercialization of education, crowded
classrooms, and the high value put on human capital, actually contradicts advice for
liberal parenting. These factors put parents in a difficult position of having to negotiate
contradictory norms and values.
The introduction and earlier chapters discuss the various norms and situations that
shape the lived experience of parenting. I show how norms for liberal parenting get
constructed in public stories; I discuss how parents adhere to norms for well-roundedness
in sending a child to many specialty classes; I describe the school-selection phenomenon
and entrance exam procedures; and I discuss the findings of other scholars who help to
illuminate the forces behind social competition in China. Carolyn Hsu points out that
Deng Xiaopoing’s belief that economic development comes from technological
breakthroughs rather than increased economies of scale has helped to foster (or re-foster)
an academically-based meritocracy (2007). Now even restaurant owners look for a
college degree in hiring waiters. Vanessa Fong’s point that the education of the only child
has outpaced the economic development of the country is also very helpful (2004).
Regardless of socioeconomic background, Fong found that only children in Dalian were
all socialized to want elite jobs and lifestyles.
I lay out these various norms and situations with the ultimate goal of
understanding parental hopes and anxieties in a way that does not pathologize them,
which is a tone I sometimes pick up in the China Studies literature. This expresses my
theoretical interest in the question of how to do a historically informed “experience-
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near” anthropology, how to radically foreground lived experience without neglecting
political, historical and economic forces. My argument in Chapter Six provides an
example of this interest, as I suggest that economic behavior is not all that different from
say, the rain rituals of the Dinka, and we should not interpret the consumption of
educational commodities in terms of ideology. Humans have a profound need to exercise
some measure of control over inhuman forces, and they develop cultural idioms and
social institutions to that end.
In the history of our discipline, those who take a more “experience-near”
approach tend to avoid broader, macro-level phenomena such as globalization and
neoliberalism. A discussion group at a recent Society for Psychological Anthropology
meeting confirms this trend.
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Psychological anthropologists feel that big-scale
phenomena can provide background, but should not be imposed on daily experience. At
the same time, few China anthropologists have made noteworthy contributions to topics
such as the anthropology of emotions.
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Because historically, China anthropologists are
drawn to the field so they may study things such as corporate kinship, state-society
relations, and the phenomenon of post-socialism. Sulamith Potter’s argument about the
cultural construction of emotions in a Chinese village provides an extreme illustration of
China anthropology’s inability to theorize subjective experiences. She argued that for the
Chinese, the emotions are regarded as nothing more than a “twitch” (Potter and Potter
1990).

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The discussion – titled “Scaling and Bridging: How can Psychological Anthropology Intersect with ‘Big
Scale’ Questions?” – was convened by Jack Friedman, who interestingly enough, is also working in a
postsocialist context. This Biennial Meeting I have in mind took place in 2007.

141
There are exceptions, for example Jankowiak (1993) and Yan (2003).
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For my research question, I had to do both, that is, address myself to both big-
scale and small-scale phenomena. In the case of China, you simply cannot ignore the
macro. Not only because state policies and the marketization of society do play a very
important role in shaping social life, but because ordinary people conceive of their
purpose and of life possibilities in relation to big-scale phenomena, or, to use a different
phrase: expansive imaginative horizons. In my study, they include a mismatch between
population size and available opportunities, the politics of cultural and social capital, the
social significance of raising quality children, and of course, the government policy that
has created a situation where parents only have one chance. There is a very strong sense
that one has to participate in something that one would not choose to participate in – in an
ideal world. It’s like how one mother put it, in explaining why she tells her son that he
has no choice but to try hard: “Such a big population. Yet so few opportunities. Able-
persons are as common as air. That’s why I tell you, it’ll be even scarier for their
generation. Our employment environment, their environment later is very grim.”
Though there are many factors that constrain what kind of parent an urban parent
can be, I point to areas where parents do exercise meaningful agency. In Chapter Four, I
give an agentive quality to putatively inappropriate emotions in arguing for their
intelligence. When mothers lose their temper or feel anxious over small domestic events,
they exercise an intelligent perception of particularities that belong to both historical and
local situations. In Chapter Five I argue that for parents, creating and providing tiaojian
serves as a strategy for managing uncertainty, and I discuss how the experience of what
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Bernard Williams calls “agent-regret” plays an important role in how they define and
enact moral responsibility.
To conclude, I have found that contrary to what the popular experts are saying,
Chinese parents are perfectly able to attend to the inner life of their child. They see a
threat to promoting their child’s subjectivity, namely self-esteem and self-confidence, not
so much in their own bad parental behavior, but in the market economy which their child
will have to face one day – a market economy that may or may not have a place that
recognizes their human worth.
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Glossary

annui – switch
banzhang – class monitor
banzhuren – homeroom teacher, class adviser
baomaodui – gangs that bully for money, usually composed of teenagers
bamiao zhuzhang – pull at sprouts to make them grow
bibo dangyang – ripples on the surface of the water
chengcai – become useful
chengqi – become useful
chuangxin jingshen – spirit for innovation
chuzhong – junior middle school/junior high school (7
th
, 8
th
, and 9
th
grades)
da – hit, spank, beat
danwei – work unit
da ziran – nature
diwei – position
du – stop up
duanlian – temper oneself, exercise (of the body or of a skill)
du wan juan shu, xing wan li lu - read ten thousand books, walk
ten thousand miles
enwei bingyong - use the carrot and stick judiciously
fahuo – lose one’s temper, get angry
fangsong – relax, take it easy
fensu xian – score line, admission line
ganjue – feeling
ganshou – feel, experience
317
gaokao – national college entrance examination
gaozhong – middle school/high school (10
th
, 11
th
, and 12
th
grades)
gewu – classification or investigation of things
guai – obedient
guan – take care of, govern, monitor, manage
gunbang dixia chu xiaozi - raise filial sons under the club
guoqing – national situation
hen tie bu cheng gang - hate that iron does not become steel
huanjing – environment
hukou – household registration
huoli – life energy
jianfu – reducing the burden (short for )
jianshi – enrich one’s breadth of experience
jiaoxue zhiliang – pedagogical quality
jiaoxun – teach, teach-train, sometimes a euphemism for a beating
jiating baoli – family violence
jiating jiaoyu – family education, domestic education, childrearing, parenting
jinze – dutiful
kaikuo yanjie - broadening one’s field of vision
keju – imperial civil-service examination system
laodao – nagging
laosanjie – “three old classes,” middle school graduates from the class of 1966,
1967, and 1968
liaojie – understand
lingdao – leader
lingling – twinkling pieces of jade
318
luowu – backward
ma – scold, chide, insult
maodun – ambivalence, contradiction
meiyou banfa – there’s no way, there’s nothing I can do, my hands are tied
mingliu – celebrity, distinguished person
mingren zhuan – tales of famous men
mingyun – fate
mu’ai – mother-love
muhai – mother-harm
muqin jiaoyu ketang – mother education class
neixin – inner heart-mind
peixun – training
poqie yuanwang – urgent wishes
qinggan – sensory-emotions, feelings
qinggan chaopiao – sensory-emotional bank-notes
qinggan yinhang – sensory-emotion bank
qipao xian – starting line (of a race)
qiqiao shengyan – anger fuming from the seven orifices
quanmian fazhan – whole development, well-rounded development
ren – restrain, endure, hold back
rencai – talent, human talent
renli ziben – human capital
renxing – humanity
renyuan - relationships
sanbai liushi hang, hang hang chu zhuangyuan - three-
hundred and sixty occupations, every occupation has an optimus
319
shangshi – appreciate
shengxue lü – rates of promotion
shengyuan – student body, source of students
shenti lixing embody principle through practice shijia shaonian – top-ten youth (a national honor)
shiwu – things of the world
shizi – teachers
shouyi – profit
shuiping – proficiency
siyou caichan – private property
suzhi – quality
suzhi jiaoyu – Education for Quality, competence education, well-rounded
education
suzhi jiaoyu gaige – Education for Quality reform
taotai – eliminated, weeded out
techan ban – specialty class
tese ban – specialty class
tiaojian – conditions, economic situation, infrastructure
tiaopi – naughty
tongzhen – naiveté and childishness touzi chanchu – invest and produce
wajue – excavate
wu - understand
wuxing – power of understanding, insight
xiaohao – expend
xin – heart-mind
320
xing – okay
xingge ji – anxious personality
xinjing – state of mind
xinli - psychological
xinling – heart-spirit, soul
xinqing – state of mind, mood
xueli shehui – academic record society
xuexi – learn, study
yangsheng – life cultivation
yanxue – sick-of-school
yayi – stifled, inhibited
yingshi jiaoyu – Exam-oriented Education
yousheng youyu – excellent births, excellent rearing
youzhi – quality, top quality
yuezu daipao - meddle in the affairs of others
zanzhu fei – supporting fees
zexiao – school-select
zhaoji – worry, feel anxious
zhiliang – quality
zhiqing – rusticated youth (refers to urban youth sent to the countryside during the
Cultural Revolution)
Zhixin jiejie – Intimate Sister
zhongdian ban – key-point class
zhongdian xuexiao – key-point school
zhongkao - middle school entrance examination
zhudong jingshen – self-motivated
321
zibei – inferiority complex
zijue – self-aware
zixin xin – self-confidence

322
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract "Adjusting the Bonds of Love: Parenting, Expertise and Social Change in a Chinese City" examines the intersection between popular advice for parents and the lived experience of raising a child in urban China. Popular advice for raising high quality children has been widely available since the implementation of the one-child policy at the beginning of the 1980s. Disseminated through state and commercial channels, advice focused on topics such as nutrition, childcare, how to rear intelligence, and so on. At the turn of the 21st century however, we see a shift in focus from advice on educating children to advice that educated parental emotions and conduct. I consider this shift in relation to the suzhi jiaoyu movement, to changing political reason, and discuss how such advice gets taken up in the context of everyday life.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Kuan, Teresa (author)

Core Title Adjusting the bonds of love: parenting, expertise and social change in a Chinese city

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Anthropology

Degree Conferral Date 2008-12

Publication Date 11/19/2008

Defense Date 09/10/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag advice literature,childhood,China,education reform,governmentality,OAI-PMH Harvest,subjectivity

Place Name China (countries), Kunming (city or populated place)

Language English

Advisor Mattingly, Cheryl (committee chair), Cooper, Eugene (committee member), Furth, Charlotte (committee member)

Creator Email tkuan@usc.edu,warmulus@yahoo.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1779

Unique identifier UC166996

Identifier etd-Kuan-2478 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-141555 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1779 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Kuan-2478.pdf

Dmrecord 141555

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Kuan, Teresa

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu