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Household and Family in Kaixiangong: A Re-examination*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Nancie L. Gonzalez
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Extract

Opportunities to revisit a remote field site studied many years before are relatively rare in anthropology generally, but when the location happens to be China, we simply do not expect them to occur. It is, therefore, all the more remarkable that the village of Kaixiangong, first presented to the scholarly world in Fei Xiaotong's Peasant Life in China, should have been further described by William R. Geddes in 1955 and by Fei himself after a 1957 visit. When invited by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to visit China in the summer of 1981 to undertake a scientific study of my choice, I was intrigued when Professor Fei suggested I request permission to go to Kaixiangong, and delighted when it was granted. I stayed in the community four days and nights during September, and the following is based on information gathered then.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 93 , March 1983 , pp. 76 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1983

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References

1. Hsiaot'ung, Fei, Peasant Life in China (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1939)Google Scholar.

2. Geddes, William R., Peasant Life in Communist China (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

3. Hsiaot'ung, Fei, “A revisit to Kaihsienkung,” in McGough, James P. (ed. and trans.), Fei Hsiao-t'ung: The Dilemma of a Chinese Intellectual (White Plains, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1980), pp. 39–74Google Scholar.

4. I visited 18 communes in six provinces over a two-month period in August and September 1981. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which I represented as a director, provided travel to and from China. I am grateful both to that organization and to CAST for having made this trip possible. Painstaking preparations had been made to ensure that I might obtain as much information on the topics in which I was interested as possible, and I thank all the Chinese who, in one way or another, aided and abetted my work.

5. Gonzalez, Nancie L., Black Carib Household Structure: A Study of Migration and Modernization (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

6. Throughout, I will use the pinyin spelling for the present community, reserving the older spelling for the historical village as described by Fei and Geddes.

7. Fei, , Peasant Life, p. 170Google Scholar.

8. Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 9Google Scholar. He refers to the total area of village lands as 4,300 mu, and though his informants seemed to imply that 1,200 additional mu had been brought into production, Geddes admitted he was uncertain, so he used Fei's original figure in his subsequent calculations of productivity. This was probably too cautious a procedure.

9. The original plan had called for Fei and me to go together to spend several days in the village, and since he had not been back since 1957, he had asked them to assemble data on certain topics. At literally the last moment, Dr Fei became very ill and was admitted to hospital in Suzhou, so I went on alone. A few weeks later he spent several days there, and presented some of his impressions in the Huxley Memorial Lecture, given at the London School of Economics on 18 November 1981. See “The new outlook of rural China: Kaixiangong revisited after a half century,” in Royal Anthropological Institute Newsletter, No. 48 (02 1982), pp. 4–8Google Scholar.

10. Fei, , Peasant Life, p. 33Google Scholar. Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 12Google Scholar.

11. Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 16Google Scholar.

12. Fei, , Peasant Life, p. 33Google Scholar.

13. Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 14Google Scholar

14. Ibid. p. 15. He carefully notes, however, that “…it is too soon to make any certain prediction of the effect of the social changes.”

15. Ibid. Note in Table 1 that Hehuawan had a birth rate of 31.8 by 1964, which for that brigade, appears to have been a high. Aggregate figures for Kaixiangong, as shown in Table 2, show a peak in 1978. The latter tend to obscure the longer-range pattern, and seem much lower than those reported either for Hehuawan or for other parts of China. See Bianco, Lucien, “Birth control in China: local data and their reliability,” in The China Quarterly, No. 85 (03 1981), pp. 119–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Still, I believe it safe to say that (a) birth rates in Kaixiangong climbed during the same period as those elsewhere in China, and were probably higher at times than apparent from the official statistics given me and Fei, but (b) they remained relatively lower, probably in accordance with earlier tradition and the local economy.

16. Ibid. pp. 3 and 16.

17. The position of women in this part of China has been influenced for centuries by the silk industry. During the Japanese occupation and after, including the early 1950s, there was relatively little activity related to silk in Kaihsienkung, for reasons which have been well described by both Fei and Geddes. It seems probable that the present re-emergence of the industry as a driving force in the community may be related to both the demographic picture and to domestic and community organization. In a monograph under preparation, tentatively entitled Peasant Life in Communist China: Kaixiangong in 1981, I discuss this point more fully.

18. Fei, , Peasant Life, p. 33Google Scholar.

19. Ibid. p. 35. Fei also postulated a high maternal death rate, but without hard data.

20. Fei, , A Revisit, p. 62Google Scholar.

21. Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 12Google Scholar.

22. Fei, , A Revisit, p. 52Google Scholar.

23. Gonzalez, Nancie L., “Domestic groups, family wealth, and the mobilization of labor in modern peasant societies,” ms. 1982Google Scholar. In this manuscript I have also reviewed the literature by other scholars dealing with this matter.

24. To illustrate: we came across a group of about 10 people seated in a courtyard removing cocoons from straw frameworks to which the worms had attached themselves during the spinning. I asked whether there were any “relatives” in the group, and was answered, “Oh, no!” Yet, when I pursued it, I found that they were indeed mostly all “related,” through patrilineal links – in fact members of a zijia. My interpreter, from another part of China, was unfamiliar with the terminology used here, and was surprised to learn that the word he had been using referred only to maternal relatives.

25. Fei, , Peasant Life, p. 35Google Scholar; Geddes, , Peasant Life, pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

26. This property consists of the house itself, furniture, various appliances including television sets, fans and radios, as well as bicycles, clothes and smaller agriculture implements.

27. Morton Fried went so far as to suggest that the nuclear family household was really the norm in Kaihsienkung at that time. See “Introduction,” in Geddes, , Peasant Life, p. 3Google Scholar. I think it must always be remembered that where the stem family is prevalent and where there are more than two children per family, by necessity there will be a large number of nuclear families as well, for this is the “default” form for all those who cannot remain in the parental home. In some areas it is the eldest son who stays, while elsewhere it is the youngest. In earlier times some of these “extra” sons might emigrate to the cities or elsewhere, but today this is less possible. Thus, the norm may not be the ideal form, and the latter cannot be ascertained by counting, for much depends upon demographic and economic conditions.

28. Fei, A Revisit.

29. Seminar, Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, 19 November 1981.