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Family Relations in Chinese History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2022

Cong Ellen Zhang Open the ORCID record for Cong Ellen Zhang [Opens in a new window]
Cong Ellen Zhang*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Chinese History is dedicated to the studies of family relations. This introduction gives a brief survey of recent scholarship, puts the seven articles in this issue into conversation with each other, and identifies four main themes that emerge from this collection of essays.

Type
State of the Field Essay
Information
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 , Volume 6 , Special Issue 2: Family Relations in Chinese History , July 2022 , pp. 193 - 200
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 The anthropological literature on the various aspects of the Chinese family system and family relations is incredibly rich. For a review of early work, see Ebrey, Patricia Buckley and Watson, James L., “Introduction” to Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1400 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 1–15Google Scholar. For recent developments in the field, see the introductions and individual contributions in Brandtstädter, Susanne and Santos, Gonçalos D., eds., Chinese Kinship: Contemporary Anthropological Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar, Santos, Gonçalos D. and Harrell, Stevan, eds., Transforming Patriarchy: Chinese Families in the Twenty-First Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017)Google Scholar, and Yan, Yunxiang, ed., Chinese Families Upside Down: Intergenerational Dynamics and Neo-Familism in the Early 21st Century (Leiden: Brill, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Chan, Alan K. and Tan, Sor-hoon, eds., Filial Piety in Chinese Thought and History (Oxford: RoutledgeCurson, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Xuewei, Kang 康學偉, Xianqin xiaodao yanjiu 先秦孝道研究 (Taipei: Wenjin, 1992)Google Scholar; Thomas Radice, The Ways of Filial Piety in Early China (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006); Fanming, Wu 吴凡明, Cong renlun zhixu dao falu zhixu: xiaodao yu handai fazhi yanjiu 從人倫秩序到法律秩序：孝道與漢代法律硏究 (Changchun: Jilin renmin, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 Knapp, Keith, Selfless Offspring: Filial Children and the Social Order in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zhitui, Yan, Family Instructions for the Yan Clan and Other Works by Yan Zhitui (531–590s), translated by Tian, Xiaofei (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Qingquan, Zou 鄒清泉, Beiwei xiaozi huaxiang yanjiu 北魏孝子画像研究 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu, 2006)Google Scholar.

4 Maram Epstein, Orthodox Passions: Narrating Filial Love during the High Qing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2019); Wilt Idema, trans., Personal Salvation and Filial Piety: Two Precious Scroll Narratives of Guanyin and Her Acolytes (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); and Idem a, Filial Piety and Its Divine Rewards: The Legend of Dong Yong and Weaving Maiden, with Related Texts (Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009).

5 See the introduction to and multiple articles in N. Harry Rothschild and Leslie V. Wallace, eds., Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017).

6 Anthony J. Barbieri-Low and Robin D.S. Yates, Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb No. 247 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Robert Hegel, True Crimes in Eighteenth Century China: Twenty Case Histories (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009); Brian McKnight and James T. C. Liu, trans., The Enlightened Judgments: Ch'ing-ming chi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999); Matthew Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) and Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015).

7 Robert Hegel, ed., Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017); Tina Lu, Accidental Incest, Filial Cannibalism, and Other Peculiar Encounters in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009); Yenna Wu, trans., The Lioness Roars: Shrew Stories from Late Imperial China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell East Asia Series, 1996).

8 Patricia Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing about Rites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) and Ebrey, Chu Hsi's Family Rituals: A Twelfth Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Kai-wing Chow, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics and Lineage Discourse (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).

9 An important early work is Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone, 1958). For more recent studies, see Beverly Bossler, Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status and the State in Sung China (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1998); Hugh R. Clark, Portrait of a Community: Society, Culture, and the Structures of Kinship in the Mulan River from the Late Tang through the Song (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2007); Richard L. Davis, Court and Family in Sung China, 960–1279: Bureaucratic Success and Kinship Fortunes for the Shih of Ming-chou (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986); Patricia Buckley Ebrey, The Aristocratic Families of Early Imperial China: A Case Study of the Po-ling Ts'ui Family (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Robert Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-Chou, Chiang-hsi in Northern and Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); David G. Johnson, The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1977); and Michael Szonyi, Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

10 Beverly Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016); Ann Waltner, Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990); Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, eds., Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Arthur Wolf and Chieh-shang Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).

11 Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Jinhua Jia, Gender, Power, and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China (New York: Columbia University, 2018); Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); Guotong Li, Migrating Fujianese: Ethnic, Family, and Gender Identities in an Early Modern Maritime World (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Man Xu, Crossing the Gate: Everyday Lives of Women in Song Fujian (960–1279) (Albany: State University of New York, 2016).

12 Hsiao-wen Cheng, Divine, Demonic, and Disordered: Women without Men in Song Dynasty China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021); Jia, Gender, Power, and Talent.

13 Grace Fong, Herself an Author: Gender, Agency, and Writing in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008); Xiaorong Li, Women's Poetry of Late Imperial China: Transforming the Inner Chambers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012).

14 Keith Knapp, “Creeping Absolutism: Parental Authority in Early Medieval Tales of Filial Offspring,” in Confucian Cultures of Authority, edited by Roger T. Ames and Peter D. Hershock, 65–91 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); and “Sympathy and Severity: The Father-Son Relationship in Early Medieval China,” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident Hors-série, 2012, 113–36; Weijing Lu, “‘A Pearl in the Palm:’ A Forgotten Symbol of the Father–Daughter Bond,” Late Imperial China 31.1 (2010), 62–97; Jonathan Spence, Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K'ang-Hsi (New York: Vintage Books, 1988).

15 Alan Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Jinhua Jia, Xiaofei Kang, and Ping Yao, eds., Gendering Chinese Religion: Subject, Identity, and Body (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014); Ping Yao, “Good Karmic Connections: Buddhist Mothers and Their Children in Tang China (618–907),” Nan Nȕ 10.1 (2008), 57–85.

16 Katherine Carlitz, “Mourning, Personality, Display: Ming Literati Commemorate Their Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters,” Nan Nü 15.1 (2013), 30–68; Martin W. Huang, Intimate Memory: Gender and Mourning in Late Imperial China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018).

17 Patricia Ebrey, “Concubines in Sung China,” Journal of Family History 11.1 (1986), 1–24; Weijing Lu, “Uxorilocal Marriage among Qing Literati,” Late Imperial China 19.2 (1998), 64–110; Ping Yao, “Cousin Marriages in Tang China (618–907),” Ping Yao, Chinese Historical Review 18.1 (2011), 25–55; and “Until Death Do Us Unite: Afterlife Marriages in Tang China, 618–906,” Journal of Family History 27.3 (2002), 207–26.

18 Beverly Bossler, “A Daughter Is a Daughter All Her Life: Affinal Relations and Women's Networks in Song and Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 21.1 (2000), 77–106; Patricia Ebrey, “The Women in Liu Kezhuang's Family,” Modern China 10.4 (1984), 415–40.

19 There are too many items to list here. For a survey of Chinese and English scholarship, see “Introduction” to Cong Ellen Zhang, Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020).

20 Kathryn Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, 960–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Bettine Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Brian E. McKnight, “Who Gets It When You Go: The Legal Consequences of the Ending of Households,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 43.3 (2000), 314–63; Xing Tie 邢鐵, Jiachan jicheng shilun 家產繼承史論 (Kuning: Yunnan daxue chubanshe, 2001).

21 Weijing Lu, True to Her Word: The Faithful Maiden Cult in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Janet Theiss, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).

22 For an expanded discussion of this and other issues, see Weijing Lu, Arranged Companions: Marriage and Intimacy in Qing China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021).

23 For some recent studies on children and childhood, see Ping-chen Hsiung, A Tender Voyage: Children and Childhood in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005); Anne Behnke Kinney, Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003); and the articles in Anne Behnke Kinney, ed., Chinese Views of Childhood (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995); Wang Zijin 王子今, Qin Han ertong de shijie 秦漢兒童的世界 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2018); Pei-yi Wu, “Education of Children in the Sung,” in Neo-Confucian Education: the Formative Age, edited by Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee, 307–24 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).