Everyday Guanxi Production In 1988-9o Fengjia, every time one asked for or granted a favor. xpressed sympathy, or called on a friend-that is, every time one invoked guanxi to achieve something in the world-one cally re-created that guanxi. Thus, in addition to the elaborate orga nization of guanxi production on ritual occasions, Fengjia residents (re)produced guanxi in their daily lives. Indeed, many of the techniques of ritual guanxi production-labor exchange, the use of kinship names the embodiment of ganging-came from everyday activity. After a brief introduction to a local typology of interpersonal relationships. this hapter examines the everyday techniques of guanxi production. Types of Guanxi In 1988-go Fengjia, most residents recognized four basic categories of endly relationships: family members(benjiaren), relatives(qinqi), fel low villagers (xiangqin)and friends(pengyou). These categories over lapped, and the same person(even within the same relationship) could stances. Family members certainly included all those who lived togethe as one economic unit. Following village administrative categories, I refer to such units as households (hu). Depending on context, mem bers of agnatically related households might also be considered family members, However, such agnates could also count as fellow villagers xiangqin). The flexibility of the term"family member"and the impor ance of the category "fellow villager: which included households of different surnames, refiected the near absence of formal lineage organi Afines were usually referred to as"relatives"(qinqi), a term em bracing three major categories: mother's sister's family (yiyi jia) father's sister's family (gugu jia), and mother's mother's family (laolao
26 Practices of Guanri Production Everyday Guanxi Production 27 Laolao jia their households. Though household members might differ over which guanxi were most important, gifts were usually seen as coming from households as units I Gugu jia △=O!}My阳 (Maternal Embodying Ganqing To convey ganqing, it must have a discernible form. Gift giving, toast ing, and serving food at banquets, and ritualized decorum like bows and ketu(kowtow)are all methods of materializing ganqing. Here, I would like briefly to describe the generation of ganging through its di ect embodiment in specific human emotions. This embodiment should 人 not be understood as the external representation of an underlying pr given reality. Rather, it is a claim about what one wants a relationship to be in the future that Participates in the reconstitution of future reality Female The sentimentality of the present shapes th e Male Figure s Kinship relations in Fengia The embodiment of ganging was important to both ritual and every. day practices of guanxi production. In ritual, such embodiment was orchestrated or at least expected. At funerals there were specifc times fia). Since village kinship was reckoned patrilineally. the last for women to wail and for xiaozhe(direct patrilineal descendants of the Claolao jia) additionally included all of the mother's brother's deceased)to weep. The GPCR ban on interclass weeping at funerals was families. Because of a tendency toward village exogamy, these ually lived in different villages. However, where they had clearly aimed at prohibiting the interclass guanxi production that results ithin the village, they also counted as fellow villagers to act embarrassed, the groom's father happy, and the groom ambiva- Villagers had friends living in and outside of Fengjia. However, a friend from within the village was usually categorized as a fellow vil- lent. At a"dowry party"(song hezi)*the bride's parents should be sad (because their daughter is about to leave home). That these ganqing lager. One exception(and an example of the situation specificity of ere expected in no sense made them less"authentic. "When witness- relationships)was at wedding ceremonies, where those who gave"con gratulatory gifts"were considered"friends"whether they came from ganqing Howev. I was always moved by the embodiment of powerf gs side or outside the village. authenticity different from that typically recognized in American pop Two caveats further complicate this terminology. First is the messy psychology. Few in Fengjia would acknowledge a"true"emotional life, fact that in patrilocal marriages women"change"families. The com where"spontaneous"feelings well up from an utterly individual heart leteness of this transfer, I will argue, was a constantly negotiated social regardless of the surrounding social circumstances problem. As a consequence. married women at times referred to their Though not orchestrated, embodied ganging played an important natal relatives as "family members"instead of"relatives. "Second, rela role in everyday guanxi production as well. On the few occasions when ionships were constituted between households as well as between their I was sick in the village, I received a stream of visitors. Though I only ndividual members. Because the general unit of economic accounting wanted to rest by myself, read English novels, and generally pretend was the household, and because guanxi always involved material obli wasnt in Fengjia, I had to deal with well-meaning friends. On one such gation, the guanxi of individuals always involved the other members of cession I must have let my irritation show; one man said, "You should
28 Practices of Guanri Production Everyday GuanxI Production ay be happy to have so many people embody concern I a]. "Why? created in illness visits as actively contributing to curing the sick. The I asked. Because if they didn't embody concern. they wouldn't be your temporary misfortunes of the Zhang family can serve as an example. friends any more. Mr. Zhangs grandson, Ying. had broken his leg. Originally it didn't af- On another day there was a fire in the cornstarch factory. People ect Mr. Zhang too much. There were lots of people visiting his grand hroughout the village grabbed buckets and ran over to the factor son, so he could go out if he needed. However, then Mr. Zhang s wife got There were two faucets near the fire where buckets could be filled. After sick. He said. "After Ying broke his leg, she worried so much she didnt filling their buckets, these helpers ran them over to men standing on eat right, Then she got a fever. "With two close relatives sick in different ladders who passed them to others on the roof who doused the fire households, his visiting burdens were doubled and he couldn't go out bug Eis 16, people flling buckets than the faucets could accom There were mor any more. Many fellow villagers visited the boy. Mr. Zhang divided his med behind the faucets: people began pushing and time between Ying and his wife. Mr. Zhangs two daughters, who had ally, the fire was put out without much damage. After long been married and were living in different villages, took turns visit- wards, I asked Teacher Feng why people would butt in line in such a ng their mother. They came on alternate days. After two weeks Zhang's situation. He explained"when a lot of collective equipment is endan- ife got better, and he started going out again gered, everyone wants to communicate concern. "Embodying concern If an old person became seriously ill, friends, relatives, and fellow their individual guanxi and their guanxi with the village as a whole oth generates a collective ganqing and helped Fengjia residents manage both villagers visited from all around, They often brought gifts of food and were given tea to drink. As mentioned in the introduction, my visit to Of course. individuals also embodied ganqing on more mundane the family of a stroke victim led to some of my closest field relations occasions. Once a man selling watermelons bicycled into the village uring that visit the house was full of visitors. One of the victim's sons loudly hawking his produce. A woman immediately walked out from told me that his relatives had come out of filial piety and respect (xiao ourtyard and yelled at him, angrily proclaiming that he had and zunjing). He said, "Old people's lives haven't been easy. they suf cheated another resident on his last trip. No one bought anything fered a lot to bring us up. so we are very happy that everyone could the hawker went on to the next village, The anger of the woman em come today. The wife of the stroke victim seemed surprisingly relaxed. bodied a ganqing in sympathy with her previously cheated fellow vil I suggested. "This must be worrying for you. "She replied, "Why should lager that seemingly swayed all those who might otherwise have bought I worry when so many people have come to visit? "For this woman and some watermelon. I would not reduce all emotional activity in Feng her son. the ganging and guanxi created by so much visiting allowed an jia to the single dimension of guanxi production, but I believe that in ng situation to become somewhat posit many contexts the embodiment of emotion is interpreted in precisely Ellen Judd (989), who also did research in Shandong Province in the this fashion ate 198os, writes of the important"affective and moral ties"(I would say ganqing and guanxi) between a bride and her natal home(niang Visiting, Exchanging Favors, Helping Out jia)and argues that a womans ratal home and mother- in-law's home pojia)make competing claims on their daughter's time and services Visiting, whether to lend a hand or to socialize, was another importer This tension was directly relevant to visiting practices. Women often practice of guanxi production. In hot weather. those with free time set returned to their natal villages to socialize, embody concern for sick p stools outside their doors and encouraged friends and relatives to sit participate in rituals, or just help out. Some women took turns and chat In the winter, friends gathered around stoves and drank tea.At g each others'felds so that each would have regular opportu- times of special need the visiting of friends and relatives was especially return to their natal villages. However, in contrast to judd's significant. It fulfilled and re-created material obligations, materialized emphasis on the competitive aspect of these relationships. I only once hence metonymically reproduced guanxi. heard a woman complaining that her daughter-in-law was spending too As my own experience demonstrated, illness was an important occa much time at her natal home. More often I heard the calculation that sion for visiting and embodying concern. Many considered the ganging lughter-in-law's natal visits could improve affinal guanxi
3o Practices of Guanxi Production Everyday Guanxi Production 31 elderly widow looked after her neighbors grandchildren and in received help with her felds, A household that ran a commercial vege table garden took advantage of their frequent market trips to shop for their neighbors. In turn, they asked for help when the labor demands of regetable gardening exceeded houschold capacity. Once, I watched an ld man spreading his wheat out in the street to dry. A sudden change in the weather threatened to soak his grain, but a half dozen men and women from neighboring households came running over and manage to sweep it up before the rain began in earnest. He told me his son had done the same for his neighbors on other occasions The exchange of ganging within households likewise depended on articular circumstances. The taking over of certain chores by a fam nember-say, clothes washing for a daughter-in-law or draught animal are by a grandfather-constituted an interdependence that cont ally re-created the guanxi of that household. Special care in the perfor Figure 6 Neighbors assisting with house construction mance of more personal duties- preparing bath water for a tired and rty farmworker, mending a cherished shirt, or cooking The larger life projects of house building and marriage provided op- embodied particular ganqing. Tensions between household member portunities for the exchange of favors and guanxi building that were could be alleviated or exacerbated by the manner in which such duties neither matters of daily activity nor formal ritual. Almost all marriages yere performed. Perhaps most basically, eating together(both in th in 1988-9o Fengjia were negotiated through matchmakers(meiren of consuming the same dishes at the same time and in the sense Households relied heavily on their networks of friends and affinal rela of utilizing foodstuffs purchased from a collective budget) constituted tions to help find spouses. The successful location of a marriage partne ousehold relationships Not only was sharing meals a matter of spend often led to a long-lasting guanxi between the new couple,'s families and ng time together and collectively enjoying the fruits of family labor, it he matchmaker. Villagers also invoked guanxi when undertaking large so was an occasion for specific contributions to the family economy construction projects(figure 6). For example, one household decided rough frugality. By eating less expensive items or by consuming only to enlarge the gate to their courtyard so that they could more easily hat would have otherwise been wasted, particular family members, move a newly acquired horsecart in and out of their yard. The proje often older ones, embodied ganqing for(and made claims on)the other involved tearing down the old gate and adjacent brick wall and build- members of their household ing new ones, including an ornate frontpiece. The family acquired the Certainly the everyday exchange of favors within and between house building materials and informed their friends and neighbors, On the holds has always been a practical matter contextualized in the ever- arranged day, scores of young and middle-aged men came over. House. changing socioeconomy of the present. The daily patterns of guan holds friendly to the family in question all tried to send someone. Some production were quite different during the precommunist era of house households also sent women who helped serve tea and informal meals hold land tenure and the Maoist era of collectivized farming. They also when the men took breaks. The project was finished in one afternoon vary from village to village. Judd (1994: 202-212)demonstrates how pa and seemed as much a social occasion as a building project terns of interhousehold help in three other Shandong villages during Patterns of regular interhousehold help varied extensively the 198os varied with each village 's economic base. During my: 2 visit families, Practical needs and abilities dictated the availabilit Fengjia, I sensed that an increase in household entrepreneurship was portunities to exchange favors and create guanxi. However, again inducing changes in the patterns of interhousehold exchange. A amples can illustrate the more typical sorts of exchange. One chi man building a chicken factory relied on friends and relatives to raise
32 Practices of Guanxi Production ryday Guanxi Proauction 33 capital and find a construction team, yet he would not directly call on respects. After he left, she said, "Secretary Feng is so good to me. Did em for labor. He purposely hired an out-of-village construction team you see that he called me great grandmother [laonainai l? to build his factory and paid them cash. Another woman who had just Recent Chinese films provide several more examples in which the opened a store told me it was wrong to ask friends for help in running emotional climax comes when one character acknowledges a relation a profit-making enterprise. However, she also said that her friends and ship by calling another by a relational kinship term. In the movie Old neighbors were her best customers. These two entrepreneurs both re Tales South of the City Wall(Cheng Nan Jiu Shi), a woman who thinks lied on friends, relatives, and fellow villagers in some aspects of thei she has found her abandoned daughter prepares to run away with her. businesses but avoided them as sources of labor. In contrast, the com- but just before they are about to go she realizes the young girl has not yet mercial vegetable gardener described above continued in 1992 to call addressed her. She says, "You still haven't called me, call me just once on the labor of his fellow villagers in exchange for shopping services (Ni hai mei jiao wo, jiao wo yi sheng). "The child calls her"Ma"and they In brief, the creation of ganqing through the exchange of favors should run off in a haze of rain and confusion, only to be run over by a train not be viewed as an unchanging essence of Chinese village life. Espe The stepson's use of"father"in Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou and the young cially over the past half century, the types and organization of labor in boy's use of maternal grand ather" in Sun Zhou's Heartstrings (xin Fengjia have been changing rapidly Xiang)provide equally compelling and perhaps better known examples e extended to everyone older, regard Kinship Terms and Names less of surname. Families of different surnames worked out generational Routine terms of address also constituted an everyday method of guanxi production. When I was in Fengjia, all older relatives were called by re Yangtze Plain village during the 193os and suggested that attached to ational kinship terms. This form of address was considered respect ach kinship relation is a certain attitude and level of respect that is and was an acknowledgment of the obligat on that junior people owed extended to each person addressed by a given kinship term. In Feng to their older relatives. Language learning itself started from kinship ia village, Fei's explanation also illuminates. When paying respects to terms. Small children were constantly being told"call that man shushu' one's older relatives on the Chinese New Year(by going to their houses, (father's younger brother)or"call her yi others sister)and re- addressing them by the appropriate kinship names, bowing, and wish warded if they managed to use the correct form of address. The term ing them well for the new year), " fictional"kin relations were given the (to recognize or acknowledge relatives) was closely related to same respect as"actual"ones. kinship terms. When a child began to call a friend of his father's"shu- Like many of the practices discussed in this book, Fengjia use of kin hu, "the child could be said to have"recognized"(ren)that man as a hip names echoes the Analects of Confucius, "Confucius says elative, In Fengjia, the title teacher (laoshi)was also used like a kin hip term. One man said, "Once they teach you, you call them la When names are not properly ordered. what is said is not attuned: when what for their whole life. "At times, children addressed their parent's teachers is said is not attuned, things will not be done successfully.( Book 13.3, cited in with the terms for paternal grandmother or grandfather(nainai, yeye Hall and Ames 1987:269) In some settings the use of a kinship term could be highly charged Usually referred to as the"rectification of names"(zheng ming). the spent the first day of the Chinese New Year with a woman who was old principle elaborated in this passage is interpreted by David Hall and both in terms of actual years and in terms of generations(the woman's Roger Ames as follows: "Acceptance of a name as appropriate involves a late husband had a generational name as old as or older than anyone disposition te act. Language is dispositional and the ordering of names lse living in the village). That morning the village secretary, who in age is per se an ordering of dispositions"(1987: 299). In brief, names do not was only twenty-five years younger than this woman but who belonged serve as "labels"for unitary, individual subjects; rather their usage im to the generation three levels below her, came and paid his customary plies a"disposition to act"that is appropriate to the guanxi that their