xxii Prologue Mao literature in translation (Slu and Stern 1983,vi),Jonathan Spence writes with regard to "Overpass":"There is extraordinary agreement among these writers about the loss of dignity that afflicts all Chinese denied Periods in Chinese History privacy,in housing as in thought,forced forever to jostle and bargain and olead until the shouts become cries and the cries blows." In a sense,I went to China with Marxist hopes:but I left with Max Weber's worst fears.Writing this ethnography has been a self-reflective endeavor. Late Imperial China Ming dynasty 1368-1644 Qing dynasty 1644-1911 Reign periods: Shunzhi 1644-1661 Kangxi 1662-1722 Yongzheng 1723-1735 Qianlong 1736-1795 Jiaqing 1796-1820 Daoguang 1821-1850 Xianfeng 1851-1861 Tongzhi 1862-1874 Guangxu 1875-1908 Xuantong 1909-1911 Republican China Warlords 1912-1927 Jiang Jieshi's (Chiang Kai-shek)regime 1927-1949 Japanese occupation 1938-1945 Civil war between the Chinese Communists and the Nationalists 1946-1949 People's Republic of China Land reform 1949-1952 Collectivization 1953-1957 Great Leap Forward and people's communes 1958-1959 Three bad years 1959-1961 Cultural Revolution 1966-1969 Fall of the "Gang of Four" 1976 Political and economic liberalization 1978- xxii
General Administrative Levels,1958-1983 Agents and Victims in South China Central government Province (and municipality) urban environment, Prefecture(and municipality) industrial work. County state ownership Commune rural environment, Brigade agricultural work, Team collective ownership Note on Weights and Measures 1 li (Chinese mile)=500 meters I jin (catty)=605 grams 1 dan (picul,10 caties)60.05 kilograms I shi (150 catties)=90.75 kilograms 1 mu 1/15 hectare 1 ging (100 mu)=6.66 hectares
CHAPTER 1 Introduction This ethnography shares with other studies of state agrarian societies a themeansbywhich theiddraniational powers the nal govement penetrate rural soet to exact comnc well as invoke commitment.In agrarian societies undergoing mode transition,governments engineer changes with a remarkable array of ide- ologies.Some social institutions are retained,whileothers are abandoned: some voices prevail,while others are silenced or ignored. The locality I examine is Huancheng Commune in south China,and for me,the central question is how the dynastic order was replaced by new claims to authority in the twentieth century.Although the late imperia nm publican period.The question is whether,in the People's Republic,thes concems have been built upon in the creation of a new state "traditional"and"revolutionary"features.At times,the rural social fabric torn by socialist rhetoric has seemed especially vulnerable and exposed. but at other times,concerns for kinand community,en neurship.and gered an intense upsurge of conventional practices ranging from family enterprises to popular rituals,Even imperial impostors continue to draw an audience (Anagnost 1985).The juxtapositions have been baffling.Have traditional cultural assumptions survi ved the nter with the Maoist revolution to come back full circle in the 1980s?Or have processes of modern state-making and nation-building transformed rural society to the extent that what we observe today are mere fragments of tradition recon- stituted for coping with contemporary existe nce,which continues to be shaped by the priorities of the socialist state? Morevervcnasume that peasant Chinahashnher cultural tradition against the demands of the socialist state,can we be sure that the revolutionary leaders themselves are free of their own past?Both anthropologists and historians will recognize the complexities
2 Introduction Introduction of the situation in the following description of the state's major concern by Stuart Schram (1985,back cover): back with a vengeance.In sum,one wonders how deeply the socialist state has affected rural socicty and established its own mandate to rule. The state was the central power in Chinese society from the start and exem- made me realize,though,that the influence of the socialist state was more plary behavior,rites,morality,and indoctrinations have always been consid- ered in China as means of goverment The connulty between this traditon than superficial.Neediesstosay,peasants under dynastic rue were sub- ed and the principles and practices of the Chinese People's Republic is evident jected to various forms of arbitrary power.Nonetheless,I wonde .Neither in the realm of oraniza whether the new state had not replaced the previous spolitical order with a ation nor in that of ideology and culture would Mao and his successors have striven so hard to promote uniformity if less accessible power structure that created its own arbitrariness.It was not the unitary nature of state and society had not been accepted,for the past two too difficult to see how the postrevolutionary state was able to control a thousand years,as both natural and right. concentrated urban population through the bureaucratic provision of work,housing,and other social services(Whyte and Parish 1984).The The sharing of these assumptions by leaders and masses revealed itself urban (work unit)acquired tremendous power indefin most clearly during the Cultural Revolution in 1966.When a million ing the scope of people's social life (Henderson and Cohen 1984).How. ever,it was hard for me to understand the presence of the state in rural ed Guards chanted "chairman Mao lives to ten thousand years. asserted a right for Mao reserved for emperors only.In this case. communities,where the vast peasantry was often left in seemingly isola traditional notions of moral leadership and of personalized relationships of villages to rely on its own resources.I was initially skeptical of the idea that as rural collectives dependence were woven into the most"revolutionary"political maneu established by the party-state,central direction rather than local initiative shaped the rhythm of life in the rural commu vers and rhetoric. While recognizing the intense efforts of the government to use ideologi- nities.However,during a stay in south China just after the fall of the Gang cal and organizational means to transform rural society,many scholars of Four,I became quite certain that the state was an entity that the villagers I had come to know had to cope with,and not always successfully.From doubt that it has succeeded as much as it had hoped.Several kinds of ement of the commune economy at the time,I could see First,com dence have been presented to substantiate ths ofcolectiviza athe state had lftaonr munal boundaries of villa rem tion aimed at reducing loyalties to them.Second,most schoars would on.When,after a period of hesitant experimentation,decollectivizati was thoroughly implemented by the arly 1980s,some scholars in- agree that the Chinese family as a social unit within the community was never destroyed by the socialist revolution.In fact,some would argu e tha the genuine embrace of the reforms as a revival ofoca iety:but for me.the speed and determination with which the cam the postrevolutionary state had consciously upheld it for purposes of policy Family-centered values continue to be felt and have paigns were pushed indicated the usual imbalance of power between rura oebuffered family members against the dirct powersf society and the party-state.Could the peasants have resisted the reforms even if they had wished to? Third,the functional requisites of rural cadres have often been compared with those of the traditional gentry(Schurmann 1968).Jean Oi (1985) ough the cadres,who main The Cellularization of Rural Society tained a network of patron-client ties with fellow villagers.Similarly,Viv- ienne Shue(1988)maintains that the cadres have used traditional com munal bases to further their own interests and to shelter villagers from the The issues of cultural continuity and change in rural society-and the related questions of whether the socialist state has penetrated it or not and intrusions of the party-state,and consequently frustrated its goalsFi t reforms seem to indicate that once the ideological by what means-hinge on a particular analytical point.It has been noted lidisdnieprenurhip and radition popule phenomena that the party-state attacked as"feudal practices,"have come have been seen as concessions on the part of the state to communal loyalties and traditional economic structures
Introduction Introduction 5 (Skinner 1965).To the protagonists in Michael Frolic's (1980)portrayal of rate written genealogies and participated in collective rituals to confim rural transformation,sharing communal resources with outsiders meant their membership and status.The trust funds of the larger ones were "a foot of mud and a pile of shit,"an attitude pronounced by both the cadres and the peasans.Richard Madsen ()sshows that onfu cian morality and behind the ma2nca的m Every male member of a lineage was entitled to a share of its res class-focused political discourse of Chen Village.In rural economic organi- urces which involved a range of benefits from ceremonial pork to rights of zation (Lardy 1975)and village family life (Parish and Whyte 1978), scholars have observed a distinct"encystment"These observations have olitical im Elizabeth Perry (1985)and Shue(198)have gone further and described how rural cadres actively encouraged parochial soli the state bureaucracy.which were in themselves sources of prestige and power. darities to create protective shells against the demands of the government. Shue notes in particular that Maoist policies paradoxically helped to pre- In this part of south China,lineage-based communities of up to several thousan embers were not uncommon.Although they were exclusive. they often formed part of higher-order lineages that were based in large ver for their own ell as f ir com unities.The reintroduction market towns and cities and whose trust funds were built on vast estates ir of market forces in the recent decade has only exposed peasants to less the sands.The managerial elites of the higher predictable economic conditions in which the central government can posed of merchants,lat ndlords order lineages were com and scholar-officials.These ancestral trusts intervene more directly.Perry emphasizes that decades of postrevolution ned both state ritually and instrumentally linked together a large membership spread ha and society.Traditional over a vast area.Managers Invested in land reclamations.accumulated parochlalism overlaps with collective interests in the communes to en- rent,dominated the trading of grain and local crops,provided credit fo gender unusual strategies of aggression. agriculture and commerce and represented their members in civil and However,even if the social cells remain unchanged,the question re. ollective actions express local autonomy?Moreover, The social landscape was further complicated by merchants who resided assume that local are the cellular structures remnants of the past that the postrevolutionary in town but controlled interregional trade as well as local agricultura production through credit and trade monopolies.They also contributed to regime failed to remove,or are they new creations?To place the inquiry in a historical context,at the turn of the century an economically differenti and managed estates held by charity organizations,temples,and academ es.Together with the ancestral trusts.these operations created webs of rural social landscape dominated the Pearl River At that time.politcal conditons were morc fud and rura economic interests and overlapping social boundaries in the rural hin terland (Nishikawa 1985:Matsuda 1981). far less cellular than one is often taught.In that case,when and how did the The political econom was dominated by an alllance of literati and cellular communities acquire their increased significance in rural life? merchants and embodied the creative union of the state and popular Since the mid-Ming pe iod,the delta's varied economy had become cultures in a unitary sociopolitical order that juxtaposed intense social increasingly prosperous.Military colonies and subsequent migration into differences and solidarities.In economic terms.the the delta reclaimed vast marshes known as the sands (sha).The develop- chang)commanded intricate me orate estates(o extract the resources of the e sands was paralleled by an increase in populatored .butfrom the peasants perspective they also provided the cialization,and the rise of a network of market necessary means for survival and mobility. highly commercialize agriculture (Ye and Tan 1985a).In time,socia At the tur of the century,peasants in the delta lived in villages.but relationships in and among the rural communities became very complex. Migrant families grew into powerful groups whose members demon- vilage life was enriched by affiliations that extended territorially in term of marketing,defense,and temple networks,and temporally in terms of strated patrilineal descent from a common ancestor.Many held corpo genealogies and migration histories going back to mythical origins.Peas rately owned properties(uchang),the income from which went into a ant life centered upon year-round festivals and lineage rituals that con trust(tang or z)to finance lineage activities.The lineages compiled elabo- tinued to evoke primordial loyalties and demonstrated cultural linkages