The Draft Syllabus, and Jo Yung's Comments

The draft syllabus is up (see the link to the right).

My colleague Jo Yung, a veteran of many research projects among middle-class, working-class, rural, and even upper-income Chinese people has offered some suggestions. They are so good that I reproduce them, here. I think there are some readings here that I'll offer up in class as we move ahead.


Jo is here, doing research with migrant workers. That's the young woman's bedroom--pretty simple living, right? But there's a big range of living styles in China. However, our little encounter will just scratch the surface. The syllabus is just such a surface-scratch.

It contains blocks that may be re-arranged a bit, but the course expectations, readings, and so on are set. Our first meeting will be a working lunch—and we have to stay on time to avoid conflicts with the instructors who will use the room before and after. See you there!

Jo Yung, anthropologist, Hong Kong, writes:

History

-The contemporary history (from 1912, the set up of Republic of China onwards) would be easier to understand, easier to articulate those (civil war, Cultural Revolution, Open Door Policy, etc.) with how China looks today.

-One thing could be interesting to learn, the etic and emic perspectives. I actually learned it from Ming. When it comes to Cultural Revolution, the whole period is always portrait as emotional, bloody, crazy, dramatic and cruel somehow. Yet, Ming gave me a film, Peacock, to watch and he said it was close to Chinese thoughts about Cultural Revolution – suppressed and quiet.

Peacock/ Kong Que (2005), directed by Gu Chang-wei.

DVD: http://sensasian.com/catalog.php//movies/1

Plot summary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445506/plotsummary

Family and kinship

-While 70% of the total population is still in the rural area, extended family still carries weight when we talk about family structure. When we did fieldwork in China, children are always taken care by their aunts and uncles. Our respondent, Faustina, from Dell project, always refers her elder cousin as 'sister'. She has close connection with that cousin as they are the only two persons in the family who left their hometown, Sichuan. They both work in Beijing. The close relationship in a family definitely gives mutual support to both girls. Another interesting thing is the psudo-family style, it's like you and your younger brother, Xiao Shang. The family network, be they in extended mode, quasi or psudo mode, they do have some pragmatic and utilitarianistic implications to some extent. And I think the 'family' network becomes more important as the in-migration is getting more common.

-If you want to talk about women in a family, it would be interesting, too. In a rural family, women's community is developed through their ties to their in-law families. While a girl is in their own family, she is supposed to be married out. She cannot inherit property or land in the family. When she is married, she is still a stranger, a new comer to her husband's family. She has to learn to be a good daughter-in-law from her mother-in-law. Her status is the lowest in her husband's family. Yet, her status and power changed when she gives birth to her first baby. If the baby is a boy, her status has automatically elevated just because she gave birth to a baby who can continue the blood of her husband and the family. And that girl's status can climb further when she herself becomes a mother-in-law. So, the children, especially, sons, are women's assets in a rural family. It is exactly this practice reinforces and stabilizes patriarchy in rural China.

Reading: Wolf, Margery, 1972. Uterine Families and Women's Community. In Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

However, when we did the study on Migrant Workers, we learned that capitalism and globalization do help women in rural areas defer their conventional obligations. They went all the way from countryside to big cities like Beijing and Shanghai to work as factory workers when they finish junior high.

In the city, after the one-child policy in the early eighties, it changes not just demographic structure but also consumer market, social policies and education system related to that. I think Jing Jun's book on little emperors do reflect consequence of that one-child policy.

Reading: Feeding China's little emperors: food, children, and social change/ edited by Jun Jing. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2000.

A lot of vehement debates on BBS/ newsgroups in China on one-child-policy can be seen after the earthquake in Sichuan. "死了就未了" (if the child dies, it's (the family) is over).

Stratification

-Some interesting, residual socialistic mentalities can be found by questions like 'how much money do you make?', 'how much is your apartment?' even in first meeting. It was legitimate to ask in the past as everybody is working for the government or working in a Danwei. Everybody should earn pretty much the same. And everyone should not hold secret from each other, too.

-Middle class: it's interesting. I think we talked a lot about them. I have to read more to understand them and especially the impact of the middle class in China. But the Omnicom videos (Qi-ling from Sichuan and Wang-mi from Shanghai) well reflect the mentality of today's middle class.

Education

-It's still the only path to climb the way up to the social ladder. That's why 新東方 (xīndōngfāng ) are still the cathedrals for most students preparing for public exams and who plan for studying abroad.

Language

There are some interesting meanings in today's Chinese expressions that we have come across when doing fieldwork.

1. 沒辦法

2. 發展 (develop) – while the migrant workers working 12 hours a day in a factory, they still consider working in a city is a kind of 'development'.

3. 查資料 (search for information) – when we ask people what they do on the Internet, they always answer searching information although they are doing QQ, playing CS and reading BBS only!

4. Phatic communications over the phone calls with family

Globalization and China

How about food culture? While it seems China is embracing the global market, there is localization happening as well.

Reading: Golden arches east: McDonald's in East Asia/ Edited by James L. Watson. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Consumerism

How about the example of Ikea? How middle class spends loads of money in renovating their houses?

Reading: Urban consumer culture by Deborah Davis, The China Quarterly, 2005