Pearl River Delta Households: A Descriptive Profile

Households in the sample population had a mean size of 5.1, not dramatically different from household size in other national rural samples in the 1980s,^[29] from the 1970s estimate of 5.0 for Guangdong by Parish and Whyte,^[30] or from the 1930s figure for Guangdong of 5.2.^[31] Household size ranged from single individuals to an enormous household of 26. There were

[27] The performance of Dongguan is detailed in Zhonggong Zhongyang Bangongting, Dongguan Shi'nian: 1979-1988 (Dongguan Ten Years: 1979-1988) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1989). Fucheng's performance is detailed at pp. 219-20.

[28] Ezra Vogel, "Guangdong's Dynamic Inner Delta," China Business Review , September-October 1989, 56-62.

[29] Household size from a national sample of rural households in 1986 was 5.07, cited in Zhongguo Tongji Nianjian 1988 (Statistical Yearbook of China 1988) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1989), 822; Guangdong samples indicate a decline from 5.74 in 1978 to 5.12 in 1985, cited in Guangdong Tongji Nianjian 1988 (Statistical Yearbook of Guangdong 1988) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 1989), 415.

[30] Parish and Whyte, Family and Village , 134.

[31] Irene B. Taeuber, "The Families of Chinese Farmers," in Family and Kinship in Chinese Society , ed. M. Freedman, 71 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970).

26 single-person households (5.0 per cent), 18 (older) women and 8 men. The modal household as in the 1970s was nuclear in structure. There were relatively few joint households, though a large number of stem or broken stem households (table 5.2). Family relationships in the sample of households are similar to the patterns detailed by Parish and Whyte in their study of Lingnan villages in the 1970s (table 5.3).

Certain kinds of household relationships that existed in the past—and were familiar in the studies of household and family in the peripheries of Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 1960s^[32] —either are nonexistent in the contemporary period or are extremely rare. Polygyny became illegal in 1950 as a result of the Marriage Law, and its economic possibility was compromised by land reform and later collectivization. Plural wives are a characteristic of the past. "Minor" forms of marriage, such as "small daughters-in-law," once common throughout the delta, become impossible in the context of a legally enforceable age of marriage,^[33] and certainly the logic for most forms of minor marriage is less compelling than in the pre-Liberation context.^[34] Households are no smaller than they were in the past, although they were likely to be somewhat larger in the late 1970s, but they are less complex. There are fewer members of senior generations than there were in the past, and there is an almost total absence of father's brothers and father's brothers' wives. Similarly, there are only few siblings (and their wives) and a virtual absence of kin outside direct lines of descent.^[35]

One of the more obvious elements of continuity is patrilocal marriage.^[36] The dominant form of postmarital residence is firmly patrilocal. A close adherence to well-defined areas from which to draw brides is clearly appar-

[32] Summarized most effectively in Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone Press, 1966), which inspired the first generation of anthropological fieldwork in Chinese settings after the formation of the People's Republic of China.

[33] This is not to suggest that all unions occur only upon the assumption of legal age. There are ways that socially recognized marriages can occur regardless of formal legality. See Parish and Whyte, Village and Family , 164-66.

[34] See, for example, the arguments in James P. McGough, "The Domestic Mode of Production and Peasant Social Organization: The Chinese Case," in Chayanov, Peasants and Economic Anthropology , ed. E. Paul Durrenberger, 183-201 (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984).

[35] There is a virtual absence of unrelated kin. There was one (legal) household of unrelated men (in the Shunde village). The villages did contain substantial numbers of individuals who were unrelated by either kinship or marriage to the indigenous people of the villages. They were not living in legal households with formal registrations. I could not discover any way to interview such individuals, who generally appeared to be non-Cantonese-speaking males working as day laborers. The situation had changed by the end of the decade when non-Cantonese-speaking households began to contract land for two- and three-year periods and build houses and small hamlets in styles distinct from those of the indigenous delta villages.

[36] It is not easy in survey situations to distinguish minor marriage or distinctive local customs. Divorce appears to be very low. The three cases of divorce in Naamshui (Leliu, Shunde) were sought by men from women who had refused to consummate their marriages and move from their natal households. See Janice Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), for a discussion of marriage patterns in Shunde, which were anything but "major." In the Leliu village of Naamshui I also came across a household headed by an unmarried sister well past marriage age, who was keeping house for her younger brothers, had engaged special tutors for them, encouraged them to study hard, and was delighted to find two of them at university. The commitment of Shunde women to their natal homes is a very strong one.

ent. Village endogamy is uncommon in all but the large multiple-surname village of Wantong in Dongguan. The marriage area may be somewhat more tightly drawn than in a previous generation. More spouses and daughters-in-law tend to be from the same xiang than are mothers. The most common provenance for wives is within the bounds of the production unit (the former commune, now typically called zhen ) and rarely extends beyond the adjacent administrative entity (table 5.4).

The coincidence between former commune boundaries and standard markets was very close.^[37] Marriage relations were most intense within the bounds of the market area. It was a pattern reinforced by administrative practice during the commune period and has not been compromised by new administrative arrangements, which in the Pearl River delta have seen few shifts in administrative boundaries, although much confusion in changes of name.^[38] Administrative and other changes in the 1980s have only reinforced traditional boundaries that have salience for rural households.

[37] This was first detailed in G. W. Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China: Part III," Journal of Asian Studies 24, no. 3 (May 1965): 363-99.

[38] Rural Guangdong has a distinctive administrative structure, which is a consequence of its particular characteristics and historical developments. The basic unit of local government is called the zhen (market town) and is equivalent to the former commune. The former brigade, which was based on the pre-Liberation xiang (village alliance) became a unit of government for only a brief period in the mid-1980s and paralleled the creation of "township governments" (xiang zhengfu ) in most other Chinese provinces. It is now officially referred to as the "village" (cun ). The former production team, which may have formed a natural village or a village neighborhood during the commune period, is called the "village small group" (cun xiaozu ).

Marriage is central to family continuity. The patrilocal system of marriage has been little affected by the dramatic changes of forty years. Brides are sought from other villages, which have tended over a long period of time to be linked in a system of bridal exchange. Administrative practice during the commune period likely contained and intensified the long-established system of marriage exchange. The renewal of the system of periodic markets has only reinforced the long-established contexts within which marriage occurs. To be sure, marriage is no longer "blind," and individuals have choice in the matter of whom they will marry. The decision to marry, nonetheless, occurs as part of clearly understood family consequences and is arranged in consultation with members of the kin group. Go-betweens make connections between families with eligible children. Their provenance is the area served by the periodic market, and their sphere of operation is the market town on market day.^[39]

Demographic changes over the past forty years have had some major significance for rural household structure. Infant mortality rates have fallen progressively since the 1950s and especially after the Great Leap Forward.^[40] Hence, rural households have more surviving children than was the case for rural households in the republican period. This likely has had effects for adoptions and other forms of incorporation into the household of individuals outside the direct line of patrilineal descent.^[41]

There are more female heads of household (16.9 percent) than at earlier periods. If single-person households are excluded (the majority of these are elderly widows) the proportion of households headed by women is 14.1 percent. There is some regional variation. In the Overseas Chinese areas, households are much more likely to be headed by women. Women are least likely to head households in the two wealthy areas of Shunde and Dongguan.

The incidence of (recent) household division is substantial. While 30.0 percent of households remain undivided, 41.2 percent have divided since the beginning of reform. Households are most likely to have remained undivided in the Overseas-Chinese-dominated village of Kongluen in Duan-

[39] Margery Wolf makes similar arguments. See her Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), 167-68.

[40] Judith Bannister, China's Changing Population (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 103-20.

[41] Parish and Whyte, Family and Village , 136, reported a virtual absence of adopted sons (except among households headed by women) and an absence of adopted daughters and "small daughters-in-law." This is also the observation of Sulamith H. Potter and Jack M. Potter, China's Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). They note in the Dongguan village where they worked, which is adjacent to the one I surveyed, but in a different administrative unit, that "adoptions are rare" (220).

fen (Taishan). Division has been most marked in the fruit-growing village of Tsimkong in Luogang, Guangzhou. It was also high in Wantong in Fucheng (Dongguan) as the reform period got under way. I will offer an explanation below.

The past four decades have been characterized by dramatic shifts in economic and political organization in rural China. Rural households in the Pearl River delta are caught up in late-twentieth-century change. Although the context has changed, household structure at first appears to be characterized by continuities. Households are not immune to what occurs beyond their bounds. Change is, however, kept at arms length, and peasant families have devised strategies to deal with the economic and political threats to their integrity. The patrilineally structured rural household has not merely maintained its corporate character but has also used its intrinsic flexibility to meet new possibilities in the 1980s.