The Western Delta: The Overseas Chinese Connection

Finally, I want to discuss some of the features of the distinctive western delta, the homeland of North Americans of Chinese origin.^[56] Overseas Chinese have always been deeply conscious of their membership in elaborate kin groups and have remained fiercely loyal to their ancestral points of origin. Chinese communities abroad were constructed, in the past at least, about a set of organizations that had at their core principles of fictive kinship (family or surname associations) or common origin. It is the loyalty to ancestral points of origin on the part of expatriates that calls forth a willingness, even after decades abroad, to donate to homeland projects. It is this understanding that has been so important for local leadership in production units in the Pearl River delta to encourage the involvement of its expatriates in local economic development in the 1980s.

The great majority of households in Duanfen have relatives overseas. They are described as "Overseas Chinese dependents" (qiaojuan ). A small proportion of households do not have kinsmen abroad. Among the qiaojuan households there are those whose kinsmen abroad are distant and others who have close kinsmen with a direct relationship, either through marriage or descent, such as husbands, wives, parents, or children. The closeness of relationships will determine the amount of support that relatives abroad will provide and, in the modern period, the likelihood of obtaining an immigration visa and the possibility of joining kinsmen abroad. In the western delta in the 1980s, family and kinship loyalty has resulted in the creation of distinct household strategies among villagers with extensive overseas link-

[56] I have benefited from numerous conversations with Dr. Woon Yuen-fong of the University of Victoria about the western delta region. She has generously shared her findings from Chikan in neighboring Kaiping xian . See her "Social Change and Continuity in South China: Overseas Chinese and the Guan Lineage of Kaiping County, 1949-1987," China Quarterly , no. 118 (June 1989): 324-44; and her "International Links and Socio-economic Development of Modern China: An Emigrant Community in Guangdong," Modern China 16, no. 2 (1990): 139-72; "From Mao to Deng: Life Satisfaction Among Rural Women in an Emigrant Community in South China," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 25 (January 1991): 139-69.

ages. It has also resulted in the extensive revival of lineages, which had seemed forever compromised by land reform, collective forms of economic management, and firmly held ideological positions.

In the western delta it is important to distinguish the proportion of households with relatives abroad and, among these, whether their relatives are directly or more distantly related. It is possible to suggest that there are different strategies employed by households in the region, which are determined in large measure by the extent of their links with kinsmen abroad.

The consequences of extensive out-migration provide a possible explanation for the large (17 percent) proportion of "isolate" family types in the Duanfen village complex of Kongluen. Many are older women who have not yet left to join family in North America or have decided to stay. There is also a disproportionately large number of household heads who are widows (38.5 percent).^[57] The high proportion of widowed household heads is a possible consequence of the high rates of out-migration to overseas settlements. Some men left and never returned or broke contact with their homeland villages. Some may have remarried abroad and established separate families. Contacts between the homeland and the points of migration were frequently disrupted and were severed for almost a decade during the Japanese occupation. Mortality was also very high in Taishan during the Japanese occupation.

Delayed household division (and the out-migration of recently divided families) results in a very small proportion of nuclear households (31 percent). There is a correspondingly large number of stem families (46 percent). Data on responsibilities of household management reflect some of the distinctive features of the consequences of extensive out-migration. There are more heads of households responsible for economic management in Kongluen than in any other village (69.8 percent) and, correspondingly, the lowest incidence of spouses taking on these responsibilities (4.6 percent). This can be partly explained by the large number of isolates and widowed household heads. Equally, household management by other than the household head (or spouse) (26.9 percent) is matched only in Ngawu, where the incidence of complex household forms, as in Kongluen, is high. In both, the numbers of Overseas Chinese households are large.

Among Pearl River delta villages, remittances have a marked significance for household income only in the Overseas Chinese homeland. This is true among households in Kongluen, where remittances are still the major determinant of income disparities. Household income per capita is

[57] For the total sample, household heads who were widowers or widows constituted 19.0 percent. The proportions in the other sample villages are as follows: Naamshui, 13.8 percent; Tsimgong, 18.2 percent; Ngawu, 9.1 percent and Wantong, 16.2 percent. The number of widowers was less than 10 percent of the total number of widowers and widows.

highest among those with relatives abroad and lowest among those who do not have relatives abroad.^[58]

Non-qiaojuan households have the fewest resources and must rely therefore on their own abilities. As a result, these households are more deeply involved in wage labor than are qiaojuan households. Their male members, for example, are the backbone personnel of the construction teams that have become so important for Taishan (and neighboring Kaiping and Enping) in meeting the labor needs of the Pearl River delta construction boom. Such activities take workers away from the villages for long periods, and they may return only infrequently but, as in Ngawu, typically for the busy season of transplanting and harvesting in midsummer. Their wives tend to bear a disproportionate share of agricultural tasks. Those who do remain in the villages and concentrate on agricultural production tend to contract larger amounts of land and to expand into lucrative sidelines, either within the agriculture sector or into transportation or commercial activities. Such households often become "specialist households" of one kind or another.

Distant qiaojuan households have remittances but have little or no opportunity to contemplate out-migration. Such households are therefore also deeply involved in local economic activity. As qiaojuan households they have some advantages when compared with the non-qiaojuan households. They have remittances that can become working capital. They have connections with relatives abroad who can become the source of capital inputs by either bringing in (tax free) or sending items that are unobtainable or in short supply, such as machinery, electric motors or generators, building materials, trucks, or motorcycles.

Changes in policy toward direct qiaojuan families have resulted in the return of confiscated property. In addition, since 1979 direct qiaojuan families have been leaving in large numbers as part of family reunification policies in such countries as Canada and the United States. As a consequence, there is a considerable amount of property standing empty, which is often managed by the remaining (distant) qiaojuan kinsmen. Such properties can be used as an economic resource. Thus, while non-qiaojuan families are typically engaged as wage laborers or on their own account in farm production, distant qiaojuan households are typically engaged in enterprises in the private sector or are in partnership with zhen -run enterprises. The access to capital by distant qiaojuan households has allowed them to contract formerly collectively managed facilities (such as orchards, general stores, or repair facilities) at the village level and therefore augment their participation in agriculture with private production activities in the tertiary sector.

[58] This was also the pattern of income distribution even before the reform in the rural economy got under way, despite the obstacles that sometimes appeared for those households receiving remittances. It appears, however, that income differences have narrowed in the 1980s.

Direct qiaojuan households were the most advantaged in the 1980s in terms of both remittances and their potential ability to leave. As direct qiaojuan they were most severely affected by ideological hostility and the lack of labor power before 1979. Often bitter memories of the past and lack of confidence about the future increase their desire to leave the homeland. This group of households expects to leave, and, despite enjoying all the advantages that their distant qiaojuan kinsmen have in the villages, they are less committed to long-term economic benefit in the homeland. Many, particularly the women, who were left behind at an earlier period, are older, and their only economic activities relate to food production for themselves and whatever dependents remain. Older men who may be waiting for immigration visas spend a great deal of time socializing with their friends in the teahouses. The major concern of younger members of such households is preparing for emigration, and they spend much of their time acquiring a foreign language, typically English, or some other useful and marketable skill. Their levels of education are often high.

The possibility of family reunification abroad and migration away from the homeland has some marked effects on the social structure of villages throughout those parts of the Pearl River delta where direct qiaojuan households are concentrated. In Taishan, as well as other parts of the siyi area of migration to North America,^[59] while the architecture stands as a testimony to foreign remittances in the past, many houses stand empty, some smaller villages are virtually deserted, and there is the constant movement of population away from the area. Over ten thousand people have left Duanfen since 1979, including at least three Party secretaries. There is a curious contradiction. On the one hand, some of the more prosperous residents abroad have returned to the homeland and donated to schools, hospitals, libraries, and other public monuments, often renewing their association with their native places after an interval of decades. On the other hand, there are households who are leaving to join their kinsmen in North America permanently, leaving behind splendid houses, familiarity, comfort, even a modicum of prestige, for an uncertain future in an alien environment.

In the late twentieth century the desire to go abroad is as intense as it was in the earlier part of the century. There is far more contact with a wider range of relatives living abroad, and a detailed knowledge of life outside China is certainly present. There are also visitors, with their obvious affluence and their ability to dispense largesse. There is also television with its seductive images. The direct qiaojuan households are awaiting their

[59] Cantonese: sze-yap , literally "four districts." The four contiguous and culturally distinct xian (Xinhui, Kaiping, Taishan, and Enping) that constitute the ancestral points of origin for the great majority of Chinese in the Americas.

chances to leave, knowing that there is a certain inevitability. The distant qiaojuan and non-qiaojuan households are anxious to marry their daughters to direct qiaojuan or, better, an actual Overseas Chinese. In this way, over time, the entire household can be sponsored and take up residence abroad.^[60]