State, gender and uxorilocal marriage in contemporary rural north China

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 60, 2008, Pages 111-132

  Zhang, Weiguo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER; MARRIAGE; RURAL SOCIETY; STATE ROLE;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 50849095150     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/tcj.60.20647990     Document Type: Article

References (104)

1. William L. Parish and Martin K. Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 379, No. 1;
2. Margery Wolf, Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 196-98;
3. Shuhe Liu, "Zheli shixi nüqunan" (Uxorilocal Marriage Becomes a Fashion Here), Zhonghua nüzi xueyuan Shandong fenyuan xuebao, funü xueyuan (Journal of the Women's Academy at Shandong), No. 4 (1996), pp. 39-41;
4. Shuhe Liu, "Hunjia dabiange - Shandong Pingyin Xian Nanmencun he Dongsancun diaocha" (Great Marriage Transformation - Investigation in Nanmen Village and Dongshan Village in Pingyin County, Shandong Province), Renkou yu jingji (Population and Economics), No. 6 (1997), pp. 54-57. The uxorilocal marriages discussed in this paper include first marriages. I exclude cases of virilocally married women who become widowed and remarry, with their later husbands joining them in the marital home.
5. Shuzhuo Li, Marcus W. Feldman and Nan Li, "A Comparative Study of Determinants of Uxorilocal Marriage in Two Counties of China", Social Biology, Vol. 48, No. 1-2 (2001), pp. 125-50.
6. Elisabeth J. Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 143;
7. Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 124-25;
8. Mark Selden, "Family Strategies and Structures in Rural North China", in Deborah Davis and Stevan Harrell (eds), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 157.
9. Michael Palmer, "The Re-emergence of Family Law in Post-Mao China: Marriage, Divorce and Reproduction", The China Quarterly, No. 141 (March 1995), p. 125;
10. Geya Wang, Zhongguo xiandai hunyin jiating lifa yanjiu (Legal Studies of Modern Chinese Family and Marriage) (Heilongjiang: Heilongjiang People's Publisher, 2004), p. 216.
11. Shuzhuo Li, Marcus W. Feldman and Nan Li, "Acceptance of Two Types of Uxorilocal Marriage in Contemporary Rural China: The Case of Lueyang", Journal of Family History, Vol. 28, No. 2 (2003), p. 316.
12. Patricia Ebrey argues in her study of property law and uxorilocal marriage in Song China that, in areas of heavy in-migration when women were in short supply, a migrant man was happy to marry uxorilocally; see Patricia Ebrey, "Property Law and Uxorilocal Marriage in the Sung Period", in Family Process and Political Process in Modern Chinese History (Taipei: Institute for Modern History, Academia Sinica, 1992), p. 41.
13. Monica Das Gupta and Shuzhuo Li, "Gender Bias in China, South Korea and India 1920-1990: Effects of War, Famine and Fertility Decline", Development and Change, Vol. 30, No. 3 (1999), pp. 619-52.
14. Shuzhuo Li, Marcus W. Feldman and Nan Li, "A Comparative Study", p. 128.
15. Lavely posits that, in pre-collectivization China, patrilineal solidarity tended to keep outside males from moving into the community; see William Lavely, "Marriage and Mobility under Rural Collectivism", in R. S. Watson and P. B. Ebrey (eds), Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 286-312.
16. Watson nevertheless shows that, in some localities, uxorilocal marriage was absolutely prohibited, for example, among dominant lineages in Guangdong, since "every new member constitutes one more claim on the profits of the ancestral estates", though communities of tenant class and areas where lineages were weak placed no restrictions on uxorilocal marriage; see James L. Watson, "Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical Research", The China Quarterly, No. 92 (December 1982), pp. 589-622.
17. Lawrence K. Hong, "Potential Effects of the One-Child Policy on Gender Equality in the People's Republic of China", Gender & Society, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1987), pp. 317-26;
18. Eugene T. Murphy, "Changes in Family and Marriage in a Yangzi Delta Farming Community, 1930-1990", Ethnology, Vol. 40 (2001), pp. 213-35.
19. There are indications that, traditionally, uxorilocal marriage was acceptable for families without sons in the southeast, east-central and southwest, but not in the north; see Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-Shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 11-15, 94-107.
20. The low rate of uxorilocal marriages in post-1949 Hebei villages has been reported in ethnographic studies in Wugong, Raoyang (see Mark Selden, "Family Strategies"), Yangmansa, Xingchen
21. (see Myron L. Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community, and State: Anthropological Perspectives on China [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005]), a village in Dingxian
22. (see Li Xu, "Intra-Family Gender Relations, Women's Well-Being, and Access to Resources: The Case of a Northern Chinese Village", PhD Dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, 2006), and a village in Handan
23. (see Weiguo Zhang, Chinese Economic Reforms and Fertility Bahaviour (sic): A Study of a North China Village [London: China Library, 2002]).
24. It has also been reported by, for example, the In-Depth Fertility Survey conducted by the State Statistical Bureau in 1985, that uxorilocal marriages accounted for 2 per cent of all marriages from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s; see William Laveley and Xinhua Ren, "Patrilocality and Early Marital Co-Residence in Rural China, 1955-85", The China Quarterly, No. 30 (June 1992), pp. 378-91.
25. In pre-1949 Hebei, Gamble reported one among 515 families with a married-in son-in-law, and none among 5,255 families in Dingxian (now Dingzhou) circa 1930; see Sidney D. Gamble, Ting Hsien; A North China Rural Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), p. 56.
26. One uxorilocal marriage was detected among 418 families in Buck's survey in the 1920s; see John L. Buck, Chinese Farm Economy: A Study of 2866 Farms in Seventeen Localities and Seven Provinces in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1930).
27. For the prevalence of uxorilocal marriages elsewhere in different historical times, readers may refer to: Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-Shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption;
28. Hong Zhang, "Social Transformations, Family Life, and Uxorilocal Marriages in a Hubei Village, 1870-1994", Dissertation, Columbia University, 1998;
29. James Z. Lee and Wang Feng, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999);
30. Wang Xiaoxia, "Qingdai Shannan zhaozhuihun chutan" (Preliminary Exploration of Uxorilocal Marriage in Southern Shaanxi in the Qing Dynasty), Shaanxi ligong xueyuan xuebao (Shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Shaanxi University of Technology, Social Sciences), Vol. 23 (2005), pp. 7-12;
31. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage in Contemporary China (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2006).
32. See Lawrence K. Hong, "Potential Effects";
33. Stevan Harrell, "Aspects of Marriage in Three South-Westem Villages", The China Quarterly, No. 130 (June 1992), pp. 323-37;
34. Hua Han, "Sexuality and Uxorilocal Marriage in Rural North China: Impacts of the One-Child-One-Family Policy on Gender and Kinship", Journal of Family History, Vol. 28 (2003), pp. 443-59;
35. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage.
36. For example, Yongping Gao, "Chuantong kuangjia zhong de xiandaixing tiaoshi - Hebeisheng Pingancun 1949 nianhou de zhaoxu hunyin" (Modern Adaptation in a Traditional Culture Frame: Uxorilocal Marriage in Ping'an Village since 1949), Shehuixue yanjiu (Sociological Research) (2007), pp. 136-53.
37. Yunxiang Yan, "The Triumph of Conjugality: Structural Transformation of Family Relations in a Chinese Village", Ethnology, Vol. 36 (1997), pp. 191-212;
38. Yunxiang Yan, Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
39. George P. Murdock, Social Structure (New York: Macmillan, 1949).
40. Bina Agarwal, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);
41. Kanji Nazneen and Vijfhuizen Carin, "Cracking Cashew Nut Myths? The Challenges of Gendered Policy Research in the Cashew Sector in Mozambique:, IDS Bulletin, Vol. 35 (2004), pp. 51-60.
42. Tullia Magrini, "Women's 'Work of Pain' in Christian Mediterranean Europe", Journal of Musical Anthropology of the Mediterranean, No. 3 (1998). Available at http://www. muspe.unibo.it/, accessed 6 November 2007.
43. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage.
44. See also Meifu Yan, "Hunjia moshi yingxiang funü shengyu xingbie pianhao shiyan yanjiu" (An Experimental Study of the Influences of Marriage Type on Women's Sex Preferences in Childbearing in Rural China), Zhongguo renkou kexue (Population Science of China) (1995), pp. 11-16;
45. Meifu Yan, Juyuan Mao, and Jijie Lu, "Tansuo dichusheng xingbie bilü de zhiben zhi tu - Hubei Dayeshi biange hunjia moshi shijian" (Exploring a Fundamental Way to Reduce Sex Ratio at Birth-Reforms in Marriage Customs in Daye, Hubei), Renkou yu jingji (1999), pp. 18-24;
46. Neil H. Thomas and Mu Aiping, "Fertility and Population Policy in Two Counties in China 1980-1991", Journal of Biosocial Science, Vol. 32 (2000), p. 125;
47. Mei Lin, "Yihuangxian Meiwancun Zhaozhui hunyin de jingyan yu qishi" (Uxorilocal Marriage in Meiwan Village, Yihuang County: Experiences and Reflections), Zhongguo dangzheng ganbu luntan (Chinese Cadres Tribune), Vol. 9 (2007), pp. 15-17.
48. See Hua Han, "Sexuality and Uxorilocal Marriage".
49. Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women and Rural Development: Sixty Years of Change in Lu Village, Yunnan (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), pp. 235-36;
50. Laurel Bossen, "Village to Distant Village: The Opportunities and Risks of Long-Distance Marriage Migration in Rural China", Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 16, No. 50 (2007), pp. 97-116.
51. Margery Wolf, "Women and Suicide in China", in Margery Wolf and Roxanne Witke (eds), Women in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 128.
52. Waud H. Kracke, "Uxorilocality in Patriliny: Kagwahiv Filial Separation", Ethos, Vol. 4 (1976), pp. 295-310.
53. Kalervo Oberg, "Types of Social Structure among the Lowland Tribes of South and Central America", American Anthropologist, Vol. 57 (1955), pp. 472-87.
54. Wand H. Kracke, "Uxorilocality".
55. Haruko Wakita and Suzanne Gay, "Marriage and Property in Premodern Japan from the Perspective of Women's History", Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 10 (1984), p. 83.
56. See Jianli Yang, "Lun Qingdai funü de shehui diwei" (Women's Social Status in the Qing Dynasty), Jianghai xuekan (Jianghai Academic Journal) (2006), pp. 149-54.
57. A son of an uxorilocally married woman with brothers could be deprived of his right to inherit property in favor of his uncle's sons, as reported in Fei and Chang's study in a village in Yunnan; see Hsiao-t'ung Fei and Chih-1I Chang, Earthbound China: A Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945).
58. In the same village, Bossen reports a case where two brothers fought their uxorilocally married sister over property (see Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women, pp. 229-30).
59. Nevertheless, some sonless families may still prefer uxorilocal marriages for their daughters rather than adoption of sons, out of individual concerns instead of lineage interests; see Zhaoxiong Qin, "Chinese Lineage Norms and Individual Options: A Case Study of Uxorilocal Marriage in Rural Hubei Province", The Japanese Journal of Ethnology, Vol. 68 (2004), pp. 511-33.
60. See Patricia Ebrey, "Property Law".
61. See Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women, pp. 229-30.
62. See Hsiao-t'ung Fei and Chih-I Chang, Earthbound China, p. 66.
63. Shuang Liu, "Dui Zhongguo shengyu 'nanhai pianhao' shehui dongyin de zaisikao" (Rethinking Social Factors Influencing Son Preference in China), Renkou yanjiu (Population Research, Vol. 2, No. 9 (2006), pp. 2-9.
64. In their study in Indonesia, Kevane and Levine suggest that there is no difference in the treatment of daughters and sons in virilocal and uxorilocal areas; nor do they specify any differences in the families with virilocal or uxorilocal marriages; Michael Kevane and David I. Levine, "Are Investments in Daughters Lower When Daughters Move Away? Evidence from Indonesia", World Development, Vol. 31, No. 6 (2003), pp. 1065-84.
65. Wand H. Kracke, "Uxorilocality", p. 307.
66. Burton Pasternak, "On the Causes and Demographic Consequences of Uxorilocal Marriage in China", in S. B. Hanley and A. P. Wolf (eds), Family and Population in East Asian History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985);
67. see also Yong Yang, "Lüelun zhaozhui hunyin dui jiejue nongcun renkou laolinghua wenti de jiji yiyi" (Significance of Uxorilocal Marriage to Rural Population Aging), Renkou yanjiu, Vol. 20 (1996), pp. 77-78.
68. See Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-Shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption.
69. See Hong Zhang, "Social Transformations", p. 266;
70. Shang Huipeng, "Zhongyuan wucun shangmen nüxu jiqi shebui diwei wenti" (Social Status of Uxorilocally Married Men in Five Villages in Central China)", Minsu yanjiu (Folklore Studies), (1999), pp. 19-27;
71. see also Myron L. Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community, p. 113. Daughter-only families of a less desirable class could have difficulty finding sons-in-law during the Mao era. In a Yongnian village where 1 spent my childhood in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the childless landlord's family who adopted a daughter later had the daughter married virilocally.
72. See Patricia B. Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
73. also Paul J. Smith, "Fear of Gynarchy in an Age of Chaos: Kong Qi's Reflections on Life in South China under Mongol Rule", Journal of Economic and Social History, Vol. 41 (1998), pp. 1-95.
74. See Arthur P. Wolf and Chieh-Shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption. In our own sample, a man who married uxorilocally in 1969 brought his wife and mother-in-law back to his own village a few years later, after the death of the father-in-law.
75. Arthur P. Wolf, Sexual Attraction and Childhood Association: A Chinese Brief for Edward Westermarck (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 25.
76. Hebei Statistics Bureau, Hebei nongcun tongji nianjian (Hebei Rural Statistics) (Beijing: Statistics Press, 2003). One US dollar equaled proximately 8.28 Chinese yuan in 2000.
77. There are two families with a father born before 1930, and they are omitted from the table.
78. Among 18 families with uxorilocal marriages, 16 occurred in sonless families and 2 in families with both sons and daughters. Among 16 sonless families with uxorilocal marriages, 13 had all children married.
79. See Laurel Bossen, Chinese Women. Ebrey also reports two cases of families with more than one uxorilocal son-in-law in her study of families in Song China (Patricia Ebrey, "Property Law", pp. 59-62).
80. Patricia Ebrey ("Property Law") reports that laws in the Song dynasty specifically forbad an only son to become an uxorilocally married son-in-law.
81. When his sister wanted to marry, the parents wanted her to marry into a nearby family so that she could provide the care that they needed in their old age. However, the daughter married into another family, further away than the parents wished.
82. Hsiao-t'ung Fei and Chih-I Chang (see Earthbound China, p. 260) report in their study in Yunnan that uxorilocal marriages occur more frequently in "better-class" farmer families. They reason that it might be because women there take greater part in farm management, "so that for the continuity of the family enterprise there (was) greater interest in trying to retain the elder able girls in the house".
83. When Doolittle wrote about marriages in mid-19th-century Fujian, he indicated that it was not infrequent that "a rich family, having only one daughter and no boys, desires to obtain a son-in-law who shall be willing to marry the girl and live in the family as son"; see Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese (Taipei: Ch'eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966), p. 99.
84. Ebrey includes historical documents showing that wealthy families in Sichuan, Hunan and Fujian with ample land or other economic activities were happy to recruit extra sons to expand their family enterprises; see Patricia Ebrey, "Property Law", p. 41.
85. See Vanessa L. Fong, "China's One-Child Policy and the Empowerment of Urban Daughters", American Anthropologist, Vol. 104 (2002), pp. 1098-109;
86. Vanessa L. Fong, Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
87. Delia Davin, "The Single-Child Family Policy in the Countryside", in E. Croll, D. Davin and P. Kane (eds), China's One-Child Family Policy (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 69;
88. also Baochang Gu, Zhenmin Xie and Karen Hardee, "The Effect of Family Planning on Women's Lives: The Case of the People's Republic of China", March 1998, p. 22, available at http://www.fhi.org/, accessed 22 May 2007;
89. Heather Xiaoquan Zhang, "Gender Difference in Inheritance Rights: Observations from a Chinese Village", Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 30, Nos. 3-4 (2003), pp. 252-77.
90. This may be one reason that Jinying's parents wished the son to be married virilocally, even with uxorilocal residence.
91. Hong Zhang, "Social Transformations".
92. Li Xu, Intra-Family Gender Relations", pp. 126-31.
93. Shuzhuo Li, Marcus W. Feldman and Nan Li, "Acceptance of Two Types of Uxorilocal Marriage", p. 331.
94. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage.
95. For example, James Z. Lee and Feng Wang, One Quarter of Humanity, pp. 78-79;
96. Eugene T. Murphy, "Changes in Family and Marriage";
97. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage.
98. In China's Changing Population (p. 125), Judith Banister cites a 1975 report saying that uxorilocal marriage accounted for 25 per cent of all daughter families in one county in Hebei.
99. See Lawrence K. Hong, "Potential Effects";
100. see also Lucy Jen Huang, "Planned Fertility of One-Couple/One-Child in the People's Republic of China", Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 44 (1982), pp. 775-84.
101. Yong Yang, "Significance of Uxorilocal Marriage";
102. Hua Han, "Sexuality and Uxorilocal Marriage";
103. Shuzhuo Li, Xiaoyi Jin, Marcus W. Feldman, Nan Li and Chuzhu Zhu, Uxorilocal Marriage.
104. E. R. Judd, "Niangjia: Chinese Women and their Natal Families", Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 48, No. 3 (1989), pp. 525-44.