Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey Through Chinese History by
Ancestral Leaves follows one family through six hundred years of Chinese history and brings to life the epic narrative of the nation, from the fourteenth century through the Cultural Revolution. The lives of the Ye family--"Ye" means "leaf" in Chinese--reveal the human side of the large-scale events that shaped modern China: the vast and destructive rebellions of the nineteenth century, the economic growth and social transformation of the republican era, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Cultural Revolution under the Chinese Communists. Joseph W. Esherick draws from rare manuscripts and archival and oral history sources to provide an uncommonly personal and intimate glimpse into Chinese family history, illuminating the changing patterns of everyday life during rebellion, war, and revolution.
Remembering China from Taiwan by
At the close of the Chinese Civil War, two million Chinese fled from the victorious communist army under Mao Zedong. They fled across a long ocean strait to the island of Taiwan where they waited for almost fifty years, dreaming of their lost homes and relatives left behind, aging and living out their lives as defeated, cursed people. But when both Taiwan and China began to become wealthy, the two sides allowed cautious exchanges. The split families met up again. There was hope, joy, sorrow, and disasters. Yet the losers of the Chinese civil war, who had endured for so long, now found a new reason to persevere: they no longer hated their enemies. In fact, they now wanted to join them. This book draws on oral histories with Kuomintang loyalists in Taiwan to show their painful struggles with family, friends, and relatives back in the mainland, their hopes and disappointments, the effects on a changing society and political situation in Taiwan, and the dynamics of cross-strait relations shared by millions on both sides of the Taiwan strait.
Caring for Orphaned Children in China by
International media regularly features horrific stories about Chinese orphanages, especially when debating international adoption and human rights. Much of the popular information is dated and ill-informed about the experiences of most orphans in China today, Chinese government policy, and improvements evident in parts of China. Informal kinship care is the most common support for the orphaned children. The state supports orphans and abandoned children whose parents and relatives cannot be found or contacted. The book explores concrete examples about the changing experiences and future directions of Chinese child welfare policy. It is about the support to disadvantaged children, including abandoned children in the care of the state, most of whom have disabilities; HIV affected children; and orphans in kinship care. It identifies how many orphans are in China, how they are supported, the extent to which their rights are met, and what efforts are made to improve their rights and welfare provision. When our research about Chinese orphans started in 2001, these children were almost entirely voiceless. Since then, the Chinese government has committed to improving child welfare. We argue that a mixed welfare system, in which state provision supplements family and community care, is an effective direction to improve support for orphaned children. Government needs to take responsibility to guarantee orphans' rights as children, and support family networks to provide care so that children can grow up in their own communities. The book contributes to academic and policy understanding of the steps that have been taken and are still required to achieve the goal of a child welfare system in China that meets the rights of orphans to live and thrive with other children in a family.
Family Revolution by
As state control of private life in China has loosened since 1980, citizens have experienced an unprecedented family revolution�an overhaul of family structure, marital practices, and gender relationships. While the nuclear family has become a privileged realm of romance and individualism symbolizing the post-revolutionary �freedoms� of economic and affective autonomy, women�s roles in particular have been transformed, with the ideal �iron girl� of socialism replaced by the feminine, family-oriented �good wife and wise mother.� Problems and contradictions in this new domestic culture have been exposed by China's soaring divorce rate. Reading popular �divorce narratives� in fiction, film, and TV drama, Hui Faye Xiao shows that the representation of marital discord has become a cultural battleground for competing ideologies within post-revolutionary China. While these narratives present women�s cultivation of wifely and maternal qualities as the cure for family disintegration and social unrest, Xiao shows that they in fact reflect a problematic resurgence of traditional gender roles and a powerful mode of control over supposedly autonomous private life.
Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China by
To explore the historical connections between Confucianism and Chinese society, this book examines the social and cultural processes through which Confucian texts on family rituals were written, circulated, interpreted, and used as guides to action. Weddings, funerals, and ancestral rites were central features of Chinese culture; they gave drama to transitions in people's lives and conveyed conceptions of the hierarchy of society and the interdependency of the living and the dead. Patricia Ebrey's social history of Confucian texts shows much about how Chinese culture was created in a social setting, through the participation of people at all social levels. Books, like Chu Hsi's Family Rituals and its dozens of revisions, were important in forming ritual behavior in China because of the general respect for literature, the early spread of printing, and the absence of an ecclesiastic establishment authorized to rule on the acceptability of variations in ritual behavior. Ebrey shows how more and more of what people commonly did was approved in the liturgies and thus brought into the realm labeled Confucian. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Korea's Historic Clans: Family Traditions of the Jongga by
A jongga is a family that can trace its line of progenitors back to a single distinguished ancestor. The eldest living son of this main lineage is the jongson, and his wife is the jongbu. This couple is charged with performing numerous ancestral rites and entertaining the numerous guests that visit the jongga. Many families have preserved this tradition even through the turbulence of Korean modern history and the prevalence of nuclear family culture brought on by industrialization. There is more to jongga culture than the bloodline alone. It is an emotional haven and a spiritual compass, providing an identity not only for the members of the family but for the Korean people as a whole. Reviewing the history of jongga culture and examining what it is today can teach a person things about the Korean spirit and culture that often elude the eye.
Patriarchy in East Asia: A Comparative Sociology of Gender by
The role and significance of patriarchy in East Asia varies greatly according to the interplay between deeply entrenched cultural norms, economic change, and government policy. The aim of this book, therefore, is to offer an historical perspective on these issues combined with an analysis of the transitions and outcomes that have occurred in the status of women over the course of modernization and industrialization in five East Asian societies - Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, and China. The narrative is interwoven with a discussion of contemporary issues such as the persistence of tradition and gender discrimination, how gender roles undermine the development of healthier marriage and family relationships (and better relations among the generations), the lack of full equality for women in employment, falling birth rates, and rising divorce rates. Patriarchy in East Asia is the first study of its kind undertaken by a sociologist who is fluent in all of the local languages, thereby providing a rare level of access in terms of research of primary sources.
Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia by
How have rapid industrial development and the aging of the population affected the expression of filial piety in East Asia? Eleven experienced fieldworkers take a fresh look at an old idea, analyzing contemporary behavior, not norms, among both rural and urban families in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Each chapter presents rich ethnographic data on how filial piety shapes the decisions and daily lives of adult children and their elderly parents. The authors' ability to speak the local languages and their long-term, direct contact with the villagers and city dwellers they studied lend an immediacy and authenticity lacking in more abstract treatments of the topic.This book is an ideal text for social science and humanities courses on East Asia because it focuses on shared cultural practices while analyzing the ways these practices vary with local circumstances of history, economics, social organization, and demography and with personal circumstances of income, gender, and family configuration.