The Traditional Chinese Family & Lineage

Arguably there has never been a stable human society in which any institution ha
s been more important to the participants than the family. Thus China is by no m
eans unique in considering the family important, and scholars of Chinese life ar
e well served by focusing attention upon it.
The strong institutionalization of the family in traditional China would seem to
have made familism even more central in that society than in most.
It is not possible to do justice to the complexity and diversity of this institu
tion on a simple web page, but this page attempts at least to provide a few coor
dinating principles and define a few terms. (Given the state of college teaching
about Chinese society, this web site is probably the only place you will ever h
ave the Chinese terms revealed to you if you happen to be studying Chinese. Copy
them now!)
Because this page is devoted to the traditional Chinese family system, I have te
nded to use the past tense. Many of the institutions, beliefs, and values discus
sed here are still present in China, but I have preferred to focus on the past i
n order to stress traditionalism and to avoid dealing with the complexities intr
oduced by the modern growth of industries, urban populations, and foreign influe
nces, especially foreign influences on law.
This page uses simplified characters, printed in red. When the traditional and s
implified Chinese orthographies differ, the traditional equivalents are added in
blue.
Outline
I. The Family
II. The Lineage
III. People Not in Families
IV. Marriage
V. Sexuality
VI. Adoption & Other Fictive Kinship
________________________________________
I. The Family
Definition: The traditional Chinese family, or jiā 家 (colloquial: jiātíng 家庭)
, called a "chia" by a few English writers, was a patrilineal, patriarchal, pres
criptively virilocal kinship group sharing acommon household budget and normativ
ely extended in form. (It was not the same thing as adescent line, lineage, or c
lan, all of which also existed in China.)
This means:
Patrilineal
The term means that descent was calculated through men.
A person was descended from both a mother and a father, of course, but one inher
ited one's family membership from one's father. China was extreme in that a woma
n was quite explicitly removed from the family of her birth (her niángjiā 娘家)
and affiliated to her husband's family (her pójiā 婆家), a transition always ver
y clearly symbolized in local marriage customs, despite their variation from one
region to another.
Reverence was paid to ancestors (zŭxiān 祖先). For men this referred to his male
ancestors and their wives. For a woman it referred two her male ancestors and t
heir wives only a couple of generations up, but was extended also to all of her
husband's male ancestors and their wives.
In popular belief ancestors depended upon the living for this reverence (usually
seen as provisioning them with sacrificial food, literally feeding them), and t
herefore the failure to produce (or, if necessary, adopt) male offspring was con
sidered an immoral behavior or, if accidental, a great misfortune. In popular re
ligion, people without male descendants to look after them tended to be thought
of as potentially dangerous ghosts.
Patriarchal
The term means that the family is hierarchically organized, with the prime insti
tutionalized authority being vested in the senior-most male.
No two members of a Chinese family were equal in authority. Officially at least,
 senior generations were superior to junior generations, older people were super
ior to younger ones, and men were superior to women. Normatively (that is, in wh
at most people thought of as the ideal form), a family would be headed by a man
who was older and/or of more senior generation than anybody else.
In actual practice, there is no known family system in which members do not cont
ribute to the collective welfare and decision making, with their differential kn
owledge, perspectives, and skills. Thus patriarchy is a "jural norm," but is dif
ferentially salient in different families. Obviously, personality has much to do
with how the members of a family actually behave. In China there were always fa
milies dominated by women, old people whose lives were run by their children, an
d so on, just as elsewhere.
Family hierarchy was very emphatically symbolized in the concept of xiào 孝 (col
loquial: xiàoshùn 孝
[孝順]), which is usually translated "filial piety," but
is more accurately rendered "filial subordination." When wills clashed, it was e
xpected (and legally enforced) that the will of a family superior should prevail
over the will of a family inferior. Traditional law held a child's insubordinat
ion to a parent to be a capital offense, and a daughter-in-law's insubordination
to her parents-in-law grounds for divorce. Acts of heroic sacrifice in the supp
ort of one's parents are the commonest and most important genre of Chinese moral
tales.
Prescriptively Virilocal
The term means that there was a strongly held preference and expectation that a
newly married couple should live with the groom's family.
It was considered ideal for all men in a family to marry and bring their wives t
o live on the family estate, and for all women born to a family to marry and go
out to live with their husbands. The change of families was of course a defining
event in the life of a woman, and the traditional, even prescriptive, sentiment
was great sorrow at leaving her girlhood home, only sometimes mitigated by a se
nse of adventure or excitement about assuming her new status as married woman. I
n some parts of western China there is a tradition of women's musical lamentatio
ns on this theme, and the days leading up to marriage may be celebrated with car
efully structured sessions of ritualized sobbing involving the bride-to-be and h
er unmarried friends or younger sisters.
In actual fact, sometimes a family lacked the resources to support additional pe
rsonnel. A man with two daughters whose income derived from carting goods in a w
heelbarrow had little chance of becoming the head of a unit with sons and marrie
d-in daughters-in-law, after all. Thus many other arrangements in fact were foun
d.
Sometimes —probably in about twenty percent of all marriages— the groom in fact
went to live with the wife's family. (This practice is called uxorilocality.) So
metimes this was merely a matter of economic convenience, but often it was becau
se the wife's family had no son, and the son-in-law was accepted in lieu of a so
n, sometimes changing his surname (which was an act of disgraceful unfiliality t
owards his own parents, if living) or more often promising that the first son bo
rn to the marriage would take the name of the wife's father.
Because uxorilocality broke the cultural prescription for virilocality, it was c
onsidered a last resort, and uxorilocal husbands were viewed with suspicion and
scorn. An uxorilocal marriage was disparaged as a "backward-growing sprout" (dăo
zhù miáo 倒住苗), and a man who married uxorilocally was (and is) referred to as
a "superfluous husband" (zhuìxù
婿 [贅婿]), even though he was, obviously, co
nsidered necessary.
Kinship Group
The "kinship" part of this means that members of the family were related genealo
gically, i.e. either by having common ancestors or by being married. The "group"
part means that they had known boundaries and shared activities or resources wi
th each other that they did not share with outsiders.
A family is not a household. A household included whoever lived in the same buil
ding, which might mean tenants, servants, apprentices, sometimes a resident prie
st, or whoever. Although a household is a useful census unit, and can be used as
 a proxy for families if one has data on households and not on families, it is n
ot the same thing.
Just as a household can incorporate people who are not part of the family, the f
amily can incorporate people who are not part of the household. Many Chinese thr
oughout history have lived for longer or shorter periods away from the families.
Shorter separations might involve living during the summer in a small shed to p
rotect fields from the theft of irrigation water, for example, or traveling over
the countryside as a peddler. Longer separations might occur if a member went a
way to serve in the army or to study or to set up a business in another location
.
Despite this close and rather legalistic definition of a family as a kinship gro
up, the word could also be extended metaphorically, as in English, to refer to a
ll relatives.
Membership in a family was sometimes accorded people by adoption. In cases where
a couple had no son, an "extra" son of a close relative might be adopted, altho
ugh there was wide variation between families in the extent to which the child w
as actually assimilated into family life. Less often a son might be adopted from
a distant relative. In most regions at most periods, it was considered undesira
ble to adopt a son from an unrelated family, but the practice was in fact by no
means uncommon, even when it was considered unfortunate.
It was not unusual for friends of roughly the same age to swear oaths of fidelit
y to each other that brought them into a relationship of sworn brotherhood (or l
ess frequently sworn sisterhood). In theory, and occasionally in practice, such
alliances were honored by families as creating family ties, although never, to m
y knowledge, was the assimilation of sworn siblings actually complete enough to
change official genealogies.
Sharing a Common Household Budget
This means that the possessions, income, and expenses of all family members were
pooled, and decisions about resource distribution were the legitimate business
of all family members, and were ultimately taken through the patriarchal authori
ty structure of the family.
It has been convincingly argued that the common budget is one of the most import
ant defining characteristics of Chinese families. One effect of this custom is t
o define who is in or out of a family by means other than kinship. Kinship makes
one a potential member of a family. But close kinsmen can be in different famil
ies if the family has decided to stop sharing a budget.
It is possible for the same family budget to be shared by a family that crosses
several households. One can imagine a family with some members living in a farmi
ng village and others living over their shop in a small town, for example. In mo
dern times, Chinese families have been studied that have had members living in s
everal different countries, but all sharing a common budget.
Sharing a budget is a strictly economic way of viewing what families shared, but
sharing went beyond that. In the religious sphere, families tended to share luc
k. A family in which one member was chronically sick while another had bad habit
s and a third tended to make bad investments might seek to treat all of these as
symptoms of a single ill, the inharmony of the family as a whole. (For more on
this, see my book,Gods, Ghosts, & Ancestors. The full text is available on this
web site.)
Family division (fēnjiā 分家) is therefore a critical event. When family members
decided that their union had become economically or socially unviable, they wou
ld agree to a division of the family's resources and the creation of financially
separate new families. Typically this occurred after the death of a senior gene
ration had left two brothers and their wives and children as a common economic u
nit. Although there might be natural affection between the brothers, differences
in their economic productivity and differences in the numbers of their children
often led to arguments that were most easily solved by family division. A usual
mediator would be a sympathetic but disinterested third party, traditionally th
e brother of one of the older married-in women, and usually a contract would com
mit the agreements to writing. While memory of the old, united family was still
fresh, each of the new units tended to be called a "segment" (fèn 份).
Because of the cultural value placed on family unity, size, cooperation, and mut
ual support, family division was always considered an unfortunate event.
The family as an economic unit was symbolized by the stove, and at division the
new units would always maintain separate stoves, even if it meant somebody cooke
d on a small charcoal burner in the courtyard while everyone continued to occupy
the same house.
Members of the same family might occasionally live apart, sometimes for decades
at a time. (An example might be a family member away at school, or working in a
different region.) Married couples also might live apart. When marriage is defin
ed by its attendant duties rather than its emotions, this is perhaps easier than
in societies with a strong stress upon romantic love in marriage, and even toda
y Chinese couples sometimes endure separations so long as to seem heroic (or biz
arre) to people in some other societies.
Since the family was the unit of ownership (even down to the level of sharing to
othbrushes), there was nothing that quite corresponded to inheritance. An import
ant debate emerged early in the XXth century as western-inspired law sought to g
uarantee inheritance for women as well as for men. This was strongly resisted by
many tradition-minded Chinese, who argued that there was no such thing as inher
itance, and that women were provided for in the traditional scheme in that they
were members of the families and segments to which their husbands belonged. One
effect of switching from corporate ownership to individual inheritance and of in
cluding married daughters as legitimate inheritors from their parents would logi
cally be the greater segmentation of land into ever smaller fields with differen
t ownership. (As events actually unfolded, land was subject to other redistribut
ive schemes throughout the XXth century, so that the issue of inheritance tended
to recede into the background.)
Ancestor veneration was a fundamental duty of every Chinese, and this followed g
enealogical lines. Accordingly family division had no effect on the need to enga
ge in ancestor worship. At family division a slightly larger share of property w
as accorded one party (traditionally the oldest son if there was one) to cover t
he costs of ancestral sacrifices and of housing the shared ancestral tablets. Wh
en possible, cadet lines would assemble at the altar of the senior line on occas
ions requiring ancestor worship. Occasionally (and controversially) cadet lines
unable to send representatives to the senior altar would make copies of the tabl
ets for worship off-site.
Although individual ancestor worship was more or less inevitable for ancestors a
ctually remembered, it tended to become more casual for those who had faded from
memory. Importantly, ancestors from whom one had not inherited economic goods w
ere soon forgotten, and their cult folded into the general sacrifices offered to
ancestors in general on a calendrical schedule that varied from place to place
and period to period.
Normatively Extended in Form
This means that it ideally included a descent line of men and their wives and ch
ildren. The usual Chinese term was simply "big family" (dàjiā 大家, colloquial:
dàjiātíng 大家庭). This is more precise than the popular usage of the term "exte
nded family" in English, but somewhat less precise than the English term "extend
ed family" as used by sociologists, which is sometimes placed in contrast to "st
em family" to provide a technical term for cross-cultural application.)
As envisioned by those inclined to sentimentalize about it, the ideal Chinese fa
mily might be headed by an elderly patriarch and his wife, and include their fiv
e sons and their wives, and the children of all these people, including perhaps
some adult grandsons who already had wives, but excluding any daughters who had
married out and become members of other families.
Since the population of China was increasing only very slightly or not at all th
rough most of Chinese history, the average number of sons that a married couple
had was in fact only slightly more than one. When there was a second son, there
was tremendous pressure to make the lad available to a relative who had no son a
t all or to provide him as an uxorilocal husband (and heir) to a friend who had
no son. Thus in most cases, a family could not in fact include two adult brother
s.
Throughout most of Chinese history the mean age at death was quite low, and one'
s sixtieth birthday was an event of awe and celebration. Accordingly, it was unu
sual for elderly people to live to see their grandchildren grow to adulthood. Fo
r this reason, although three-generation families were common, four-generation f
amilies were rare, and five-generation families truly remarkable. (In funerals o
f elderly people, it was conventional to write the number of generations they ha
d spawned on funeral lanterns, usually adding a couple of generations to make it
sound better. Five was a common number.)
Hence, although Chinese families were normatively extended, and although many Ch
inese spent at least some years living in families of considerable complexity, i
t was unusual for a family to conform to the ideal image of a truly large group
of relatives living together and sharing a budget. Mean family size in most vill
ages was between four and five people.

________________________________________
II. The Lineage
A distinction should be made between a descent line, a lineage, and a clan (whic
h, in the case of China, is more conveniently called a surname group).
In Chinese all three entities can be called a zú 族 (colloquial jiāzú 家族), whi
ch tends to add to confusion. (Caution: The syllable zú 族 that refers to a desc
ent group is different from the syllable zŭ 祖 that refers to an ancestor. Engli
sh authors who do not mark tone sometimes get them mixed up.)
In each case, the fundamental concept is that a person (male or female) is "desc
ended" from a succession of ancestors. Although this normally means being the bi
ological son or daughter of a parent, it is possible to be adopted into (or ejec
ted from) a descent line; what is at issue is social classification, not biology
.
Chinese descent is patrilineal, which means that traditionally descent was calcu
lated through male links only (the same way that surnames have traditionally des
cended through male links only in Euroamerican society). If I am Chinese, my sig
nificant ancestors are my father, father's father, father's father's father, &c.
Although wives of male ancestors are considered also to be ancestors, a person'
s mother's mother's mother's mother's mother, for example, is not an ancestor in
a patrilineal descent system.
A distinctive feature of traditional Chinese patrilineal descent is that a woman
, at marriage, is assumed to be removed from her own descent line (except for th
e acknowledgement of her immediate parents and grandparents) and assimilated int
o her husband's descent line. (In most patrilineal descent systems around the wo
rld, a person keeps his or her affiliation throughout life. China is unusual in
this.)
A Patrilineal Descent Line (or Patriline)
Definition. A patrilineal descent line is the line of fathers and sons making up
all of my male ancestors. In theory I can regard it as going back to an atomic
globule, or as starting at any ancestor and continuing down to me. I can also re
gard it as continuing down through my sons, their sons, their sons, and so on.
Size. One characteristic of a descent line is that there is only one person per
generation when I count up (since a person has only one father), but there may b
e many people per generation looking down (since a person may have many sons).
Dying Out. Another characteristic is that all ancestral generations successfully
produced children —that is where I came from— but descending generations may or
may not produce sons: any descent line has the prospect of dying out in the fut
ure.
Collateral Lines. Since any man, ancestral or descendant, may have a brother, an
d since the brothers of my ancestors are not ancestors to me, there are any numb
er of "collateral" lines made up of their descendants. My father's brother's son
(my patrilateral parallel cousin, in anthropological jargon) is a collateral to
because I have one ancestor (my father) not shared with him.
A Patrilineal Lineage (or Patrilineage)
Definition. A patrilineage is an organized group of descendants of a single, spe
cific ancestor. The ancestor is referred to as an "apical" ancestor because he i
s at the "apex" of the genealogy by which the lineage membership is determined,
and the descent links to this person are known (or anyway written in a genealogy
where they can be looked up).
Exogamy. In China, as in other lineage systems, it was (and is) regarded as ince
stuous to marry (or mate with) a member of the same lineage.
Women & Lineages In China a woman is a member of her father's lineage at birth,
but at marriage she is transferred to her husband's lineage. As noted, cross-cul
turally this is an extremely unusual arrangement. One effect of it is that it is
usual for all members of the same family to be members of the same lineage. (In
most lineage systems around the world, members of the same family belong to dif
ferent lineages.) Women did not usually participate very significantly in lineag
e worship, however, and their level of interest in lineages was far less than th
at of men (even though they cooked the sacrificial food).
Geographical Distribution Lineages were an optional feature of Chinese social st
ructure. Although every person by definition had a descent line, organized linea
ge groups were nearly universal in some periods and regions (particularly the Ca
ntonese-speaking world), but a rarity in others.
Lineage Property. Where they existed, lineages owned property. In some cases thi
s consisted of little more than an ancestral hall, or a few fields that were ren
ted out to provide income used for the worship of shared ancestors. In other cas
es lineages had substantial holdings, and could afford to maintain loan funds, c
atastrophe insurance, student scholarships, or even schools for the benefit of l
ineage members.
Genealogies. Because lineage membership had potential benefits, most lineages ma
intained written genealogies, which began with their apical ancestor and then in
cluded all lines descended from him. Written genealogies allowed a lineage to be
very clear about who was and who was not entitled to various lineage benefits.
Ancestor Veneration. The prime collective activity of a lineage was ancestor wor
ship, and whatever else it did, it always did this. Many a lineage would maintai
n a modest (or occasionally pretentious) "hall" (táng 堂) for this purpose, usua
lly with provision for the permanent storage of ancestral tablets. The commonest
procedure was for members to move tablets from family altars to the lineage hal
l as the tablets got older. In some regions there was a general rule about this
—tablets over five generations old would be moved, for example. In other regions
tablets would be moved in whenever the hall was rehabilitated. In some cases me
mbers who wanted to put tablets in the hall would pay for the privilege, the inc
ome going to the maintenance of the hall.
Social Class. Because lineages were based on kinship, and because different desc
ent lines from the apical ancestor might have fared differently with the passing
of generations, many lineages cross-cut social classes. To the extent that rich
er members tended to provide lineage resources which were used by poorer members
, this tended to recycle wealth and reduce social class difference, but it also
potentially alienated the rich members from the lineages as these organizations
began to be a financial drain. "Anti-poor" measures sometimes included the payme
nt of fees for the enjoyment of full lineage benefits.
Lineages & Politics. At times and places where lineages were strong, they were s
ometimes been charged by the government with local administrative functions rang
ing from tax collection to dispute settlement or defense. There is a tradition o
f lineages supplementing their genealogical documents with "family instructions"
(jiāshùn 家
[家順]), moral injunctions by elderly members passed down to thei
r descendants, sometimes with rules for the conduct of lineage business, and oft
en with general instruction on citizenship and moral behavior.
Lineages lost face if their members engaged in illegal or immoral acts, and they
had provisions both to punish errant members and, if necessary, to eject member
s and expunge their names from the written genealogies.
Lineage Benefits. Lineages sought to promote the welfare of their members, and s
ince this might be at the expense of non-members, conflict between lineages was
not unusual. In areas and at times when lineages have been strong, local warfare
has been an occasional result. Even when open violence does not occur, there is
a tendency for residence with lineage-mates to be more comfortable in such case
s. The result, even today, is the existence of single-lineage villages, or villa
ges where most residents are members of a single dominant lineage.
Lineage Division. Lineages normally could not divide, like families, but since a
ny ancestor could be taken as the apical ancestor of a new lineage, the work-aro
und for lineage division was for a dissident group to contribute property as an
endowment of a new lineage centered on a lower-level ancestor whose descendants
included "the right people" and excluded "the wrong people." When Lineage B was
centered on a genealogically lower apical ancestor than was Lineage A (that is,
when the apical ancestor of Lineage A was an ancestor of the apical ancestor of
Lineage B), Lineage B was said to be a "branch" (fāng 方) of Lineage A. (The sam
e vocabulary is sometimes used of multi-household families.)
Lineages in the XXth Century. Lineages have, at least in concept, been prestigio
us (except briefly under the Communist regime), and few Chinese willingly conced
e that the system is not universal in China, even though it patently is not. In
many cases, this derives from confusing lineages with clans. (See below.) In fac
t, the "lineage system" was so frail by the time the Communists came to power th
at no official steps needed to be taken to end such organized lineages as remain
ed. Once ownership of private property was restricted, lineages collapsed on the
ir own.

A Clan
Definition. A clan, as the term is used today by anthropologists, is a wannabe l
ineage. That is to say, it is a property-holding group made up of descendants of
an apical ancestor, but the details of the descent lines from that ancestor are
unknown. In some cases the ancestor is clearly mythical or non-human (a sweet p
otato, say).
Clans & Surnames. In China, clans were created on the basis of common surname, u
sually asserting common descent from a real or fictitious ancient person of that
name.
Some such surname groups were exclusive, considering themselves to be branches (
fāng) of an imaginary greater clan. THey thereby excluded some people of the sam
e surname. But more commonly they were inclusive, and anybody of the same surnam
e could potentially participate.
Clan Benefits. Clans provided a way in which Chinese who traveled away from thei
r home regions could locate putative kinsmen and procure assistance from them if
necessary. In the expansion of Chinese from north of the Yángzi River into the
southern half of China, and later in the migration of Chinese from China into so
utheast Asia and other parts of the world, a fundamental mutual-aid device has b
een the same-surname association.
Clan Ancestor Veneration. Although worship of the putative apical ancestor occur
s in clans, the lack of genealogical records successfully linking other members
and branches to each other makes more specific ancestor worship less common (eve
n potentially embarrassing in some cases), and clans are inevitably centered on
the mutual protection and shared risk functions of lineages more than on ancesto
r worship.

________________________________________
III. People Not in Families
Circumstances. Not all Chinese were able to live in family groups. Flood, fire,
famine, war, banditry, plague, infertility, flight from the law, madness, and wi
llful disregard for social mores were all reasons why some individuals might be
left alone to wander the world without family ties.
Attitudes. People outside of families were usually regarded with a mixture of pi
ty, suspicion, and contempt. They were unable to attain positions of economic se
curity or social prestige, and tended to live at the margins of society as prost
itutes, beggars, and casual laborers, so far as historians can determine.
Monasteries. The principal exception was the world of Buddhist monasticism. Indi
viduals might take vows (and receive initiatory scars that made the vows difficu
lt to reverse) that removed them from their original families (if any) and affil
iated them in perpetuity to the Buddhist clergy as monks and nuns. A fully ordai
ned monk or nun received the dummy surname Shì
(釋), the first syllable of th
e full name of the Shakyamuni Buddha (Shìjiāmóuní
迦牟尼 [釋迦牟尼]). He or sh
e took on the burden of offering "ancestral" reverence to a line of earlier cler
ics, and was in turn to be reverenced on temple ancestral altars by a line of la
ter ones.
Fully ordained clerics were permitted to change monasteries at will (in theory)
and carried their ordination papers with them so that they could be fitted into
monastic hierarchies wherever they went. Life was no picnic for them —on the con
trary they were permitted to own nothing and were held by their vows and by the
authority of their abbots to hundreds of behavioral restrictions. They usually w
orked hard in monastic gardens or in the performance of liturgy. However they ha
d the consolation that they were gaining religious merit, and they seldom starve
d.
In addition to ordained clerics, monastic establishments also were home to unmar
riageable people, wandering children, abandoned old people, battered women, and
other people who did not take full vows, but had no place else to go (or in some
cases simply preferred the ambiance of the monastery). The most important categ
ories were abandoned children (assimilated under the general term "small discipl
es" xiăo shāmí 小沙弥) (小沙彌) and unwed, divorced, abused, or abandoned women,
who took partial, reversable vows and were usually called zhāigū
孤 (齋孤), l
iterally "vegetarian orphans." Zhāigū were not permitted to change monasteries a
t will and tended to work as servants in the monastic establishments. Some event
ually chose to take full vows and become full nuns.
Not all such shelters were orthodox monastic institutions. The general organizat
ional principles were sometimes copied by small-scale sectarian or even non-reli
gious societies to provide shelter to people (especially women) outside of the f
amily system, although typically such groups had at least a veneer of Buddhist t
rappings.
Finally, monasteries sometimes served as hospices for the disfigured, diseased,
and dying, as insane asylums, and in general as shelters for people unable to ca
re for themselves. In all parts of the world, care for such people in premodern
societies was shocking to modern understandings, but Chinese Buddhists did what
they could, even if it was not much. (I visited one monastery where a frightenin
gly violent "lunatic woman" had been kept caged for decades in a small outbuildi
ng built by her brother to contain her.)
Values. Did people outside of families have the same values about families that
other Chinese held? One study based on interviews in the 1970s with Hakka-speaki
ng nuns and prostitutes in Taiwan found that in general they did share general C
hinese values about families, and they also shared the general social view of th
emselves as tragic failures. In most cases their life stories involved grinding
poverty, premature deaths, abusive husbands, family alcoholism, and a host of ot
her untoward circumstances. The same interviews collectively seemed to imply (bu
t not to demonstrate) that women who had once been driven to prostitution may ha
ve tended to become zhāigū later in life. (Hsiu-kuen Fan TSUNG 1977 Moms, Nuns A
nd Hookers: Extrafamilial Alternatives for Village Women in Taiwan. Ph.D. disser
tation, Antropology, UCSD.)

________________________________________
IV. Marriage
One does not teach about the traditional Chinese family system to sexually enthu
siastic California college students without being asked (1) whether the Chinese
nation can't be retroactively compelled (perhaps by armed intervention) to stop
using matchmakers and (2) whether there were homosexual alternatives to married
life. The answers are no and no, in that order. This section elaborates on marri
age, the following one on sexuality.
Arranged Marriage. Traditional Chinese marriage was not the free union of two yo
ung adults to establish a new household. It was the movement of a woman from her
natal family (or niángjiā娘家) to her married family and her assimilation into
her married family as an economically productive member of the family corporatio
n and the mother of her husband's children.
In thinking about the social structural constraints on this, it is more useful t
o think of the in-marrying bride as a newly hired corporate employee than as bei
ng like a modern bride. She depended upon her parents or other favorably incline
d people to find her the best "job" possible, and the family "hiring" her sought
to get the best "worker" available. As with all things else, the final decision
lay with the hierarchically senior decision maker in each family, although as a
practical matter the most important voice in making the decision was that of th
e parents of the potential groom or bride.
Matchmakers Although friends and relations were constantly alert for possible ma
tes for young boys and girls, sometimes professional help was required (particul
arly if one had an only marginally marriageable kid on one's hands), and profess
ional matchmakers (méirén 媒人) were a constant feature of the Chinese social sc
ene. (They still exist today. A conference paper I wrote on modern matchmakers c
an be found elsewhere on this web site.)
Divorce. Late imperial family law, based on earlier moral and legal codes, provi
ded seven grounds for divorce and three protections against divorce, and it is e
asy to understand them by thinking of the corporate model just mentioned. In ess
ence. the new family member had to prove herself a valuable team player, capable
of doing the job for which she was recruited, of getting on with the other memb
ers of the family, and of advancing (or anyway not hindering) family interests.
When she had been in a family for a reasonable period, she was "off probation" a
nd could no longer be divorced. In this light, look at the list:
Seven Grounds for Divorce (Qī Chū 七出)
As Phrased in Imperial Law Seen From a Modern Corporate Standpoint
She is insubordinate to a parent-in-law.
(bú shùn fùmŭ 不
父母 [不順父母]) She must conform to the hierarchy of aut
hority.
She fails to bear a son.
(wú zĭ 无子 [無子]) She must do the job for which she was hired
She is lewd and vulgar.
(yínpì 淫僻) She must not draw unfavorable comment.
She is envious.
(jíwù 嫉妒) She must not sow discord.
She is foully diseased.
(èjí
疾 [惡疾]) She must not be unable to perform duties.
She is talkative.
(duōkŏushé 多口舌) She must not reveal company secrets to outsiders.
She is inclined to theft.
(qièdào 竊盜) She must not steal company property.

Three Protections Against Divorce(Sān Bùchū 三不出)

As Phrased in Imperial Law Seen From a Modern Corporate Standpoint
She has nowhere to return to.
(yŏusuŏqŭ wúsuŏguī 有所取无所
[有所取無所歸]) Enough time has passed that it i
s cruel to turn her out.
She already observed full mourning for a parent-in-law.
(gònggēng sānnián zhi sàng 共更三年之
[共更三年之喪]) She has earned job secur
ity.
The family was poor when she entered and is now rich.
(xiān pínjiàn hòu fùguì 先

后富
[先貧賤後富貴]) She has been a significa
nt contributor to corporate success.
(This famous list is here taken from Le P. Guy BOULAIS 1924 Manuel du Code Chino
is. Shanghai: La Mission Catholique, p. 301. The Chinese expressions are not qui
te those used in the law code, but rather are those used in an earlier document
to which the law code alludes. The differences are trivial.)
Concubinage. Until well into the XXth century, Chinese society regarded it as a
normal thing for a man to take more than one wife, especially if the first wife
did not produce male offspring, and so long as the family budget could afford th
e additional person. (Secondary wives still exist, although today they are often
kept in secret.)
However, there was always a distinction between the first wife or qī 妻 (colloqu
ial fùqī
妻 [婦妻]) and a secondary wife (concubine), who might be called by a
variety of terms, usually involving the syllable qiè 妾. (In modern Chinese a w
ife is normally referred to as a tàitài 太太, while a concubine is referred to a
s a "little tàitài" 小太太.) In some far western regions under Tibetan influence
, a woman could have more than one husband, but for "mainstream" Chinese society
that was not possible.
Remarriage. Traditional China always honored "chaste widows" or guăfù 寡
(寡婦
), literally "lonely women," who, on the death of a husband (or fiancé), did not
remarry, but remained attached to the same household and continued to serve the
husband's family. An important consideration was such a woman's economic securi
ty, since she was legally entitled to continuing support from her dead husband's
family just as she was bound in continuing to service to it.
Such a convention was not always comfortable for all parties concerned. Some law
cases turned on efforts by other family members to eject or marry off younger w
idows, or to sell them as prostitutes or servants. Others turned on the "escape"
of widows with lovers. As far as I know, we lack detailed data on actual practi
ce, but it seems likely that most younger widows, especially without children, p
robably did eventually remarry in most periods (with varying levels of enthusias
m or family approval), while most older widows probably did not.
Not surprisingly, men were expected to remarry after a decent interval following
the death of a wife if she had not born a son. If he already had a son, remarri
age was regarded as largely a matter of his comfort and was left to his discreti
on.

________________________________________
V. Sexuality
Traditional Chinese society was as prudish about sex as any other society, but s
ince the population reproduced itself it is hard to believe that very many peopl
e were fooled by the rhetoric.
The Confucian position was that sex properly occurred between married people and
was for the purpose of producing heirs. Beyond that it was undignified. The Tao
ist position was that it was probably dangerous unless accomplished using variou
s esoteric techniques. The Buddhist position was that it tended to distract one
from the business of improving one's karma. In short, no respectable philosophic
al school advocated unrestrained whoopee-making. But, as anywhere else, a lot of
whoopee was, of course, made.
Sexual Intercourse. Sexual intercourse was traditionally considered dangerous fo
r men, since they lost semen, which was identified as a man's "yáng-essence" and
was thought to be a non-renewable resource necessary for life, a belief that is
still widespread. (Taoist longevity exercises involve attempts to avoid ejacula
tion and instead recirculate semen through meditation up the spine and into the
top of the head.)
Folklore includes tales of lonely scholars seduced by maidens who turn out to be
yáng-sucking she-devils, often transformations of dreaded fairies whose real fo
rm is that of the fox. It is not clear what level of worry the fear of loss of o
ne's yáng essence would actually have stimulated in most young men. The introduc
tion of an unknown bride into a young groom's life may have been somewhat more t
raumatic for some because of this belief. But clearly, rampant promiscuity was n
ot something that should be boasted of among folklorists.
Extramarital Sex & Homosexuality. Since marriages were by arrangement, the sexua
l attractiveness of a spouse was at best a very secondary consideration. A woman
was not free to engage in extramarital sexual liaisons (although of course they
did occur sometimes), since children she might bear were to be the heirs of the
family. However there was no similar constraint on men, whose extra-marital sex
ual affairs were usually regarded as unfortunate but as significant only if they
threatened to drain the family wealth away from legitimate claimants.
This view comprehended both heterosexual and homosexual affairs, it appears, and
some of the warm friendships and sworn brotherhoods celebrated in Chinese poetr
y, folklore, and history were almost certainly homosexual relationships. Althoug
h it was not (and still is not) feasible for homosexuals to establish marriages
and households together, intensely affectionate same-sex companionship was ignor
ed or even admired so long as familial obligations were also observed. (I do not
know of a study of family values among Chinese homosexuals similar to the one m
entioned among prostitutes and nuns; there is some hint that family values in th
is group today are largely mainstream, and that, perhaps even more than in arran
ged heterosexual marriage, emotional investment in one's offspring somewhat offs
ets the absence of sexual attraction to one's spouse.)
(Some of my students have suggested that open endorsement of gay marriage for me
n could help alleviate the imbalance in numbers of marriage-age men and women in
modern China caused by the combination of the one-child policy and selective ab
ortion of female fetuses. This is logical, but in China there appears to be litt
le support for such an idea.)
Infanticide & Its Alternatives. Contraception and abortion were both practiced,
but both were dangerous and unreliable. Since boys could carry on the family des
cent line and girls could not, boys were considered more valuable children, and
if families simply could not afford additional mouths to feed, they sometimes ki
lled newborn infants when it was discovered that they were female. This practice
was considered outrageous, and various religious and other moral societies carr
ied out a constant propaganda war against it, but the grinding poverty that unde
rlay the custom was widely acknowledged, and was inevitably the pretext provided
by families who practiced it. (For an interesting condemnation of the practice
by the XIth-century poet and essayist Sū Dōngpō

坡 [蘇東坡], click here.)
Adopted Daughters-in-Law When an unwanted additional girl was not killed, she mi
ght be redistributed to a wealthier family to work as a serving girl, or be tran
sferred to a poor family where she would be raised to become the eventual wife o
f a son, thus avoiding the cost of engagement and wedding presents, obviously al
so an adaptation to extreme poverty. Such an "adopted daughter-in-law" was calle
d a "daughter-in-law raised from childhood" (tóngyăngxí 童
媳 [童養媳]) in most
parts of China. Not surprisingly, given their association with poverty, such ma
rriages were held in very low esteem. The custom seems to have been most widespr
ead in Taiwan at the end of the Qīng dynasty and on into the early Japanese peri
od (1895-1945). Taiwanese adopted daughters-in-law are frequently discussed in E
nglish-language anthropology based especially on the life-long research of Arthu
r Wolf, who calls them "sim-pua" (derived from the Taiwanese Hokkien term sim-pū
-á, "little daughter-in-law").
Submitted by:
Group 7 BSN 1Y2-1
Lorilla, Karen
Makino,Aiko D.
Manuel, Raquel
Mapacpac, Debbi Lyn P.
Mercado, Ma. Kariska An B.
Molina, Lea May L.