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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 October 2010
During the 1990s, over seventy per cent of the married men and adult children of Stone Mill village in northeastern China have been employed i n wage labor each year. Because a vast number of household laborers (i.e. husbands, sons, and daughters) have nonagricultural jobs outside the village, daily agricultural tasks are performed by married women and elderly men, who are fondly described by the villagers of Stone Mill as “Troop Number 3860” (3860 budut). The number 38 refers to International Women's Day, March 8, representing the women in the village's agricultural labor force, while the number 60 represents the minimum age of the elderly agricultural workers.
1. The name of the village and names of the villagers appearing in this paper are all pseudonyms. Unless otherwise noted, the demographic data about Stone Mill is from my 1997 survey of 315 Stone Mill couples, with wives born after 1930.
2. For local or family level studies of peasants' employment in village-township enterprises or private businesses, see Croll, Elisabeth, “The New Peasant Economy in China”, in Feuchtwang, A.H. Stephan and Pairault, Thierry (eds), Transforming China's Economy in the Eighties 1: The Rural Sector, Welfare, and Employment (London, 1988), pp. 77–100Google Scholar ; Ho, Samuel P.S., Rural China in Transition: Non-Agricultural Development in RuralJiangsu, 1978-1990 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar ; Johnson, Graham E., “Family Strategies and Economic Transformation in Rural China: Some Evidence from the Pearl River Delta”, in Davis, Deborah and Harrell, Stevan (eds), Chinese Families in the Post-Mao Era (Berkeley, CA, 1993), pp. 103–138Google Scholar ; Nee, Victoret al., “Peasant Entrepreneurs in China's ‘Second Economy’: An Institutional Analysis”, Economic Development and Social Change, 39 (1991), pp. 293–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Veemer, Edward B., “Experiment with Rural Industrial Shareholding Cooperatives: The Case of Zhoucun District, Shandong Province”, China Quarterly, 314 (1995), pp. 75–107Google Scholar.
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5. One mu is equal to 667 square meters or 0.165 acre.
6. See , Heet al., Chinese Rural StatisticalAnnals, 1992, p. 215Google Scholar ; , Zhanget al, Chinese Rural Statistical Annals, 1996, p. 58Google Scholar.
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9. The WorldApple Report, January 1998.
10. , Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development, pp. 222–251.Google Scholar
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12. See Scott, James C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT, 1976), pp. 1–55Google Scholar , for a discussion of the peasant moral economy. Although this paper uses the term “cultural economy”, it addresses a similar conception of the traditional peasant economy.
13. See Cohen, Myron L., House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan (New York, 1976)Google Scholar ; Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development ; Yang, Martin, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (London, 1947)Google Scholar.
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15. For China's family planning policies and their implementations see Peng, Xizhe, Demographic Transition in China: Fertility Trends since the ipsos (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar . For data on average household size and agricultural laborers see , Zhang, Chinese Rural Statistical Annals, 1996, p. 45. For the new custom of early household division, seeGoogle ScholarCohen, Myron L., “Family Management and Family Division in Contemporary Rural China”, China Quarterly, 130 (1992), pp. 357–377CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Wang, Danyu, “Flying From the Nest: The Household Formation in a Village in Northeastern China” (Ph.D., Brown University, Providence, RI, 1999)Google Scholar ; Wang, Danyu, “Complex Households, a Fading Glory: Household Formation During the Collective Period in the PRC”, Journal of Family History, (forthcoming, 2000)Google Scholar ; Yan, Yunxiang, “The Triumph of Conjugality: Structural Transformation of Family Relations in a Chinese Village”, Ethnology, 36 (1997), pp. 191–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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18. Fei, Xiaotong, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley, CA, [etc.], 1992)Google Scholar , translated by Gary G. Hamilton and Wang Zheng, chs 4, 5, and 6.
19. The hukou system, which was established in the 1950s, designates people as city or rural inhabitants, according to their status of residence. During the 1950s-1970s, the government exercised strict control over rural-urban migration and urban residential status (i.e. city hukou). One's rural residential status (i.e. a rural hukou), which was based on the rural residential status of one's mother, could hardly be changed. After the 1980s, the government began to ease its restrictions i n changing residential status. In some areas, there were peasants who could afford to buy a city hukou - at a very high price, however. For more on the Chinese hukou system, see Cheng, Tiejunet al., “The Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou System”, China Quarterly, 139 (1994), pp. 644–668CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Selden, Mark, The Political Economy of Chinese Development (Armonk, NJ, 1993) ch. 6Google Scholar ; Potter, Sulamith Heins, “The Position of Peasants in Modern China's Social Order”, Modern China, 9 (1983), pp. 465–499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20. For Chinese household organization see Cohen, House United, House Divided ; Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London, 1966)Google Scholar.
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24. See ibid.; Freedman, Maurice, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London, 1958); Maurice, Chinese Lineage and Society,Google ScholarWolf, Margery, Women and Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford, CA, 1972)Google Scholar ; Yan, “The Triumph of Conjugality”.
25. See Yan, Yunxiang, The Flow of Gifts (Stanford, CA, 1996), pp. 176–209.Google Scholar
26. See Wang, “Flying From the Nest”.
27. Whyte, Martin K., “Introduction: Rural Economic Reforms and Chinese Family Patterns (Symposium on Rural Family Change)”, China Quarterly, 130 (1992), pp. 317–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28. Jacka, Tamara, Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in Era Reform (Cambridge, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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