Drink Water, but Remember the Source

While many have studied China’s recent rise as an economic power, China itself does not exist solely in the economic realm. Ordinary Chinese still place intense value on moral obligations and the nature of the social ties that connect them to others. This study explores the moral sphere as a key to understanding how rural Chinese experience and talk about their lives in this period of rapid economic transformation. Ellen Oxfeld, who spent time in a village in southeast China’s Guangdong Province over the course of a decade and a half, examines both continuities and changes in the local culture. Although some have suggested that the reform period in China has been characterized by moral cynicism, Oxfeld finds that villagers appeal to a vibrant array of moral discourses when choosing a path of personal action or evaluating the behavior of others.

Ellen Oxfeld is Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College. She is the author of Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community and the coeditor of Coming Home? Immigrants, Refugees, and Those Who Stayed Behind.

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Notes on the Text
Preface and Acknowledgments

Part I. Morality in Rural China: Contexts and Categories

1. Moonshadow Pond: Moral Expectations and Daily Life
2. Liangxin

Part II. Moral Discourse in Social Life

3. Weighty Expectations: Women and Family Virtue
4. Everlasting Debts
5. The Moral Dilemmas of Return Visits
6. Property Rights and Wrongs
7. “Money Causes Trouble”

Conclusion: Ethnography and Morality

Notes
Chinese Character Glossary
References
Index