History, Fraternity and Reciprocity The Folk Model of Welfare and Mutual Aid in Two Southern Fujian Communities

Wang Ming Ming

Zheng Zhenman (Xiamen University) and Chen Zijui (Anxi´s Mingxuan School)participated in my Meifa investigation, each for a short period of time. Li Wenrui and Fang Baoshou (Xiamen University) helped me with interviews in Tangdong in my 1991 investigation. Stephan Feuchtwang spent with me in total 15 days in the two villages.

This article, reports my findings of mutual support in Southern Fujian, South-east China. By means of description and analysis, I shall try to draw out a few implications of local forms of provision and acquisition of support resource. The data for the chapter derive from two periods of ethnographic fieldwork in two administrative villages (xingzhengcun). These two villages, Tandong in Jinjiang County and Meifa in Anxi Country, are both situated within Quanzhou, one of the three municipal regions (Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou) in Southen Fujian (Map 1). They are established in the late Yuan Dynasty (approximately around 1340 AD.) by the Cai Lineage migrants from Qingyang (TDCSJMQCTK, 1986:1-3), the current capital town of Jinjiang County, to which Tangdong is attached. Meifa was set up as a village in a slightly later period (1370 AD), the early Ming Dynasty (JMCSJP, 1990: Forward)

The large areas within which the villages are situated differ greatly: Meifa is located within a mountainous area (shanqu) Tangdong is one of the coastal villages in Southen Fujian. But administratively, they are at the same level. They were both Xiang (rural district) in the late imperial periods (the 14teh to the 19th centuries); Bao in the Republican phase (1912-49); Daqu (rural brigade) between the late 1950s and 70s; and Cun (village) now. Tangdong includes six natural villages (zirancun). Its population was 4,900 and households number was 925 in 1992 (TDCLYT, 1992). Meifa includes seven natural villages. Its population was 3,500 and household number was 620 in 1992 (FCZLYTJBB), 1992).

In Tangdong, I stayed for three months in 1990 and one and a half months in 1992. In meifa, my fieldwork was conducted for a period of five months and it occurred in 1992. My fieldwork in Tangdong was focused an Tangdong Natural Village, a lineage community (the Cai Lingeage) . This is the largest natural village in Tangdong and the administrative village is named after it. I sampled, an a random basis, 30 households among the 350 households in the 12 branches of the lineage and key interviewees. In Meifa, I concentrated an five natural villages (Zhaiwei, Shuikouwei, Fengjiao, Dingcu and Qiangwei) which constitute the central parts of the Chen Lineage. Even though I also visited the Li Lingeage village (a natural village)

Map 1: Tangdong and Meifa in Quanzhou Region

and interviewed five households, my fieldwork in Meifa was mainly conducted among the households in the Chen Lineage). Apart from interviews, also utilised extensive participant observation and documentary data in my investigation of both villages.

Illustration 2 Marriage and territorial areas

(Tangdong)

I . The Resurgence of Voluntary Support

Data from Tangdong and Meifa suggest that, due to the changes in state-local relationship, local socio-economic order and cultural traditions have experienced several major shifts since 1949. These shifts have to a large extent affected local welfare and mutual aid institutions and practices. Prior to 1949 , village economy was not homogeneous but comprised a variety of activities. In Tangdong, livelihood depended upon a complex of things, including agriculture, seafood gathering, commerce and transportation (TDCSJMQCTK , 1986:3 - 6) ; in Meifa, forms of economic activity included agriculture, boat-transportation, husbandry and commerce (AXXDA, 1943: 63 - 1728 ; 1948:68 - 6 - 292) . Even though different forms of economic activity existed in the two different communities, lineage organization was commonly utilised as a basic social resource by villagers in both communities in their specific economic, political, social and cultural circumstances.

Like in other places in rural Southern Fujian (Freedman, 1958; 1966; Fu, 1982; Zheng, 1992) , in Tangdong and Meifa, economic organization, social relation, local welfare and ritual leaned heavily an lineage order. Social support institutions, an important aspect of local socio-economic life an which I have concentrated, relied mainly an kinship groups or lineage. Kinship or lineage groups, including external connections of lineage or the non-agnatic kin groups, provided the basic circles within which social support was arranged. Local welfare systems consisted of inter-household mutual aid and public causes. Inter-household mutual aid mainly occurred among agnatic relatives and a relations by marriage and female ties. Public causes within the lineage were organised through village temples and ancestral halls which served as volunteer agencies for mobilising local resources in support for public building construction and repairing and the building of public facilities such as roads and bridges. Outside the lineage, larger projects of public causes sometimes involved more than one lineage. For example, in 1928, Tangdong's Cai Lineage co-ordinated with other seven lineages in the same area in constructing a inter-village bridge (YSQBJ , 1928) . These lineages shared a geographical circle of spouse-exchange (see later discussions) . Both kinds of mutual help was founded an a popular conceptions of group-individual relation. These conceptions emphasised that individuals should be responsive to group interests and could express their self-identities and interests as well as fulfil them through small group efforts and mutual responsibility.

The land reforms in the early 1950s deprived lineage public fields which used to serve as the basis of communal economic and welfare systems of lineage existence in both communities. Between the 1950s and 70s, due to the state's suppression of private commerce and non-agricultural economic activity, grain production became the core of local economy in both villages. Between the 1950s and 70s, grain production occupied 80 % of local productivity in Tangdong (TDCLYTJ , 1989) and it weighted some 90 % in Meifa (MFCMWYH, 1991) . Along with the economic transformation, the state also imposed a new social fabric upon the local society. Collectivisation in the later half of the 1950s absorbed elements of lineage organization into a new national network of administrative organization which was based an the place hierarchy of the commune, the brigade and the production team.

Parallel to economic and social transformation, the Maoist regime also imposed a new social support policy upon rural communities, not excluding villages in peripheral areas such as Tangdong and Meifa. It attempted to bring about a break with traditional cultural definitions of individual and group identities by remolding traditional small groups into cellular units of the Chinese socialist nation-state (Siu, 1989; Pye, 1991) . In such attempts , ` mutual help' (huxiang banzhu) was advocated as a principal of social relations among all members of the new nation rather than those of small groups. The idea of `mutual help' was double-faceted: it was based at once an a class idiom and a state-individual relationship. On the one hand, the idea postulated that people within the same ` labor class' (loading rennin) including ordinary peasants should help one another and `mutual support' does not extend across the boundary of class divisions (Kraus , 1981) . On the other hand , it also supported the government's call for national unification and individual sacrifice to socialist collective cause. Under the ideological guideline, rural villagers were organised as parts of a uniformed collectivity or within which they were expected to implement the socialist principle of mutual support. Further, the Maoist state sought to create a direct mutual responsive system of economy and welfare by imposing the `ideal' that all members of the collectivity should work for the state which in turn would supply to meet the people's basic needs for daily consumption and support.

Given the impressions recorded above, it would seem that a description of social support and welfare arrangements in contemporary South Fujian has little to do with local tradition. But the case is the opposite. Since the reforms (1979 - 1993) , the Communist state has tried to decollectivise rural economy (Unger, 1985-86; Shue, 1984) , The ` decollectivisation policy' has created conditions under which local forms of economic organizations have been re-utilised have evoked a degree of local autonomy. Even though the two communities differ greatly, they have been both affected by the new policy. Official state discourse tends to see changes since the reforms as signs of ` socialist modernization' (shehui zuyi xiandaihua) . But my observation indicates that the revival of tradition is, paradoxically, included in the `modernization' process. Industrialization which is occurring in both villages is certainly a new thing to both communities. But apart from this, other aspects of change seem to suggest that local modes of socio-economy (Saith , 1987) and tradition (Feuchtwang , 1986 ) have re-emerged.

Firstly , in economic fields , traditional non-agricultural economic activity such as commerce, transportation and sideline production has revived. In Tangdong, by 1989 , 60 % of the local economic output had been produced by small commerce and sideline production (seafood production) and these ways of economic activity have been expanding in the recent years (TDCLHTJ , 1989) . In Meifa, agriculture still counts much. Nonetheless, there are trends toward the transfer of labor from agriculture into non-agricultural work such as local transportation, construction and small scale commercial activity. Traditional poultry and animal husbandry are re-emerging too (FCZLHTJBB, 1981 - 91) . What is more important is the fact that most economic activities are carried out an the `private basis' . Agriculture and sideline production are mainly organized through a ` household responsibility system' (Croll, 1988) ; so are the other types of economic activity.

The second major change is the return of lineage organization and local politics. in 1983, the commune, brigade and production team institution and the Maoist ideology of group belonging were formally abolished in Southern Fujian' s rural areas. Even though the reformist regime still continues attempting to construct a new society out of the old, its failure to conceive a consistent social policy has created a vast space which has accommodated the re-invention of local traditional social order. Currently, to the state, a village as an administrative unit (danwei) is composed of a number of villagers' groups (chunmin xianzu) and it is attached to a higher level unit, township (zhen) or rural district (xiang). But in he local villagers' own appreciation, such place hierarchies are nothing more than their own traditional social relational order, which is based upon lineage and inter-lineage relations. Thus, the lineage amounts to the village; its branches amounts to villagers' groups; and the unit beyond the village amounts to a circle of the lineage's external connections.

The third major change, the theme which I shall follow up throughout the article, has been the resurgence or re-invention of traditional mutual support institutions. The external condition for the resurgence is the decline of the Maoist theory and promoted practice of `mutual help' . In the reformist ideology, individuals are no longer seen as members of cellular units of the state but seen as themselves independent beings who earn their living by their own efforts and gain support through their own relations. Under the new guideline, government support provision which was considered to be a major indicator of the state's socialist beneficence has now been looked at as something unnecessary or, at least, requiring `reforms' . At times, regional planning (e. g. , the Poverty Relief Scheme) is promoted to signal the government's willingness' to reduce the inequality between areas. Nonetheless, the government' s Intervention in social support arrangements has been largely limited.

This policy change has led to the decline of state welfare provision system which the pre-reformist regime tried to establish. During the Maoist era, village governments (brigades) , with their higher level government, the communes, in both Tangdong and Meifa not only served as means of state-locality linkage in political economy but also served state welfare agencies who were intended as transferring state welfare resources (e. g. , healthy and medical services and employment opportunities) into the villages. Since the reforms, the work of local governments has been confined to administrative control, population registration, collecting levies and taxation. They are currently inactive in welfare spheres. My fieldwork indicates that no one in either Tangdong or Meifa refers to the collective (jiti) or the village government as a source of support in villagers' resolution of emergency and the fulfillment of local social support demand. Statistical data based an sampling point to the fact that the support from the government and institutionalised (insurance) agencies is 4 % in Tangdong and 3 % in Meifa (for details of the situation, see Figure 1) .

The resurgence of local folk model of social relationship has filled in the vacuum created by the reformist policy concerning social welfare provision. Currently, when villagers in Tangdong and Meifa need support to resolve emergency, to organise family events, to construct and repair their houses and to invest in production and businesses, they resort to their relatives and friends. These relations are not based the social bases which served as the foundations of the collective (jiti) . It is evident that informal organizations based an lineage, non-agnatic kinship and friendship relations have formulated a major social force in the resolution of household and village crises; and in the expansion of local socio-economic power. It seems to be evident that traditional individual-group relations have re-emerged and extended. The communities whose social Support arrangements I describe have in common the fact that their in habitants emphasise a sense of `fraternity' among their own informal unions. These unions are the groups, be they groups of lineage kin, non-agnatic kin or friendship, within which mutual help most frequently occur. They are not social units imposed from outside the communities but founded upon a local historical Basis of mutual-knowledge and shared experience. The rote of them in local social welfare lies in the fact that they facilitate reciprocal exchange of socio-economic resources and serve to resolve villagers' life crises (Figure 1).

II . Major Faces of the Folk Model

The current situations of local welfare practices much confirm Feuchtwang's argument that voluntary sources play the most significant role in China' s rural social support (Feuchtwang. 1986; 1988). In consideration of their importance, in this chapter, I shall concentrate an a descriptive account of the conceptions, institutions and practices in the sphere of the rural voluntary welfare system. Before I do that, for the sake of clarity of description and argument, let me put forward a summery of the major facets of rural mutual support in advance of the ethnographic description:

(i) The inhabitants in both villages are in common Southern Fujianese (Minnan Hua) speakers who share certain conceptions with which social support is conceived. The vernacular term of support is `bang' (help) . But ` help' is not regarded as a purely charitable action but a multi-faceted phenomenon. `help' induces `renqing' which is exchangeable basic `human sentiments' . Basic `human sentiments' (renqing) can be represented in forms such as gifts (li) , loans (jiedai) , material and labor returns (huili) and symbolic gestures of fraternity (qing) . They are be owed , credited, demanded, supplied and, in general, exchanged. A local term for the reciprocal exchange of the items is ` baoda' which means both showing gratitude and return what was owed to the others. `Bang' and `renqing' as well as `baoda' formulate a folk model of social support. They are the underlying conceptions about social life which provide social support arrangements a cultural basis.

(ii) Another common facet of social support institution in the two communities is the fact that `help' and `human sentiments' are not universally given, expressed and exchanged. Parties who exchange helps such loans, labor help and gifts mainly include lineage members, non-agnatic or matrilineal kin and friends. In Tangdong and meifa, relations by patrilineal ties are called ` tangqin' (relatives by settlement) ; non-agnatic kin are called ' qinqi' ( relations by marriage) ; and friends are called ` pengyou' (friends) or ` shouren' (acquaintances) . These are the main social categories which exchange material and non-material manifestations of basic `human sentiments' .

(iii) These social relations do not emerge suddenly but have formed through a historical process of social formation. The historical process is one in which lineage settlement, spouse-exchange/marketing territory and experience-sharing groups. It closely connected with village histories of locality emergence and its external networking. Historical experiences provide bases an which social relations are formed and reproduced. They also create a sense of fraternity among the social relations. To a large extent, it is this sense of fraternity that facilitates mutual support.

(iv) The historically formed social relations are active in four main areas of mutual support: family events, household emergency, house building and investment. It can also be said that these four areas are spheres within which fraternity unions such as tangqin, qinqi and pengyou are constantly created and recreated. Further, village rituals, the calendric festivals and rites of passage, are another aspect of sustaining and reproducing local unions. They are also significant from he point of view of their close relation with marking the circles of exchanging mutual support resources.

(v) Local norms and practice of social support seems to emphasise an egalitarian ideology. Within a group, equality and balance of demand and supply of support resources are important in the formation of mutual help within the group. But the sense of equally and balance is coupled with a sense of differentiation of social capabilities of different individuals. Thus, social support in the two communities is not purely a `moral economic' but a combination of mutual responsibility and competition which has the potential of creating hierarchy. There is a sense of differentiation between those who have more ` linjing' and social capability and those who have less such things. This sense serves to legitimate hierarchy within the communities.

(vi) Historically formed relations and social support institutions are adaptable to changing politico-economic conditions. There are cases from both Tangdong and Meifa with which to demonstrate that social support circles can be adapted into large productive and commercial associations which are not so much about `mutual Support' than about `profitable co-operation' . Part of the profits from the businesses have flowed back into local social welfare systems and become resources for volunteer provision of aid.

I want to regard the above six facets of local conceptions and social practices as constituting a re-emerging and self-renewing folk model of mutual relation and support. I apply the term `folk model' for two considerations. First, informal social support arrangements and conceptions rely heavily upon local traditions which are largely removed from central state socio-cultural order. Secondly, they are themselves systematic, coherent and transformative. The major thrust of this chapter will be an attempt to expound upon the folk model.

I shall argue that the social circles within which individuals conduct mutual Support activity are created and reproduced through historical processes of social formation and mutual knowledge. Social relations which exchange mutual support resources are formed an the basis of shared historical experience and they are sustained as unions of `fraternity' (ganqing) and mutual responsibility. Voluntary social support Institution is thus formed out of socio-cultural definitions of obligation and mutual responsibility in social groups. On the basis of this understanding, I shall See `mutual support' as a double-faceted phenomenon: an the one hand, rural social welfare is about the prevention of acute poverty and resolution of emergency; an the other hand, it is to do with the mobilisation of socio-economic resources. This is to suggest that practices evoked by the local social welfare institutions are not only significant in terms of their functions in reproducing local socio-cultural norms and social protection among the rural groups but also significant in terms of their role in articulating household socio-economic development which varies with areas. In the end, I shall conclude that the folk model raise certain important issues of theories and politics of welfare in Chinese socialist nation-state. But before that, I have to substantiate my argument. Let me begin with a consideration of villagers' own conceptions of ` support' .

History , Fraternity and Reciprocity

III . Renqing : Morality and Reciprocity

What I have called the ` folk model' is based an a popular cultural ` dialectic' of the provision and acquisition of support resources. In Meifa and Tangdong, it is widely recognised that provision of support is potential of earning the individual an opportunity to acquire the others' support in the future and acquisition of support could induce a need to provide the others a similar amount of support. Provision of support is at once a derivative of responsibility and a result of the individual' s attempt to create social prestige and control future supplies of support resources. At the same rate, acquisition of support is an the one hand regarded as what a member of a group ` naturally' deserves and an the other hand seen as what may induce a debt (Zai) . We can analyse this `dialectic' from the perspective of local conceptual configurations of ` support' .

One way by which Southern Fujian has been integrated into a region is language. People, be they urban or rural, in the three municipal regions share a language . Villagers in both Tangdong and Meifa speak this local language with different accents: the Jinjiang Accent (Jinjiang Qiang) and the Anzi Accent (Anxi Qiang) . Certain elements of vocabulary and syntax are different; nonetheless, the core of the language is shared. In both the two communities, three terms are central to the description of social support. The first is `bang' (the same pronunciation in Maderin). The second is `linjing' (renqing in Manderin). The third is `baoda' (Manderin) or `be:du'b' (Minnan Hua).

`Bang' designates the sense of ` help' . It is often used together with ` zhu' (support or assist) and is usually applied in the context of `helping other people (as differentiated from the self )' . ` Renqing' has a more complex meaning. A direct translation is `human sentiments' . But the term refers to at once an ethic of personal relations between relatives, neighbors and friends and a sense of owing other people emotional debts (renqing zai) . In describing the phenomenon of ` help' , ` renqing' means that doing somebody a favor is a basic ethical principle which one should obey. But paradoxically, it also means that being helped by someone else is equal to owing the person in question something. `Baode' in Chinese could mean a group of things. As Lin noted, in classical Chinese, `bao' could mean report, respond, repay , retaliate and retribute (Yang , 1957) . Locally , ` baoda' refers mainly to showing gratitude to the others for help and return renqing debts to the others.

The concepts apparently entertains a moral-ethical understanding of being in society. This can be seen in the fact that the negative senses of these terms are often applied in some villagers ` accusation of other villagers' unwillingness to help or support. In Tangdong and Meifa, to suggest that someone is not helpful, one often says that the person is someone without `renqing' . To the villagers, to be helpful and to have ` renqing' is basic to a person' s being a person. But do the villagers always help one another with full willingness and without expecting return? When one poses the question to the villagers themselves, one gets certain confusing answers. Some villages may give a simple reply ` no' . Others may just say being helpful is ` natural'(jilian). To a sociologist, the ultimate issue of the vernacular terms relates to a major debate in social and ideological studies of the ` peasantry' . In fact , we can put the questions in this way: Do the local conceptions represent a peasant `moral economy' (Scott , 1976) or do they celebrate an ideology of ` rationality' (Popkin , 1979) ?

I want to point out the `peasant view' of social support in what we can see from examining the vernacular terms entertains a double-faceted idea of social life. Local terms of social support certainly include a moral-ethic definition of being in society. They treat persons as some people who are ` born' as mutually helping individuals. Lack of such human qualities as `renqing' thus amounts to lack of socio-moral qualities. Nonetheless, there is an economic logic in the moral-ethic itself. It seemed to be `natural' that people exchange helps and `renqing' can be supplied, demanded, consumed, owed , returned , transacted and accumulated . Terms such as `bang ' and `renqing' thus not only suggest that mutual help is the manifestation of basic human sentiments but also postulate that people can expect material and symbolic returns from the others who they used to help. The sense of return is vividly expressed in the third term `baoda' which intervenes in the moral-ethic definition of support. A Person without an willing to ` baoda' is referred to as a person without renqing and could be accused of being a `renqing-less dog' (mei renqing gou).

In both villages, we can identify three forms of mutual support: loans, gifts and labor help. Loans are usually given to family emergencies (such as illness) , house building, weddings and investments. Gifts are provided to those who are organising funerals and weddings or to those who the gift-presenters once owed much. Labor help is supplied mutually to resolve tensions arising from busy seasons, family events and so on. These are general items of support because they are inter-changeable.

No people in either Tangdong or Meifa claims interests from the loans which he or she supplies to other villagers. Giving a fellow kinsman, a neighbor or a friend certain amount of loans means accumulating a portion of emotional credit for the self. There are more just one way (e. g. , money or interest) in which a return to what is owed is made. Loans are normally returned to the 1ender within one year without an additional amount of interest. Nonetheless, the borrower may give a present to the 1ender or promise in mind, without utterance, to lend money or supply labor support to the 1ender. Next time, when the 1ender wants to borrow and request for other kinds of help, he or she normally get what is desired. Thus, loans can be exchanged with loans, with labor help, with gifts, with prestige and with any other things which are `valuable' . Labor help can be exchanged with labor helps, with loans, with gifts, with money and so on. Gifts can be exchanged with gifts, loans, labor helps and the like.

For example, a villager in meifa often provides one of his tangqin with labor help during harvest seasons. One year, he was repqiring his house. He was in bad need for money support. So he asked the tangqin for a loan and he got it. When I asked why his tangqin was so willing to help him, he told me that the tangqin of his owed him `renqing' . For another example, a villager, a local businessman, in Tangdong sometimes gave small sums of loans to his neighbor. At one time, his business demanded so much attention that he could not care for his agricultural work. So he asked the neighbor to do it for him and the neighbor accepted the task without a word. The businessman told me that the neighbor owed him `rending' .

The vernacular notion of `renqing' points to the fact that villagers are required by their tradition to respond to one another's demand for help. That is to say, those who are in relations are required to be responsible for one another. Otherwise, they will be accused of being `not sociable' , having no ` renqing' or even being ` immoral' . So, giving help is part and parcel of villagers' social conduct. Certainly, villagers may have certain kind of fear against losing social support resources. For example , in Tangdong , there is a villager who is widely-seen as an unkind person. He is one of the richest. But he never gives other people support. Other villagers described him as a ` stingy person' or ` hungry ghost' (yiaoxiao gui) . A villager commented on him in such a way : `A person like him is a hungry ghost (gui) . He is not tenuous now. In the future, if he had problems, who would want to help him?' So to be helpful or `generous' is to insure a future supply of social support resources. Generosity is exchanged with generosity. The conception of return to generosity is conveyed in the term `baoda' . `Baoda' designates a sanctification of generous help and insurance of what may be gained through giving help.

Local semantics of `support' are, of course, not simply about `support' itself. They do not conceptualise `support' in the Western terminology `charitability' . One aspect of support in Chinese villagers' world of thought is its socio-moral effect. For example, one well-off villager in Tangdong was asked to provide loans. Even though he was not very willing to do so, he did. When I asked why, the answer I got was that, an the one hand, he felt obliged to and, an the other hand, he was willing to because he did not want to reduce his own reputation of being a ` generous man' in the village. This socio-moral effect is similar to what Scott has seen as an equalising mechanism and egalitarianist ethos (Scott , 1976) . It consists of social expectations of equal distribution of local resources. In this light, one facet of the folk model of social support is the transfer of extra-supply from one household into another. However, in local conceptions, this interpretation does not exhaust the significance of mutual help. It is more than apparent that those households or individuals who are provided by the others `support' always feel obliged to return the help. So, both provision and acquisition of support resources are underlined by a logic of exchange which is similar to Mauss's idea of the double significance of the obligation to give and the obligation to repay (Mauss , 1990) .

This much said, that popular conceptions of welfare is consistent with a social means of reallocation of resources. But this form of reallocation of resources differs from `redistribution' which, according to Polanyi's definition, requires the transfer of local resources into a central authority (Polanyi, 1944) . It is basically a form of reciprocal transactions constrained by an folk ideology of morality.

IV . Circles of the mutual-Supporters

Villagers in the two communities do not apply this line of thought to the reality outside their places and social worlds. Nor do they require all people to be responsible for them and to be generous to them, nor are they themselves responsive to all others' demands. Strangers or non-members of their own groups are not included in the moral-ethical and tactical conceptions of support. In the villages, I heard villagers criticising the government of being irresponsible for the people. But in other times, the government is not expected to be kind and supportive : so long as it give opportunities to the villagers to do their own business, it is a `good government' . Over 90% of the individuals who I interviewed thought Deng Xiaoping was a good leader. The explanation that they gave was that Deng gave them much freedom to do things and, unlike Mao Zedong, did not intervene too much in their businesses and production. Their response to outsiders is also interesting. In Meifa, I once gave a donation to the village temple in order to show my respect to their village. Immediately, I was thanked by the key member of the temple committee. Obviously, I was treated differently from the local villagers. For a local villager, to donate something to the temple is usual and deserve no work of gratitude. As an outsider, I was not expected to `help' . That was way I was thanked.

As I mentioned earlier, currently, external support-be which it mainly refers to the support from the government and from insurance companies - is extremely limited. Strangers' involvement in local social support in nil. At the same rate, villagers showed little interest in giving the outsiders support. In Tangdong, the villagers' committee chief complained that a lot of villagers under-reported their earnings. The purpose of doing so was to avoid paying a lot of tax. The government tried to collect money for `three state funds' (irrigation fund, population fund, and education fund) from the villagers. But local cadres had major difficulties in so doing because a tot of households simply refused to pay any money. The village chief explained to me that `these days it is so hard to "lead" the people who show no interest in the state's social cause' .

'Social support' thus is not understood as either a cause of the ` welfare nation; an universal ethos. Then, who are included in the circles of mutual support? In other words, what are the social spatial confines of mutual support groups? In both the communities, what we may call `welfare systems' consist of household self-help, inter-household mutual aid and public causes. Household self-help is based an popular conceptions of filiality (xiao) and family continuity. Public causes are mainly characterised by household contributions to temple festivals (miaoji) , ancestral hall celebrations (ciji) and the construction and reconstruction of temples and house. These two `welfare' systems are not perceived by the villagers as `mutual support' even though we may consider them as such in our academic discourse. The popular conceptions of `renqing' , `bang' and `bao' are only applied in the contexts of inter-household mutual aid. It should also be noted that not all local households are involved in general mutual aid: only those who have special relations between themselves are regarded as those who should help each other.

Three categories of people are most frequently involved in local mutual support practices. Local terms for these are the same in the two villages. These are tangqin (relatives by lineage settlement) , qinqi (relatives by marriage ties) and pengyou (friends) or shouren (cooked people or acquaintances) . Tangqin are those relatives who share a patrilineage line and live in a small neighborhood. In local genealogies, the whole lineage is described as having the same lineage line. But not all lineage members are tangqin. Only those who trace to a common ancestor not more than five generations before call one another tangqin. The size of a tangqin group varies from forty to sixty people. The houses of tangqin are normally concentrated an a focal point which is called ` gongting' or ` public hall' . This is a place where shrines of the common ancestors of tangqin are placed and worshipped.

Qinqi are relations by marriage. Unlike tangqin groups, qinqi do not have an common residence area. They are more loosely spread than tangqin. We may call these relative groups `non-agnatic kin' . In Chinese, they can be called `yanqin' or `marriage relations' . Members of the groups include mothers, fathers' sisters and their families, wives, wives' brothers and their families, brothers' wives and their families, sisters and their families and daughters and their families. We may well perceive such relations as relatives by matrikinship ties. The size of a qinqi group can vary from thirty to a few hundred people. Compared with the size of tangqin groups, their sizes are normally larger. Geographically, they also spread in a much larger area than tangqin. This area includes three to over ten administrative villages (xingzheng cun) . In Meifa, it includes some five administrative villages. In Tangdong, it includes six villages.

Pengyou (friends) or shouren (acquaintances) are those relations which are outside patrilineage and matrikinship circles. They are usually made in worksites, schools, the army and so on. Sometimes, villagers can made friends with members of the same lineage who are not counted as tangqin. But pengyou and shouren are normally nonkin. Compared with both tangqin and qinqin, they are less confined to local geographical areas: some villagers can make friends with people from other provinces. For example, a few villagers from both Meifa and Tangdong who served in the army have friends from provinces such as Jiangxi and Jiangsu.

My findings in Meifa demonstrate the significance of mutual support among these relations well. According to my sampling data, in Meifa, qinqi is the most important support source for financial help. Tangqin occupies the most significant Position in labor help. Tangqin and qinai are equally important in information mutual aid. In financial, labor and information support, pengyou relations are also important. In Tangdong, tangqin (including extended family self-help) is most important in all aspects support. Qinqi and pengyou respectively occupy the second and the third positions (Figure 1) . There are certainly area variations ( I shall come back to the point later) . However, these data jointly suggest that tangqin, qinqi and pengyou are the most important sources of mutual aid in both villages.

We may define the three types of mutual support groups in terms of three different social spatial rings. The closest ring to the individual/household is the tangqin ring. It is basically a kind of territorially and genealogically defied circle. The extent of the social geographical spread of tangqin is limited to small neighborhoods or co-resident areas (smaller than natural villages and than sub-branches of lineage) . The second ring, or the qinqi, extend to a broader area whose core (see later discussions) is larger than an administrative village but smaller than a township. Pengyou as a social ring is less confined by local social tied. instead, it is defined by professions, age, and experiences. The extent of its geographical spread is the broadest among the three types of groups.

The social rings are formed out of the shared historical experiences of the related individuals. A shared history, be it the lineage past of friendship, gives a group an identity (Feuchtwang , 1992 : 2 - 7) . It also provides social support arrangements and institutions an ideological interpretation. Therefore, to understand the folk model of social support, it seems necessary to examine the interrelationship between history and group formation.

* Dada are from questionnaire interviews. Financial support refers mainly to loans. Contacts mainly refers to contacts for financial support. Labor help occur in production and house building. Information aid occurs mainly in house building, investment and family events. Among the four items, only financial support is calculated in terms of money; all the rest are calculated in terms of frequency of help.

V . History and Group Identities

Formation of Tangqin

In both communities, all descendants of a great grant father (grant fathers, grant fathers' son and their families and the further divisions of these families) are known as tangqin. Those patrilineage relations which are related with the ego by a genealogical tie beyond the great grant father' s generation are known as ` tong fangfen' (people sharing a room within the lineage ` house') in Tangdong and as ` tong jiaoluo' (people sharing the same settlement) in Meifa or as ` tongzong' (people sharing the same lineage ancestors) in both villages. They can be sub-branches of a lineage or a lineage itself (e. g. , MFCSZFGSPZP, 1532 - 1953) . If we can estimate that the time span of one generation is twenty years, then we can also suggest that the standard length of all tangqin histories in both communities is about eighty years. Such histories are processes of family division and reunion and they vary with generations.

Tracing the origin and development of tangqin groups, we may find that the establishment of a tangqin circle begins with the establishment of a separate family or, as it is locally called , ` stove' (zao) ; after one generation , the family is divided into several families due to the expansion of family population induced by marriage and reproduction. After one more generation, the newly established separate families/stoves are further divided into more families for the same reasons. The same process is repeated when these further established families are faced with marriage and demographical issues.

Family sample X from the Qingwei sub-branch of the Chen Lineage in Meifa is a good example. The great father (a son of a family in the late Qing Dynasty) of the family set up his own family in the 1920s after his marriage with the great grant mother from Xianyuan Village's Liang Lineage. In the 1950s, his daughter was married into a nearby village, Houan; his two sons got married later. One of his two sons remained within his family whereas the other established his own family/stove. In the late 1950s, the ancestor of Family X died. It was a period of time when his grant sons were an the edge of marriage. The son who stayed with him had two sons and the other son had three sons. All of them got married by the early 1960s. Not long after their marriages, three more separate families were established while two (one for each of the two) remained with their fathers' families. The same process was repeated in the 1980s. By then, Family X's tangqin included nine households/families.

 

Note: A= common ancestors; B1, B2 and B3 = the first generation of tangqin families; Cl , C2 and C3 = the second generation of tangqin families. Dl , D2 and D3 = the third generation of tangqin families. E1, E2 , and E3 = the fourth generation of tangqin families. Different generations (except family members of a single household) after the common ancestors also treat one another as tangqin. Data are from Qingwei natural village, Meifa.

Tangqin as a kind of social circle is not only genealogical but also territorial. With a few exceptions, tangqin groups in both Tandong and Meifa have their own special territorial zones for habitation. A spatial zone within which a tangqin group live together as a social entity is one of the several small areas within the hamlet of the sub-lineage (fangfen in Tangdong and Jiaoluo in Meifa). Such a zone as a focal point which is the shared `public hall' (gongting) . This is the place where the ancestors of the tangqin are worshipped, shared production facilities and materials (such as cattle for ploughing) are placed and funerary rituals for those who belong to the same tangqin group are held. It is evident that the inner part of the zone, the small area nearby the public hall, is usually occupied by the older families such as those of the `uncles' (su) whereat the outer parts are the houses of the junior families in the same group. The spatial differentiation is derived from the process of family division which I illustrated in the above (Illustration 1) .

Nonetheless, there are cases in which tangqin can be tangqin without living together. These cases usually emerge among tangqin groups with emigrants. For instance, in Tangdong, Family Y has seven tangqin households. Five of them live in the same neighborhood or the tangqin area. Two of them live outside the locality. One of them has emigrated to Hong Kong; the other moved to Xiamen City. But Family Y counts the two non-local families as their tangqin. For another instance, in Meifa, Family Z lives with their six tangqin families within the same residential area. But two other tangqin families live outside the territorial zone. One of the two families migrated to Xiamen and has stayed there since the 1950s. The other lives in the same village but in a different `corner' (natural village) because when it tried to build its own house in 1983 the village government provided a piece of land in the ` corner

Qinqi and Marriage Areas

In Mandarin Chinese, the term `qinqi' refers to `kin' in general, including patrilinear and matrilinear kins. in the two communities in South Fujian, however, `qinqi' only includes what we may call `non-agnatic kins' which includes: 1) mother' s parental household and its sub-divisions (such as mother' s brothers and sisters' families) : 2) father' s sisters' families; 3) wife' s parental household and its sub-divisions; 4) the parental household of brother's wife; 5) sister's family; and 6) daughter's family. Compared with the residential zone of tangqin, the territorial circle of qinqi is much more extensive.

For both communities , the core circle of qinqi includes relations in several administrative villages. In Meifa, it core includes Beishi, Xianyuan, Houan, Guangde and Chengyu Villages which are situated within the geographical confine of the `Lower Anxi area' (xia Anxi) as it is locally known. It outer ring extends into Yongchun County, Quanzhou City, Tongqn County and Jinjiang County In Tangdong, its core includes Weitou, Huchu, Yangfeng, Kengkou, Jinjing, Chenchu and Shuijun which forms a similar area to `Lower Anxi Area' . It outer zone has extended into Quanzhou, Qingyang, Xiamen in Fujian as well as Shenzhen in Guangdong and overseas Chinese communities in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

How have such geographical zones of qinqi formed? The social history of marriage is the most central part of the answer. Since early this century, the modern political regimes and intellectuals have been advocating ` free love and marriage' (ziyou hunlian) which postulates that the only lawful (palmer, 1986) and `good' marriage (Croll , 1981) occurs purely in relation to romantic love and without reference to local confines. In Tangdong and Meifa, I find that the promotion of romantic love is unsuccessful. Currently, a few number of young villagers (not over 20 in the two villages) have married without parents' arrangements. Most others marry their spouses from the geographical confines of local marriage circles. The formation of such circles are not a new thing but a continued tradition. The formation of qinqi can be seen as an indication of the force of the uterine family that is hidden within the patriarchal household and lineage. It points to the importance of mother-son tie, marriage tie, and women in the local formation of social relations. Further, it shows how geographical circles of marriage has been closely linked with lineage history, local territorial ritual space and migration.

Data of village histories (genealogies) in the two communities indicates that the inner rings of the marriage circles are correspondent with the rings of local territorial rotation ritual. The formation of the inner rings is fulfilled gradually through a historical process of lineage external relationing. At first, the village establish itself as a village an the foundation of local lineage creation, land seizure and settlement. In the earliest phase of lineage history , Marriage practice was carried out within the customary limits of geographical space but was not institutionalised. Then, along with the growth of population and expansion of lineage settlements, the marriage relation between the villages and their surrounding villages was consolidated. Two factors contributed to the consolidation of local marriage relation. First, the further extension of frequency of marriage between the villages and the neighboring communities. Secondly , the emergence of territorial cult areas (Feuchtwang , 1992: 91 - 125 ; Sangren, 1987: 61 -92) in the late imperial period institutionalised local marriage areas.

An illustrative example of the overlap of marriage circles and territorial ritual areas is that of the larger area within which Tangdong serves as collective member. The inner circle of the spouse exchange covers six villages, including Tangdong, Huchu, Weitou, Nanshagang, Yangfeng and Kengkou. My analysis of a sub-lineage in the Cai lineage indicates that throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties members of the lineage mainly married their spouses (male or female) within the circle of the six villages (TDCSWTFZP , 1908) . The marriage area was reconfirmed by a spatial institution of ritual organization. Each of the six villages has its own local temples. But all of them share one major temple, the Xizhiyan Temple some 1 kilometer from Tangdong. The temple was established in the Song Dynasty in the l0th century. Throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 - 1911) , it was repaired from time to time. According to temple inscriptions (XZYBJ , 1964 ; JJXZYBJ , 1888) , at times when the temple was repaired, households and emigrants from the six villages all contributed to the temple funds. At the major Universal Renewal (Jiao) festivals, the six member villages also co-ordinated in funding and organising the ceremonies.

The co-ordination among the villages is also demonstrated in the rotation ritual during the Seventh Month Festival. The six villages were grouped into seven units (Tangdong was divided into two groups because it was larger) . The seven groups formed a seven year cycle. Each year, one of them served as a host (luzu) collectivity. Members of the group were obliged to treat their qinqi from the other six groups (Illustration 2) .

Co-ordination in ritual very much facilitates co-ordination in marriage. This is not only the case in Tangdong but also true of Meifa. The marriage area within which Meifa is situated does not have a unified temples. But the area is treated as a unit in the county' s rotation ceremonies during the Seventh Month Festival . It is known as ` xia anxi' (Lower Anxi) and co-ordinated with other twenty nine units located an the banks of the Lanxi River.

In Meifa, the village was established in the early Ming Dynasty. The establishment of its marriage circle was in the Mid-Ming Dynasty. Before then, inter-relation between villages in the ` Lower Anxi Area' , the inner ring of the marriage circle already existed in a informal manner. But only in the Mid-Ming when the rotation ritual was created did inner ring of the marriage circle formally formulated. In Tangdong, the village was established in the late Yuan Dynasty the early 13th century and marriage with neighboring areas was practiced. It was also by the Mid-Ming that the circle was consolidated.

The outer rings of the marriage circles are evidently in close connection with emigration. In both Meifa and Tangdong, the reach of emigrants. Emigration to the target areas began in the lineage’s' early history. Emigration built up linkage between the emigrants' home villages and their new base. One way by which the linkage is strengthened has been marriage. The emigrants introduce their lineage members to the fellow residents in their new base and often serve as informal match-makers. For instance, an emigrant from Meifa in Tongan introduced one of his female tangqin to one of his friend in Tongan as a spouse. For another instance, an overseas emigrate from Tangdong in the Phililppines successfully made a couple out of his tangqin sister in Tangdong and one of his friends or business partners in Manila.

Origin of Friendship

In South Fujian as a whole, the word `pengyou' is widely used now as a general name of those strangers who one may come across in streets and who wants to do business or communicate with. In such a usage, `pengyou' does not have the connotation of a group or a circle. But when one person asks another who are his/her friends, those who are included in the list are quite limited in number. They may vary from one to tens. Those who can be called `friends' in such a strict definition are often those who have shared certain past experiences for a certain period of time with the person who call them ` friends' .

In traditional China, friendship existed mainly among the literati. Friends who continued to be such after a ` cold age' (hansui) are praised as those who have high human quality. Thus, in the literati ideology, the capability to ` make friends' (jiaoyou) is central to the personhood of a scholar or gentry man. The Meifa Chen Lineage Genealogy (JMCSJB, 1990: 5 - 7) mentions that in the fifth generation of the its lineage history one ancestor of the Chen Lineage was an well-educated gentry man. He was very capable of making friends (jiaoyou) . He had some friends (you) in the county government compounds and was friendly with some lineage chiefs of surrounding villages. Tangdong' s Cai Genealogy (WTEZP , 1986: 10 - 13) involves a similar story. The term `jiaoyou' (making friends seems to be only used in such contexts. It serves to describe the personality of local elite. Such a `high quality' of friendship did not exist among the ordinary peasants who normally and ` kin' , either agnatic or non-agnatic kin. To the rural communities, especially those which are based an lineage organizations, ' friendship' was an luxurious thing. The diffusion of friendship among the ordinary villagers occurred roughly at the transition in the twentieth century.

Villagers in Tangdong and Meifa have different friendship circles. A villager' s friends may include one or more of the following categories:

1. Those who used to study or study in the same school and become mutually agreed as friends;

z . Those who used to work or work in the same workplace and become mutually agreed as friends;

3. Those who used to be trained in the same army unit and agree to recognise mutually as friends ;

4. Those who became cadres together and got to know one another very well and agreed to treat one another as friends;

5. Those who participated in the same political compaign(s) and were members of the same political factions (pai) before and during the Cultural Revolution (1966 -76);

6. Those who are friends of the above five kinds of friends and

are introduced by them as common friends to the person in question;

7. Those who are engaged in the same business, become partners or colleagues and treat one another as friends.

The formation of all the above friendship circles largely relies upon shared experiences. Any shared experiences, study, military training, work, political campaigning and doing business, can lead to the creation of friendship even though to a particular villager not all of these have done so. Villagers' own interpretation of friendship suggests that friends are normally those who have similar mentality and temperament. Thus, generally, friendship is based an both social historical and psychological factors. The creation of friendship takes a few steps: shared contexts and experience -similar responses to the situations and experience - memory of the shared experience of events - consolidated friendship.

For example, Y. L. Chen of Meifa has been friendly with two individuals. One of he tow friends is from Houan Village, some 4 Kilometers from Meifa. Y. L. ' s friendship with the Houan person began as early as when he was 14. he went to the same middle school with the person; then in 1981 he was recruited into returned from the army together with the houan person. Now, they are in two quite different professions: Y. L. does a small transportation business (riding motorbike) whereas his friend works in the county government. But they still get together sometimes and, When necessary, Would support each other. The other friend of Y. L. ' s is from Beishi. He and Y. L. did not make friends in school or in the army, but in a mine (Yongan County) where he and Y. L. worked as colleagues for some four years (1982 - 85) . Y. L. said the reason why he made the two friends was simple: in the army, he and his Houan friend was the only two persons from the same place and they could accompany each other. When he was in the mine, he made the Beishi friend partly because he was his same-place fellow and partly because they had the `same type of personality' and used to join the same faction (pai) during the Cultural Revolution.

The diffusion of modern friendship in Southern Fujian's rural areas is evidently a consequence of the local extension of modern means of identification. In Tangdong, the earlier modern form of friendship perhaps emerged around 1921 when the village' s public school was established (TDCSJMQCTK , 1986: 3 - 4) . In Meifa, village public school was established in a later phase (1936) (AXXDA , 1941, 68 - 5 -153) . But in 1920s, the Nationalist local government promoted joint-venture between different villages in boat-transportation business (AXXDA, 1943 , 63 - 1228) . Cross-village and inner-village friendship may have been created in joint-venture companies.

This much suggests that friendship in rural South Fujian derives mainly from the emergent `civil society' . But to be more precise, it derives from popular appropriations of new contexts and experiences. From the above list of friendship categories, we can see that some kinds of friendship groups (business, school, and work) have had a longer history than others; but some only created in the 1950s and 60s in the political campaigns organised by the Communist Party (see a general discussion in: Gold, 1985); still some have just been formed in the past few years. Schools, workplaces, and army bases are there major stable spatial contexts in which friendship groups can be constantly created, sustained, and altered.

V . Mutual Support or Exchange of Fraternity

Different tangqin, qinqi and pengyou groups are formed an the basis of contextualised social interactions of the individuals. A tangqin group is created in the process of interactions between those who have lived under the same ` shadow' (yin) of shared ancestors (Hsu, 1948) .' The creation of a qinqin group derives mainly from connections through marriage interrelationship between different lineage (Baker, 1991) which is in turn regulated through a number of institutions (especially conventional territorial limits of spouse distribution) . Pengyou groups are more removed from traditional lineage and marriage institutions. But historical ties are also significant in the origination of such groups.

Social support practices are regulated by patterns of historically formed social relations. histories of different groups create variants of what we may call `fraternity' (ganqing) . They evoke feelings of mutual belonging among the members of the groups by way of providing a sense of sharedness and compassion among the individuals in the past and in the present. But it should be noted that such histories are enacted by social practices of mutual support. To be more specific, the interrelationship between historical formed social relations and social support arrangements are dialectical. Social support practices are influenced by histories and identities of groups; they also serve to reproduce the histories and identities in the present. Different forms are in common connected with household welfare, continuity and developments. They are certain ways in which historically formed social relations of the household are re-enacted.

For example, let us look at the ritual exercise of mutual support in a funerary ritual which was held in Meifa in September, 1991. The deceased which received the ritual sanctification was an elderly man who died of an usual cause. His death was first known to his tangqin who then announced the news to the whole village and his and his family members' qinqi and friends in several neighboring villages who were also notified the date of the funerary procession (chushan) to take place.

Except the household members, those who took part in the ritual were perceived as both participants and helpers and they seemed to involve two categories : the closer relations and the remoter relations. The close relations arrived at the funeral in the earlier phase. The household members were obviously the most busy individuals in the whole event. No special request for help was posed to the others. But in the first day, some twenty three close relatives and friends turned up in the host household. These included nine tangqin of the deceased, four qinqi from his wife's home village, three qinqi from his daughters-in-law's home household, five qinqi from_ his sons-in-law' s households , and two friends of his two sons' .

The major hosts of the ritual were the deceased's two sons. But a figure played a central role in arranging the whole event. That was the tangqin brother of the deceased who had relatively a high reputation in the neighborhood. The rest of those who came to help were divided into groups: some were cooking for the funerary feasts; some were busy in doing shopping; and some were outside the village to employ funerary specialists. Some remoter relatives and friends visited the deceased' s household briefly to inform them that they already knew the death and would come to attend to major ceremonies at the funeral. All of them (the number of which was approximately three hundred) , however, arrived, in the latter phase of the funeral (the second day) . They mainly took part in the funerary feasts and procession.

The closer and remoter relatives and friends were differentiated throughout the procession and feasts. In the procession, the closer ones occupied the front part of the procession whereas the remoter ones followed them behind. At the feasts, the closer relatives and friends played the role of entertainers. They were asked by the host household to toast to the other quests.

They were also differentiated in terms of donations to the event. In Southern Fujian cultural area as a whole, there is a distinction between 'red-color' events and ` white-color' events (hongbai shi) . The former consist of weddings and annual Festivals. The latter mainly includes funerals. The differentiation is based an the perception that ` red-color' events are `happy' events whereas ` white-color' events are unhappy events. In happy events, relatives and friends only present gifts to the host household when they feel like to go to the feast. In contrast, in unhappy events, they feel more obliged to participate without being invited. A further point of the differentiation is the idea that relatives and friends are obliged to give certain support to ` white-color' events where they could choose to do so according to their own decisions in `red-color' events. At the funeral in Meifa, all participants gave donations to the host household. But they gave different amounts of money. According to the record written by the host household , the average donation of the closer relations was thirty RMB while that of the remoter relations was ten RMB.

Rituals such as the funeral occasions of rites of passage and communal celebrations. However, to those who hold and participate in these rituals, they are also significant as occasions in which their social relations are reaffirmed and re-created. They mark a difference between the closer and remoter relations. Sometimes, the difference may be made through genealogical differentiation between people. But in the funeral which I have briefly mentioned, the difference lies in a distinction between those who in the past already helped the household a lot and were in turn much helped by them. As the hosts told me, those who helped them cook food for the feasts and organising the ritual proceedings were those who they for a long time ` mixed up with' . They also had a lot of `ganqin' (emotional ties) with the household. Therefore, they were most helpful.

It seems to be the case in funerals and other family events most social relations -- tangqin, qinqi and pengyou - - could be easily involved. However, in normal occasions, not all of them are available to help. Some relations are more helpful than others. To some households, tangqin may be the most helpful ones; to others, qinqi or pengyou may be more helpful than tangqin. How are the `more helpful relations' formed? From the perspective of those who acquire the help, the `more helpful relations' are either those who are close to them and have more resources than other or those who owe themselves a certain amount of ` renqing' . From the perspective of those who provide support, the relations who deserve more support than others are either those who are more `trustworthy' or more capable of keeping their promises or those who they used to owe some ` renqing' . To give a little illustration of the two way process, I shall provide a case of the role of mutual support in a Tangdong household's house building project.

D. C, Cai was a man with tow sons. In the late 1980s, both the two sons of his sere at the edge of marriage. This obviously worried D. C. a lot. His house was small and old. Even if it could accommodate two new couples, it looked shabby and did not fit into his vision of a prosperous household at all. However, all of his household members did not have high income. To build a new house, one would normally need 200 , 000 RMB in the area. D. C. only had some 50 , 000 RMB. But he was anxious to accomplish his plan. How could he resolve the tension? In order to get support, He saw a few of his relatives but not all of them. He talked to three major relations of his. One was a tangqin brother in his neighborhood, whose grandfather was D. C. ' s grandfather's brother. The other two were his wife's two brothers who lived some 10 kilometers away from the village.

The tangqin brother of D. C. 's grew up with D. C. in the same neighborhood and they had been good relatives. But he was a much better-off businessman and owned two small factories. D. C. explained the problem to him. The tangqin brother soon responded that he would not be able to support a lot as he was expanding his business in the year and would need a lot of money. After another discussion, he promised to lend 30,000 RMB to D. C. but insisted that D. C. should return the loan within a year or tow. D. C. 's discussions with his two qinqi brothers (wife's Brothers) were more smooth. He went to their village with his wife who already mentioned to her brothers the request earlier. Viewing that D. C. was anxious to establish a good home for his sons, they showed much willingness to help. Each of the two qinqi brothers gave him 40 , 000 RMB as a good gesture of support.

With 75 % of the funds which he desired, D. C. began rebuilding his house in September, 1989. As it has been the case in Tangdong, little labor help from relatives and friends was involved in the construction work. The construction was contracted to a builder from a neighboring county, Nanan. Towards the end of June, 1990 , the house was in shape but it required interior decoration and furnishing which would cost D. C. some extra 50, 000 RMB. Because D. C. ' s elder son planned to marry in the New Year Festival of 1991, D. C. hoped much to complete the whole building within the limit of time. This time, his elder son solved the problem. D. C. 's elder son worked, between 1986 and 88, in a stone-carving factory where he made good friends with a fellow worker who later became the partner-manager of the factory. Knowing that this friend of his had earned much money, he went to him and asked for help. The visit was successful.

D. C. ' s new house was completed in October, 1990. It is two-story, stone-structured, and it contains eleven rooms. D. C. was certainly feeling much self-achievements. As he said, 'building a new house is important because it glorifies the ancestors (guangzong yaozu). ' D. C. was also quite aware of the fact without relatives and friends' financial support his vision would not have been fulfilled. He was also feeling much a burden to repay the loans. In late 1991, when I revisited D. C. ' s house, D. C. told me that he had already returned all the debts. How could he do so? His household' s total annual income was not more than 60 , 000 RMB. It is more than apparent that D. C. borrowed some money from other relatives to repay the debts.

One may now pose questions of why D. C. was able to mobilise so much funds and why his relations were willing to provide so much funds. Once I asked D. C. the questions. D. C. responded to me by offering a few explanations. Firstly, he said that it was usual for relatives and friends to help one another because relatives and friends were meant for mutual help. As he said, `if the relatives and friends were unwilling to help, how could they deserve the titles of relatives and friends?' Secondly, he added that some relatives and friends were better than others because they had more `renqing' than the others. In the past, these relatives and friends already gave D. C. 's family much help. For example, in D. C. 's mother's funeral in 1987, they all came over to help. Thirdly, D. C. suggested that he resorted to these relations because ha was confident that they could not refuse to help. The reason that he gave was that in the past when they had difficulties and needed help D. C. 's his sons were always available. For example, in the 1970s, D. C. 's tangqin brother was still quite poor. Then, the government did not allow people to do business. This tangqin brother was an ordinary farmer. D. C. , however, was better-off: he made more money out of fishing. At the times, the tangqin brother often asked D. C. for some amounts of loans and, according to D. C. himself, he was never refused. So, even the tangqin was a bit hesitant to lend D. C. money, he was finally willing to do so.

Then, did what those who provided the support think in the same way as D. C. ? In November, 1991, D. C. held a celebration of his own mother's death anniversary (zuoji). The tangqin brother of his and one of his wife’s brothers were among the twenty four guests at the feast. I was also invited to the feast. I started chatting the tangqin brother of D. C. 's by saying that, `according to D. C. , you are a very helpful relative' . He responded to me by saying that `relatives are families and they are obliged to help one another' . Further, he said, `a person without renqing is an incapable person. '

Different individuals may use different explanations to argue for their different cases. But in al circumstances, the sense of ' fraternity' was emphasised. D. C. and his relations rarely made specific statements about the special relations between themselves. What they always emphasised was that relatives and friends were unions of mutual understanding and beneficence. But both parties were quite selective when they were choosing who to borrow money from and whom could be provided support. For D. C. those relatives and friends who provided the loans were those who were closest to his family in terms of mutual relation and, of course, who had the money to lend. For the relatives and friends who were approached by D. C. and his sons, D. C. deserved their help and would surely repay the loans. ` Fraternity' is a disguise of all the histories of mutual knowledge, interactions, and mutual help between the receivers and providers of support. Such specific histories define the boundaries of the group which share the idea of the obligation to give and repay which is what `fraternity' in effect means.

A illuminative indication of the close linkage between histories and the making of `fraternity' is lineage genealogies which celebrate the lineage and its connections as mutual supporting parties. When I asked questions about local histories in Tangdong and Meifa, I was always shown to local genealogical books. What do the genealogical books tell us? They (in Tangdong there are tens and in Meifa there are three) tell stories of how the lineage ancestors established the lineage through semi-epic deeds; how the lineage seized its land and built its ancestral and village temples; how the current lineage branches can be traced back to the age of origin and settlement; and how people in the lineage married. Genealogies, like ancestral worship, conceptualise village histories in terms of settlement and migration based an descent from a common ancestor.

Such histories are a product of a deliberate special strategy. As students of Chinese lineage organizations have indicated, this strategy is one with which choice is made to create and sustain lineage socio-economy (R. Watson, 1982; Ebrey and J. Watson, 1986) . But it is not only such in the process of lineage formation in historical times but also significant in the constant reproduction of lineage in the present. On the surface, genealogical books are entirely about the past and the dead. But no one in the villages refute that idea that they are also significant contemporary. They are significant because they assist lineage members in knowing who are their relatives, which relatives are closer to them and which are remoter from them and how they should treat one another. They are even more important when villagers are in need for help. In this light, we may observe that histories are closely linked with local definitions of social unions and circles of mutual trust and help. When histories are utilised to sanctify unions and circles which involve a village as a whole, they are made to facilitate the creation of external connections of the village and the gaining of support from these connections.

This is not only true of village histories but also true of household, tangqin, qinqi, and pengyou histories and mutual support. Unlike lineage genealogies, these histories are not written. Instead, they are encoded in popular ceremonies such as funerals, weddings and festivals and in practices of mutual support. Ritual events and events of emergency and sanctification (house building and family. events) memorialise the past conditions under which the household and the individual set up themselves as social beings. They also serve as a ` knowing power' whereby the external connections of the household and the individual are recognised and reproduced. Villagers in both Meifa and Tangdong are clearly aware of the historical processes in which their tangqin , qinqi and pengyou have become the related. Like lineage histories , smaller histories of these small groups they tell villagers from whom to seek support and to whom they can lend money, supply labor help and expect returns.

VI . `Sentimental Value' of Things

Inter-household mutual aid mainly consists of three kinds: financial support, labor help and share of personal contacts and information. In both communities, financial support is further divided into two sub-categories: presents and loans. Presents are normally given an occasions of family ritual events such as weddings, funerals and birthday celebrations. Loans are borrowed to support house-rebuilding and Investments. Labor help provided by relatives and friends are usually unpaid and it is mainly applied in agricultural production , house building and ritual arrangements at family events. Personal contacts and Information are provided when the villagers want to set up new businesses. Among the various forms of mutual aid, only loans are regarded as requiring return. All the other forms are largely perceived as `free gifts' .

Few people in Tangdong and Meifa charge ` interest' an what they give or lend their relations. However, as I discussed earlier, acceptance of any kind of aid is perceived in the communities as something which may induce the debt of ` renqing' and which requires certain kind of ` baoda' (return and expression of gratitude) . Even though there is no strict definition of what `renqing' and `baoda' really are, it is often said that other people' s ` renqing' should be always remembered and actions should be conducted to repay it (baoda) . Popular perceptions of ` renqing' seem to stress the importance of `fraternity' (ganqing) . For example, an old villager in Tangdong told me that ' what "renqing" means is a kind of feeling' . It is a feeling and memory of relatives `good deeds.' In popular ideologies, `baoda' also designates a kind of sentimental gratitude to the helper. However, in both villages, when individuals and households repay their ` renqing debt' (renqing zai) to the others , no one has done so merely by language expressions. As one villager in Meifa said, ` to just thank people with words it not a good expression of gratitude. The word "thank" (xie) should be always accompanies by some real returns. Otherwise, we should not say "thank you".'

Then , what are the `real returns' ? These are the reciprocated materials , money , contacts, labor and information. In Chinese communities such as Meifa and Tangdong, what disguises the `material value' of ` renqing' is a exchangeability of different things. When gifts are exchanged with the interests of loans, when money is exchanged with `volunteer labor' , when labor is exchange with loans, when Information and contacts are exchanged with gifts and so forth, no one calls the exchange ` exchange' : it is a kind of ` renqing' and ` baoda' . We may call such a form of exchange in terms of ` indirect exchange' .

For example , in 1988 , S. M . Cai in Tangdong borrowed from his qinqi 2 , 000 RMB for the purpose of setting up a local small shop. He was unable to return the debt until 1990. in his in-debt period, he felt owed the qinqi ` renqing' . In 1989 , he had a good chance to convey to his qinqi that he still remembered what he owed him. Then, S. M. ' s qinqi was rebuilding his house and needed badly some labor help. When S. M. knew this, he, without hesitance, went over to his qinqi and volunteer to do the work.

For another example, Y. N. Chen in Meifa once was very ill and had to receive major treatments in the County Hospital. The problem was that the hospital was full of patients and the authorities there refused to accept him immediately. Y. N. 's wife was desperately seeking a contact. Fortunately, a tangqin living in the same village used to be friendly with a doctor in the hospital. This doctor was the tangqin's wife' s tangqin' s qinqi' s friend . He met Y . N . ' s tangqin at a feast and had an occasion to toast to each other. later, he asked Y. N. 's tangqin to get some good tea for himself and by so doing owed him some ' renqing' . Y. N. ' s tangqin went to see the doctor and explained the situation to him. The doctor was delighted to be able to help and to repay the owed ` renqing' . So , he asked the person in charge of reception in the hospital to turn an the 'green light' for Y. N. 's entrance. After the treatment, Y. N. felt much indebted to the doctor and wanted to thank him by presenting him a little gift. But he was not familiar with him. So he asked his tangqin again to do that an his behalf .

VII . Renyuan : Social Capability and hierarchy

In both villages, there is obvious differentiation between the richer and the poorer and between those with high social prestige and those who have `low profiles' . How does the hierarchical differentiation within the communities fit into social support institutions and practices?

Inhabitants in both Meifa and fangdong distinguish between two kinds of people . The individuals who have more sociable and good at making connections are known as the persons with 'hao renyuan' (good predestined relations with the other individuals) . Those individuals who are unable to make a lot of relations and are unable to respond to the others' requests, moods and actions are known as the persons with ` huai renyuan' (bad predestined relations with the other individuals) . The conventional designation of ` renyuan' itself contains a notion of fate. It suggests that some people are born with better and more ` renyuan' and the others are born with worse and less ` renyuan' . One aspect of the concept of ` renyuan' is thus , like the

94 Chinese Social Sciences Yearbook ,1998

concept of fate, a popularised ideology of hierarchical ordering of individuals, a way to make the individuals ` think nothing about their wretched lot' (Harrel, 1987:91 -92).

However, in a seeming contradiction with the fatalist definition, `renyuan' also designates `social capability' (shehui nengli). In this sense, `renyuan' is closely related to entrepreneurship (Arkush, 1984; Harrel, 1987) . It suggests that to be good to the others is to be good to the self . So when a child was said to be ` huai renyuan' , he is reminded of the idea that ` renyuan' is important for his personhood and wellbeing (fu) in the later phase of his life course. `Renyuan' in such contexts means that for one to live his life well in the society it requires efforts an the part of the individual to create more social relations which are perceived as social resources to be utilised. Thus, `renyuan' is rarely separated from `renqing' , `bangzhu' and `baoda' in the particular contexts of their usage. A person with good `renyuan' is someone who has credited with much ` renqing' , is willing to provide and accept help (bangzhu ) and knows when and how to repay the support (baoda) . One who feels no obligation and willingness to help the others, no obligation to receive help or had no knowledge of how to repay is one without ' renyuan' .

Neither of the two contradictory senses of ' renyuan' appears in its pure state. The conjugated concept is largely a means of hierarchical classification of the person. It is a sophisticated ideology, a means whereby those who have gained more social resources are differentiated from those who have not. For example, in Tangdong, my informants often contrasted two members of their lineage: these were S. C. Cai and L. H. Cai. S. C. , aged 42 , is a local tycoon. He used to serve in the army, later became a brigade (village) cadre and has been a top businessman of the village. L. H. , aged 41, has been a handicraftsman since he was 16 and never changed his profession.

Everybody in Tanddong agrees that S. C. is a nice person with good `renyuan' . He has a lot more connections than all others in the village. he is king to all relatives and friends and to the whole lineage (an indication being that he never refused to give help to others) . People agree that he deserves the wealth that he has got. In contrast, L. H. is regarded by most Tangdong people as an eccentric person without ' renyuan' . He is average in terms of income; but he has no potentials for the future. L. H. is almost isolated from all the others in the lineage; he even married a lady from a village which is far away from the usual marriage circle. He never shows willingness to help and so he gets no help from the others. That is why ten years ago when he had his own wedding only just a small number of relatives were there. Nowadays, everybody is getting rich except L. H. . As a villager said, `he deserves being like this always' .

The local popular comparison between S. C. and L. H. says something of the interrelationship between personality, wealth and social status. In this comparison, `renyuan' is a criterion whereby a good guy (a wealthy person and benefactor) is distinguished from a ` low profile' person (a unpromising person) . It explains why some people are better-off by way of contrasting different social capabilities. In this comparison, it is stated that a person with more `renyuan' and social support is better-off than a person without these.

Interestingly, S. C. is often also compared with a local businessman, S. Q. Cai. S. Q. is no less wealthy than S. C. and he lives with S. C. in the same neighborhood. Even though his economic status is no lower than S. C. , his social influence in the village is limited. Fellow villagers admire his wealth; but no one shows respect to his way of conduct and thought (weiren) . Unlike S. C. , he rarely shows up when relatives and friends need him. He always makes excuses by saying that he is too busy. Being able to establish his company, he must be quite good at making connections with both local and township officials. But such connection are said to be `backdoorisms' by the Tangdong villagers. As one informant said. `because he corrupts the cadres and never cares for his relatives he has not renyuan in Tangdong' .

This second type of comparison is more or less a moral classification of the Person. Here, the term ` renyuan' is employed as a criterion with which to judge the qualities of two different persons. By saying that. S. C. had ` renyuan' , villagers mean that he was moral-ethically sound. At the same rate, by saying that S. Q had no ` renyuan' , they meant that he did not fit into the ` common wealth' of the community well.

The two complementary comparisons function in two mutually opposing manners. The contrast between. S. C. and L. H. serves to suggest that there is a legitimated difference between those who have more social resources and those who do not. The contrast between S. C. and S. Q. , instead, suggests that between those who commonly have a lot of social resources and capabilities there is a moral-ethical difference. High economic status does not amunt to high social prestige. The concept of ` renyuan' at once serves to legitimate social hierarchical order and operates in an opposite manner to sanctify social harmony and equality in the distribution of social resources. The two facets of the reflection in the concept of ` renyuan' are, in many ways, true of the situations of social support practices in rural Southern Fujian.

In rural South Fujian, mutual support consists of three kinds in which tangqin, qinqi and pengyou supports co-exist. Firstly, it can be seen as certain forms of mutual aid for the destitute and for emergency (illness) . Secondly, it is to do with fund-raising for household investments (including economic investments and investments in house building) . Thirdly, it comprises support for ritual events. The first kind of events are regarded as ` huaishi' (harsh events) . The second kind of events and some of the third kind of events are perceived as ` haoshi' (good events) . In the third kind of events, `funerals' are identified with `huaishi' . In many households, these forms of social support are all required and they play complementary roles in the households' continuity and development. Aid for the destitute and emergency serves to resolve poverty problems and crises of the households. Social support for investments and ritual events serves to sanctify household honor and identity.

Nonetheless, my observation indicates that a hierarchical differentiation exists between the three kinds of support. For the better-off households who do not consider themselves as the destitute, aid for emergency and poverty resolution seems unnecessary. Some local informants, both the rich and the poor, told me that to receive poverty and emergency relief aid is to `lose face' (diu mianzi) even though sometimes it is necessary. For the poorer households, supportive funds for investments in business and house building , which for the middle stratum and the rich of the community are important and useful, are luxurious. What bridges the two kinds of support is support for ritual events which most households perceive as necessary. This may be due to the fact that festivals, weddings, funerals and other celebrations are traditionally treated as occasions to demonstrate the obligation to give, the obligation to receive and the obligation and repay. If we could divide local inhabitants into poorer class, intermediate class and higher class, then it is possible to see what follows: (i) poor households have more events of aid for emergency and crises; (ii) intermediate and higher class households have more support for household investments and ritual events; and (iii) all households have certain support for ritual events.

This much suggests that among the households beyond the intermediate level of our classification there are tendencies to accumulate social relations and to utilise 'social capabilities' . For the sake of gaining social prestige (Aijmer, 1984:5 - 6) , some households may even try to show their `generosity' to the others (including the poorer) . Among the poorer households, ` social capabilities' and resources are commonly desired. These households also try to gain aid for their own events and for resolution life crises from themselves and from the households beyond the intermediate level. Among all the households, there is a shared tendency to gain support for the celebration of major family events even though some richer households may try to exclude ` shabby relatives. '

For the lower class, `renyuan' is important especially because it could lead to the acquisition of aid. For the intermediate households which would like to fulfil their socio-economic development, `renyuan' is central to their gaining of support. Before a household become a higher class household, it requires `renyuan' to support its own development and social prestige. However, after it becomes such, it could either need `renyuan' to gain prestige or extend `renyuan' beyond the local confine and try to make connections with supra-local forces (such as friends and relatives in the townships and cities) .

y1Q . Area Variations and New Adaptations

One point of Chinese rural social support institutions merits our particular attention. This is that the folk model seems to be shared in different communities and has continued to exert its major influences in society; nonetheless it is not a fixed mode of social interaction but is adaptable to area characteristics and economic change.

Meifa and Thangdong are attached to the same municipal region (Quanzhou Shi). However, their geographical, historical and socio-economic conditions differ greatly. Geographically, Meifa is situated in a mountainous area and is close to its county capital, Fengcheng. In contrast, Tangdong is located an the coast of Southern Fujian and is more distant from its county capital, Qingyang. The different geographical characteristics have affected politico-economic conditions of the two villages. Meifa is one of the undeveloped village in Fujian and is directly subject to the control of the county's political and administrative centre. Unlike Meifa, Tangdong has had a long history of local development. Its distance from the county government also creates conditions under which the village's economic order is more independently created. Being a coastal village, it is open to foreigh influences through its emigrant overseas.

Historically, Meifa and Tangdong follow two different lines of communal formation Meifa's Chen Lineage an which I have focused originated from two militia-peasant households in the early Ming Dynasty (MFCSJP , 1990: 5 - 8) . Throughout the history of lineage formation and development, the Chen Lineage, as a weaker lineage , was much subordinated to a neighboring lineage of the same surname (Tongmei Chen lineage) . The lineage's traditional livelihood was confined to self-sufficient agriculture, sideline production and the limited business of local ferry-transportation. Tangdong's Cai Lineage was a sub-branch of larger lineage which migrated, without imperial government intervention, into the place. By the Ming Dynasty, it had become a strong lineage in the area, with a dominance over five surrounding lineage. Its economy depended more an sea-food production and commerce than an self-sufficient agriculture. Since the 16th century (TDCSWTFZP,1908) , many members of the Cai Lineage have emigrated to the Southeast Asia and created a lot of overseas connections for Tangdong (in Tangdong most households have overseas migrant relatives).

Different geographical and historical conditions, together with different extents of the government's influence, shaped the two villages into two greatly different socio-economic patterns. Currently, Meifa is still struggling to start local industries. Most inhabitants live an agriculture, sideline production, small scale commerce (including transportation) and industrial labor. According to my estimation, the annual average income per capital is 600 RMB. In Tangdong, 60 % of local households have started their own businesses. Some 20 % of local households have owned factories or larger shops. The annual average income per capital , as I estimate , is more than three times as much as in Meifa. In Meifa, a lot of villagers try to be involved in industrialization by way of turning themselves into cheap labor. In contrast, few Tangdong villagers work as cheap labor. By 1992 , there are some 9 , 000 migrant labor from Northern Fujian who were employed in the village's factories (TDCWHWJ,1992).

Social support institutions and practices in the two villages are influenced by and in turn bears an local historical and socio-economic development. Due to the fast progress in industrialization, certain new tendencies have emerged in Tangdong:

(i) Spatial extension of social rings : Since the reforms (1979) , the overseas connections have been re-established in Tangdong and the number of emigrants have increased dramatically . Currently , some 4 , 790 overseas emigrants are formally registered in the genealogy. They spread broadly in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A major effect of the large-scale emigration has been the extension of the geographical boundaries of the tangqin circle. Most villagers still marry their spouses from within the conventional marriage circle. But a lot of qinqi (non-agnatic kin) have been able to emigrate to abroad or to set up businesses in other provinces.

(ü) Paid labor help: In 1989, I visited 20 households among which only 2 households answered that they had labor help. In 1991, I revisited Tangdong. By then, among the 10 households which I interviewed, 3 had employed full-time labor in small sideline production and 4 had employed part-time construction workers;

(iii) The resurgence of usurious loans : Usurious loans existed widely all over China. In 1949, it was abolished by the Communist Regime. In recent years, in Tangdong. but not in Meifa, they have re-emerged and seemed to play a significant role in local resolution of emergency and investments;

(iv) Inner-family support: In Tangdong, it seems to be occurring that less and less families are willing to borrow money from relatives and friends and more and more families are able to support themselves. In recent years, due to the increase of emigration, divisions of family within emigrants' home family less often occur. Instead, where emigration occurs, the family seems to have a strong intention to hold itself as a large household which could encompass both local and overseas divisions. A lot of support comes from inner-family divisions (overseas) themselves;

(v) The extension of friendship: While tangqin and qinqi support continues to be important, in Tangdong, friendship both within the village and outside the village is becoming more and more important. Along with industrialization, more and more Tangdong businessmen are able to travel and make many more friends both within the county and beyond it. (In contrast, in Meifa, friendship rings are a lot more limited in terms of geographical distribution) .

In Meifa, industrialization is much less advanced than in Tangdong. Local and lineage defined relationships still weight over 80 % in the total support resources. Overseas relatives' support only appeared an one case during my fieldwork. Usurious loans have not re-emerged. However due to the increase of recruitment of local youth labor in the factories in the county capital, the friendship circle is potentially extending. Support from friends has not demonstrated a major increase; increase; but it is predictable that in a few years time it will expand.

Social support institutions also bear an socio-economic change in the two villages. Practices in mutual support are being adapted into economic organizations which in turn respond to changing environment and socio-economy. Because of the government' s limitation an the change of land tenure policy (Ash , 1991) , mutual Corporation in agriculture in Meifa and Tangdong is confined to small-scale labor help. Nonetheless, in other spheres, mutual support has been extended into larger-scale corporations. In Meifa, it is usual for relatives and friends to contribute funds to help one another to set up small transport businesses (the average total investment in each business is normally, 30,000 RMB). In Tangdong, industrialization has greatly advanced in the past decade. The capital of each enterprise varies from 10 , 000 to 40 million RMB. Hardly any enterprises rely rely on the bank' s loans. Some enterprises were set up with individuals' savings; but more are established with joint efforts of the relatives and friends (both local and overseas) .

It is arguable that the adaptation of mutual support institutions into enterprise construction demonstrate the potential of local mutual aid methods being transformed into ` profitable corporation' . But how is the adaptation fulfilled? To answer this question. I want to mention two examples from Tangdong where industrialization has enjoyed a vigorous development since the reforms.

Case 1: Tangqin Corporation in Enterprise

J. H. Cai served in the army prior to 1980. But he is now the owner of a large garment manufacturing company in Tangdong. The story of his success is that of the creation of tangqin corporation in business. In 1981, J . H. established his own Business. His initial investment was 30, 000 RMB. At the time, he only owned some 10 % of the capital. The rest of the investment derived from his elder brother (xiong), his tangqin younger brother (tangdi) in Hong Kong who respectively lent him 5 , 000 and 22 , 000 RMB. These two relatives supported his business without expectation of any return and profit share. They thought J . H. was still not established and he even did not have a job. To support his small business was to show `fraternity' to J. H. and was not to make profit.

In 1983, J. H. saw the first sigh of Business success. By then, he had returned all the debts. The turn-over of his company was above 400,000 RMB. He predicted that there would be more demand for his product in the next few years. He thus decided to expand his enterprise into a one-million capital enterprise. In the Chinese Lunar New Year, 1984, his tangqin brother visited Tangdong an holiday. J. H. had an occasion to have long discussions with him. Seeing the potential of Business development, the tangqin brother was willing to corporate with J. H. and he promised that he could invest half a million RMB in the Business. But this time, he negotiated with J. H. over conditions of his own involvement: he wanted to share 50% of the profit. In addition, the tangqin brother suggested that he could market J . H. ' s products in Hong Kong and the profit from the marketing should be his own. After a further consideration , the tangqin' s terms were agreed. In late 1984 , J . H. began to expand the business.

Between 1985 and 1989 , J . H. ' s garment manufacturing business underwent a dramatic growth. In December, 1989, his factory's annual turn-over reached 40 million RMB. Currently , J . H. and his tangqin Brother' s company is one of the largest in Tangdong. It has successfully built up its own factory bases, markets (both H. K. and the mainland) and financial institution. In its main factory in the township, there are 900 workers. Most of the products are sold in Hong Kong whereas some have marketed through formal channels in Beijing and Shanghai. A formal presidential board has been established: his tangqin and himself serve as co-presidents. The tangqin brother owns 52 % of the shares and J . H. Himself owns 48 % . Both of them are directly involved in financial accounting. In other spheres, they have division of work. L. H. is in charge of production and organization of the company as well as internal marketing whereas the tangqin brother is responsible for international marketing.

Case 2: Friendship as Share-Holding Partnership

D. S. , Y. F. and A. Q. are three close friends. They all age 41. They have been friends because they were educated in the same school and, they said, were nice to one another in the school. D. S. used to be the party secretary of the village and became a businessman in the early 80s. Y. F. and A. Q. were both electronic technicians in the 70s and the early 80s and they became businessmen in the mid-80s. When D. S. began his business, Y. F. and A. Q. was still making their living by repairing tape-recorders, radios and television sets for the local villagers. The earliest co-ordinators of D. S. ' s were three men: a tangqin brother and two other friends. The total investment was 10 , 000 RMB. But by 1985 , their business was much expanded and its total capital reached one million RMB. By the time, D. S. and his ex-partners were already in conflicts. D. S. said to Y. F. and A. Q. that he would rather restart his own business. Nonetheless, he said, he could not afford the whole Investment in a similar size business to the old one.

At the time, Y. F. and A. Q. already got certain amount of saving. Further Y. F. own brother who was doing business in Manila encouraged Y. F. own brother who was doing business in Manila encouraged Y. F. to set up his own business. In response to D. S. 's concern and in consideration of their own benefit, they jointly suggested that D. S. and themselves could organise a new company. They said, as goods friends, unlike the others, they never suspected one another. Forming their own company would thus be ideal. In 1986 , they together mobilised some one million RMB: D. S. fully utilised his past profits; Y. F. used his savings and gained support from his overseas emigrant brother; and A. Q. collected all he could from his own savings and family support. The company was established in the later phase of the same year. Each of the three friends had a share in the business. D. S. contributed 50 % of the capital; Y. F. and A. Q. each contributed 25 % . Each had a special role in the company: D. S. was in charge of business and personnel affairs because he was obviously more experience than the other two; Y. F. was in change of technical issues and production; A. Q. and D. S. jointly worked for marketing. Financial accounts were jointly treated.

Reallocation of Wealth

Does some part of the industrial and commercial profits flow back into mutual support? The official state discourse offers an answer. This answer is based an a state consideration of redistribution of wealth nationally. It suggests that taxation an industries and commercial enterprises could serve to transfer business profits into people's welfare expenditure. in Tangdong, all enterprises pay some 23% taxes out of their annual gross profits. If the government is right about the interrelationship between taxation and welfare, then such tax payments should have been flown back into welfare. However, neither local businessmen nor the ordinary farmers have perceived the interrelationship in this way. The village committee chief in Tangdong told me that villagers often expressed much opposition against taxation. Alternatively, they thought taxation was entirely for the benefit of the government and was the exploitation of the people. The local businessmen who I interviewed said that they were unwilling to pay taxes because they were too heavy and. one paid, `dissolved into the air, Locally, flows out of industries and commerce do play a role in local social welfare. The transfer takes two different forms: the transfer of profit into local public causes and the transfer of profit into welfare through local kinship, neighborhood and friendship institutions. Not all businessmen want to contribute to public causes; but a lot of them do. One local businessman told me that he paid annually two thousand RMB to the local school and some one thousand to local territorial temples. Occasionally, when the village needed funds to repair public facilities such as village roads, he was also willing to support Another businessman proudly told me that he was frequently invited as an honored guest to all sorts of public celebrations in schools, the township and local temples. On each occasion, he paid hundreds and thousands of RMB. All the businessmen who I have just mentioned (including the Hong Kong tangqin) have contributed, more or less, to local road construction, temple festivals and reconstruction and school funds.

Then, are there any volunteer agencies which especially serve to transfer extra resources from the wealthy households into the public causes? Anyone who knows something about Chinese history would know that such agencies did exist prior to 1949. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 - 1911) , in both meifa and Tangdong, village temple and ancestral hall organizations were local agencies who received obligatory contributions from the villagers and reallocated these resources to village public causes (temple and hall celebrations) . In the Republican phase (1911 - 49) , these organizations were merged with local public school financial boards (AXXDA, 1940: 68 - 5 - 153 ; TDCSJMQCTK ,1986) . While remaining to play a role in organising temple festivals, they provided funds to establish local modern schools and for volunteer education.

Currently, temple and ancestral organizations have re-emerged in both villages. In Meifa, their role is confined to temple repairing and festival organization. The reestablished temple and ancestral committees serve as volunteer associations in which public rituals in the village are reconstructed and sustained. They are not involved in other public causes. However, in Tangdong, the ancestral hall committee has co-ordinated with the Tangdong School Fund and Overseas Local Compatriots Committee in funding the construction and extension of local public roads, hygiene facilities and schools. The committee is also known as an agency which serves to arrange funerals for the villagers. A local businessman told me that, to support the village' s public causes , he paid each month a sum of 2 , 000 RMB to the Ancestral Hall Committee.

In Meifa and Tangdong, temples and ancestral hall organizations have not become fully recognised as representatives of local welfare institutions. It is still inappropriate to call them ` volunteer agencies of welfare' . But it should be noted that they are becoming more and more important in terms of reallocation of local resources.

Many wealthy businessmen are also targeted by their relatives and friends as `providers' of financial help. Y. X. Cai, one of the most wealthy person in Tangdong, once told me: `To be rich is to be troubled by relatives. Everybody thinks I am rich. In effect, I have put most of my money back into the factories and into the government's pocket. I am not as rich as they would imagine. But occasionally when I am asked to help, I always do so. After all, I am richer than most others and some of those who ask for help are my relatives. '

Like temples and ancestral halls, traditional conceptions play the key role in the reallocation of wealth. Such conceptions are those conceptions of generosity and social prestige (Aijmer, 1984: 5 - 6) . Those who have gained more resources are currently struggling to establish their socio-moral images. To do so, they are usually quite willing to show off their wealth and generosity. One way in by which these are demonstrated is provision of support for the destitute or for those in need.

IX . Conclusion : The Folk Model and Welfare Theory

In political studies of welfare institutions, it is agreed that welfare provision and acceptance are commonly connected with definitions of boundaries and interrelationships between the state, the market and the society. As Paci (1987) brilliantly summarised, neo-classical theories mostly prefer to treat welfare as a set of derivatives of competitions and commodities services. Marxist and neo-marxist theories, instead, stress the important of social balance and societal intervention in the redistribution of economic resources. Even though these two theories differ greatly in terms of approach and politics, they in common apply a `two-sector' model. They either resort to `market for the individuals' welfare or seek for the state' s political power to resolve people's life crises. To use Giddens' words, they are targeted at creating specialised institutions of ' ontological security' (Giddens , 1990: 92 - 93) which in turn serves to turn welfare and social security into, a kind of `body politic' (Ibid. )

It is more than apparent that the Chinese Communist regime had never digested thoroughly the two contesting theories. Nonetheless, it is ironical that it has ` consumed' them in certain ways. In Maoist periods (1949 - 76) , a signified Marxist social theory was implemented as a social policy. In the sphere of welfare provision, the Chinese Communist party attempted to create conditions under which the state directly respond to the society's demand. The result was that it adopted a consistent policy whereby socio-enonomic resources were directly transferred into the ` pocket' of the central authority which, in turn, redistribute them to both productive (shengcan) and welfare (fuli) sectors. After Mao, and more precisely, since the reforms (1979), the government advocates a socialistised `liberal' theory of market. This pro-market and pro-competition policy remains underdeveloped; nonetheless it has been treated as a guideline of the Party' s social policy and its implementation (Hsu , 1985) . Currently, in the workplaces of the urban areas which are more subject to the state control, Maoist welfare systems are still exerting their influences through wage, medical Service and civil affair handing (minzheng). In the private sector and the countryside, however , they have largely declined along with the elimination of ` commune' institutions. The post-Mao pro-market theory of welfare is effective only in the sphere of ideology. Taxation which is said to support welfare development amounts to nothing but the state's direct exploitation of its rural populace. What is gained through taxation (and levies) counts little in welfare provision.

Even if we forget the obvious ironies in the state policies and political practices, we should never erase the point that neither the signified Marxist theory of welfare nor the reformist `pro-market' approach to social protection and welfare has taken into account the third sector in society. That is the `volunteer sector' by which I in effect refer to what I have called the `folk model' . In Maoist age, the volunteer sector of welfare was abolished as a sign of Chinese peasants' social backwardness (luohou) due to its difference from the party' s ` modern vision' of society. In the reform decade , similar accusations of the same sector have also been applied in the state' s political discourse. But by this time, it is not only `pre-modern' but also `pre-market' and `pre-corporative' . Why has the folk model received constant attacks from the government? As I believe, one major answer lies in the fact that social support Provision and acquisition in the folk model is fulfilled and extend locally without giving the central authority a role. In such a ` localistic' model, flows' of resources are channeled locally by the `uncontrolled' social relations of the individuals. They are of no benefit to the central resource concentration for the state and of little contribution to the symbolic creation of `socialist image' of the Chinese Communist State.

Throughout the chapter, by way of inclusion of the conceptions, institutions and practices of mutual support in two Southern Fujian village, I have sought to indicate the existence and importance of the folk model in China's rural areas. Readers might have found what I have presented an excessively local vision. All that we can call mutual support practices in Meifa and Tangdong take place in local settings. They are acts and actions of mutual aid, social protection and resource mobilization. These practices are enacted by local histories of mutual knowledge and identification and of shared experiences in past moments. They in turn enact memories of past fraternities among the locally related. What they confirm is an vision of social unions and `common wealth' of the lineage, tangqin, qinqi and friends. However, they are not entirely devoid of individual pragmatic signification. In their practices, competitions and transactions are induced and a hierarchical order is created. But such a form of `competitions' and transactions are not based an the `national market-sector' . Nor the hierarchical order a mirror of the ` cadre-masses' relationship. They are locality focused and they represent a recognition of locally created social prestige as well as local social protection and resource mobilization.

Then, what is the `folk model' imply for our theoretical inquiry of welfare? For the sake of empirical description, I have left the question open to further considerations. But before I end this chapter, I should mention that what I have described presents a challenge and a dilemma. To formal political theories of welfare, it points to the significance of a long neglected ` sector' of welfare , the voluntary and local institutions. Evidence from the two Chinese communities indicates that social support arrangements in particular settings are not isolated as formal institutions of welfare but are Part and parcel of a general process of socio-economic interactions between individuals and groups and of local reallocation of resources. The local characteristics of the process exposes the impotence of ideologies which treat welfare as either a state-run business or nationally organised ` trust institutions' . To the rulers which stress the importance of `state policies' (of any kind) , such characteristics also point to the difficulties that could be involved in imagining a government of beneficence. Their increasing force in Chinese society not only indicates the significance of the ordinary people' s own socio-cultural forms but also press the self-acclaimed ` socialist state' into a self-embarrassment .

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Wang Mingming: Professor of Anthropology, Beijing University.