Abstract
According to Fei Xiaotong, in Chinese families, father, mother and children form a bi-directional nurturing relation, and their relation can be compared to a triangle, with parents being the base and children at the vertex.
Four sons ask for family division, snatching firewood and sticks.
Old parents are left alone, having no choice to do.
—A ballad from Liangshan, Shandong Province
This ballad is recorded in the third volume of “Liangshan Folktale” in Collected works of Chinese Folktale (1988) which is edited by collected efforts of Folk Literature Office in Liangshan, Liangshan County, Shandong Province.
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- 1.
Study on number of persons in Chinese rural family was earlier indicated in Li Jinghan’s survey about Ding County. The statistics showed that among 5,255 investigated rural families, the average number was 5.525 people a household (Li 1933: 137). Study conducted by Lin Yaohua in Yixu of Fujian Province showed that the average population per family was 5.27 (Lin 1935: 89). In the work of Chen Da, the statistics of 16 counties and districts showed that the maximum number of average population was 6.17 persons a household in Kunyang County; while the minimum was 4.18 in the Kunming city (Chen 1981: 133). The survey of Ma Xia in seven places revealed that the number of nuclear family had gradually increased (Ma 1985:130–133). The investigation of Cao Jinqing in the countryside of northern Zhejiang pointed that, by 1990, the nuclear family had accounted for 55.3% of all households. Besides, the tendency in familial structure was that the number of nuclear family was on rise year by year, while that of both linear joint family and linear family decreased year after year (Cao et al. 1995: 362). The statistics of Hebei Province reflected the number of four-person family had increased obviously, whereas the number of six-person or more families had decreased. For example, the proportion of three-to-five family rose to 69.42% in 1990 from 57.2% in 1982, which increased by 12.22%. Therefore, nuclear family was the main familial form in Hebei countryside (Trans-century Chinese Population, Hebei Volume, Editorial Board 1994: 95). According to the above statistics, the so-called “it can be frequently found different generations live under the same roof in China” does not hold water.
- 2.
Of course it is not absolutely equal. After dividing into several parts, parents must ask for each son’s opinion. If they think it’s almost equal, then the property can be divided. Afterwards, they draw to decide each one’s share.
- 3.
“Family Division List” is also called “Jiushu”, “Fenduan” or “Biaofen wenbu” (Zhang 1987: 79).
- 4.
Family division is premised on property distribution, which is an organizational form in Han people society. There are two types of evolution model of this form, one is “wealth never survives three generations” and the other is to set up the public family property, and each son will take turns to manage it for a year (Chen 1997: 125). The former is common in North China, such as the investigation conducted by Jing and Luo (1959) on Shandong squires’ property transformation. Their study showed that due to family division , the capital of rich families was hard to accumulate for a long time. Almost after three generations, the mass ancestral property would be divided up by descendants. And some descendants were reduced to poor landlords due to the lack of property. The latter one is common in South China and Taiwan area (Sung 1981), where each family branch manages the public family property in turn, with no one owning the right to sell off the property. This model can protect the ancestral property from decreasing because of distribution (Chen 1997).
- 5.
Cohen emphasized that sons had equal rights in family property division (1990: 518). Zhao Bingxiang collected a Family Division List in Lin Village of Ju County in Shandong Province, which read “all property should be divided equally” (1997: 49). What’s more, on each of the 50 Family Division Lists collected by Zhang Youyi in local areas of Anhui Province in Qing Dynasty, the rule of “equal division of property” was particularly emphasized (1987).
- 6.
This contract was provided by the accountant Li Wenyi; many thanks for his help.
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Zhao, X. (2019). Family and Family Division. In: Power and Justice. China Academic Library. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53834-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-53834-0_3
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