Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand: Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China

By Friederike Fleischer

Despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese have problems making ends meet. Based on ethnographic research among several different types of communities in Guangzhou, China, Soup, Love and a Helping Hand examines different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. With an emphasis on the subjective experience, Fleischer’s research carefully explores people’s ideas about moral obligations, social expectations, and visions of urban Chinese society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Release date: Feb 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785336775

Friederike Fleischer

Friederike Fleischer is Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. She is the author of Surburban Beijing (2010), and co-editor of Ethnographies of Support (2013).

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Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand

Asian Anthropologies

General Editors:

Xin Liu, University of California, Berkeley

Hans Steinmüller, London School of Economics

Dolores Martinez, SOAS, University of London

Founding Editors:

Shinji Yamashita, The University of Tokyo

J.S. Eades, Emeritus Professor, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

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Bali and Beyond: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Tourism

Shinji Yamashita

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The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia

Edited by Shinji Yamashita, Joseph Bosco, and J.S. Eades

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Centering the Margin: Agency and Narrative in Southeast Asian Borderlands

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Engaging the Spirit World in Modern Southeast Asia

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Volume 7

Ogata-Mura: Sowing Dissent and Reclaiming Identity in a Japanese Farming Village

Donald C. Wood

Volume 8

Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand: Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China

Friederike Fleischer

SOUP, LOVE, AND A HELPING HAND

Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China

Friederike Fleischer

First published in 2018 by

Berghahn Books

www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2018 Friederike Fleischer

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fleischer, Friederike, editor.

Title: Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand: Social Relations and Support in Guangzhou, China / edited by Friederike Fleischer.

Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. | Series: Asian Anthropologies; volume 8 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017051490 (print) | LCCN 2017059195 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785336775 (eBook) | ISBN 9781785336553 (hardback: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Guangzhou (China)—Social conditions. | Interpersonal relations—China—Guangzhou. | Social service—China—Guangzhou.

Classification: LCC HN740.G837 (ebook) | LCC HN740.G837 S68 2018 (print) | DDC 306.09512/75--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051490

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-655-3 hardback

ISBN 978-1-78533-677-5 ebook

To my mother, Rosemarie Fleischer, 1932–2016

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Map

List of Main Interlocutors

Introduction

Part I: Soup

1. If not his child, who will pay for his living?: Household and Kin-Based Support

2. Neighbors and Friends

3. Support and Reciprocity

Part II: Love

4. Religious Revival

5. The Church: Social and Religious Services

6. Love: A Community of Believers

Part III: A Helping Hand

7. Philanthropy, Charity, and Volunteerism

8. Inspirations and Motivations to Volunteer

9. Volunteering: Governmentality and Agency

Conclusion: Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand: Urban Transformations and the Ethics of Social Support

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

0.1. Contamination. © Author

0.2. Guangzhou City Center: Old and New Buildings. © Author

0.3. Old Danwei Apartment Block. © Author

0.4. New Commercially Sold Apartment Blocks. © Author

1.1. Grandparents Provide Vital Support Taking Care of Grandchildren. © Author

2.1. New (Reform Period) Danwei Housing. © Author

5.1. Church Neighborhood. © Author

5.2. Church Neighborhood. © Author

5.3. Love Never Ceases. © Author

8.1. Volunteer Event. © Author

Tables

5.1. Church Services and Projects.

8.1. Initial and Continuing Motivations to Volunteer.

Map

0.1. China and Guangzhou, the Research Site. © Jutta Turner

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing is often a solitary process and only one author is named on the cover of this book. It is, however, the work of many. Indeed, I could not have completed this project without the contributions and invaluable input of numerous people at different stages of the process. Here I can only name a few.

The research for Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand was funded by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. I would like to thank the director, Chris Hann, for his guidance, critical comments, and suggestions throughout my postdoctoral studies. Keebet and the late Franz von Benda-Beckmann as well as Stephen Gudeman generously shared their scholarship during the time. The Social Support in East Asia group of researchers gave honor to its name and provided invaluable advice and friendship during my time in Germany and China. I benefited particularly from the critical insights by, and discussions with, my MPI colleagues Helena Obendiek, Ayxem Eli, Sarah Schefold, Wu Xiujie, Detelina Tocheva, Irene Becci, Markus Schlecker, and Friedrich Binder. At the institute, Anke Meyer and Berit Westwood provided vital administrative and logistical help.

I am indebted to the interlocutors in China, who so willing shared their experiences and grievances with me. I would like to especially thank the Wang and Chen families for opening their homes to me. The Xiatian church community’s welcome and the volunteers’ readiness to talk about their ideas and aspirations provided unique insights into contemporary China. Yet, I could have never completed the research without my two research assistants, who helped me gain access to people and institutions and who patiently explained their world to me.

Ma Guoqing, at the Department of Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University, was my host during fieldwork in 2006–2007 and kindly helped with overcoming all the bureaucratic hurdles involved in doing anthropological research in China. My thanks go to Guo Yuhua and Wu Xiujie for establishing the contact. During a short revisit to Guangzhou in the summer of 2010, I was affiliated with the Department of Geography at Sun Yat-sen University. My special thanks go to Luigi Tomba for putting me in touch with my host at the time, Werner Breitung.

Most of the manuscript was written after I joined the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. I would like to thank my home institution for the financial support I received to return to the field in 2010. In addition, I would like to thank my colleagues in the department who accommodated the travels necessary for my research and writing.

Yet, the book would never have been finished without my semester as a visiting scholar at the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine. I am extremely grateful to my host, Mei Zhan, who made this possible, and to Wang Feng, who kindly put us in touch. Thanks to George Marcus for letting me use his office space and to the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) team for their inspiring company and friendship during the time.

Last revisions to the book were made during a visiting scholarship at the HafenCity University, Hamburg, Germany, in the summer of 2017, which was partially funded by a travel grant from the Universidad de los Andes. I would like to thank Jörg Knieling and Kathrin Wildner for hosting and sharing their research with me. During the time, I also greatly benefited from exchange and discussions with Gesa Ziemer, Alexa Färber, and Monika Grubbauer.

Thanks to Monika Berghahn, Burke Gerstenschlager, Amanda Horn, and the production team at Berghahn Books for accepting this project for publication and their careful and patient guidance throughout the process. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thorough reading and suggestions on how to improve the manuscript. All errors remain, of course, my responsibility.

Apart from the people and institutions who contributed directly to the research and writing of this book, my work on China has been shaped by, and greatly benefited from, the work of and discussion with important scholars in the China field of studies. I would like to especially thank (in alphabetical order) Arianne Gaetano, Lisa Hoffmann, Andrew Kipnis, Anru Lee, Ellen Oxford, Gonçalo Santos, Alan and Josie Smart, Luigi Tomba, Danning Wang, Yan Yunxiang, and Li Zhang for their interest in my work over the years.

Beyond the China field of studies, I would like to thank my family and friends in Germany, Colombia, China, and the United States for their encouragement, support, and patience during all these years. Friederike Brockmann enthusiastically took it upon herself to shoot the cover photo. Andrés Páez accompanied me for part of the research to Guangzhou and subsequently in Germany as well as during the semester in Irvine. Thank you for your love and companionship and your belief in me.

Finally, it fills me with great sadness that my mother, Rosemarie Fleischer, passed away before the completion of this book. Her determination to follow her dreams and her curiosity about the world were, and will remain, a true inspiration. Parts of this book were previously published as Friederike Fleischer, Young Chinese Volunteers: Self/Interest, Altruism, and Moral Models, in Ethnographies of Social Support, edited by Markus Schlecker and Friederike Fleischer (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2013), 121–40, and have been reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

MAP OF CHINA

Map 0.1. China and Guangzhou, the Research Site.

MAIN INTERLOCUTORS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Chen Family

Chen Yiping, father

Wei Lan, mother

Chen Lili, daughter

Chen Yiping’s birth family

Mother (passed away in 2010)

Chen Wan, older (half) brother

Chen Zhong, first brother

Chen Hong, second brother

Chen Yiping

Chen Yuhua, younger sister

Wei Lan’s birth family

Mother

Wei Zixiong, older (half) brother; wife, two sons

Wei Xianghua, older sister; Lin Feng (husband), Lin Rui (son)

Wei Hong, second sister; husband, son, daughter-in-law

Wei Lan

Wei Fang, younger brother; wife, son

Wei Xiaobo, second brother; wife, son

Wei Xiaoli (Xiao Mei), younger sister; Su Yong (husband), Su Lin (daughter)

Neighbors and colleagues of Chen family

Mr. Peng (former colleague of Wei Lan)

Mr. Li (former colleague of Wei Lan)

Wang Family

Wang Feng, father

Li Xiaolei, mother

Wang Xiaofei, daughter

Wang Feng’s birth family

Mother

Wang Song, older brother

Wang Feng

Wang Peng, third brother

Wang Lijun, first sister

Wang Xiangqun, second sister

Wang Mei, younger sister (widow); two daughters

Li Xiaolei’s birth family

Father and mother (living with oldest brother)

Li Peng, older brother; wife, son

Li Song, second brother; wife, son

Li Hualun, older sister; husband, daughter

Li Qiuxin, second sister (widow; no children); caretaker of father and mother

Li Yi, third sister; husband (in New Zealand), son

Li Xiaolei

INTRODUCTION

The God of Wealth, as Ikels wrote almost two decades ago, has indeed returned to Guangzhou.¹ Residents are without doubt better off than during the Maoist period; their incomes are higher, their living standards better, their life expectancy longer. At the same time, these advances are also significantly more unevenly distributed than before the reform period.² As elsewhere in urban China, wealthy Guangzhou residents today buy apartments at prices that could compete with metropolises such as Hong Kong and New York. They own luxury cars, travel internationally, and buy high-end consumer articles. There is also a growing middle class, owners of home(s) and, more and more often, cars who, favored by government policies targeted at increasing this group, lead a comfortable life. Yet, despite growing affluence, a large number of urban Chinese do not fall in either one of these categories. These are low-qualified laborers, the self-employed, laid off, elderly, and disabled people who often live precarious lives. The combined social, economic, and political transformations of the last thirty-five plus years since the beginning of the reform period has not only improved peoples’ livelihoods but also caused strain and new challenges. As a result, significant numbers of urban residents have problems making ends meet or live in potentially precarious conditions.

This study started as an inquiry into what has happened to the laobaixing, the common people, under the economic, social, and political transformations. More precisely, I examine the issue of social support among Guangzhou residents. This topic is prompted by the transformation of the social contract since the beginning of the reform period. Whereas Maoism offered urban residents a complex net of social welfare that effectively resulted in their state dependency, the last three decades have been marked by the continuous curtailing of public provisioning. When the iron rice bowl was smashed, the cradle-to-tomb social security vanished and urban residents had to organize their own social welfare, at least much more than before.³

At first, social support might not appear to be a very innovative concept or concern.⁴ Yet, turning the issue into a question—who helps whom, how, when, and why—shows its fundamental scope and importance. Inquiring into social support means examining the social contract of a given society, that is, ideologies and practices of social interaction and relations. Thus, the aim of this book is to examine how China’s dramatic urban transformations have affected urban residents’ social relations and networks of support. The focus is on the common people, though this is a slippery term. Here it is used to refer to urban residents who are on the lower rungs of, or just below, the much discussed new middle classes.⁵ My interlocutors were lower rank white-collar employees, workers, or self-employed. Almost all were homeowners and referred to themselves as just in the middle—neither poor nor wealthy.

What distinguished them from the upper ranks was mostly their disposable income and (sociopolitical) connections or social capital. Thus, they managed to get by, but an unexpected turn of life—unemployment or illness, for example—posed a serious challenge to their household economy. In this context the question arises of how people deal with uncertainty. How do they ensure their own and others’ well-being in the present and future? More specifically, what forms and possibilities of support exist on the level of family (household and kin), neighborhood/community, and larger society? How do people justify and/or explain their ideas and practices regarding help? And what are the challenges that arise individually and collectively in the context of support practices and expectations?

I began this study focusing on two extended families and determined to follow their interactions, interchanges, and ideas as practiced and articulated in their everyday lives. Yet it became quickly evident that focusing narrowly on the kin group excluded a number of significant social relations and domains of people’s everyday lives. While the two extended families remained at the center of the project, I expanded the scope of analysis to include religion/church and volunteerism. Other institutions certainly also played a role, yet these two domains were by far the most common and significant to interlocutors. Thus, what might appear from the outset as a scattered focus in fact is a classical anthropological study in that it follows leads from the field.

Soup, Love, and a Helping Hand provides an in-depth analysis of a society in the midst of a massive generational, social, and economic transformation. Based on participant observation, formal and informal interviewing, surveys, and mapping I examined different modes and ideologies of help/support, as well as the related issues of reciprocity, relatedness (kinship), and changing state-society relations in contemporary China. Importantly, the picture presented here is not based on economic indicators; hard data on the support that people receive or provide is impossible to obtain. Favors, goodwill gestures, and even in-kind support are impossible to objectively measure. While interlocutors constantly assign value to gifts and favors—money or time spent, status or debt acquired—this is highly subjective and cause for major disagreements. Moreover, articulating this measuring process commonly caused discomfort or embarrassment.

Thus, even though throughout my research I frequently asked people about the amount of money they earned and how much time and money they spent on others, there was no reliable means to confirm and probe my interlocutors’ answers. In effect, the picture I present here is based on the subjective experiences and reflections of the people at the center of my investigation in combination with my own observations and conclusions. Throughout the study I foreground interlocutors’ thoughts, including their fears, anxieties, and worries, as much as their ideas about (moral) obligations, social expectations, and visions of contemporary (urban) Chinese society revealed in conversations and observations. By putting this ethnographic and local data into conversation with other studies and theoretical reflections, I hope to contribute to a general debate about the interrelation between social support, morality, and kinship in contemporary China and beyond.

Before outlining the themes and domains that feature prominently in my research, let me briefly introduce the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding province Guangdong.

Guangzhou

Guangzhou, located about 120 kilometers inland on the Pearl River, is the capital of Guangdong province on China’s southeastern coast. Naturally hot and humid in summer and cool and humid in winter, climatic conditions are worsened by environmental pollution. Thick gray smog produced by increasing traffic and the large number of factories throughout the Pearl River Delta covers the sky practically year round (Figure 0.1).

Looking back on more than 2,000 years of history, we see that Guangzhou has a long tradition as an international trade center and port. The southern gateway to China was the beginning of the Silk Road of the Sea that brought Arab and Indian traders to the city in the second century AD. The city was also one of the first trading posts for European powers in the sixteenth century and declared a treaty port after the Opium Wars. Guangdong province (and neighboring Fujian), furthermore, was the origin of most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese emigrants, a fact that gave the region a competitive advantage in the reform period. Since its pacification in the twelfth century, its geographic distance from the political power center in China’s north guaranteed that the province maintained its distinct character and culture, which is expressed in language, diet, and an alleged receptiveness to influences from outside China.⁶

After the Communist Revolution in 1949, Guangzhou’s history as a center for trade and commerce came to haunt the city. The new Communist government was suspicious of city life in general, and especially of the treaty ports with their foreign-influenced culture. Located at the coastal front line, Guangzhou had a very low priority in receiving state investments and effectively went into decline.⁷ With the reform period, however, the region’s distinct history turned into an advantage: in 1980 three of the first four special economic zones were opened in the province with the intention of attracting the investments of the overseas Chinese who had local connections. When the city of Guangzhou was granted special economic zone status in 1984, the municipal authorities decided on a set of preferential regulations. Again these were intended to encourage overseas Chinese and Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao compatriots to invest in the city. The strategy was successful: joint ventures and foreign-owned enterprises’ share of total value of industrial goods and service rose from 1.9% in 1985 to 23.0% in 1991 (Figure 0.2).

Figure 0.1. Contamination. © Author

Notwithstanding its well-established status as the commercial, business, and administrative center of southern China, in more recent years Guangzhou has been facing increasing economic competition from nearby cities in the Pearl River Delta, especially Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which is reflected in indicators like its gross domestic product (GDP) share in the province, GDP per capita, export, and economic growth rate. Moreover, with the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macao in 1999, Guangzhou lost its gateway role. Finally, the Pearl River Delta as an economic region faces increasing competition from Shanghai and the Yangtze River Delta, snatching investment and human capital.⁸

General Social and Economic Situation of Guangzhou Residents

Beginning in the 1990s, the national government gradually reformed the iron rice bowl, transforming the system of guaranteed and subsidized employment, housing, healthcare, and pensions into a social security system based on individuals’ and employers’ contributions. A series of laws and stipulations, such as the 1994 Labor Law and the 2008 Labor Contract Law, initiated the reform period social security system. A comprehensive new social security law was, however, issued only as recently as 2011. Generally speaking, under the new system, registered urban residents of Guangzhou (i.e., those with Guangzhou urban hukou)⁹ have some form of social insurance, which is either provided by their employer or (if they are self-employed) bought from the government, which covers basic medical expenses and provides a pension.¹⁰

Figure 0.2. Guangzhou City Center: Old and New Buildings. © Author

In addition, almost all interlocutors owned their house, which ranged from commercially constructed, Western-style apartments of eighty square meters and larger to barren, concrete floor, forty square meters flats in buildings from the Maoist period that were occupied by three or more persons. The majority of people had bought discounted apartments from their work units when these were required to sell off their housing stock to occupants at highly subsidized prices beginning in 1989.¹¹ These typically six- to ten-story buildings, built in the early 1990s, offer modest comforts, such as tiled floors, a private kitchen, and a bathroom, but usually have no elevator. A few of the older people in my study lived in Guangzhou-style houses (zhutongwu or qilou) that date from the beginning of the twentieth century (or older). Some of these narrow but deep three- to four-story buildings have a receding first floor used as a store with living quarters above. In both types, bathroom and cooking facilities are minimal (Figures 0.3 and 0.4).¹²

The majority of interlocutors did not feel that their basic livelihood was in jeopardy. Their overall living situation was comparably much more secure than that of China’s rural population. Problems and hardship could occur, however, in the following situations: medical expenses in