Small world, big world: the cultural possibility of a Chinese transnational grassroots society

Abstract

The radical modernist ideology (both Socialism and GDP-ism) that has overwhelmed China for the past sixty years has produced profound and distinctive problems. This article explores cultural resources at the grassroots level that are able to balance the influence of radical modernist ideology. Chinese new migrants (primarily ex-peasants from rural areas of South China who migrated to Western countries, particularly to the US in the past three decades) have revived local cultural and societal mechanisms in the construction of transnational self-rule communities. By applying an anthropological approach, this research shows that the new migrants’ practices express their understanding of modernity and what “a better life” is. Their rich experiences may inspire us to look into the local tradition of South China, which represents a possible resource that could evolve in the direction of helping to form a modern civil society in China.

Keywords:

• radical modernity
• Chinese new migrants
• cultural possibilities
• self-organized community
• public good

Notes

1. The fieldwork for this research was done between 2009 to 2014, in multiple sites covering the Changan village of Eastern Fujian, China and Chinatowns of New York, New Jersey and Boston.

2. These four regions are Pingtang county, Fuqing city, Tingjiang district and Changle city, all belonging to the greater Fuzhou area.

3. The investigation was carried out by the author with the Fujian American Association, October 2009.

4. See my discussion of the Zheng lineage in Malaysia (Song 2008).

5. A mu is equal to 1/6 of an acre.

6. This is in the Changan village chronicles, as edited by the Changan village committee.

7. A worker’s monthly salary was about 20–30 yuan and a policeman earned 33.5 yuan during the 1950s-1960s.

8. The average yearly income of Chinese peasants was 134 yuan in 1978. See Li (2010, 19).

9. Zheng led seven expeditions in 28 years, visiting more than 40 countries. Zheng’s fleet had more than 300 ships and 30,000 sailors. Along with a Han and Muslim crew, Zheng opened up trade routes in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.

10. For instance, “yandanchi, gulique” (洋当池，古里去), an oral expression of dialect from sailors of Zheng He’s time, literally translated means “we regard the west ocean as a pool.”

11. Two ex-villagers, Yang Renqing and Zheng Weinuan, opened “Qing Nuan Sailor House” 清暖水手行 in Hong Kong.

12. The internationally famous female snakehead called Sister Ping played a major role in organizing the village’s human smuggling; her mother came from the village.

13. The China model is also called the Beijing Consensus, a term that refers to the political and especially economic policies of the People’s Republic of China and are thought to have contributed to China's eightfold growth in gross national product over two decades.

14. Fujian is a province located in Southeast China, with a land area of 124,000 square kilometers and a population of 38,300,000 (2014 data). Fuzhounese immigrants in US are typically people from the eastern costal region of Fujian.

15. Peter Kwong’s account of New York’s Chinatown between 1965 and the 1980s provides a critical examination of the structure and dynamics internal to the community (Kwong 1987). The community earlier based on the Cantonese population with the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) as its headquarters was replaced in the 1990s by the new Fuzhounese community.

16. This is true especially in the eyes of top officials like Xi Jingping and Jia Qingling, who have been promoted from the Fujian region.

17. It happened that when I visited the association, immigrants gathered together to make donations for the care of a new arrival diagnosed with nasal cancer.

18. For instance, it mediates disputes among partnerships of Changan immigrant restaurants, or disputes among immigrants who want to open new restaurants in the same area.

19. Changle is also located in the eastern costal area of Fujian, but Changle and Tingjian are divided by the Ming river, and so immigrants from these two areas do not regard themselves as belonging to one group.

20. Economist and Nobel laureate Kenneth J. Arrow has suggested using “wealth” to replace “income” to measure the future in a public lecture at Xiamen University, 6 April 2011.

21. This is chronicled in the Changan village records.

22. Lin Yaohua explains that 宗法 as a system ceased to be binding since the late Zhou but many forms of etiquette and custom of the system remained and were promoted in Song. See Lin Yaohua (2000b, 241).

23. To understand what the construction of a lineage-hall entails, I give a comparison figure: the average yearly income of the village in 1980 was 105 yuan and in 1985 was 432 yuan. This means that constructing an ancestor hall cost the total yearly income of 1389 people.

24. This was stated in the National People's Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference in 2013.

25. As Weller discusses, under corporatist arrangements, each social sector is allowed to organize itself, with the state granting one group in each sector a monopoly on this role in exchange for loyalty.

26. “Breaking the ‘four olds’” (old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits) was the slogan raised in the People’s Daily, 1 June, 1966. The slogan was explicitly stipulated in “The Decision of Cultural Revolution” in the eighth plenary session of the CPC, August 1–12, 1966.

27. Beyond this, “gong” (公) as a term in Chinese political vocabulary has been recognized as having the same meaning as the Western term “public.” This ancient term had been revitalized since the late Qing (Rowe 1999). The rich meaning the term contains and its corresponding practices in grassroots society may make major contributions for the construction of Chinese civil society in the future.