This study was conducted in Dougou village, using ethnographic methods and semi-structured interviews. My father was born and raised in this village, and some of his relatives still live there. My parents and I visited it regularly during my childhood. Narratives of family lives in Dougou had entangled in my memories since I was a child. I heard numerous family stories, which were often filled with the villagersâ own values as well as their judgements and emotions. When I was older, I visited Dougou less often. But narratives of life in Dougou still abound in my everyday life, which I hear from time to time through talks, telephone calls and personal visits. In more recent years, one recurring and powerful theme of these narratives has been about elderly villagers and the changing situations in their later life, which frequently include very sad stories of their lives in Dougou.
At the time of my fieldwork in 2014 and 2015, the elderly people were generally very satisfied with the better living conditions compared with decades ago when one could not fill oneâs stomach. It was common for an elderly person to talk for hours about the contrast of living conditions between the present time and the past when they were younger. However, at the same time, it was sad to see that on a material level, the elderly generally live the poorest life compared with younger generations. One man who lived in a shabby room unlocked the main part of the house belonging to his son and new wife and showed me through it. It was a two-storey new house, with new furniture, curtains, TV, air-conditioner and washing machine, and the coupleâs grand wedding pictures were hanging in a couple of rooms. In contrast to this relative luxury, the manâs small room was dark, with worn furniture and malodourous quilts.
Until the late 1970s, elderly people generally lived in the eastern bedroom (zhu shangshou ä˝ä¸ć/zhu dongjian ä˝ä¸é´/zhu dongwu ä˝ä¸ĺą), while the co-residing son and daughter-in-law lived in the western bedroom, and there was a sitting room (tangwu ĺ ĺą) between the two. The eastern bedroom has traditionally been considered the most distinguished room, to be reserved for the parents. Living in the eastern bedroom is a symbol of higher social status, although the room structures, building quality and dimensions are similar to the western bedroom. Nowadays, most elderly parents live in a tiny, shabby room beside the gateway or a room of a similar quality. The room beside the gateway is usually small, and is not in the main part of the house. In many houses, the room beside the gateway is built with materials of a lower quality in order to reduce costs.
The change in the accommodation conditions of the elderly over the years happened concurrently with the increasingly heavy burden of the villagersâ lifetime âdutiesâ. In Dougou, it has always been the parentsâ duty to help the son to build his family by providing a house and paying the bride-price. Back in the collective period, parents with marriageable sons could receive substantial communal support when fulfilling their âdutyâ of âfinding a wife for their sonâ. For building a house, the main expense was money needed for buying coal for making bricks. Labour required for making bricks and building the house was free, as workers were dispatched from the production team. Brides married generally without a bride-price. Nowadays, parents of the groom need to pay for all the building materials and labour required in building a new house, plus an expensive bride-price. In 2014 and 2015, the average expense for âfinding a wife for oneâs sonâ amounted to about 300,000 yuan (about 60,000 AUD dollars).
As a result of the increasing burden of raising a son and âfinding a wife for oneâs sonâ, many couples are not willing to have more sons. At the time of my fieldwork in 2014, I heard about one young couple who sold one of their twin male babies to a stranger in another town; another young woman aborted a baby boy as she already had a son and was determined to have a girl. Such cases were almost unheard of in the previous several decades due to the traditional preference for a boy to continue the family line.
In line with the changes in the lives of the elderly on the material level and the increasingly heavy burden of the elderlyâs âdutyâ to their sons, the social atmosphere of respecting the old and the social force to strengthen it have also undergone great changes. In the collective period, it was uncommon for younger members of a family to openly quarrel with their elders. Villagers agreed that the 1980s and 1990s saw the most open quarrels following the opening-up policy. Quarrels were often due to intergenerational conflicts. Later, from 2000 onwards, intergenerational conflicts gradually calmed down, although open quarrels between elderly parents and adult children still happen from time to time. Many participants mentioned that mitigation of the conflicts was due to the higher wages and greater geographical distance initiated by migrant work.1
The local governmentâs role in strengthening elderly care has also changed. In the collective period, mass meetings were frequently held, which most of the villagers attended in person apart from the children and those who were ill. The mass meetings reinforced filial piety from time to time, for example, through openly praising daughters-in-lawsâ filial behaviors towards their parents-in-law. Village cadres were also frequently involved in mitigating intergenerational conflicts and, in some cases, openly punishing unfilial behaviours. During the time of my fieldwork, the village leaders had little work, and village committee offices were locked up all year round. Nowadays, village leaders generally do not intervene in villagersâ private lives.
Recently, the township government initiated an activity of voting for the most filial daughter-in-law. Candidates are supposed to be selected first by the village committee, after which the committee forwards the list of names to the township. So far no one has been rewarded âthe most filial daughter-in-lawâ prize in Dougou village. When I asked the reason, the village leaders said they ignored this activity and did not forward any names to the township. I found that villagers were generally not interested in the activity and did not mind that the leaders had not reported any candidates. Many had never even heard of it, and did not seem interested at all.
China is currently the most populous country in the world. The percentage of elderly people in China is increasing rapidly. The proportion of people older than 65 years increased from 5.6 per cent of the total population in 1990 to 8.9 per cent in 2010; in the same time span, those aged 60 and over increased from 8.6 per cent to 13.3 per cent (Liu, Han, Xiao, Li, & Feldman, 2015, p. 124). The ageing population will soon become a serious challenge for China. The United Nations has estimated that the elderly will grow to one-third of the national population by 2050, if not earlier, making China the largest ageing society in the world (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs [UNDESA], 2011, cited in Zhang, Guo, & Zheng, 2012, p. 590).
Most Western countries have established quite comprehensive formal care service systems.2 However, especially for the elderly population in rural China, family is still the main source of support for elderly care; thus, it is important to study elderly care and intergenerational relationships in the context of everyday family life. The stories I have presented clearly show that intergenerational relationships and elderly care practices in Dougou have undergone substantial changes during recent decades, along with Chinaâs large-scale socio-political-economic changes. The aim of this study is to explore how rapid socio-political-economic change in China since 1949 has influenced elderly care and intergenerational relationships in rural China. To make this broad question more specific: What are the changes in day-to-day intergenerational practices, such as filial behaviour and obligations, and parental obligations? Since family remains the main source of support for rural elderly people, how have these changes in intergenerational practices affected the care they receive from their adult children? What are the changes in the everyday life experiences of the elderly villagers? How do villagers themselves perceive the impact of these social changes on intergenerational relationships, family cohesion and the traditional family value of filial piety?