Drink Water, but Remember the Source: Moral Discourse in a Chinese Village

While many have studied China's recent rise as an economic power, China itself does not exist soley in the economic realm. Ordinary Chinese still place intense value on moral obligations and the nature of the social ties that connect them to others. This study explores the moral sphere as a key to understanding how rural Chinese experience and talk about their lives in this period of rapid economic transformation. Ellen Oxfeld, who spent time in a village in southeast China's Guangdong Province over the course of a decade and a half, examines both continuities and changes in the local culture. Focusing on everyday lives, her study begins with a close look at intimate domestic relations and then explores villagers' experiences within an expanding circle of relationships including extended family, fellow villagers, and the state. Although some have suggested that the reform period in China has been characterized by moral cynicism and the collapse of ethics, Oxfeld finds that villagers appeal to a vibrant array of moral discourses when choosing a path of personal action or evaluating the behavior of others.

"Drink Water, but Remember the Source is a lively and readable ethnography that will reshape our understanding of moral discourse in the Chinese countryside. Ellen Oxfeld greatly improves upon the usual claims that China is losing all forms of communal morality by illustrating the multiplicity of views refracted through concrete events"-Robert P. Weller, Boston University More

Ellen Oxfeld is Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College and has been Visiting Professor at the Hakka Research Institute, Jiaying University, China. She is the author of Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community and the coeditor of Coming Home? Refugees, Migrants, and Those Who Stayed Behind.