O verview o f the Thesis

This thesis is based upon fieldwork earned out between the autumn of 1993 and June of 1996. For the first two months (between autumn of 1993 to spring of 1994) o f this period, I conducted my research for the fulfillment of my M.Phil. thesis. After this period of data collection, I had got a contour of the village and got to know some of the villagers.

I returned to the village in July of 1995 for the fulfillment of my Ph.D. thesis. During most of the 12 months of my field, I stayed in the same village. From July to August, I visited the editorial office of local history of the Guangdong Provincial Government. In their office, I found some information about the local history of Mei County. I tried to interview the officials of the Guangdong Provincial Government. But the official of the editorial office suggested I interview the officials at the county level because they should understand the local situation better. In September, I went to Mei County and contacted some officials of the county government. Several interviews were arranged by my relatives in order to listen to the official voices about the local development and their opinion on several policy issues such as taxation, birth control and so on. I also often visited the library at Mei County, in which I reviewed about ten years of the local newspaper for the sake o f acquiring the necessary background documentation on the topic and getting a rough picture of the development of Mei County in these ten years. The rest of the time I stayed in the village. Sometimes I visited other villages for comparison. The eveiyday interaction with the villagers enriched my understanding of their world view, their feeling and perception on different kinds of issues. Eveiyday I recorded my dialogue with the villagers and the important events that happened in the village. I also participated into their activities and festivals. In the village, I was not only the observer, but also a participant who was observed by the villagers.

This thesis has been divided into nine chapters including the introduction and conclusion. In Chapter 2, I would like to invite the readers to Ku Village where I stayed and studied. I will present the social-economic setting and the legacy of Ku

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Village which formulated the special social and historical context of my study. In addition, I will describe how the conception of guanxi and zeren is produced and reproduced in important ceremonies and everyday life occasions.

In Chapter 3, as the title states, I will try understand the history of Mao's China from the Ku villagers. Staying in the village, I find that talking about Mao's era is the main content of their everyday narration. Putting their discourse o f Mao's China into

context, I find that past experience or history is very significant in their resistance

nowadays. There is a contradiction in their discourse about the past. They criticize the CCP government by recollecting the past painful experience under Mao. But sometimes they praise Mao's China as a way to negate the government in the reform era. In short, they always construct and reconstruct their own history always for their own interests.

Chapter 4 talks about the economic transformation of Ku Village. In the first part, I will look at how the CCP government diffused the knowledge of the market economy and capitalist ideology into the village and how 'making money' became the fashion in Ku Village. In the second part, I will look closely at how the villagers reformulated the state constructed economic development model and created their own which in some aspects clashes with the interests of the state. From the view of the villagers, I tiy to understand the economic logic of the villagers, e.g. their view of land, labor, profit, etc.

In Chapter 5, from the everyday narrative of the villagers, I will see how the villagers construct their model of "good government"/ "bad government" and "good cadres"/ "bad cadres", through defining zeren of the government and local cadres. In this chapter, I will pay much attention to how the villagers articulate the information for constructing their model through different sources such as mass media, overseas relatives and so on.

In Chapter 6 ,1 will focus on the specific issue of peasant resistance to taxation. I will decipher how the villagers and their households organize themselves individually and collectively with a variety of tactics to resist the tax collection of the state. I will pay much attention to how the villagers formulate the rationale for their action discursively in terms of'reasonable tax' and 'unreasonable tax'.

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Chapter 7 talks about the controversial issues regarding population policy in China. Apart from examining the peasants' resistance in action, I will also examine the cultural meaning of having a son in rural China and its relationship to their family and kinship, economic structure of rural society and local religion. The different strategies the villagers employed to maintain their family line will also be carefully examined.

In the first part of Chapter 8 ,1 will closely examine the village election and try to understand why the election made the villagers turn to new tactics — sidelining government — to protect their own interests. In the second part, I will go beyond the household or individual resistance, I will look at how the Ku identity is formulated in the reconstruction of the ancestral hall and other village temples. The revival of traditional organization also implies the struggle between the state and the peasants. The villagers in the process are able to articulate different resources, e.g. overseas Chinese networks, to support their movement for their own interests.

Chapter 9 will conclude the whole project. In the Appendix 1, I will rethink the problem of representation and my subjective position as a sub-indigenous anthropologist.

Map 1

Map 2

Map 1. Map o f China & Location o f Guangdong Province Map 2. Map o f Guangdong & Location o f Meizhou Region 1. Shantou

2. Guangzhou 3. Shenzhen 4. Macau 5. Hongkong