Page 187 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

174 ANNE E.MCLAREN
as stone carvers. The majority of men are involved in fishing and stone carving. As a
consequence, there is a dearth of men to take up agricultural and construction work,
which now falls to women.
Qiao and Chen observed a highly gendered division of labour. Women alone did the
following: washing of clothing, cleaning of toilet buckets, water carrying, sewing,
ploughing, sowing seeds, planting rice shoots, adding fertilizer to soil, weeding,
harvesting, mending of nets, transporting of goods, knitting goods for sale, carrying stone
and sand used in production. Tasks performed only by men were the design of clothing,
fishing far from the coast, working as a hired hand on a boat, or as a boat repairer,
concrete labourer, stone engraver or explosives technician in construction work (Qiao
and Chen 1994: table 1, 765–6). They point out that this pattern of work is unusual in
south China where men generally do the heaviest work, such as ploughing. However in
this village, ‘the men not only do not participate in agricultural production but also
consider this sort of labour shameful’. The locals rationalize this by saying that the
shoulders of women are particularly strong and therefore they are good at carrying heavy
things while the hands of men are very strong, so they are good at fishing (Qiao and Chen
1994:766). Women in this village also take part in construction work, where they dig
foundations and carry concrete and bricks. The men do jobs such as concrete and
carpentry jobs requiring a level of training. They conclude that ‘whatever is rough,
requiring a low level of skill, time consuming and less profitable is undertaken by women,
whatever requires a high level of skill, and is more profitable, is undertaken by men’
(Qiao and Chen 1994:767).
Fishing and stone carving bring in most of a family’s income, which leads to a huge
disparity in the income earned by men and women within the household. Qiao and Chen
argue that this disparity in income across gender lines accounts for what they say is the
‘extreme male chauvinism’ and deeply patriarchal kinship structure of the area (1994:
767). However, they also point out that the social and economic role of women in the
village is not necessarily lower than in other parts of China; nor is it true to say that they
are subject to absolute domination (Qiao and Chen 1994:767). This is perhaps because
women tend to be the managers of the family finances. The men often work far from home
and financial control is left up to the women. Another critical aspect of female dominance
is the ritual culture of Dazuo.
In spite of the seemingly unfavourable economic circumstances for women, it is
women, not men, who play a leading role in lineage worship at Dazuo (Qiao and Chen
1994:773 ff). The same process of the reinvention of lineage rituals apparent in the
Jiayuan example is found here as well. Formerly only the names of males who had married
and had a son were entered in the ancestral tablets. Now the names of wives can be
entered as well. The village women also take ritual control over the kinds of deceased
household members who do not warrant entry into the ancestral tablets and temples.
They do this by looking after personal gods known as furenma (Qiao and Chen 1994:768).
The furenma are figures of men and women made of paper, each representing a deceased
family member or person known to the household. The ghosts associated with the furenma
are often those who died ‘unnatural’ deaths, including those who died before marriage or
who committed suicide. The paper ‘ghosts’ are arranged in a box or encased in glass and