Yunjun Li; Ling Meng; Lei Yang
Yunjun Li
PhD Candidate, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sudden Death in Chinese Families: What can be learned from the youth’s bereavement experience following the sudden, unexpected death of a parent in Chinese context
Death is a universal experience that everyone will meet one day. So is bereavement. But death is a taboo topic, especially for Chinese. When Western scholars have gradually reached a consensus that grieving is a highly individualized experience, whether the concept of "the right to grieve" exists in Chinese society” is a being-discussed question. For example, “Save the tears and accept your loss” (Jie ai shun bian, 節哀順變) is still widely used for consoling bereaved persons at a funeral in CHina. Hence, whether the evidence of bereavement from Western cultures is shared in Chinese context is greatly in doubt. Moreover, present China seems to embrace the individualism financially, mentally and socially, which may imply a shift of the grief experience among the new generation in China. Hence, this study is designed to explore the grieving experience the bereaved Chinese youth after the death of a parent. 17 bereaved children were interviewed, adopting a constructive stand as the leading paradigm and narrative analysis for uncovering the meaning and interpretation. The concept of Xiao (filial piety) serves as the basis for the grieving experiences, as a result, the bereaved children have a strong sense of indebtedness and try their best to keep the mourning emotions. A “I don’t have a family anymore” theme emerged from the participants’ construction of bereavement experience. It reflects the family transition or even the family destruction after losing a parent suddenly. The findings also indicate that the Chinese families (including the bereaved children, the deceased parent and the surviving parent), co-construct the dominant theme of “interdependence in grief” in the experience of bereavement experience while individualistic grieving is experienced by those bereaved youths. The findings of this study reveal a Chinese concept of grief in the context of culture and parent-child relationship.
Ling Meng
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Year 2 DPhil Candidate in Sociology
Customary Adoption under Family Planning Policy in Contemporary Rural China: Life Experience, Family Relations, and Power Dynamics
Customary adoption has a long history in Chinese society. This practice has revived in rural China due to the coercive implementation of the one-child policy since the 1980s. During family planning campaigns in rural China, families with extra babies sometimes temporarily abandoned the unplanned children, or more accurately hid their children (usually girls) in their relatives’ or friends’ families in other villages to resist state population control. On top of existing literature, which considered hidden children or customary adoption to be a strategy against the state population policy, this study focuses on the interactions and relations among an adoption triangle (birth parents, adoptee, adoptive parents). It aims to explain how adoption triangle and their family relations are shaped by structural forces in practice in contemporary rural China and how individuals make responses in their everyday lives. Empirical data based on in-depth and oral history interviews will be collected in a county in Northern China. This study contributes to the existing literature of family studies through revealing the complexity family relations and power dynamics of Chinese customary adoption.
Lei Yang
Department of Social Work, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Paper co-authored with Prof. NGAI Sek-yum, Steven
Department of Social Work, Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Identity and Community Constitution in the Life Reconstrction of the Shidu
This study investigates the emergence and transformation of the Shidu’s (that is losing family’s only one child) identity and community within their life reconstruction. Its purpose is to understand: 1) Is there any possibility that Shidu organization can develop into a community? 2) And how can the Shidu identity and community help this group to accomplish an active life reconstruction?
The investigation combines meaning reconstruction, identity, and community conceptualized by Neimeyer, Beck and Bauman, and then develop a research framework. Using this framework, the study conducts 15 in-depth interviews and three-month participant observation among the Shidu in a city of central China. The study also traces the historical events influencing the formation and development of the Shidu in the Chinese social transformation. The events include the implementation of One-child Policy dating from 1979, the regulation of assistance policies from the diverse region as well as state’s weak response to this group.
The analysis shows that the Shidu’s life trajectory emerges similarity because of the shaping of the historical events. These people across diverse stratum and region, has appeared as a self-identifying group as well as labeled themselves as “Shidu”, and further set up their own organization. It illustrates that to understand the Shidu identity and community, we have to look into various social events among them in the specific historical context. In this respect, the analysis explicates how the Shidu identity is constructed in the historical context and how they reconstructed their life with the help of Shidu organization.
Besides, the study further suggests that in the transition from an organization to the community, Shidu organization mostly emerges new power relationship and has not escaped the dilemma of polarization. These can undermine their identity and community, then influence their trajectory of life reconstruction.