Welcome to Sisyphus Highway: In Depth.

In the previous episode, we reviewed the history of bride price and introduced several theories about it. Here we ask a more specific question:if bride price is property, how should we understand it?

More precisely:Who owns it? Who decides? How may it be used? If the marriage does not continue, should the money be returned?Disputes over these questions frequently occur within families. In fact, they all revolve around the same proposition:how private property moves among family, marriage, and generations.

Since reform and opening up, Chinese society has changed dramatically. As private property reentered family life, bride price gradually changed from a ceremonial gift into an important vehicle for wealth transfer, intergenerational distribution, and legal relationships. Disputes multiplied accordingly, while the law continually adjusted to new practical difficulties.

Beginning with anthropologist Yan Yunxiang’s research, we review decades of change in Chinese families and private life. Recent judicial practice also helps us reconsider the meaning borne by bride price as “property.”

 

- Beginning with nine questions: whose property is the bride price?

- Yan Yunxiang and Xiajia Village: a thread for understanding changes in the Chinese family

- From collectivization to reform and opening up: how did private property reenter family life?

- Why did bride price change from a “gift” into an intergenerational transfer of wealth?

- The decline of patriarchy, individualization, and new changes in Chinese families

- Why are high bride prices increasingly common?

- Why are disputes over returning bride price increasing?

- How does the Supreme People’s Court understand return of bride price, and what do several representative cases reveal?

 

- Suffragette (2015) (film)

- Like a Flowing River (television series)

- She and Her Girls (television series)

- Yan Yunxiang, The Individualization of Chinese Society (book)

- Yan Yunxiang, The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (book)