26 Practices of Guanri Production Everyday Guanxi Production 27 Laolao jia their households. Though household members might differ over which guanxi were most important, gifts were usually seen as coming from households as units I Gugu jia △=O!}My阳 (Maternal Embodying Ganqing To convey ganqing, it must have a discernible form. Gift giving, toast ing, and serving food at banquets, and ritualized decorum like bows and ketu(kowtow)are all methods of materializing ganqing. Here, I would like briefly to describe the generation of ganging through its di ect embodiment in specific human emotions. This embodiment should 人 not be understood as the external representation of an underlying pr given reality. Rather, it is a claim about what one wants a relationship to be in the future that Participates in the reconstitution of future reality Female The sentimentality of the present shapes th e Male Figure s Kinship relations in Fengia The embodiment of ganging was important to both ritual and every. day practices of guanxi production. In ritual, such embodiment was orchestrated or at least expected. At funerals there were specifc times fia). Since village kinship was reckoned patrilineally. the last for women to wail and for xiaozhe(direct patrilineal descendants of the Claolao jia) additionally included all of the mother's brother's deceased)to weep. The GPCR ban on interclass weeping at funerals was families. Because of a tendency toward village exogamy, these ually lived in different villages. However, where they had clearly aimed at prohibiting the interclass guanxi production that results ithin the village, they also counted as fellow villagers to act embarrassed, the groom's father happy, and the groom ambiva- Villagers had friends living in and outside of Fengjia. However, a friend from within the village was usually categorized as a fellow vil- lent. At a"dowry party"(song hezi)*the bride's parents should be sad (because their daughter is about to leave home). That these ganqing lager. One exception(and an example of the situation specificity of ere expected in no sense made them less"authentic. "When witness- relationships)was at wedding ceremonies, where those who gave"con gratulatory gifts"were considered"friends"whether they came from ganqing Howev. I was always moved by the embodiment of powerf gs side or outside the village. authenticity different from that typically recognized in American pop Two caveats further complicate this terminology. First is the messy psychology. Few in Fengjia would acknowledge a"true"emotional life, fact that in patrilocal marriages women"change"families. The com where"spontaneous"feelings well up from an utterly individual heart leteness of this transfer, I will argue, was a constantly negotiated social regardless of the surrounding social circumstances problem. As a consequence. married women at times referred to their Though not orchestrated, embodied ganging played an important natal relatives as "family members"instead of"relatives. "Second, rela role in everyday guanxi production as well. On the few occasions when ionships were constituted between households as well as between their I was sick in the village, I received a stream of visitors. Though I only ndividual members. Because the general unit of economic accounting wanted to rest by myself, read English novels, and generally pretend was the household, and because guanxi always involved material obli wasnt in Fengjia, I had to deal with well-meaning friends. On one such gation, the guanxi of individuals always involved the other members of cession I must have let my irritation show; one man said, "You should