64 Practices of Guanxi Production Talking about Gifts and Guanxi polite and really knows how to make friends. Again, the skillful use of gifts to establish friendly feelings was praised as artistry. The language used to talk about gifts and guanxi likewise points to the congruence between feelings of friendship and economic exchange in guanxi, and the elements of virtuosity and timing in the art of gift Case Studies giving. The term laiwang(coming and going) when referring to guan This section discusses cases emblematic of the full range of gift-giving could mean the exchange of gifts, the exchange of visits, or the exchang practices I saw in Fengjia. At most ritual events, the hosts set up an of ganqing(human feeling) between friends. when talking about how accounting table and kept lists of who gave what gifts, My knowledge to deal with guanxi and gift giving, people often used the phrase"zenme f these cases comes from reviewing such lists. At first I was surprise ai zenme wang"meaning to treat people as they treat you. Sometimes that people would share these lists with me, but I later surmised that I would be confused by this phrase and ask if it referred to reciprocal many villagers enjoyed discussing their gift networks; they viewed them visiting, the exchange of gifts, or feelings and attitudes toward the other as accomplishments. Moreover, as Yan (1993: 45)comments, gift lists person. Almost always the reply was"It's all the same"(yige yisi),De were sometimes used like photo albums; they commemorated famil ptions of guanxi as being close (jin)and, therefore, having a high reunions and were meant to be reviewed level of ganging and being reliable(being able to count on it for material The first case is the wedding of a young man whose education er support and favors)also overlapped ini several situations. For example, after junior high school and whose family did no work outside of farm in response to the question"Who will you get to deliver the dowry ing. As a result the groom and his family had no connection with a he two most common replies were someone who had a close gua and someone who was reliable (kekaode) After a while I began to real- large network of classmates or coworkers. Thus, most of the people who me to the wedding were relatives and fellow villagers. However, the ize that people were using these terms interchangeably. As with laiwang, groom's father had four brothers and the groom himself was popular when I asked what was the difference between these two terms, I got the in the village. Sixty people gave the head of the household a total of reply " It's all the same"(yige yisi ). The language here is certainly not f350 in gift-money. Most people gave Ys, but the groom's four pat nal uncles each gave Yio, while one of the grooms maternal aunts gave and ganqing in a rural Taiwanese township during the early 197os, Bruce Y20. When I asked why she gave more than everyone else, the groom Jacobs(1979)reports the use of practically identical phrases. said because she was especially close to his mother. All of the grooms Finally, consider the following descriptions of people who gave elder female relatives also gave the bride V7 to 8 worth of cloth.In received unusually many or unusually few presents. Of a teacher who all, seventy-five people gave or In received about 11, 200 in gift-money on the occasion of his youngest largest single giver was the grooms best friend (a fellow villager and daughter's marriage, several men commented, "He handles his guanxi classmate in junior high school) who very well. " Of a young man who received relatively few congratulatory tion by himself. presents on his wedding, one said, "He does not handle guanxi very A second case involves the dowry party for the youngest daughter of well. In these statements not only is giving gifts directly related to han a retired teacher. The daughter had graduated from college and had just dling guanxi, but the dimension of skill is also clearly indicated. A few been assigned a teaching job in the prefectural seat. Her father said she days after the 1989 spring festival I went to see a local official, accom was the first woman in the village to marry a man of her own choosing panied by a couple who were going to town on another errand. The (though she and her husband still relied on matchmakers to handle the official's wife gave the woman some foodstuffs as a present. The woman wedding arrangements). The young had three older brothers resisted accepting them, but the local official told his wife to "just put who had already married and were living in separate households in them in the car, "thus forcing the gift. On the way back everyone seemed the village. The bride's classmates and coworkers were going to throw quite pleased and the womans husband said of the official. "[He] is very a separate party for her when she returned to the prefectural seat, and