66 Practices of Guanxi Production Gift Giving 67 thus they were not present at this event. However, in addition to rela At first Ming was just going to chip in with two other friends to buy a tives, many of the father's former coworkers and students came. I did groom from the same team. However, ore careful consideration Ming decided to chip in on a present ree other friends for one of the grooms not on his team, and for her dowry. Monetary gifts ranged from ws to wao for fellow villagers to buy an expensive painted glass decoration with just one other friend and from Vao to 3o for close relatives. Three exceptional gifts of 2oo for the groom who was on his own team. Ming explained his decision: each were made by the brides three older brothers. They said that they now people were buying more and more presents. Though he didn't feel were beginning to carry out the duty of supporting their father in his obligated to buy one for the groom from the other team, some of his old age(shanyang). On two other occasions I also saw sons who ha friends were buying him one, thus making this groom the friend already moved out of their parents' homes giving their elderly parents friend from the same village By chipping in on this present, Ming coul arge amounts of gift-money confirm this guanxi and have one more friend. So"giving was better When asked why so many gave more than the usual Vs, people gave an not giving. "In the case of the groom from the same team, Ming rwo sorts of answers. One was because this retired teacher handled his said that he had just discovered that his fiancee was friends with this guanxi with others especially well (ta guanxi gao de man hao). The sec- grooms bride. Since in the future his own wife and his teammate's wife ond was that people were just repaying him in the same amounts that would bring their families closer together, he decided to buy an expen he had given them on various earlier occasions(zemme lai zenme wang) sive present. when I asked for help in resolving the differences between these state- ments, Teacher Feng pointed out that there really was not any difference. To have good guanxi with people and to exchange a large quantity of Diseussion money on various festival occasions were parts of the same process Perhaps the first point that could be made is that the closer the guanxi A third case is a twelfth-day party that celebrated the birth of a baby the bigger the gift. Close relatives tended to give more than friends, boy to the wife of a young teacher who still lived with his parents in one and those who wished to claim a close friendship gave more than those household. In general, gift giving at these events was on a smaller scale who didnt. Whenever I asked why one person gave more than another. than at weddings or dowry parties. Guests gave eggs and fried dough the answer almost invariably was"because so and so's guanxi is closer. sticks to the teacher's father(as a present to the young mother) and/or However, this point is potentially misleading. On the one hand, the gave money to the young mother( for the baby)when they went in to correspondence between closeness of guanxi and size of gift should be see the newborn. In all, about fifty people gave gifts. Most gave twenty seen as constitutive and not simply representational; a large gift did ggs, but the relatives from the young mother's natal home(niangia ot merely"stand for"the unchanging reality of a close guanxi, it con ren)gave thirty eggs each. Most people gave Y3 to ws when they saw stituted or reconstituted the guanxi. To not give the gift would have he baby, but one man gave Yio. This man was the father of the fiance altered the guanxi. Gifts, in their embodiment of the desired closeness of the teacher's younger sister. The teacher said that he gave more than f a guanxi, helped construct that guanxi, On the other hand, there was others in order to help establish (jianli)the guanxi between his family more to the constitution of guanxi than gift size: a person could nd that of his son's fiancee create a guanxi ipso facto with anyone at any time just by giving a large The final rds the decisions of a young man al bout whom to gift. The circumstances and timing had to be right. when Ming gave give to and how much to spend on congratulatory gifts. i give him the the husband of his fiancee's friend a large congratulatory gift. he seized three men were to be married an opportunity to strengthen a guanxi that, because of other circum- One was from the same team as Ming,moreover, this groom's bride stances, had the potential to be deepened. Thus large gifts constituted was from the same town as Mings own fiancee. The other two grooms close relations, but not in and of themselves. were from different teams and had no particular guanxi with Ming. All In any case, this capacity of gifts to realize guanxi allowed several were slightly older than he, so none of them had been Ming s classmate. types of action to be taken through the giving of gifts. On the one hand