3o Practices of Guanxi Production Everyday Guanxi Production 31 elderly widow looked after her neighbors grandchildren and in received help with her felds, A household that ran a commercial vege table garden took advantage of their frequent market trips to shop for their neighbors. In turn, they asked for help when the labor demands of regetable gardening exceeded houschold capacity. Once, I watched an ld man spreading his wheat out in the street to dry. A sudden change in the weather threatened to soak his grain, but a half dozen men and women from neighboring households came running over and manage to sweep it up before the rain began in earnest. He told me his son had done the same for his neighbors on other occasions The exchange of ganging within households likewise depended on articular circumstances. The taking over of certain chores by a fam nember-say, clothes washing for a daughter-in-law or draught animal are by a grandfather-constituted an interdependence that cont ally re-created the guanxi of that household. Special care in the perfor Figure 6 Neighbors assisting with house construction mance of more personal duties- preparing bath water for a tired and rty farmworker, mending a cherished shirt, or cooking The larger life projects of house building and marriage provided op- embodied particular ganqing. Tensions between household member portunities for the exchange of favors and guanxi building that were could be alleviated or exacerbated by the manner in which such duties neither matters of daily activity nor formal ritual. Almost all marriages yere performed. Perhaps most basically, eating together(both in th in 1988-9o Fengjia were negotiated through matchmakers(meiren of consuming the same dishes at the same time and in the sense Households relied heavily on their networks of friends and affinal rela of utilizing foodstuffs purchased from a collective budget) constituted tions to help find spouses. The successful location of a marriage partne ousehold relationships Not only was sharing meals a matter of spend often led to a long-lasting guanxi between the new couple,'s families and ng time together and collectively enjoying the fruits of family labor, it he matchmaker. Villagers also invoked guanxi when undertaking large so was an occasion for specific contributions to the family economy construction projects(figure 6). For example, one household decided rough frugality. By eating less expensive items or by consuming only to enlarge the gate to their courtyard so that they could more easily hat would have otherwise been wasted, particular family members, move a newly acquired horsecart in and out of their yard. The proje often older ones, embodied ganqing for(and made claims on)the other involved tearing down the old gate and adjacent brick wall and build- members of their household ing new ones, including an ornate frontpiece. The family acquired the Certainly the everyday exchange of favors within and between house building materials and informed their friends and neighbors, On the holds has always been a practical matter contextualized in the ever- arranged day, scores of young and middle-aged men came over. House. changing socioeconomy of the present. The daily patterns of guan holds friendly to the family in question all tried to send someone. Some production were quite different during the precommunist era of house households also sent women who helped serve tea and informal meals hold land tenure and the Maoist era of collectivized farming. They also when the men took breaks. The project was finished in one afternoon vary from village to village. Judd (1994: 202-212)demonstrates how pa and seemed as much a social occasion as a building project terns of interhousehold help in three other Shandong villages during Patterns of regular interhousehold help varied extensively the 198os varied with each village 's economic base. During my: 2 visit families, Practical needs and abilities dictated the availabilit Fengjia, I sensed that an increase in household entrepreneurship was portunities to exchange favors and create guanxi. However, again inducing changes in the patterns of interhousehold exchange. A amples can illustrate the more typical sorts of exchange. One chi man building a chicken factory relied on friends and relatives to raise