B D. Harmon and B Harmon never-ending requests for help, these ritualised exchanges also fueled her sense of rela- tional, rather than individual, agency. As a Master Teacher, parents begged her to guide their children with the love of a surrogate parent. Many students clamoured to be named her godchildren(ganzi or annu), a ritual relationship requested by parents wishing to ensure better fortune for their children. Some students poured out private troubles to their mama. She embraced her gatekeeper role energetically. Fending off as many ritual invitations as he could only confirmed her honest reputation and redoubled ritual efforts to obli gate her. Word of her selflessness, channeled through feast events and broadcast socially by the acclaim of colleagues and parents, gained her promotion Her excellent bodily and linguistic enactments of intersubjective agency made her a skilled feaster. In toasting, she would return any praise with interest, eagerly seeking out people she knew or had been introduced to and toasting them with effusive, com- alimentary words. When a television producer raised a glass to her at a feast given by an opera lovers'association, she straightened her back, raising her glass to his as he declaimed on the great pleasure in meeting her and observing her obvious talents. Her rigid posture graphically embodied the ritual claim that she was 'captured,, ethically and affectively, by the producers words. She was under the sway of his goodness(and he, in turn, posed his toasts as compelled by her goodness--ritual acts form a chain, each one traced back to some previous agency outside the self). Hardly had he finished than she was pouring out a complimentary torrent in return: ' Actually, it is my great great honor to meet you; clearly your knowledge and your ability with people mak you indispensable to your work unit, and i do hope that we have occasion to work together, as friends, in the future. As she spoke, they continued to hold their glasses Face radiant with smiling engagement, Jasmine saw feasts as a privileged space time for displaying agency by making relationships. She embodied China scholarship relational subject(Yang 1994: 85), whose sense of selfhood grows not out of distinc tion from other egos, but out of ongoing interplay with them. While subject implies a stable, coherent existence, however, I prefer to think of intersubjective(or relational) agency as produced episodically. If Jasmine celebrated ritually-produced agency and subjectivity, Mr Feng repre- sented a stubborn individualism. Running a small karaoke hall with his wife, he was a reflective man whose honest refusal to ritually exchange with people he did not truly like, isolated him in business and society. He eschewed all the varieties of ritualised exchange, from long-term cycles of mutual presents between families on large life occasions(renqing), to playful-agonistic feasting as with Yang, or calculated guanxi onstruction. He strongly believed in the ability of true, moral individuals to interact outside of etiquettes coercion. Living out his principles, Feng was almost entirely iso- lated, existing in the alternate intellectual world of newspapers and books, which filled his many idle hours. As China modernises, a measure of space has opened up between urban residents and the institutions-work unit, family, school-which formerly defined them. But e 2014 Australian Anthropological Societynever-ending requests for help, these ritualised exchanges also fueled her sense of rela￾tional, rather than individual, agency. As a Master Teacher, parents begged her to guide their children with the love of a surrogate parent.7 Many students clamoured to be named her ‘godchildren’ (ganzi or gannu), a ritual relationship requested by parents wishing to ensure better fortune for their children. Some students poured out private troubles to their ‘mama’. She embraced her gatekeeper role energetically. Fending off as many ritual invitations as she could only confirmed her honest reputation and redoubled ritual efforts to obli￾gate her. Word of her selflessness, channeled through feast events and broadcast socially by the acclaim of colleagues and parents, gained her promotion. Her excellent bodily and linguistic enactments of intersubjective agency made her a skilled feaster. In toasting, she would return any praise with interest, eagerly seeking out people she knew or had been introduced to and toasting them with effusive, com￾plimentary words. When a television producer raised a glass to her at a feast given by an opera lovers’ association, she straightened her back, raising her glass to his as he declaimed on the great pleasure in meeting her and observing her obvious talents. Her rigid posture graphically embodied the ritual claim that she was ‘captured’, ethically and affectively, by the producer’s words. She was under the sway of his goodness (and he, in turn, posed his toasts as compelled by her goodness—ritual acts form a chain, each one traced back to some previous agency outside the self). Hardly had he finished than she was pouring out a complimentary torrent in return: ‘Actually, it is my great, great honor to meet you; clearly your knowledge and your ability with people make you indispensable to your work unit, and I do hope that we have occasion to work together, as friends, in the future’. As she spoke, they continued to hold their glasses close together. Face radiant with smiling engagement, Jasmine saw feasts as a privileged space￾time for displaying agency by making relationships. She embodied China scholarship’s ‘relational subject’ (Yang 1994: 85), whose sense of selfhood grows not out of distinc￾tion from other egos, but out of ongoing interplay with them. While ‘subject’ implies a stable, coherent existence, however, I prefer to think of intersubjective (or relational) agency as produced episodically. If Jasmine celebrated ritually-produced agency and subjectivity, Mr Feng repre￾sented a stubborn individualism. Running a small karaoke hall with his wife, he was a reflective man whose honest refusal to ritually exchange with people he did not truly like, isolated him in business and society. He eschewed all the varieties of ritualised exchange, from long-term cycles of mutual presents between families on large life occasions (renqing), to playful-agonistic feasting as with Yang, or calculated guanxi construction. He strongly believed in the ability of true, moral individuals to interact outside of etiquette’s coercion. Living out his principles, Feng was almost entirely iso￾lated, existing in the alternate intellectual world of newspapers and books, which filled his many idle hours. As China modernises, a measure of space has opened up between urban residents and the institutions—work unit, family, school—which formerly defined them. But 364 © 2014 Australian Anthropological Society B. D. Harmon and B. Harmon