Practices of intergenerational support are regulated by familial normative imperatives. Ancestor worship has been serving as such a normative force that sustains household eldercare in traditional China. Against the background of the concerted population ageing and reviving ancestor worship practices and beliefs in contemporary China, this study investigates whether or not the positive link between ancestor worship and household eldercare persists in the post-Reform Era. Drawing on data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, this study finds that, on average, both practices and beliefs of ancestor worship at the household level have a significant and positive correlation with the likelihood of older family members to be financially supported by family members, but no significant association is detected for the reception of household chore assistance. Moreover, familial ancestor worship beliefs show a stronger association with the reception of monetary support among rural older adults than the urban counterpart. These results suggest that the intergenerational relation in contemporary China still relates to the norms of ancestor worship. As such, this study extends the scholarship on eldercare that mostly focuses on resource transaction and exchange by highlighting the normative aspect of caregiving.

Religion in Chinese Society

Are Elders from Ancestor-Worshipping Families Better Supported? An Exploratory Study of Post-reform China

This paper traces the settlement history of the Chinese in Kajang (and Sungai Chua), as seen in particular through an account of their economic and religious life. Kajang, as a small town turned Klang Valley satellite town locale, presents the opportunity to examine immigrant small-town Chinese society in the setting of the tin, rubber and land settlement economy which was the making of colonial Malaya. At the same time, its participation in the vigorous demographic, economic and social development of the Klang Valley in the past 30 years provides a setting for an understanding of the forces of transformation in the social and religious landscape of contemporary Malaysian Chinese society. The paper makes two arguments. First, it argues that settlement was far more integral to the process of Chinese migration to colonial Malaya than the evocative figure of the “sojourner”, widely seen to be typical of the Chinese migrant, suggests. Second, it argues that in the course of the recent New Economic Policy (NEP) decades, a new, tertiary-educated, sinophone but multilingual, Malaysian Chinese middle class has emerged, concentrated in the Klang Valley, whose political and cultural imaginations are of great significance in understanding the dynamics of Malaysian society today.

Migration, Settlement and the Rise of a New Middle Class in Malaysian Chinese Society: A Case Study of Kajang

Does education have a cumulative or persistent effect on well-being? If it does, does it vary by sex or what are the mechanisms linking them? These questions have seldom been explored in Asia among its very old people. Using the 1998-2002 Chinese Healthy Longevity Survey, this chapter reveals that: (1) Education has both short-term and longterm effects on emotional and cognitive well-being and life quality; (2) Economic conditions, psychosocial resources and healthy lifestyles mediate the education-health association; and (3) The association between educational attainment and cognitive wellbeing (or lack of cognitive decline) among the oldest old Chinese is stronger among women than men. This difference is explained by women’s higher mean levels of engagement in daily activities and psychosocial resources. Therefore, this chapter contributes to the literature by (1) revealing the cumulative, or at least persistent, effects of education on emotional and cognitive well-being; (2) extending the Western findings into a new cultural setting with appropriate theoretical and operational alterations; and (3) encouraging Chinese policy makers to be aware of the long-term effects of education on health for its senior citizens.

How do education and religion affect the health and well-being of the very old in China?

The idea, widely spread in Asia, that each human being is a microcosmic emanation of the whole universe, reduplicating on a small scale its basic elements and ruling principles, commonly leads to theories of social epidemiology and to related rituals, which closely link treatment of the physical and of the social bodies. For the Chinese case, several studies have richly documented the central function that the proper manipulation and geomantic placing of the dead, conducted during the funeral, assumes for the regeneration of life and the redistribution of status within the line of descent. James L. Watson has also convincingly demonstrated that the standardisation by the state of death rituals was a major political issue in the pursuit of cultural unity and of social cohesiveness in late imperial China (Watson 1993: 80–9). In this cultural context, however, little attention has been paid to the treatment of those who die at the fringe of the social structure, that is, without descendants to take care of them. Because their ‘orphaned’ remains are believed to pollute the environment and their souls to transform into hungry and wandering ghosts who threaten the living as well as the social order, these dead occupy a core position in the Chinese folk theories of social epidemiology, and therefore constitute a topic of great epistemological relevancy. The present study intends to fill this gap through examination of a ritual, named xiu gugu 修孤骨 (Teochiu: xiu kouku, ‘refining of the orphaned bones’) that the Teochiu, generally considered an ethnic subgroup of the Han people, of Chaozhou (in northeast Guangdong province) perform periodically. In addition to the analysis of the meanings associated with the manipulation of human bones during the ritual, my purpose is to explore the political economy of the event in contemporary China, and in

Religion in Chinese Society

Citations

Are Elders from Ancestor-Worshipping Families Better Supported? An Exploratory Study of Post-reform China

Migration, Settlement and the Rise of a New Middle Class in Malaysian Chinese Society: A Case Study of Kajang

How do education and religion affect the health and well-being of the very old in China?

From bones to ashes: the Teochiu management of bad death in China and overseas

“Religious Ecology” as a New Model for the Study of Religious Diversity in China

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