Gee’s Reviews > From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society > Status Update

anyone who wanted to be considered a native resident had to fulfill several conditions. The first condition was
that the person have "roots" in the earth-that is, own land in the village. The second condition was that he or she enter local kinship circles through marriage. These are not easy conditions to satisfy. The land in rural China cannot be bought and sold freely. The rights over the land are protected by lin

Consanguinity is a stabilizing
force. In stable societies, a tie to a specific place (diyuan), or regionalism, is no more than an extension of consanguinity and cannot be separated from it. "Being born and dying in the same place" fixes the
relationship between places and people. Therefore, birth-that is, one's bloodline---determines one's ties to a location.

A social order based on rituals has, as a precondition, a tradition that offers effective
solutions to life's problems. Rural society meets this requirement. It is an order
maintained by rituals. In societies that frequently change, the efficacy of tradition cannot be guaranteed.

Ritual is obviously different from law and even from what we normally call morality. Law restrains People by setting external limits to action.

Morality is sustained by public opinion. If you do something immoral or scandalous, people will ostracize you, and you will be shamed.

Ritual is even more exacting than morality. If you act in violation of rituals, your action is not only immoral but incorrect

The fact that a society is ruled through an
etiquette established by rituals does not mean that the people in that society are
gentle and refined

one must change oneself internally so that one can fit externally into an established order. That is the reason we can say that
Chinese rural society conforms to the patterns of antiquity-that it is Apollonian.
The social order restrains and contains individuality.

Rural society does not allow the Faustian spirit. Rural society does not need to create
new social relationships. Social relationships are fixed from the time of birth. Rural society seeks stability, so it fears the destruction of
social relationships. It is Apollonian.

Moreover, because politics, economy, religion, and social activity all require long-term continuity, the basic social groups
certainly cannot be as transitory as Western families. The family must have continuity. It must not break up when the children grow up
and must not end when individual members die