Review: Hugh D. R. Baker. Chinese Family and Kinship. London: MacMillan Press, 1979.

In this study, Baker focuses on two Chinese concepts that define their view on proper family relationships. Wu-fu means the “five mourning grades,” and wu-lun describes the “five human relationships.”  These concepts identify the social hierarchy of Chinese society. Wu-lun is the more fundamental concept and is based on Confucian precepts. The five relationships are ruler/minister, father/son, elder brother/younger brother, husband/wife, and friend/friend (11). Except for the last, all of these relationships are about status with the latter person as the inferior half. Wu-fu is more complex than wu-lun. Wu-fu was a state sanctioned code of five mourning grades that were based on one’s relationship to the deceased. Wu-fu defined a person’s place within the hierarchy of their lineage. It was directly related to ritual and those who did not demonstrate the correct mourning garb were subject to severe punishment. This was one method by which the state enforced adherence to ritual. Wu-fu codified the web of association in which all Chinese lived, and was so vividly described by Fei Xiaotang. 

Baker does not have a thesis for this work. His book is a description of the Chinese family and its place in Chinese society within the framework of the associated rituals. He states that all relationships in the family are based on a “pecking-order” (15). The “pecking order” that ordains superiority and inferiority in all family relationships is generation, age, and sex. For example, while a husband is superior to his wife because of sex, he is expected to defer to his mother due to her superior generational position. This “pecking order,” along with wu-fu and wu-lun, “makes clear to whom each owes respect and obedience” for every individual in the family or lineage group (16).

Baker applies the above concepts to two traditions within that Chinese family that most illustrate the central important of the carefully defined hierarchies. These traditions are ancestor worship and lineages. Baker quotes a proverb that expresses that function of ancestor worship which places every individual in a “Continuum of Descent”: “he exists by virtue of his ancestors, and his descendants exist only through him” (71). As he explains, death does not end the mutual responsibilities between parent and child. In order to be secure in the afterlife, the dead require the appropriate sacrifices from their descendants, just as the living require blessings from the departed. Descent was patriarchal; hence the Chinese obsession with having a son to carry on the line. Women became appendages to the male line of their family.  

Baker’s chapter on lineages ties in well with Fei’s concept of differential mode of association. Lineages were extended families that held some property in common via trusts. The purpose of these trusts was to finance worship of significant ancestors. All males descended from this ancestor were part of the lineage (49). As Fei had written, these lineages could become states within the Chinese state, especially during the rule of a weak or declining dynasty. They enforced de facto legal codes. According to Baker, lineages were much more common in the south than in the north. While he provides several reasons for this, the impression is given that there is no consensus on this by scholars. This book dovetails nicely with that of Fei.