"Guorizi":the Farmers’ Life Philosophy

This thesis is focused on expounding the logic of farmers’family life by representing their living stories in Huangyan Village, Guanzhong, and based on it, analyzing farmers’ living philosophy and its influences on social transformation in China contemporarily,In the thesis, four theoretical issues and practices are explained. First, nuclear families and lineal three-generation families have been the main family patterns in the society of small-scale farming economy; production and life patterns of small farmers are the basic theoretical propositions to understand Chinese society. Secondly, life philosophy represented by ancient philosophers is characteristic of elitism. In China, however, life concept and methodology of small farmers can reflect life philosophy of the populace. Thirdly, farmer consciousness is not culture resistance to China’s modernization process, and farmer’s lifestyle is not incompatible with urbanization and industrialization. Moreover, farmer consciousness and farmers’lifestyle has a positive effect. Lastly, researchers on rural social transformation should not only lay their eyes on "change", but also on "stability". It is farmers’continuous styles of production, life and consciousness that make social transformation steady and sustainable.The research discloses that familism is high-level generalization of the farmer’s life philosophy, which conveys farmer’s principles, strategies and methods of "guorizi"As to family life, authority of family-management is not centralization but a kind of decentralization based on "man master, woman in". The premise of harmonious relation in a family is the stable relationship between "the stronger" and "the weaker" among family members and the formation of the balanced of power. Quarreling is a way to solve conflict and grievance, while more efficient strategy is "Couhe (making do)", which reduces dispute, shelves controversy, keeps life continuing among family members in the condition of accepting contradiction.In the respect of association, the basic unit is not an individual but a family. The essential principle of dealing with family, friends, neighbors is "showing’li, love and common conscience", in which "Li" is the local regulation from common live", love" includes the human nature and human interaction, and "conscience" is the inherent moral experience.As to relationship between Human and God, family is the basic unit in farmer’s religious behavior. When worshiping the Family God, males dominate, while routine pray is mainly made by females.The basic driving force of farmer to worship the God and Buddha is "desiring something". Due to diverse needs in real life, farmers’faith belongs to polytheism and utilitarian orientation. The way of farmers to get religious feelings is not by converting to the Gods, but by making the secular and the sacred life unified to the height of life experience in "guorizi".When talking about the meaning of live,"guorizi" is farmers’cause, and there is almost no meaning and sense of belonging outside of family. The life tasks are expanded around raising the children, and the key point is intergenerational responsibility. The farmers’ personality is not individual-oriented but family-oriented, and family is the end-result of farmers’personality, which is not "self-realization" but realizing in "guorizi".In the respect of family economy, the farmers arrange production activities around family, and they strive to maximize the household income by part-time laboring. Thrift is basic principles when the farmers deal with the tense relations between accumulation and consumption. The family economy of small farmers is a kind of survival economy, and "guorizi" is the generalization of farmers’surviving sense.Based on the five respects above, it is concluded that the farmers’life philosophy is an abstraction of "guorizi", which is the ethos farmers show in the process of managing the family life:in the respect of production, the performance is hardworking, diligent and conscientious; in family life, the performance is thrifty, familism, and special attention to children; in the meaning of life, focusing on real life and reality, and the basic goal in life is to business life. This spirit of Chinese peasants, is the way of life and survival ethics forming in the long agricultural society production. Being handed down from age to age, this spirit is carried into the modern society, and making a profound impact on the contemporary social transformation.