Research On Cheng-hui And Folk Credit Mechanism

Cheng-hui is a traditional folk credit custom,it is also a credit financing form,in which a sponsor invites several participants to meet together,they aggree the time,contribute some fixed amount of money on schedule,and select one person to receive the money.Cheng-hui(ROSCA)takes a variey of forms,which were prevalent in many countries such as Vietnam,Indonesia,Mexico,and the United States;In Yun-nan,Shan-xi,Jiang-xi and other places,people are also using Cheng-hui to meet their credit demand in daily life.Nowadays,Cheng-hui has disappeared or turned to professional and institutionalized credit institutions in most of the above-mentioned countries and regions,but in southern Zhe-jiang and Fu-jian provinves,it is still regarded as an important credit form and plays an important role in local People's everyday life.At present,the role of the folk credit Cheng-hui has been concerned in the economic level.The seminal contributions to the study of Cheng-hui mainly focus on description of economic behavior and analysis of risk mechanism,showing a "top-down" research purport.Therefore,Cheng-hui is often regarded as an indigenous and informal credit form,which is different from the formal financial sector such as banks.But in fact,for local people,Cheng-hui is not only a pure economic behavior,but also a folk tradition related to different groups and different cultures.It is a way of life that people are practicing personally.Therefore,only by going deep into local People's everyday practice "from the bottom up" can we truly reveal its operation logic beyond the economy.This paper focuses on folk Cheng-hui in Qian-ku town,Cang-nan,Wenzhou,uses the research methods of folklore and anthropology,to concern the ordinary people's life experience,social interaction and folk custom practice.By restoring Chenghui to a specific space-time context,the paper presents the ordinary participants and their folk context through which we can understand the "credit mechanism" of the whole regional society.First of all,Cheng-hui incorporates a set of rules that are constructed,internalized and inherited by folk society,including Cheng-hui's forms in different periods,the selection criteria of its invitor(Hui-Shou)and participator(Hui-jiao),the purpose of collecting the contributions,the meeting time and the number of members.Behind these seemingly minor rules,in essence,we can find the continuation and reconstruction of China's folk credit mechanism,that is:obeying or breaking the above rules also means the generation or rupture of credit relations.Second,the credit mechanism represented by Cheng-hui is first formed on the basis of clan blood,and under the background of the change of "human-land" relationship caused by urbanization,its credit boundary is constantly extended and reorganized,turning to other complex networks of social relationships,such as neighbors,colleagues and religious groups connected by temples.The flow of credit boundary diachronically presents the folk credit mechanism.Third,as a kind of daily folk credit form,Chenghui reflects individual,family and the entire community's aggregation ability in dealing with the important events in people's life.It overlaps with the life rituals,gift exchanges and faith practices of Qianku people,forming a network of customs.Constructing human relationships("Song Ren Qing"),becoming sworn brothers or sisters("Meng Xiong Di"),and worshiping scriptures("Bai Jing")are serving as a lens through which local people could correlate reciprocity,morality and effectiveness together,as well as their understanding of credit.Finally,discussion of the traditional credit model is not to weigh the pros and cons,but to reflect its strong vitality and social implications:both the breaking and producing of credit mechanism follow the peculiar folk logic.The choice of traditional or modern credit forms not only involves the survival strategy of folk society,but also implies the rational interests calculating and emotion gaming.Under this background,people form a unique "folk credit rationality" based on their own emotional experience,custom culture and social background.From ancient to contemporary time,Cheng-hui has been used as a "way of solving problems" in people's daily life,it is not a credit symbol that draws away from the daily practice in the areas of economics,nor the emotionless organization in a sociological field,but people's perception,judgment and choice to economic behavior and lifestyle under their "past experience".From this point of view,the discussion of Cheng-hui and its "credit mechanism" from the perspective of daily life practice has become an important way for us to understand folk society.