Alice Bloch  0:00  
Hi, it's Alice here. I produce Uncommon Sense, and in a moment you'll hear our episode on China, families and generations. But first, a quick word. The Sociological Review Foundation is a charity, and we're hard at work celebrating and sharing the importance of the sociological imagination. Uncommon Sense is a really important part of this, and if you're a regular listener, you'll know what we do, but we really want to know more about you. Why you enjoy this podcast, what you'd like to hear, what else you enjoy listening to, that kind of thing. And so, in the show notes for this episode, you will find a link to a short, simple survey. And we'd be so grateful if you'd be happy to fill this out. Why not press pause and do it now? It will make a huge difference to us, and it may well shape what you end up listening to here. Thanks.

Rosie Hancock  0:59  
Hi everyone, and welcome to Uncommon Sense from the Sociological Review Foundation. I'm Rosie Hancock, joining you from Dresden in Germany.

Alexis Hieu Truong  1:07  
And I'm Alexis Hieu Truong in Gatineau, Canada. 

Rosie Hancock  1:10  
As ever, this is the show where we take an everyday notion or a word that usually gets used uncritically – maybe it's a bit misunderstood, or it's got lots of assumptions loaded into it – and we pause, examine it closely, flip it around a little bit with our guest, and come away seeing it in a new light, seeing it a bit more sociologically.

Alexis Hieu Truong  1:34  
And today we're going pretty big because we're talking about an entire country, one of the world's biggest: China. And within that, the meaning and reality of family, modernisation and generations too. 

Rosie Hancock  1:47  
And we're going to be doing this with Jieyu Lieu, a sociologist at SOAS University of London, whose new book Embedded Generations takes on some powerful and pretty deeply embedded assumptions. Those include ideas about what modernisation has looked like in China, what rural and urban life look like, but above all, about how families work in China and how they've changed over time. Because, as we'll hear in a moment, there's this powerful, very Eurocentric idea that relationships have been radically transformed with the progression of what you might call late modernity. So, this is ideas about the fact that we have less obligation and therefore can achieve greater satisfaction perhaps, that there's less dominance of factors like gender and class, and more emphasis on negotiation and contingency. So, all about individuality, self-actualisation, that kind of thing. But, maybe, it's not quite so straightforward and not quite so uniform after all. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  2:47  
Jieyu's research saw her spend extensive time travelling in rural and urban China, leading to 260 life history interviews across three generations, all exploring how families have changed with time and how individuals have navigated courtship, marriage, intimacy and ageing. It led her to develop concept, a concept called the "embedded generations", which will be at the heart of our conversation today.

Rosie Hancock  3:15  
Jieyu joins us from London. Hi Jieyu. You grew up in Eastern China, in a small city, and I'm wondering: what did family mean to you then, and to the those members of your family who still live in China today?

Jieyu Liu  3:28  
Okay, so I, yeah, I grew up in eastern part of China, city not far from Shanghai. And I actually, indeed, I lived with my grandparents and throughout my childhood and as well as my school years. The reason why such living arrangement was made is because of my education. My grandparents live in a neighbourhood that has the best grammar school, the middle school, in the whole city. So that's why they took me in, since I was born, so I could have the chance to enter that top school in the city. But the dominant memory of family to me at the time is that all the families are networks. They kind of, there are very frequent interactions and exchanges between generations. Despite that, we live separately and my parents came to see us almost every week, and there are so frequent exchanges between the two generations. So, I don't have that sense of being nuclearised, as many western theorists would predict.

Alexis Hieu Truong  4:34  
And so for the research we're talking about today, like you did 260 interviews across three generations, across urban and rural sites, and I think that that was from like 2016 to 2023. And you were essentially seeking to understand the reality of family life since the Chinese Communist Revolution that culminated in 1949 when Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People's Republic of China. I'm keen to know more about your research questions, but maybe above all, like, what motivated you, right? Because your work takes on some big name theorists, some kind, the kind of thinkers anyone would who've picked up a sociology book in the noughties would be very familiar with, right. Did you have an inkling right from the start that this would be the case?

Jieyu Liu  5:22  
Yeah. Empirically, I was very interested to find out how Chinese family life have shifted across three generations over time in China. But also, I was really struck by how dominant the discourse on individualisation appeared in the Chinese academic circle for the family scholars. And I really wanted to find out to what extent individualisation was taking place in Chinese family, because from my personal experience that wasn't the case.

Rosie Hancock  5:53  
So, I think, you know, some of the thinkers that you are engaging with in your work and really pushing back this idea of individualisation are people like Anthony Giddens in the UK and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim in Germany. And I was wondering if you could outline these thinkers a bit more specifically and their influence, including in China, like how they've influenced the research on China?

Jieyu Liu  6:16  
Yes, in 1992 the book Transformation of Intimacy, Anthony Giddens outlined a kind of shift in the late modern time from romantic love to a pure relationship, characterised by confluent love in which that two individuals only stayed in a relationship as far as their erotic needs are met. So and then in 2002 the book Individualization, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim put forward the idea that the contingency and the negotiation of the intimate relationships are shaped by the process of individualisation. This process of individualisation is associated with denormalisation of roles and of decline of these formal structures like gender and class and kinship, etc. And this, their theorisation have generated very robust debate within British sociology, there are a lot of critiques disagreeing with them. However, because of this asymmetric academic exchange in global academic circles, the theories from Giddens and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim were translated to Chinese society, but not the critiques. So their theory were taken up by some very influential scholars working on China, and through the translation of these scholars' work the individualisation theory has become the most dominant theoretical framework for family scholars within China. But they were unaware of those critiques and the alternative theorisation existing.

Rosie Hancock  8:03  
I was wondering if, if you could help us understand individualisation a little bit more. We've mentioned it a few times now, and would the idea be something like: in the past, if I was, let's say, marrying someone, I wouldn't just be marrying that person. I would also, in a sense, be marrying into their family. And so I would, I would become sort of bound to their parents and their siblings, and that there might be obligations that came along with that, and I would see myself as part of this much broader family unit, let's say. And perhaps that commitment, I'm in that commitment for life. It's the sort of, sort of deeply embedded relational commitment to a wide group of people, beyond just the person that I have perhaps fallen in love with. Whereas now, I'm just making a commitment to the one person and – I don't know if I'm getting this right or not – so not necessarily, I'm no longer, my partner's no longer necessarily obliged, has any obligation or duty towards my family. I don't have obligation or duty towards their family. And in fact, we only have sort of commitment and obligation towards each other for as long as it suits us. We are sort of operating as individuals that might couple for a period of time and then decouple as it suits us. Is this kind of what individualisation means in the context of families? 

Jieyu Liu  9:22  
Yes, this is what the individualisation thesis about, yes. I mean, the core idea in the individualisation theory, for example,  there is a thesis called individualisation of Chinese society, and some scholars outlined a kind of inversion of generation hierarchies in Chinese family which predict a constant decline of parental authority and the constant increase of youth autonomy. And they credit this kind of transformation to the individualisation, it's down to the personal desire, the pursuit of personal desire and autonomy in this process. But what I found these kind of a linear prediction of this decline of parental authority and increase of use autonomy didn't exist in the reality I observed through my field work.

Alexis Hieu Truong  10:14  
Hearing you talk, it kind of reminds me, because I did my field work in Tokyo and when I was studying kind of the literature there also I was able to read a bit more on how, for example, modernisation in Japan was also trying to be thought outside of the West, right? And so, I'd like to hear a bit more about these ideas that, that you said were travelling to China, for example, from Giddens and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, but without the critique. So, you mentioned how certain researchers were using that to look at the transformation of autonomy and authority within the family. Can you tell us a bit more about the kind of analyses that scholars were having in China?

Jieyu Liu  10:59  
Yeah. The debate was within British sociology, so these scholars who use, utilise Beck's individualisation theory, they were based in United States, so probably that's why they didn't understand that the whole debate, where the critiques came from. So, they only just applied Beck's individualisation theory to the Chinese context, so that's how this concept was introduced to China, but without the critiques. And the Chinese scholars, because the translation of these scholars' work into Chinese, so the Chinese scholars they only – I mean, again, because of language as a barrier, so they do not necessarily to read it into the English debate. So, they only look at the translations but the older translations are predominantly based upon the individualisation theory. They didn't just see the other side. During my discussion with them, they felt there was something wrong with it, but they just couldn't pin down which point. That's why I feel it's a moment, it's the time for me to enter the debate and to collect more data to see to what extent the individualisation is taking place in China. 

Alexis Hieu Truong  12:09  
To what extent and also in what ways, right? And I guess it's pretty, it's pretty risky for ideas to travel without context and caveats, especially when the social and political worlds are so different. And of course, China has a very, it's had a very different 20th century than that experience in western Europe, where these theories emerge, right? The families you spoke to will have lived many huge experiences, upheavals, right? So the Great Leap Forward under Mao, the ensuing Great Famine and the so-called Cultural Revolution, and after communism the one child policy and major economic and social reforms also. You write of generations: G1, G2, G3. Do these neatly map onto some of these big historical periods? Can you tell us a bit more about these three generations?

Jieyu Liu  13:05  
The generation in my book has two meanings. First, is the familial generation, because these three generations are from the three generations of one extended family, like grandparent generation, then the parent's generation and then the grandchildren's generation. But at the same time, they are quite roughly mapping onto the historical events. And for example, the G1, the grandparent generation, were born in the 1930s, 1940s. So their formative years and their working years exactly happened in the Mao era, so they will experience the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. So these, these are the historical events that shaped the experience of the G1 generation. And then the middle generation. The middle generation, they grew up in the 1960s, 1970s and most of them got married around the 1980s – that's the early reform era. So, they experienced the, the post-reform economic restructuring, the redundancy, and a lot of the events tailored to that. And also the G3. The G3 is the grandchildren's generation. They are exactly, came into the period when the one child policy was put in place. So, in the urban families, predominantly the G3 are only one child. But in rural China it is different because the one child policy was modified in rural China since 1980. So, these are the picture of my three generation in my book. 

Rosie Hancock  14:32  
But I'm curious whether, you know, across these three different generations, we've just sort of highlighted some of the ways in which there are contextual differences, and across those generations, you know, whether we're talking about people that experience communism under Mao, whether the ones that grew up during economic restructuring or under the one child policy and so on. So there's pretty, you know, big sort of contextual differences. But I'm curious whether you also found continuities as well? You know, I'm especially interested – as a sort of a sociologist of religion – about the enduring power of Confucianism in China. I was hoping that you might be able to introduce us a little bit to what Confucianism is, because it's certainly not, it doesn't necessarily fit into the definition of a standard religion that, that people who grew up on Christianity would necessarily associate, you know, it doesn't have, yeah, it's quite different. So you know, what is it and its core tenets, but really importantly, you know what it, the role that it played in, in the evolving norms around family life since 1949?

Jieyu Liu  15:36  
Thank you. I mean, Confucianism was one of the most dominant school of thought in Chinese philosophies, because Confucianism was elevated into the, become the orthodox of the state governance since the Han Dynasty for 2000 years. So, it has a lot of influence in terms of structuring how family relationships were organised. But there is kind of in the 20th century, there is kind of paradoxical relationship between the Chinese intellectuals and reformers with Confucianism. Initially, at the beginning of the 20th century, many Chinese intellectuals, intellectuals starting to criticise Confucianism. They felt Confucianism was the source of China's weakness in its interactions with the western powers. For example, China's defeat in the Opium War, they all felt it's the Confucian ideas basically prevented China to move as fast as the other countries. So, there was a large attack upon Confucianism in the earlier 20th century. However, the effect was very limited, because a lot of the ideas of promotion of freedom in marriage and freedom in love and sexuality, these practices only practised by the urban elites. Very, very small circles, didn't affect large population of the Chinese society. The real reform of gender relations, family relations came since 1949 when Chinese Communist Party took over China. So, the party state had issued a lot of legislations trying to attack this Confucian idea and trying to induce an ideology of equality, diluted the power of the parents instead to give the power to the younger generation of the family. However, what I found out is that the Chinese institutions are neither traditional nor modern. Instead, they are a mixture of both. For example, in the Mao era, on the surface you see a very strong attack on the Confucian ideas. But at the same time, the Chinese government also legislated that there is a family obligation to continue to support, this is what, after all, is a Confucian idea, for adult children have the obligation to support their parents, but also extended that obligation from the sons – traditionally – to the daughters. You see these contradictory ideas. And again, in the post-Mao China, you see a lot of revival, of reuse of the Confucian discourse in the state policies. And since the 21st Century, you see again these kind of Confucian discourse reappeared in the Chinese leader's speeches, like the emphasis on harmony  – again, Confucian idea – and then the emphasis on family values again reappeared in the last two decades in a lot of the leader's speeches. So, it's very paradoxical relationship with the Confucians and I can see there are a lot of legacies of Confucian ideas influencing contemporary Chinese practices.

Alexis Hieu Truong  18:40  
So, as you've mentioned, you set out to do interviews to capture reality on the ground. What norms and values were really in play, how family life was negotiated and narrated, where these continuities were and the shifts across generations. Methodologically, like during my own PhD, I basically moved from my parent's basement in Canada to Tokyo on the other side of the world to start a two year ethnography, entering new spaces, meeting new people. It was really intense. I wanted to hear more about what it was like for you to, to enter the field work, right? Because you did so many interviews, right? And to engage with these families and talk about their intimate lives, for example, gaining their trust. Can you tell us a bit more about that experience?

Jieyu Liu  19:33  
It is very difficult, in a way, because Chinese families, during the initial encounters, they all tended to present themselves as very harmonious, happy family to comply with what is expected in the public space. So, I did a lot of repeated visits and so build gradually, I build a rapport with them. And so, the family members I encountered, sometimes they treat me as a very close friend, so they can confiding things to me. So, it's over time like conflicts or secrets started to emerge. It's definitely not a one-off thing. So this is, I would advise all the scholars who want to study families, you need to conduct it over an extended period of time.

Rosie Hancock  20:22  
So, I mean, it seems like you were definitely able to build a whole lot of trust, because I know you've, you – I mean, it's just such a huge project with so many interviews, it's very impressive. So, talking to all of these people about, you know, how they made and make marriage decisions and so on, led you to offer your own concept, which is "embedded generations". And could you explain that for us?

Jieyu Liu  20:48  
Yeah, thank you. The embedded generations entail three related processes. So, the first process I want to describe is each generation's family practice is shaped by the material and institutional context of their time. And the second layer, what I'm saying that each generation does not stand on its own. Instead, each generation serve as a bridge for intergenerational transmission and the negotiation. And finally, what I want to emphasise that the individuals they are occupied in different kind of positions and confined by their position in the community and family and the society. Therefore, the process each individual respond to these kind of intergenerational negotiation or how to respond to the societal changes, the process are very uneven because individuality is positional.

Alexis Hieu Truong  21:45  
The work you, you've done, it really speaks to me in a way. Like, my own father was born in Vietnam in the 50s. So, my grandpa, my grandfather was born there. He moved during the war. I was born in Canada, and so on. So, some of the dynamics that you're explaining it speaks to me in various ways. I was wondering, based on the explanation that you gave of embedded generations, could you give us an illustration, a case study from the families that you met with that would be especially helpful for for people who are not as familiar with the context to understand the kind of changes that happen, but also the continuities?

Jieyu Liu  22:25  
Yeah, let me give you an example. So this is a one, three generational extended family in the city of Tianjin and they are talking about their courtship experiences. So for example, the grandmother, she recalled her courtship experience in the 1960s Mao era, and from her account she demonstrated how she fall in love with her colleague who was also apprentice at the time. But because the work colleague family background is from a small business family, but her family was kind of classified as Revolutionary Army family. They were encounter a lot of difficulties from the workplace superior and the workplace superior trying to make her to break up with her boyfriend at the time in order to admit her to become a party member. But she defied the meddling and they insisted getting married to her husband. But in the end, she never actually got the chance to become a party member, so she stayed as a worker throughout her life. So, the embedded generations show how each generation, their experience really defined by the characteristics of the year of the time. And then we move on to the middle generation. Her daughter was born in 1968, so her experience, courtship experience, she described is the 1980s early reform era. She met her husband through dancing because it was the fashion at the time for urban youth to visit dance halls after work. And then the grandson's, grandson's generation. So, the grandson recalled that he had multiple girlfriends, again it's the 21st dating scene in urban China, who reflected the institutional context of, of his generation, of the one child generation. But then we can also see the continuities, because there are a lot of intergenerational transmission of values. What I found out, a very widely held view across the three generations that Chinese marriage is not only just the two people coming together, they are also the union of two extended families. So, there are a lot of emphasis on obligations towards each other, but also to each other's family. This is a widely held view across three generations. What I also found out, the love is not blind and there is a strong tendency to marry someone from compatible background. For example, across these three generations, their spouse, the chosen, is always from an urban family. So, urban families tend to marry someone from urban family background, and the rural family tend to find someone from a rural family background. And also, you can see there is no linear transition from like traditional to modern, because you see the grandmother was very kind of romantic, presented very romantic. She defied the meddling effect of workplace superior in order to marry someone she fell in love with. So, I couldn't see a very linear transition from traditional to modern.

Rosie Hancock  25:33  
You know, thinking about this love is not blind idea, I feel like what you were just saying then is making me think about, you know, what marriage and relationships, romantic relationships are actually really about, and the role that love plays in them, ever and sort of in any context, actually. Because, I'm wondering whether love is ever blind anywhere, even when it claims to be or when we think it might be? You know, like, are we all, in some respects, a product of the context that we're in? And are who we fall in love with and who we're able to fall in love with is shaped by that context? And, you know, is there something just a bit more honest, maybe, about the Chinese context? I really love the, there's a concept that shows up in your work, jiangjiu, which you write means "making do". I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Jieyu Liu  26:26  
Yeah, okay. The first point about these, love is not blind. I think the Chinese were very explicit because there is a matching household, is a pre-modern Chinese idiom that has really continued into being used to the present day. People are very clear, we need to find someone who is from a compatible background as well as they're from compatible family background. And I think in the West, there is a lot of talk about the romantic love and, in a way, I do think there are studies found that even in US, in the UK settings, these kind of assortative selection process still take place. So, people from middle class background tend to marry someone from a middle class background as well. And the concept on the jiangjiu. Jiangjiu is a Chinese term to describe this process you really don't like, but because the external constraint you just have to continue that kind of life. So, this is really conveys this kind of message. I think in the first two generations, this is very strong because a lot of them, I asked the question to every interviewee: if you were given the chance to relive your life, would you choose the same spouse? I think 90% households say no, but many of them will stay in their marriage because the family obligation towards your older generation, also towards your children, they stay in their marriage. For the younger generation, I found really interesting patterns, because you see a lot of report, journalist report, saying that the Chinese divorce rates are rising. Yes, but what I found that among from my interviewee is the people who are most in a position to initiate a divorce are those younger ones, those who in their 20s, who got just got married, have no children. But even for the G3, the grandchildren generation, when they reach their middle age I see a lot of conversions in terms of their attitudes towards family and commitment, with the early, with the earlier generation. They will really hesitate if their children in their school years, they will hesitate whether to go through a divorce or not.

Rosie Hancock  28:36  
You know, I think a crucial lesson here is that people, these sort of people that you've been interviewing and but people everywhere, you know, often don't map nicely onto macro theory, that there's always something else to think about or to attend to. And, you know, your work also makes me wonder, as researchers, we're often too eager to find the really distinct things or the changes or the ruptures, and maybe we need to attend more to continuity and nuance. So, we're going to be back with you all in a moment and with you too Jieyu to hear about a pioneering thinker who has shaped your thought.

Alice Bloch  29:26  
Hi, it's Alice. I produce Uncommon Sense. Thank you for joining us to hear Jieyu Lieu talking about China, families and generations. If you're enjoying this, do scroll right back through our archive to series one to hear Katherine Twamley in our episode on intimacy. She talks to us about how a trip to India got her thinking about the varied meanings of love across cultures and contexts, and also what it could mean to decolonise love and why we should be wary of acts performed in its name. That's in our show notes, where you'll also find a link to our Donorbox page, where you can donate to directly support the making of this show. As we always remind you, we are a charity committed to celebrating and promoting the sociological imagination, and we are extremely grateful for your support. Thanks for listening.

Alexis Hieu Truong  30:21  
Okay Jieyu, here's where we ask our guests for someone who's given them some uncommon sense, who has shaped their thinking, right? And today, you want to profile a pioneering and very prominent Chinese anthropologist and sociologist, Fei Xiaotong, born in 1910 and died in 2005. He was educated in China and the UK, including with the famous anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. He also advised academic reformers post-Mao. But his incredible life was also marked by tragedy and hardship. It ranges from his wife falling to her death while seeking to help to release him from a tiger trap just over 100 days after their wedding, to being banned and sentenced to hard labour under Mao. Can you tell us who this man was, his academic significance and his story in terms of ideas?

Jieyu Liu  31:13  
So, Fei Xiaotong was a pioneering researcher and could also be considered as one of the founders for Chinese sociology and anthropology in China. So Fei Xiaotong's field work experience of the 1930s village life in China, he put forward this model of differential mode of association. Within this model, basically he argued that the individuality is relational. So, one person can display very individualistic attitudes and behaviour towards someone who is located more distance towards the self, but at the same time, the same person can display more collective or these kind of attitudes and the behaviour towards people who are considered closer to the self. This is called differential mode of association. What I found the most striking is a lot of his theorisation about individuality has striking similarities with a lot of the critiques put forth by the British sociologists on the individualisation theory. For example, by scholars Carol Smart and Stevi Jackson, they were arguing the individual are social and they are relational. These kind of relational selfhood has a lot of commonality with Fei Xiaotong's theory. I mean, Fei Xiaotong was inspirational for me. First of all, Fei himself was educated in China and in the UK, so he was well versed in western theories and concept. But at the same time, he was very good in doing field work. He grounded all his analysis and theorisation from these solid, extended field work research.

Alexis Hieu Truong  33:05  
And could you talk us through one of his key works, perhaps Peasant Life in China, which was a very famous work which then came out in 1939, or one that you would recommend most? 

Jieyu Liu  33:17  
I would consider, is one of his most influential work. I still think a lot of things he theorised in that book can apply to the understanding a lot of contemporary practices. Actually, in many ways, it's kind of village ethnography. So, he was choosing one of the villages that he was very familiar with in the Jiangsu province and in the different chapters were organised about different aspects of village life. For example, on marriage, on the relationship between adult children and the parents, and on the economic life in the village. So, from reading the whole book, you will have a very vivid memory, a vivid picture of how the village life was carried out.

Alexis Hieu Truong  34:02  
Jieyu, earlier in the episode, right, we talked about how some thinkers had travelled from the West to China, right, in terms of analyses and so forth, and, and Fei Xiaotong's work has been very influential inside of China. I'm kind of wondering if you could tell us a bit, maybe, about what current students in sociology and anthropology might learn from his work and from that person, what they could take as they're becoming, you know, sociologist and anthropologist?

Jieyu Liu  34:35  
I think within Chinese sociology, anthropology all of Fei Xiaotong's works are kind of on the essential reading list for all the Chinese sociology and anthropology students. And his concepts about individuality, about the social governance in China becomes the foundation for a lot of theoretical discussions in China. However, I'm not sure his work is widely recognised in western sociology. But again, this is to speak to the asymmetric academic exchange on the global scale. So, there is a tendency to prioritise those concepts and theories derived from the western concept which have kind of assumed universalistic implications. But those of us who are doing study beyond the western region were considered as area studies, does not necessarily have the kind of universal, universalistic implication. But I do encourage, for example, family scholars of other societies to have a look, whether a lot of things I argued for the Chinese families can actually be applied to other societies as well.

Rosie Hancock  35:47  
And for people who are curious to read some of Fei Xiaotong's work, we're going to have links in the show notes, along with our usual rich kind of repository of resources available. And finally, Jieyu, we often ask our guests at this point in the show what we can read or watch or listen to get a better understanding of our subject that we've been talking about today. And I'm curious to know if there's anything that comes to mind for you. But in addition to that, so in addition to any recommendations you might have, what your views are generally on how China gets represented in the media that you encounter in the UK, for example, like what's missing or what needs amplifying or remedying?

Jieyu Liu  36:29  
I think sometimes I do get frustrated when I read newspaper reports about China. China is such a huge country and so complicated in terms of the urban-rural divide and also the regional variation. I just hope in future probably there will be more nuanced reports about China, rather than making any sweeping generalisations. In terms of any books I would recommend, I would highly recommend some of the Penguin translations of the Chinese literature. They're really good. During Christmas break, I was reading one of the kind of autobiography written by a scholar in Qing Dynasty. It's called Six Records in a Floating Life. So basically, this person described his everyday life, including family, his relationship with his wife, with his parents, and his hobbies, really provide a very vivid picture how the life in Qing Dynasty appear. But the most things striking me that a lot of his, the things he described show the resemblance to a lot of the stories I heard from my interviewees. So again, this disrupt this kind of notion of pre-modern or contemporary, these kind of linear progression model.

Alexis Hieu Truong  37:53  
Jieyu, thank you very much for joining us today.

Jieyu Liu  37:56  
Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure.

Rosie Hancock  38:01  
That's all from us this month. There is so much to reflect on here and we're going to put a whole lot of essential reading in our very rich show notes as ever.

Alexis Hieu Truong  38:10  
And remember, you can check out our archive over on the podcast page, on the Sociological Review Foundation website. There you'll also find our manifesto, a great rallying call for why sociology is as essential as ever.

Rosie Hancock  38:23  
And don't forget, we're a charity. If you'd like to directly support the making of the show, head over to donorbox.org/uncommon-sense where you can make a one-off or repeat donation. It is all very gratefully received.

Alexis Hieu Truong  38:37  
We'll be back with you next month, talking about Frantz Fanon.

Rosie Hancock  38:40  
Thanks for listening. Bye!