Disorderly freedom: Changes in family relations in rural China

Abstract The period of reform and opening-up that occurred between 1978 and 1991 revolutionised what had been the economic structure of the People’s Republic of China since its foundation, changing the traditional social structure that had endured for thousands of years in rural settings. This change had a significant impact on rural mobility in contemporary China; it brought about a shift in the rural population’s values and led directly to the largest migrant mobility in China’s history. This article analyses these changes in terms of family and marriage and their consequences for rural families. The method employed was ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Sichuan Province. 7 men and 14 women, aged between 25 and 64 took part in the research and were both members of different families, as well as teachers involved in the education of their children. The information obtained from these 21 people was supplemented with data from other sources, including references in the literature and statistics. The results show that the changes taking place in Chinese family and rural society are of such magnitude that traditional values are being replaced by others associated with economic activity and a new individualism. Additionally, the effects of the phenomenon of left behind children are shown.


Introduction
Following the foundation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the country established a socialist economy on the basis of state ownership and centralised planning. This introduction tries to show the historical context of the subject of this investigation. According to Huang (2004), collective agricultural production units were set up in the countryside, while in industry, a fairly comprehensive system was established that incorporated various industrial sectors. This approach basically solved the problem of simple subsistence in almost all regions of the country, and to a certain extent achieved state economic power. In other words, the result was a period of about 30 years of a planned economy. At the same time, however, the economy that emerged as a consequence presented excessive concentration, market inhibition and isolation from the rest of the world.
In late 1978, the Chinese government decided to implement its "reform and opening-up policy" in order to overcome deficiencies in the administration of the national economy. According to Heine (2016), between 1978 and 1991, China's reform and opening-up policy was remarkably successful, as was the country's economic development, drawing global attention. Thus, in that period, the growth rate of China's economy doubled and 1991 witnessed the highest ever rate of foreign investment in China.
For 30 years , China broke all the moulds and gave the lie to conventional wisdom by reaching an average annual growth rate of 10%. Kroeber (2016) has claimed that over this period China achieved something unprecedented: per capita income increased 14-fold, from 300 to 4400 dollars, and 500 million people were lifted out of poverty, representing immense progress for a country that over the previous 150 years had experienced enormous political and social upheaval. With a strong emphasis on industrialisation and largely following the development model of its East Asian neighbours such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, China positioned itself as the world's second largest economy.
This economic model based on a collective system curbed the polarisation between rich and poor that had emerged in the countryside after foundation of the state. Through collectivised management, the rural population's basic survival was guaranteed, low agricultural productivity was reversed, industrialisation received a major boost and the chaotic management of industry and trade following foundation of the state was to some extent alleviated.
However, as a result of the excessive pursuit of fair distribution and centralised management, the system paid little attention to the efficiency of rural development and ultimately hindered development of the rural economy. Moreover, due to the extremely strict affiliation and registration mechanisms of the collective economy, rural inhabitants were tied to their villages of origin, unable to leave. This laid the foundations for a vast urban-rural income gap, both a cause and a consequence of the large numbers of rural inhabitants who left their villages to work in the cities after the reform and opening-up era, and led directly to the largest internal mobility of migrant workers in China's history.
In 2020 alone, the number of migrant workers in China reached 285.6 million, accounting for 56.02% of the total rural population. In other words, there is now one migrant worker for every two rural inhabitants.
This article is a contribution to the project with reference PID2021-124970NB-I00, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Government of Spain.

Literature review: current situation regarding the family
The social and cultural changes that have occurred in China's recent history have been described by a number of scholars. However, for the most part, these changes have been studied and reported in general terms to demonstrate rapid economic growth or major transformation over a relatively short period of time relative to the country's history. In this section, rather than referring to a sociology of the family in China, which has generally been making a general disciplinary classification, we are interested in pointing out how the study of the family by certain Chinese sociologists can help us understand the complex situation we are in. This means referring to the concept of social change in connecting with the family situation in China. This is because the concept of marriage in rural China has changed drastically compared to the situation before the reform and opening-up, and it continues to present a changing situation that has had a great impact on family life not only for peasants but for their children and their parents. Besides, studies have primarily focused on the urban environment: few studies have examined social and cultural changes in rural contexts, and even fewer have specifically reported changes in family and kinship. As an example of the latter, Y. S. Wang (2002) has reported on the changes in marriage and family experienced by agricultural workers between the 1940s and 1990s from the perspective of ownership and the organisation of production, comparing the characteristics of contemporary marriage and family in rural China with those of traditional practices prior to the change in the production system, and summarising the general features of this shift. For instance, the previously widespread custom of early marriage, especially but not exclusively among women, was curbed following land reform, especially in the collective economy era. In terms of family power dynamics, the degree of paternal control over property was reduced in the collective economy era, diminishing a father's influence over family members' conditions of survival-especially adults-and increasing a sense of equal rights within the family. As regards family structure, there has been an increase in children living separately from their birth families after marriage, the existence of extended families has gradually dwindled and nuclear families have become the predominant family structure.
A basic approach to explain the rural environment of China is Fei (2016). This author posits rural society as a "lawless society" if the laws are defined as those regulations maintained by state power. However, the absence of laws does not affect social order, because rural society is ruled by rituals. Rituals are publicly recognized behavioural norms. If one behaves according to the rituals, then one's behaviour is correct and proper. In this respect, rituals are the same as laws, because laws are also behavioural norms. The difference between a ritual and a law is the force used to maintain the norms. Laws are enforced through state power. But rituals do not require any concrete structure of political power in order to be effective. Instead, ritual norms are maintained by tradition (Fei, 2016). In other words, traditional Chinese rural society is characterized by a selfsufficient mode of production and a relatively closed way of life, on the basis of which rural ethical relationships, moral lifestyles, and a basic understanding of rural relationships have emerged with their own characteristics, fair and equitable among people. "Rituals" contain both an explicit or implicit system of rules and regulations in the form of external rituals and customs, as well as moral emotions and value choices in the form of internal ethical judgments and moral psychology, which together form the basis of ritual governance in traditional Chinese society. To treat others "without ritual" is to treat them unfairly. This conception will be fundamental for the understanding of his later concept of "disordered freedom".
Other pioneering studies have called attention to the impact and consequences of urbanisation, highlighting the large numbers of rural workers that have migrated to cities. For example, Feng (2006) and Shih (2006) have focused on the impact of rural youth mobility on rural marriage and family structure over a short period of time following reform and opening-up, analysing its effects on lifestyle and marriage among young people from the countryside. It is to the credit of these authors that their pioneering studies have sparked interest in the subject and have prompted increasing research attention. Feng (2006) has argued that the mobility of rural youth has had an impact on their marriage circles, their marriage behaviour, their choice of spouse, their reproductive behaviour and their children's education, while Shih (2006) has contended that the mobility of rural youth has led to difficulties in choosing a spouse, and that the migration of young women from some poor areas has made it difficult for their male counterparts to marry. The act of mobility has also affected marital stability among young married people in rural settings. In addition, he has argued that it is important to pay attention to the marital problems of older single workers, to children in rural single-parent families and to the "accumulation of disadvantage" in poor rural areas caused by marital migration.
The second decade of the 21st century has witnessed a notable increase in studies on rural change in China. However, a review of this research using CNKI revealed that most of the studies were conducted at macro level. Thus, in examining this shift in the situation of rural marriages, such studies discuss questions such as the marriage circle, age at marriage, the costs involved in marriage and the stability of rural marital relationships, but only from the perspectives of economics, demography or sociology.
In this regard, for example, L. Wang (2013) has reported on the growing catchment area for rural marriages and the consequent widening of marriage circles. Prior to the reform and openingup period, the rural population tended to seek marriage partners in a few surrounding towns and villages, whereas after this period, the rural population's marriage circle expanded considerably to include cities and even provinces beyond these geographical boundaries. Meanwhile, Tian (2009) has reported that marriage circles in rural areas are simultaneously expanding and shrinking, because whereas migrant workers may marry people from other cities and counties, those who remain in the countryside to work in agriculture have fewer choices thanks to the continued exodus of the rural population and have to marry people living nearby or not marry at all.
Other studies have focused on the role of young single people and their increasing demands concerning marriage. Thus, Chen (2014) has reported a dramatic increase in the demands made by young unmarried women in particular as regards the assets of a potential marriage partner. This author also found that structural imbalances in the allocation of marital resources in rural areas led young rural men to demand resources from their parents in order to increase their marital competitiveness and get married. Generally, their motivation for this was to be able to buy a flat in the city and gain a foothold for their families, i.e. the couple and their children, in other words to complete population reproduction and production by relying on initial and subsequent intergenerational support from their parents. This situation prompted Chen (2014) to coin the term "intergenerational exploitation" in reference to the material and spiritual imbalance between parents and children, whereby parents give the best of themselves to their offspring, but these latter do not fulfil their duty of correspondence, as would be expected, which to some extent can be defined as children's exploitation of their parents.
Along similar lines, Gui and Yu (2010) have explored the reasons for the high cost of rural marriages in terms of women's demand that men buy or build the marital home before the wedding, with the result that women's parents demand a very high cai li. Cai li (彩礼) is a Chinese marriage custom whereby the man must pay a sum of money-a bride price-to the woman's parents upon marriage, as a form of financial compensation from the man's family to the woman's family for the loss of labour (Fei, 2018). Their analysis of the reasons for the rise in this cost was based on price theory. They observed that the shift in rural marriages has not only led to intergenerational exploitation, but has also changed the family power structure. As a result of this structural imbalance in rural marriages, men have become increasingly passive in the marital relationship, while women have taken the initiative in the relationship and the process of marriage exchange, increasing the bride price and thus subjecting potential male partners to enormous marriage costs and pressures.
Another phenomenon that has received attention is that of early marriages. In many rural areas, common-law marriages are contracted before the legal age of marriage and even before reaching adulthood. This relationship between the two people is recognised by their parents, social opinion and the wider community as a proper marriage, although without the existence of legal documents to certify it because the parties are minors, an aspect that is solved when they are of legal age to wed. Tao (2011) has asserted that this type of early marriage is the result of "intergenerational exploitation" within the family. The financial pressure that the high bride price exerts on men's parents leaves these latter no choice but to marry off their own daughters early in order to obtain the bride price from another family with which to amass the capital for their sons' marriages. This is also a consequence of the marriage market, and the pressure to find a partner and to prepare ahead from a very early age for future spouses, but at an increasingly higher price, as this income affects the purchase of housing, also subject to continuously rising prices.
In contrast to this long-sighted approach to seeking a partner, there are also what H. Wang (2011) has termed "flash marriages", in reference to a type of modern marriage in which the time that elapses between the couple beginning their acquaintance to their marriage is very short. Wang Hui argues that this is the result of modernity and a shift in the traditional village economy, and indicates a change in the nature of rural society, with a gradual weakening of the cultural significance of traditional marriage in rural society.
However, Chen (2012) considers "flash marriages" to be a limited option within the traditional family model and power dynamics in rural areas, despite the weakening of traditional values and the introduction of more modern ones. However, as the rules of family power and structure have been disrupted by the emergence of the economic phenomenon of migrant working families, this new form of marriage has become increasingly common. If anything, it is a consequence of the changes in the economic and family model that occurred following the era of reform and openingup, when "flash marriages" arose as a functional solution.
The other side of the coin is the instability of "flash marriages", which poses an enormous problem and challenge for the rural marriage system and has a major social impact on the economy, society and rural families. There has been a considerable increase in the incidence of infidelity, separation and divorce in rural areas. Researchers such as Feng and Chen (2012) and Lu (2017) have argued that this is due to individual factors, such as the prolonged separation of migrant couples and women's enhanced social status, and structural factors, such as the "female bias" in the act of matrimony, the expansion of marriage circles, the weakening of traditional culture-based support mechanisms for marriage and the dissipation of community in rural society.
Some studies (Tian, 2009) have also focused on rural labour mobility and its impact on family and marriage, generally seen as detrimental to migrant workers' stability. This is corroborated by studies such as that by Shih (2006) examining the correlation between marital stability and type of mobility among rural couples.
In sum, this repertoire of research shows that reform and opening-up precipitated continuous large-scale migration of labour from villages to cities, which in turn sparked an increase in problems in marital relations, mainly because at the beginning, husbands migrated while wives stayed behind in rural areas. Thus, new patterns and problems have emerged in rural marriage, and an increasing number of rural inhabitants experience difficulties in their marital relations.
These new patterns and problems are influenced by structural social changes such as population mobility, gender imbalance and marriage bias, but are also closely related to cultural factors such as the concept of marriage and family values and attitudes, which have changed as the influence of urbanisation has reached rural areas.
However, the research to date still presents two shortcomings: one is that it lacks a holistic perspective, as many studies only describe and analyse a specific marriage phenomenon or problem without capturing and reporting the current state of rural marriage in China as a whole; the other is the absence of studies on the social impact and consequences of new marital situations and problems, especially marital instability and the impact of mobility on those living in rural areas who are dependent on the mobile couple, such as the elderly and children.
In this context, the study reported here forms part of a broader investigation into children left behind in rural areas in contemporary China. The aims of this article are to investigate changes in the family system in rural society, to analyse the new forms of family and kinship relationships that are emerging and to explore the deeper implications of these changes as part of the general phenomenon of the children left behind.

Methods
This research was carried out from the perspective of social anthropology, using the ethnographic qualitative method of participant observation via in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, in accordance with the criteria established by Hammersley and Atkinson (2007). Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in the Shengli municipality in Sichuan Province, southwest China, over 13 months between 2019 and 2020.
Twenty-one study subjects were interviewed; 7 men and 14 women, aged between 25 and 64 and were both members of different families, as well as teachers involved in the education of their children. All prospective subjects were informed of the study objectives and procedures and were given an outline of the questions to be covered in the in-depth interview. They were also informed that participation was entirely voluntary and that absolute confidentiality of responses and data would be maintained. Once they had been given this information, all individuals invited to take part in the study gave their consent to participate. They were told that there were no right or wrong answers, and were asked to respond with the utmost sincerity and honesty. To ensure representativeness and diversity, family responsibilities for the older and younger generations, age, sex, education and occupation were all taken into account when organising the focus groups, as were socio-demographic factors that might affect subjects' motivation, disposition, habitus, agency and adjustment (Bourdieu & Thompson, 1991).
The average duration of the interviews and focus groups was 90 minutes, and the study design allowed for the possibility of conducting several interviews with the same person in order to confirm, contrast or expand on information. Participants were asked to focus on their work, their life experience and trajectory, rewarding or memorable events, their attitudes and any significant life-changing events they had experienced. Special attention was paid to motivation, feelings, acculturation and personal, occupational and family growth.
Coding and analysis of the qualitative data were performed inductively through constant comparison (Merriam, 1998), guided by Byram and Feng's (2006) assessments of cultural experience and focusing on interest in other people's economic and social ways of life, the ability to change perspective and the capacity to cope with living in different environments, such as rural and urban. These criteria facilitated identification of the critical contact points in people's social and cultural transition and made it possible to conduct a thematic narrative analysis (Riessman, 2008). The information obtained was categorised into four main groups: marital relations following changes in the social structure; changes in wedding customs and rituals; the cost of weddings and comparison with others' marriages; and changes in married couples' behaviour and values with respect to older and younger generations.
Regarding the implications and interest of this study is based on the fact that, at this time, the number of social anthropological studies related to this topic is very small, and most of the other research lacks qualitative factual evidence. Therefore, it can be considered that this study will have certain implications in terms of research areas and methodologies. On the other hand, another type of implications from a systemic perspective is that the impact of the post-reform and opening-up Chinese economic system on the situation of marriage and family in rural areas is linked to the issue of the relationship between changes of the social structure and the sensitization of individual conscience, even following the steps of what has been happening in Western countries.

Study results
Marital relations in Shengli following changes in the social structure: The administrative municipality of Shengli is located in the east of Sichuan Province. It consists of more than ten villages engaged in traditional agriculture, where the main crops are rice, maize and several varieties of fruit tree. The municipality presents characteristics typical of other villages in southwest China. The inhabitants have a long history of migration to work in the cities and the municipality has a high rate of labour outflow. In parallel, the proportion of the villagers' income obtained from agriculture has fallen year by year since reform and opening-up began in 1978, leaving the village economy and rural households heavily dependent on income from work in the city.
In addition, massive migration from rural areas has sparked a serious process of "empty nesting" in the villages, whereby most young and middle-aged people abandon the countryside to live and work in the cities, leaving behind the elderly and young school-age children. As a result, marriage in these villages has also changed considerably compared to before reform and opening-up. Fieldwork conducted in the municipality of Shengli revealed significant changes in four key areas.
First, choice of spouse has shifted from passive to autonomous; second, pre-wedding customs have changed from complicated to simple; third, the cost of marriage has risen, an increase brought about by a trend towards comparison with other marriages; and fourth, marriages have become less stable than before, with higher rates of infidelity, separation and divorce.
Thus, the first fundamental change is that there has been a significant shift in the way spouses are chosen. As Fei (2018) has noted in relation to traditional Chinese culture, "marriage is not simply a private matter between the two parties, but also a matter between two families", and such was the case in Shengli before 1980. Arranged marriages were very common and young people had almost no say in the choice of their spouse. At the same time, local production methods, lifestyles and associated communication methods restricted the geographical catchment area for marriage, rendering marriage with people from other counties and provinces, or between individuals from urban and rural areas, extremely rare. Because of this limited geographical scope, many young people in rural areas depended on the intervention of various matchmaking figures to find them a marital partner. Consequently, the pattern of marriages at the time reflected the Chinese saying, "the parents' commands and the matchmakers' words".
This was confirmed by 63-year-old agricultural worker Li in an interview: "My wife and I met through a matchmaker. Actually, there was a girl in my village that I liked, but her family were too well-off for me to have a chance, so my parents decided that our family was not worthy of theirs. My actual wife didn't want a very generous cai li (bride price), only a modest one. This was the case in many families. A pretty dress and some flowers for the wedding, and little else, was enough. Her cai li was very cheap and my family was very poor, so in the end, my grandfather intervened to marry me off to her. At that time, we didn't have the right to choose a spouse, and the family elders said what they said. That's why I was able to accept this marriage for a while, but after I got married it was very painful. My wife and I didn't see much of each other before we got married, so we didn't have many feelings of love for each other when we got married. Most of the people I know were like that".
However, this practice gradually changed after the reform and opening-up era, as economic development and social change meant that local young people gradually gained a certain level of autonomy in choosing their spouse.
In her interview, Zhang, a 28-year-old woman from the village, said that she and her husband had also met through the intervention of others, but each had the right to decide about their marriage. Thus, young people now have a say in the choice of spouse, and matchmaking has simply become another way of getting to know and choosing one's spouse, rather than being the sole criterion for determining marriage, as it used to be.
During fieldwork, it became clear that as more young people were leaving their home village to earn a living in the city, the emergence of new methods of communication such as social media and mobile phones has gradually transformed and accelerated completely free choice in marriage. For young people who migrate to work in cities, choice of spouse has clearly transcended the geographical limitations of their village. The marriage circle of young people in Shengli has gradually started to expand, with more people from other counties and even other provinces coming to Shengli through these new marriages.
The second fundamental change is that pre-wedding customs have changed from being complicated to being simple. According to the "Chronicles of Yingshan County" (1980), where Shengli is located, traditional pre-wedding customs used to be very complicated in this area. Before the creation of the Republic of China, if two young people wanted to get married, they had to start with an introduction arranged by a matchmaker, and according to the customs described, a ritual consisting of at least six steps was required to become a married couple. After the foundation of the Republic of China, these six steps were reduced to three: xia geng, ding qi and wan hun. Xia geng means commitment, which must be acquired through contact with the parents of both parties arranged by a matchmaker. After obtaining preliminary confirmation from the parents, a "master" must be sought to ascertain the birthdays of the two young people according to a given professional calculation. The result of this calculation is then kept in the house shrine for seven days. If there are no mishaps or "accidents" in the house during those seven days, the two young people can become betrothed.
Ding qi is the procedure for setting a wedding date when two young people are preparing to get married. In this step, the man must give the bride a cai li (the bride price), usually consisting of a large amount of food, such as eggs, sugar or other staples. The wedding date is negotiated through a matchmaker. Meanwhile, the bride's family must prepare a jia zhuang (dowry), usually consisting of furniture, bedding, etc., in return and compensation.
Only after completing the first two steps can wan hun, the wedding itself, occur. There used to be many other previous steps involved in preparing for the wedding, such as wedding etiquette, invitation to the banquet, farewell to the parents, etc., which will not be detailed here.
Before reform and opening-up, Shengli residents who wanted to get married needed at least two months to complete this series of pre-wedding rituals. After reform and opening-up, however, wedding circles in the municipality widened, bringing an influx of spouses from other cities and provinces with their own marriage customs. As a result, marriage practices have become much more varied as earlier pre-wedding rituals and customs are viewed as old-fashioned and unsuitable for the new style of marriage. In addition, changes in production methods have meant that most young migrants in cities no longer have time to spend on lengthy pre-wedding rituals. The shift in these concepts and associated symbolic values has in turn affected attitudes towards other related aspects, such as divorce, which has lost its social impact and exceptionality. Simplification of the marriage ritual for young people has led to simplification of its symbolic value, diminishing its previous importance.
However, while the content and length of pre-wedding rituals have been greatly simplified for young people and the intervention of matchmakers is no longer required, the cost of a wedding for Shengli residents has increased significantly. This is the third fundamental change: the cost of a wedding has risen, in line with a trend towards comparison with neighbours' marriages. As a result of changes and modernisation, in the early 1990s young people started to choose their spouses autonomously and their decisions acquired greater weight, although economic circumstances did not favour relaxation of the cai li, and families became less involved in the choice of spouse and in wedding arrangements. However, a new criterion was introduced as a benchmark for young people, namely a comparison with their neighbours. As Yang, a 53-year-old teacher, said, "then, after young people got married on their own terms, they all liked to compare their own marriages with their neighbours' marriages. They cared a lot about whether others lived in bigger houses than theirs, whether others were richer, had more money or better social relations, and so on. And some couples divorced because of poverty at home".
Fieldwork with other villagers yielded narratives indicating that since 1990, marriage in Shengli has been influenced by the standard of living of other couples, and that the relationship between marriage and material prosperity has gradually tightened. With the goal of achieving more than simple subsistence, people began to seek better material conditions, better housing and a better cai li. During this period of greater matrimonial freedom based on love between the parties, material factors naturally exerted little influence on choice of spouse, although people tended to be conscious of marrying partners who come from well-off families with better social relations.
The fourth fundamental change refers to changes in marital behaviours, whereby marriages have become less stable than before, with higher rates of infidelity, separation and divorce.
The marital behaviour of Shengli residents has shifted considerably since the reform and opening-up era, with an increase in marital problems such as infidelity, separation, divorce, rendering rural marriages less stable than before. Fei (2018) has indicated that the relationship between husband and wife in China's traditional rural areas is not only a relationship between a man and a woman, but also a cooperative relationship with joint responsibility for children. The marriage contract simultaneously encompasses two closely connected social relationships: the spousal relationship and the parent-child relationship. These two relationships are not mutually independent. The relationship between husband and wife is based on the relationship between parents and children, and the former is a necessary condition to create a stable triangular relationship.
Prior to 1978, before reform and opening-up, marriages in Shengli were generally arranged and rarely satisfied the couple's personal goals and feelings. According to Fei (2018), arranged marriage was based on family values and responsibilities under the Chinese rural fertility system, whereby the purpose of marriage was to "transmit the lineage" and "rear children with the support of both partners' parents", in which parents were defined by their social role.
Since the late 1980s, the migrant economy has continued to expand and many young people from the countryside have moved to cities to work. The impact of reform and opening-up on the urbanisation of rural areas in China has provided the ideological and economic conditions necessary to gradually change the way of life of those who remain. Likewise, in parallel with the process of urbanisation, attitudes towards marriage among young people who have moved to live and work in cities have also shifted, to focus on aspects such as love or individuality.
This change was clearly evident throughout the fieldwork. For instance, it was expressed by Mrs. Li, a 77-year-old woman living in Shengli, who reported that before the 1980s, the purpose of marriage was far removed from the experience of personal feelings; according to traditional values, married couples were only required to cooperate in order to fulfil their function within the family division of labour, i.e. to rear children. Even if the relationship broke down for some reason, perhaps because of one partner's personal feelings, this function could not be cast aside. This meant that divorce was a very shameful act for both spouses, but especially for women. Thus, even if a woman was dissatisfied with her marriage, she could not apply for divorce because she would be condemned for life by "public opinion" and forever lose her social status in the village. However, with the impact of urbanisation and modernisation, rural women's attitudes towards marriage have changed as they have become aware of equality between men and women and have gradually developed a growing consciousness of subjectivity and an independent personality. Thus, in contrast to the earlier marital goal of "rearing children together", women seek equality and personal happiness in marriage. One consequence of this is that they are also increasingly likely to seek divorce when their marriages are unsatisfactory. Fieldwork revealed a steady annual increase in the divorce rate in Shengli since the municipality registered its first divorce in 1983. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs' Statistical Yearbook, in 1978 there were 285,000 divorced couples in China, with a divorce rate of 0.18; in 1988, there were 655,000 divorced couples, with an annual divorce rate of 0.6; in 1998, there were 1,192,000 divorced couples, with a divorce rate of 0.96; in 2008, there were 2,269 divorced couples, with a divorce rate of 1.71; and in 2016, there were 415,8 divorced couples, with a divorce rate of 3.01. The annual increase in the divorce rate is evident (China Civil Affairs Statistical Yearbook, Ministry Civil Affairs RPC, 2017). This was true both for arranged marriages that took place before the 1980s and for those that have taken place since based on other, more personal criteria.
Changes in the economic situation, migration to cities and new work opportunities have all had an impact on married couples' relationships within the household. If the husband lives in the city and the wife stays in the village to look after the children, take care of the parents and work in the fields, the possibilities for living together or even seeing one another are scarce. However, the same is often true when both have jobs in the city, because they are frequently employed in very different jobs with different working hours and demands (women tend to be employed in occupations requiring dexterity, patience and little physical strength, whereas men tend to seek work that requires considerable physical effort, such as construction), and this tends to keep them apart even though both live in the same city.
Thus, neither case offers married couples many opportunities to meet and communicate. In the case of young people from the countryside, over time, long separations affect the stability of the marital relationship.
Thus, there are two factors involved in the increase in separation and divorce. One is the lack of emotional, spiritual and personal communication between spouses: obliged to live apart, spouses communicate instead with nearby friends and colleagues, which then becomes a hidden danger and a reason for the couple's divorce. The other is that spouses living apart for long periods of time are exposed to different environments and experiences, creating and exacerbating cultural differences in terms of aspects such as knowledge, skills, earning capacity, income level, lifestyle, attitudes towards life and ideology. Both factors underlie marital crises such as infidelity, separation and divorce.

Discussion
A crucial aspect of the new situation is married couples' failure to provide support for their children and elderly family members in Shengli from the perspective of the family power structure. In a study of the transformation of private life in a Chinese village in the second half of the 20th century based on fieldwork in Xia Jia village, Heilongjiang, Yan (2006) analysed the relationship between agricultural workers' increased awareness of rights and the power structure in rural households. Yan Yunxiang argued that the increase in agricultural workers' awareness of rights began with the free expression of love, which led directly to an increase in young people's autonomy in marriage. This brought about a number of changes in choice of spouse, emotional expression and even in attitudes towards marriage and young people's sexual behaviour. Changes in love and marriage eventually led to a shift in the family power structure.
In research conducted in Lixu in northern Anhui , Chen Bofeng (2007) found that changes in the family power structure occurred in two areas: the marital relationship and the intergenerational relationship. Thus, changes in the marital relationship in Shengli not only affected married couples, as the subjects directly involved in the marriage, but also older people and children, i.e. intergenerational relationships. For example, in Shengli today, it is a social expectation and even an obligation for parents to provide their sons with cai li when they get married, and considerable support when they buy the marital home. Generally speaking, the cai li in Shengli ranges from 80,000 to 100,000 yuan (10,000 to 15,000 euros), while the deposit for a mortgage to buy a house at the time of marriage is between 200,000 to 500,000 yuan (30,000 to 75,000 euros). In Shengli, where the per capita disposable income is only 15,000 yuan (less than 2,000 euros), it is absolutely impossible for young people of marriageable age to pay such sums from their wages and savings. Therefore, they must seek help from their parents when they marry, and this puts tremendous financial pressure on the elderly. If financial support is not provided, the relationship between parents and their children is irretrievably damaged, and the parents are "condemned by public opinion" in the young people's community. Fieldwork observations illustrate the extent to which a parent-child relationship can be harmed as a result: Mr. Huang, a villager in Shengli, refused to provide his son with the deposit for a mortgage to buy a house in the city, and instead bought himself a flat in the centre of town, where he could live more comfortably. Over time, Huang's son lost competitiveness in the search for a wife and remains single to this day. As a result, the relationship between Mr. Huang and his son has cooled to the point that they do not speak to one other even when they meet in the street.
In a study of family ties, Chen (2014) raised the issue of "intergenerational exploitation" in an analysis of the rapidly rising price of cai li in rural areas. That is, as young people's "correct conscience" or attitude gradually grew stronger, patriarchy in traditional rural society began to decline. The patriarchal power structure in the form of a large extended family described by Fei (2018) is gradually disintegrating, and the nuclear family form is instead becoming increasingly predominant. In traditional rural society, when a nuclear family separated from the extended family in order to pursue individual development, the property the former accumulated was initially obtained from whatever corresponded to separation from the extended family. As young people have become increasingly aware of individual rights and autonomy, their desire to separate from the original family has gradually consolidated and prevailed. As part of this "family separation" (分家), a Chinese custom that refers to the process whereby male heirs of a family divide the original family into several smaller family units after they reach adulthood and marry, young people ask their parents for a large amount of assets and housing when they get married, in the form of cai li. Thus, marriage has become a legitimate reason for children to draw on their parents' assets, with the result that cai li has become a kind of anticipated inheritance.
Since most elderly people in rural areas have a very low income, once they have paid for their children's wedding and deposit to buy a house in the city, they will have practically exhausted their life savings and are relegated to living in traditional houses in the villages, in poor living conditions.
With the decline of traditional patriarchy, the influence of "filial piety", one of the main ideas of Confucian thought that refers to the respect, love, kindness and support that children should show their parents and family elders. This includes protecting them from shame and is considered one of the moral virtues and other values that were once dominant in rural areas is gradually fading. In Shengli, it is common for the elderly to be abandoned after losing their capacity to work. The fieldwork revealed that there are often several siblings who argue over the unequal share of property obtained after "family separation" and shirk their responsibility to support their parents. As payment of cai li consumes the greater part of a family's life savings, most of the elderly abandoned by their children have hardly any resources left to support themselves. This is associated with another phenomenon observed in fieldwork in Shengli: the sharp increase in the suicide rate among rural elderly people in China in recent years. The average annual suicide rate among the elderly was 60.85 per 100,000 in the 1980s, rising to 19,270 per 100,000 in the 1990s-slightly more than three times the rate in the 1980s-and to 50,710 per 100,000 after 2000, a 26-fold increase over the 1990s and about 83 times more than in the 1980s (Liu, 2013). Although the elderly in Shengli still retain a limited capacity to work, they have begun to "please their children in advance" in exchange for their support, helping their children working in the city by taking care of the grandchildren left behind in rural areas. When young people go to work in the city, they show little concern for the children they leave behind in the countryside, which has contributed to the proliferation of a growing number of "left-behind children" in rural areas.
Fieldwork in rural schools showed that these rural children experience various difficulties in their education and socialisation. In interviews with teachers, most respondents reported that marital instability in rural areas today was the cause of various difficulties in the family environment necessary to the survival of rural children.
For example, in some classes in Shengli primary school, children from single-parent families account for half of the class. According to Mr. Li, a teacher at the school, the biggest change he has witnessed in recent years-and especially in the last ten-is an increase in separations and divorces. In the past, couples actively fought for custody of their children after separation. Nowadays, however, this is not the case because the parents are living and working in the city, busy with another way of life and meeting other people with whom to form a couple and establish a new life; consequently, the children are viewed as an inconvenience and are left behind in the care of the grandparents. These children do not receive the emotional, educational or material support that their peers may.
With the gradual disintegration of traditional forms of marriage, the ways of establishing kinship relationships in Shengli have changed. The "triangular relationship" whereby family life revolved around the married couple and their children no longer exists, and the purpose of marriage is no longer to establish a social parent, nor "joint parenthood". Marriage has become a means to pursue personal happiness. As a result, it is no longer subject to intervention from external social forces or to traditional marriage and family values. In the same way, traditional rural public pressure or opinion has lost its power to influence spouses' individual decisions and behaviour. The ethical concept of ensuring the smooth functioning of traditional rural society is gradually collapsing, and this breakdown has led to a situation where young people "do not take responsibility for their families or their circle", which has had a negative impact on children, the elderly and intergenerational relations. In this context of the gradual loss of the value of traditional marriage in today's rural society, a new value of marriage has emerged, structured by marital instability, separation, divorce and remarriage.
With regard to the impact on intergenerational relations, the changes described above have had other consequences for family relations in Shengli. Where once the purpose of traditional marriage was "joint parenthood", as a means to organise production and reproduction within the family, now, with the pursuit of personal satisfaction and feelings, child rearing has become incidental to marriage. It is now common for children to be abandoned after divorce, or for spouses to abandon a marriage after the children are born, leaving them in the care of others, usually grandparents. Until a new value system for marriage is articulated, parents' responsibility for their children in rural areas has become a question of morality.
Young people's increased autonomy in marriage has implied an improvement in their status and rights. This in turn has transformed the power structure within the family, leading to a decline in the status of the elderly and a deterioration in their living conditions. The younger generations began by emphasising the social responsibility of parents towards their children, demanding a high cai li and imposing other forms of "intergenerational exploitation" on their elders. Traditional intergenerational relationships were utilitarian and governed by the "principle of reciprocity": parents provided unconditional support to their children while they still had the power to do so, in exchange for their children's care when they became elderly and unable to help with work. Thus, at present, traditional family values have lost their cultural functions and traditional ethical and moral values are gradually collapsing and disappearing. Traditional society's moral concept of "respecting elders and caring for children" has lost its authority in rural areas as a result of a shift in the social structure.
Lastly, with regard to the importance of strongly held traditional values for social order, it is undeniable that such values remain deeply rooted in rural Chinese society despite all the changes described above. And this happens because the functioning of traditional Chinese rural society was not based on laws imposed from the outside, but on rituals learned from childhood. Originally, rituals were imposed on children, and since minors did not yet have their own will, they could be imposed on minors. Rituals were internalized and society functioned smoothly as long as people kept to themselves. In a closed society, the older person always has more experience than he does. For this reason, the elders, the elderly, assumed the role of paternal social discipline. The ritual order was governed by the elders, and in traditional rural society they used to have unquestioned authority. Due to social change and modernization, the decline in the influence of the elders on the marriage relationships of the young after the reform and opening-up is also a reflection of the loss of ritual order. Certain features of the generally self-sufficient mode of production, a relatively closed way of life and the proximity of people in need of cooperation, mutual help and care all continue to exist. Previously, agricultural life determined the immobility of people and the isolation of villages. People could be born and die in the same village without ever having left it, without ever having crossed the mountains to go to the city or elsewhere. In rural society, everyone knew each other and there were no strangers. Such rules were learnt through socialisation. On this basis, the rural ethical relationship, the moral lifestyle, the basic understanding of fairness and justice and the relationship between people and the environment was constructed as unique.
With reform and opening-up, cultural clashes increased and traditional ethical and moral values no longer satisfied the new needs of rural society and were gradually replaced by concepts associated with the rule of law. However, this is perceived through a particular lens, for in the minds of these villagers what predominates is a way of life characterised by "disorderly freedom", or freedom with few constraints, where obligations to the family have dwindled. These traditional values of marriage and family in rural society are empirical identifications reached through consensus and the continuous accumulation of trial and error, yielding evidence of their utility in maintaining moral order. In terms of ensuring support for the elderly in villages witnessing a period of social transition, it will be necessary to respect and instil traditional rural family values widely recognised by society, extract their positive elements and combine these with the concept of the rule of law introduced by modernisation and the "individualism" adopted by young people. This will yield a rational and justifiable basis for the formation of a new morality and rural values concerning marriage and family. In terms of children's education, various contradictions and conflicts have emerged during the transition period: earlier patriarchal authority was most evident in the relationship between parents and children, and teachers and students, evidencing a complex situation of pluralism and change. In the absence of parents, it will be necessary to vigorously build and develop rural school education, to compensate for the lack of family education with school education, and to build a benign interaction between traditional values and the rule of law at the level of institutionalised and formal education.
It clearly follows that the reference to "disorderly freedom" is based on the "ritual order" mentioned in this research. The "order" here is the "ritual order." The phenomenon of rural marriage has changed since then in terms of rituals, customs and moral feelings and value options of internal ethical judgments and moral psychology of peasants, in contrast to the situation before the reform and opening-up. These changes can be attributed to changes in the "ritual order." The concept of "disorderly liberty" has allowed us to contrast the situation with marriage under the "ritual order" of the pre-reformation period.

Conclusions
This article has shown that the processes of modernisation, urbanisation and industrialisation that occurred in China as a consequence of the reform and opening-up period between 1978 and 1991 generated unprecedented change in Chinese society. Such change was most pronounced in rural areas where there was a shift in the cultural order, which had been governed by the "order of ritual", and which had guided the functioning of traditional rural society for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This change has also affected the system and structure of family and marriage among agricultural workers.
After the reform and opening-up era, China entered a period of social transformation. Rapid economic and social development accelerated the process of industrialisation and the pace of urbanisation. The rural population migrated to the cities. These external social and institutional changes have had a profound impact on marriage and the family. At internal level, these changes gradually awakened young people's awareness of individual versus collective rights and personality.
Furthermore, these changes in the marital relationship in Shengli have not only affected married couples, as the subjects directly involved in the marriage, but also the elderly and children, i.e. intergenerational relations. As a result, the influence of traditional patriarchy, filial piety and other ethical concepts that once prevailed in rural China is gradually fading.
The analysis that has been carried out on marriage in rural China from the perspective of the changing social order in the countryside and the concept of "disorderly freedom" provides new ideas and perspectives for the study of new rural social phenomena that are appearing at the present time. In this sense, new research can be developed and try to suggest ways to improve the rural social environment.

Funding
The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Disclosure statement
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