Text, practice, and life narrative: bridal lamentation and a daughter’s filial piety in changing rural China

This article explores, through the lenses of text, practice, and life narrative, how Chinese peasant women as daughters manage patrilocality and carry out—or fail to carry out—filial piety toward their parents. Based on field research in a locale in southern China conducted since 1992, this article focuses on four women’s life histories and juxtaposes how these women articulated filial piety as daughter-brides in wedding lamentations and how they practiced it after marriage. This research illuminates how peasant women perceive daughterly filial piety as a complex entailing not only emotional attachment but also peace of mind, tolerance, and material support. For these women, concerns about filial piety emerge as a focus of their maneuvering and negotiating among the strategic possibilities in their lives—their social responsibilities, personal conditions, the broader social–political milieu, and above all, the male support that is often ignored but indispensable in these women’s stories.