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The basic social group in the village is the Chia, an expanded family. The members of this group possess a common property, keep a common budget and co-operate together to pursue a common living through division of labour. It is also in this group that children are born and brought up and material objects, knowledge, and social positions are inherited.
Larger social groups in the village are formed by combining a number of Chia for various purposes and along kinship or territorial principles. Associations based on individual membership are few and secondary. The following four chapters will provide a social background of the village for our study of its economic life.
The term family, as commonly used by anthropologists, refers to the procreative unit consisting of parents and immature children. A Chia is essentially a family but it sometimes includes children even when they have grown and married. Sometimes it also includes some relatively remote patrilineal kinsmen. We can call it an expanded family, because it is an expansion of a family due to the reluctance of the sons to separate from their parents after marriage.
Chia emphasizes the inter-dependence of parents and children. It gives security to the old who are no longer able to work. It tends to ensure social continuity and co-operation among the members.
In a given economy, the indefinite expansion of the group may not be advantageous. In the process of expansion social friction among the members increases. As we shall see presently, the Chia will divide whenever the division proves to be advisable. The size of the group is, therefore, maintained by the balance of the opposing forces working for integration on the one hand and for disintegration on the other. We shall analyse these two forces in the following sections.
Some quantitative data about the size of the Chia in the village may be helpful for our further discussion. In spite of the fact that most studies of China have stressed the importance of the large-family system in China, curiously enough, in this village a large-family is rare. In less than ten per cent. of the total number of Chia do we find more than one married couple.