What role did family play in late imperial China?

After watching this week’s lectures and finishing this week’s readings, please focus this week’s post on the questions below.

Remember: the idea here is to think carefully about the questions, but you don’t need to worry as much about producing a perfectly polished text. Your post should be a few sentences for each question and please write this post on your own before you look at your classmates’ posts. I want you to first think independently.

1.     What’s one idea about this week’s lectures and readings that you found most intriguing or surprising? Why is it intriguing or surprising to you?

2.     Family relationships were extremely important in China. What role did family play in late imperial China? How does Eastman talk about the concept of “individual” in China?

3.     China had long been an agricultural society, at the same time, China had a vibrant market system. What are “the methods of Peasant Agriculture” described by Eastman? What is the “Periodic Marketing System” in China?

Here are the two links for the two lectures this week

Lecture 1 Link: https://gauchocast.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=fc8dc6e5-b766-42ea-820d-ac4b0179d31d

Lecture 2 Link: https://gauchocast.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=b21bffcd-2421-4be3-b3c1-ac4b0179d296