返復、延遲與區隔： 福建惠東「不住家」婚後雙居、交換與社會再生產

The practice of duolocal post-marital residence means that a married woman will stay with her natal family until her first child is born. Such a custom is relatively unusual for human societies, but it was common among minority peoples in Southwest China and in some rural areas in Southeast China until the late twentieth century. In the early 1990s, there was a research team which aimed to explore this custom in eastern Hui'an. My mentor, Professor Li Yih-yuan was one of the pioneer scholars who was deeply engaged in this research. Inspired by their academic commitment, I started my ethnographic journey on study the anthropology of kinship, marriage and duolocal post-marital residence two decades ago, and have continued till now. This paper is the result of my field work study in rural Hui'an in the summer of 1997. From the description and interpretation of the cultural contents of gift exchange and ritual practice during the wedding ceremony, this paper proposes that there are two layers of social relations: one is the patrilineal relations and the other is the affinal relations. The people maintain and continue these two sets of relations for the value of social reproduction. In this paper, I focus on providing ethnographic data about the details of the gift exchange, wedding ceremony and the ritual practices which present the ethos of duolocal post-marital residence through the cultural foci of "return", "delay" and "boundary making."