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AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#1: Feb 12th 2011 at 5:45:20 AM

How are orphans treated, culturally, by Han Chinese? How are they treated by Tibetans? Also, if anyone knows, how do the Nakhi treat orphans?

My protagonist is an orphan who most people assume is the bastard son of travelling merchants, growing up in the Fantasy Counterpart Culture's equivalent to Lijiang. (For plot-related reasons, there is both a Han-equivalent community and a Tibetan-equivalent community in the Lijiang-equivalent.)

I know Han Chinese culture places a very strong importance on worshipping one's ancestors, so how would someone who has no ancestors to worship be treated? I'd also like to know how the Tibetan-equivalents and the local Nakhi-equivalents would treat him.

breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#2: Feb 12th 2011 at 11:23:55 AM

I'm not entirely sure but I get the sense that being an orphan itself isn't the issue. There's lots of adoption stories but those are highly idealised. In those stories, a kid becomes an orphan, gets adopted by a good family and then becomes successful in life.

AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#3: Feb 12th 2011 at 8:51:32 PM

The protagonist does not get adopted. For a while, at least.

kurushio Happy Human from Berlin, Germany Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: I've got a total eclipse of the heart
Happy Human
#4: Feb 13th 2011 at 6:25:54 AM

Re: The Han situation: I did a quick search for a few articles on the historical situation in China, but I don't have time to fire up my JSTOR access, so I can only provide a few pointers.

- You could do worse than being an orphan in historical China. rén - humanity - is on of the five core duties/virtues of confucianism, and that includes charity. I didn't find anything on earlier times (well, I did, but I didn't have the two days I'd need to translate it), but at least in Ming and Qing times, there were quite a few semi-private orphanages. It was considered something of a duty for a civil servant to provide charity. (Semi-private because what you'd call mandarins didn't make a difference between budget and income.)

- If you're a male oprhan and you know your lineage, you could (and would in most cases) be adopted into another family. Nearly the same if you're female. Not knowing your lineage gets you more trouble, because you cannot simply be adopted - no one ones your social position, and though you could 'upgrade' your social status by adoption, downgrading it would be something of a, well, faux pas against the order of things.

- Pre-modern ophanages provided a certain level of education, even for orphans without lineage, and it was not uncommon for those to reach lower bureacratic ranks - they were allowed to take the necessary exams. (And frankly, it was expected of them to return the favours they recieved.)

- If you're a female orphan without any known lineage, good luck. Although they were more often orphaned than killed by poor parents, because, theoretically, the state (as far as you can seperate the state and its citizens in Confucianism) has a duty to care for them - see above -, there was a certain tendency to ignore the fact that they were still alive when found.

- Always consider that in theory, a) children are a valuable and cherished commodity in China and b) Confucianism is stone-cold pragmatic in a lot of ways. You don't just throw away valuable commodities.

AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#5: Feb 13th 2011 at 4:09:45 PM

Good answers, thankyou very much. I have more questions though:

  • The Lijiang-equivalent is on the edge of Jiangshan (the China-equivalent), although still within its borders. Would there be such private orphanages around, so far from the centre?
  • The protagonist, Rinzen, does not know his ancestry, neither mother nor father. I guess it would be plausible for one of the local families to adopt him, though. As I originally planned it, he was going to be educated by the ghost of a Jiangshanese bureaucrat he runs into.

kurushio Happy Human from Berlin, Germany Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: I've got a total eclipse of the heart
Happy Human
#6: Feb 13th 2011 at 11:51:23 PM

No worries, it's what I do for a living. smile (You got me confused there for a moment, because Jiangshan is an actual city in southern Zhejiang.)

For the question - it depends on the equivalent timeframe. If you're setting it in Ming- or Qing-like times, yes, there'd be orphanages. Some higher-level bureaucrat would take care of it. Not as many, but since Yunnan (real world Lijiangs' province) is something of a cultural melting pot, spreading Confucianism und showcasing its superiority would be even more important to the local officials.

Yunnan culture is a little different on all levels. Expect the political climate to be heavily centered around trade and military. The earlier it is, the more it feels like, well, the old Western American frontier or early colonial settlements in Australia. (Or Firefly.) It's also more tolerant - lots of culture diversity and influences from other countries. Officials won't be as 'by the book' as in central China. Oh, and women have a more emancipated live there, it's not unusual for them to be the working part of the family while husbands stay at home.

All in all, you'd have both options. You could even combine them to 'orphanage first, adoption later'.

Cheers, kurushio

edited 13th Feb '11 11:53:03 PM by kurushio

AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#7: Feb 14th 2011 at 12:13:33 AM

Your job? Are you a China historian?

The era is mostly based on the Tang Dynasty, although not exactly so (there are social differences and such). At this point Sheysaca (the Tibet analogue) is fairly strong, but it has not had border clashes with Jiangshan in a while.

I think I can justify Rinzen not directly getting a parent by having him be in an orphanage for a while. How long would such an orphanage keep children, though? The story proper starts when he's of age, so about 19 or 20.

kurushio Happy Human from Berlin, Germany Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: I've got a total eclipse of the heart
Happy Human
#8: Feb 14th 2011 at 1:55:58 AM

A sinologist, actually. My primary focus is modern China, though.

History of education isn't my strong point, and a difficult field because most sources are only concerned with the imperial examination system. Tang is a good setting, though, because it saw the rise of shuyuan, private academies. Couldn't find anything about about the ages at which you went to school, I'd have to look into individual biographies for that. An educated guess would be 16-18 for a higher level, another would be that he'd have to leave the orphanage at about 13-14 years and start an apprenticeship or further studies. Won't bet my life on it, though.

The following two might be worth a read for you, depending on which pages google decides to display:

Education in Traditional China: A History (Tang starts at page 70): http://books.google.com/books?id=EvLACfv6egkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&cd=1&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false

Daily Life in Traditional China: the Tang Dynasty: http://books.google.de/books?hl=de&lr=&id=emPuDu97qbkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=china+education+history+tang+dynasty&ots=HDmJ9Whg7w&sig=ghUGm5tRa-LJGX04W3zL8AjvYD0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Cheers, kurushio

edited 14th Feb '11 1:57:53 AM by kurushio

breadloaf Since: Oct, 2010
#9: Feb 14th 2011 at 11:27:00 AM

These have got to be the most helpful posts I've ever seen in this board.

AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#10: Feb 25th 2011 at 6:11:43 AM

Bump! I have a further question: how would Tang-dynasty era Chinese people treat someone who was missing an arm?

kurushio Happy Human from Berlin, Germany Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: I've got a total eclipse of the heart
Happy Human
#11: Feb 25th 2011 at 2:20:31 PM

A dozen different puns aside, I'm not sure. From the top of my head I'd say reasonably well, but I might be wrong about that. I'll get back to you tomorrow, I'm just enjoying an evening off and ain't exactly sober right now. :)

kurushio Happy Human from Berlin, Germany Since: Sep, 2009 Relationship Status: I've got a total eclipse of the heart
Happy Human
#12: Feb 26th 2011 at 4:41:50 AM

Okay, I'm back. (You make me read interesting stuff.) I got nothing on the Tang dynasty in particular, but there seem to be no major differences across the history of Imperial China.

In short, it isn't that big of a deal. Compared to Western societies, quite a lot of semi-mystical figures and historical people in China were actually disabled. From Ming on, you might be barred from military service, but not from civil service. Care for disabled people is provided for both by Confucian virtues and Daoist... well, whatever they have. There is a (Confucian) tendency to judge them by their abilities and achievements. (That's why you'll find so many blind people in the physiotherapist/massage business all across Chinese history, even today.)

Generally speaking, a one-armed person would be allowed to do anything that doesn't require two arms. Expect positive discrimination rather than negative.

Keep in mind that this does not necessarily applies to the really poor, for example peasant farmer households. In their case, children with birth defects would probably be marooned or sometimes even killed.

Cheers, kurushio

Further reading (The main topic is the PRC, but it comes with some historical and philosophical background): Disability, culture, and education: a study of the empowerment of the physically disabled in the People's Republic of China http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/6929/2/uhm_med_513_r.pdf

AirofMystery Since: Jan, 2001
#13: Feb 26th 2011 at 5:40:23 AM

Cheers! That's great info, thanks again very much. The character is not a peasant, so she'll probably be fine.

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