Between Men: Uxorilocal Marriage Reconsidered in Chinese Western Old Well

1 Introduction

The choice to matriname or patriname has erupted as one of the most controversial issues of contemporary Chinese cyber-feminist issues since Papi Jiang, a female empowerment vlogger with 31 million followers, posted about giving her son her husband’s surname on Weibo in 2020. Even though China’s 1980 marriage law allows parents to surname their child after either parent, having a child surnamed after the mother remains scarce. On the one hand, matronymic naming practices are deemed progressively a feminist yet socially stigmatized stance. On the other, it recalls one of the lasting traditions of patriarchal uxorilocal marriage, which refers to a marital practice in which a man is to be married into a woman’s household to help continue her family line, therefore abandoning his own either out of institutional or strategical needs (Wu and Guo 2010, 16). In the case of uxorilocal marriage, a male heir inherits the surname of the woman’s household. With a keen awareness of the ongoing controversy over specific marital practices entangled with rising contemporary feminist sentiments, this article examines the highly relevant film classic Old Well (1987), which pinpoints an unconventional patriarchal marital practice against the backdrop of gender reconfiguration and national transition.

The Chinese Film Directors Committee presented the Academy Honorary Award to 66-year-old Wu Tianming 吳天明 (1939–2014), a leading director of the fourth generation, with unanimous consensus at its inaugural meeting in 2005.^[1] Even decades after its first appearance, Old Well, which has remained Wu’s most prominent film and has been hailed as a pioneering film that brought Chinese cinema to the global stage, still provides an astute note on issues including but not limited to heterosexual marriage and social production. Old Well portrays Laojing (literally meaning “old well”) village’s generational pursuit of water in the desolate and impoverished inner remote areas of China, where dozens of people having died searching for water. Digging a working well remains a decisive collective task for the village’s surviving and thriving in which the Sun family (“Sun” 孫 literally meaning “grandsons”) has been critical. The family includes two young brothers: the intellectual youth Wangquan 旺泉 (literally meaning a “gushing spring”) and the decadent Wangcai 旺才 (“an outstanding talent”). These naming choices indicate that Wangquan, the one in the Sun family who signifies spring water, seems to be the destined person to eventually dig a working well, while Wangcai’s name functions as an ironic warning to the younger generation who heed the call of decadence (the film exposes Wangcai’s stealing and vulgarity) as he dies in the end. The lexicon of a “dry well” and the reference to gushing spring water in Wangquan’s name offers the literal signification of well-digging in the Laojing village and implies the signification of an entrapped heterosexual relationship revived, especially as “dry well” is a common metaphor referring to a sexually inactive woman, often a widow (Meng 2009). The Tang poet Meng Jiao 孟郊 (751–814), for instance, declares that a virtuous wife should be valued for her loyalty even to a dead husband, as her sexual yearnings will forever be at peace, just like the water in a well, pure and untouched 波瀾誓不起, 妾心古井水 (bolan shi bu qi, qie xin jing zhong shui, 2009, 53). Other idioms such as “gu jing wu bo” 古井無波, which means “an ancient well that does not have waves,” symbolize a woman who is sexually inactive and loyal. In contrast, “gu jing qing bo” 古井清波, refers to a new phase when an ancient well begins to produce waves and a sexually inactive woman starts to become active. The name “Wangquan,” therefore, seems to indicate how he will be the key to rekindling a decayed heterosexual relationship, as he is the one who brings prosperity to the spring. The linguistic setting of this film therefore, points to this film’s dual theme: the ultimate affirmation of historical labor (generational well-digging) and the reconfiguration of heterosexual relationships.

The primary heterosexual relationship of the film exists mainly in the love triangle between Wangquan, Xifeng and Qiaoying. Qiaoying is Wangquan’s girlfriend of free love and has been to the city like Wangquan whereas Xifeng, symbolizing domestic stability, with whom the Sun family arranges to pay a “groom-price” to marry Wangquan so that Wangcai may have enough money for a wife (Chow 1995, 69). In the end, Wangquan successfully leads the village to dig a working well with the knowledge learned in the county and lives harmoniously with Xifeng while Qiaoying leaves the village for good. This heterosexual relationship distinguishes from most Chinese films due to its representation of a rare uxorilocal marriage which lies at the very foundation of the plot while tying the issue of patriarchal reproduction with social production. Nevertheless, the issue of heterosexual marriage in the form of ruzhui in the film remains understudied while existing scholarship (Chow 1995; Kuoshu 2002; Wang 1988) focuses on the production of the Chinese Western amidst a cultural fever, intersections between national allegory and gender relations, and the problem of historical temporality.

Produced in 1987, Old Well comes to exist during a turbulent transitional moment during the post-revolutionary era when a cultural fever 文化熱 (literally wenhua re), “developed as a counter-discourse to the earlier ideological emphasis on class struggle,” and “various explorations of broader cultural issues” dominated China’s field of cultural production with the hope of “better understanding China’s past, present, and future” (Kuoshu 214). This cultural fever marked the emergence of “a new discursive institution relatively ‘autonomous’ to state-administered discourse, despite its prematureness and precariousness, between the crushing forces of existing symbolic orders” (Zhang 1997, 72). Shooting films was Wu and his peers’ way of exerting this “autonomy” to join the formation of alternative discourses. Along with this cultural fever, the “root-searching” 尋根 (xungen) movement was a prominent trend among Chinese artists and writers as they ruminated over a national history of turmoil, readdressed the embodiment of present production relations, and pondered futuristic nationwide envisions. The genre of the Chinese Western rose to prominence at a time when filmmakers imagined the vast western landscape of rurality and isolation as a synonym for being “unaffected” by high socialism or Western capitalism, hence, it may function as a kind of “real root” to Chinese civilization and contain possibilities towards an alternative future (Chow 1995, 43). Therefore, the Chinese Western at its very inception concerns a highly self-reflectional national allegory through natural scenery, unlike the American Western’s utilization of the frontier to appeal to “the immigrants’ evolutionist expansion of social and political organization over inanimate nature” (Yau 1991, 79). The scenery of the “harsh natural environment of a mountain village” in Old Well functions at the level of national allegory as it “attests to what people would, could, or have to do [t]here” (Kuoshu 215). Chen Kaige, the director of one of the most enchanting Chinese Westerns, Yellow Earth 黃土地 (1984), confirms this search through nature’s visuality: “…we, recent graduates of the Beijing Film Academy, have chosen this yellow earth—poor, barren, and yet full of possibilities—to begin our artistic careers” (Ma 1988, 173). Aligning with this root-searching trend, a return to realism to mirror national issues was a predominant approach to embody cultural agents’ urge for societal commentary.^[2] Actively engaging with realism, Wu’s globally recognized Old Well, set in a remote village in the western region of China, presents itself as a filmic search for indigenous “roots” that may point a way forward for China’s social development. This setting stands as the filmmaker’s cultural response to dealing with the country’s historical baggage during the high socialist era and looks to a promising future distinct from neither a copy of western capitalism nor a repeat of Maoism through the genre of Chinese Western.

The utilization of nature as one significant trope in Chinese Westerns to mirror national allegory in Old Well specifies on the motif of “conquering nature” as the main plot of Old Well centers on villagers’ generational struggle to locate water on the barren land and their eventual success. Eugene Wang reads this portrayal of nature as entailing a double perspective that both celebrates heroism when confronted with historical obstacles as well as the folly of heroism through occasional unsteady takes of the camera (1988, 78). This suspicion underlying the “coronation” of the Laojing villagers’ heroic acts, in a way, refutes Rey Chow’s exegesis of the film as a firm note on the historical continuity of the nation through technological progression (modern knowledge) and banishment of unstable factors (a liberal woman). In a worldview of a patriarchal linear temporality eminent in Chinese Westerns, women and nature are popular twin themes utilized to revolve around male-centered history.^[3] The dual theme of nature and women correlates to Rey Chow’s theorization of “primitive passions” as an analytical concept for cultural productions that emerge at moments of social and cultural crisis (1995). The term “primitive passions” refers to an urge during cultural productions to primitivize materials that can be seen as “Other”/“Obstacle” so that strategically these primitivized materials serve as useful components for the making of new cultural products that point to “salvation” or “progress” at moments of transition. The objects to be primitivized typically relate to “the animal, the savage, the countryside, the indigenous, the people, and so forth, which stand in for that ‘original’ something that has been lost” (Chow 22). Old Well corresponds to post-Mao society’s revitalized passion for modernity through evoking two aspects of primitivism: nature and women. In the discourse of modernized progress, the dry well and the liberal woman (Qiaoying) become the enemies of progress, and the conquering of the former via technology and the banishment of the latter via marrying the stable woman (Xifeng) are employed as pillars supporting the progression of history (Chow 44).

Above analyses of Old Well concerning the making of Chinese Westerns, labor and gender relations, and heroism all engage with grand national issues while the basic inquiry into the woman question in relation to heterosexual relationships and marital practice remains inadequately explored. This oversight underscores a persistent historical trend in which women are frequently welcomed as signifiers but not as themselves in popular discourse and cultural representations. Specifically, the film perceptibly comments on the 1980s’ debate of two forms of womanhood through the contrast of Qiaoying and Xifeng as the traditional womanhood of “virtuous wife and good mother” 賢妻良母 (xian qi liang mu) was harshly criticized due to the claim that traditional marriage did not truly allow for women’s formation of a gendered self (Barlow 2004, 261). In addition, this film’s designation of a uxorilocal marriage serves as a commentary on the marriage crisis of the 1980s in China when traditional gender roles were challenged. Traditional marriage functions to enact heterosexual relations, designate new gender norms, reorganize social labor, and ensure reproduction, as well as form social ties through the exchange of women. According to Rubin (1975), the exchange of gifts is crucial to the unity of different patriarchal tribes. The most important of all gift-changing is the exchange of women, as it concerns kinship and friendship as well as political solidarity. Further, “male homosociality is first and foremost fashioned through the exchange of women and the consolidation of men’s power in society” (Hammarén and Johansson 2014, 5). Therefore, patriarchal marriage concentrates on the practice of trafficking in women to cement the unity of two families and contribute to a kinship network. This strictly gendered practice culminates in virilocal marriage as “the wife leaves her natal family and co-resides with her husband’s parents,” which “has been almost universal throughout the history of China” (Jin, Li, and Feldman 2006, 142). The traffic in men, a rare phenomenon in patriarchy, is portrayed in Old Well as a main plot device that drives the central thesis of progression yet remains unstudied. Not taking a leap to claim how the “feminized” man may allude to the emasculated historicity of the post-Mao generation (male) intellectuals’ emasculation, a gendered analysis centering on uxorilocal marriage in the film opens up unaddressed possibilities in reconsidering cultural productions saturated with gender politics.

The following details the triangular heterosexual relationship presented in the film to show how the progression of history is based on the redemption of a patriarchal kinship that renders women as placeholders (objects) and men as subjects. Whereas Rey Chow focuses on the primitiveness seized with the metaphor of women at moments of social crisis, this article’s focus is on the reconstruction of productive relations (genetic reproduction and social production) both within the domestic and the public realm. In the end, the seemingly male-unfriendly uxorilocal marriage is rendered male-centered, reflecting a shrewd use of crisis narratives to bring back patriarchy.

2 Redemption of Male Power in Triangular Relationships

Old Well particularly sets up a parallel between the diachronic history of digging a well and the synchronic structure of finding a good wife. The changing structures of both labor-human societal relationships and gender-based interpersonal relationships peak in the story when both are challenged and intersect with each other. In other words, the film utilizes both labor and women and compares them with each other diachronically due to historical inheritance structures and synchronically due to the film’s turbulent present. Together, labor and gender form a chain of controls surrounding the center of two triangles of patriarchal power and reproduction. Eve Sedgwick notes in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire that “the status of women, and the whole question of arrangements between genders, is deeply and inescapably inscribed in the structure even of relationships that seem to exclude women – even in male homosocial/homosexual relationships” (1992, 25). Further, male homosocial bonds enacted through women also serve to “construct power blocs and protect male territory and privilege” (Hammarén and Johansson 2014, 2). In this light, this article shows how women function as different tools to help strengthen homosocial bonds between men in the patriarchal community of Laojing, which ultimately ensures male historical inheritance and reproduction.

The following analysis demonstrates two triangular relationships of asymmetry, wherein the first triangle consists of Sun Wangquan, Zhao Qiaoying and Xifeng, and the second consists of Sun Wangquan, Sun Wangcai, and Xifeng. The first triangle discloses what has been popularly believed to be the main message on gender relations in this film, that is, the contrast between the domestic and the romantic woman, but pushes further to show how this first triangular relation sets up a male-centered viewpoint in addition to the gender antagonism between two women. The second triangle displays how the film employs a masculinity crisis to symbolize a communal crisis. Through the omission of the weak and decadent man, the marriage to the domestic woman, and social labor achievement, this second triangle redeems the strong man at the center of patriarchal succession. Exploring the embedded gender bias in a kinship system of patriarchy, this article therefore maintains that women are either utilized as asset carriers (Xifeng) or banished as destabilizers (Qiaoying) in a patriarchal kinship in order to ensure the formation of a male homosocial bond (between Wangquan and Wangcai) that eventually, along with the rejection of the weak and decadent man (Wangcai) and the success of social labor, resolves the masculinity crisis and reinforces the continuity and prosperity of the kinship system. In this way Old Well reflects a male intellectual’s commentary on national transition in which national crisis is figured as a crisis of masculinity.

In the first triangle, Xifeng, the widowed woman with assets, is not deemed a counterpart of men, where masculinity serves as the gendered foundation for owning resources. Xifeng functions purely as an asset carrier trafficking resources between men in order to secure male homosocial bonds of inheritance and continuity of patrilineality. This triangular relationship presents a patriarchal crisis in which both men were originally unable to continue the family line. By banishing the free woman Qiaoying as Wangquan’s lover and embracing the domestic woman Xifeng as his wife, this triangular relationship constructs a male-centered heterosexual marriage that relies on female antagonism and loyalty to kinship.

At first sight, Old Well presents the viewer with inverted traffic in men in a marriage arrangement, which contrasts with the idea that “patriarchal heterosexuality can best be discussed in terms of one or another form of the traffic in women” (Rubin, qtd. in Sedgwick 25). In Old Well, on the surface, it is not a woman that is to function as symbolic property, but a man (Wangquan). Wangquan’s household is destitute, with Wangquan, his brother Wangcai, his father, and his grandfather all living together in a shabby shelter. Worse even, the Sun family does not have any property or capital to support either of the brothers’ marriages. This lack creates the foundation for the ultimate form of masculinity crisis—the threat of extinction—which hangs over the household and motivates their actions. Therefore, the father arranges for Wangquan’s marriage into Xifeng’s, a widow, household (uxorilocal marriage) in order to attain the “groom price” such a marriage provides. With this done, at least one of the two brothers of the Sun family, Wangcai, can use this amount of money to marry a woman (virilocal marriage). Uxorilocal marriage is called ruzhui 入贅 or dao chamen 倒插門, the literal translation being “an inverted joining of a household.” Whereas normally it is a woman who joins a man’s household, in ruzhui or dao chamen marriage, it is the man who takes on a woman’s traditional role and is to be married into the woman’s household. In these cases, groom is normally expected to help continue the family line of the woman’s original household, be it her dead husband’s if she is a widow or her father’s if she is an only child. Accordingly, the child will not bear the father’s family surname but the mother’s household surname, a defining factor that determines how, in this kind of marriage, a man is not deemed a “full” man, that is: not the head of a family, but rather, exists in a derivative position to provide necessary seeds for the reproduction of the woman’s household and a male presence.

Xifeng’s family is well off in the village, but they are not deemed complete because the household is entirely made up of women (Xifeng, Xifeng’s mother, and Xifeng’s daughter). Instead, what the patriarchal society of Laojing recognizes is a household with a man at the center. When Wangquan enters Xifeng’s household, her mother happily proclaims: “You [Xifeng] and I finally have someone to count on!” (16:10). By the term “have someone,” she is essentially referring to a man of no social status, property, fame or any other assets that can be counted on by the two women as themselves as women are not deemed as subject in the patriarchal structure; what they look forward to counting on, therefore, is nothing more than the mere presence of a male in the household and a seed-provider. In a patriarchal setting, money and status are not enough for providing women with security; only a male presence can. Women are therefore of the same status as property and tools. Even with capital, women are not considered the main participants in generational inheritance and communal activities: they must instead rely on the men to “speak,” to “present,” and to form a complete household.

When Wangquan joins Xifeng’s household as this necessary male presence, he is first required to renounce his male rights to the Sun household. This process resembles women’s conventional marriage transition from their original household to their husband’s. This transition is prominent in the moment when Wangquan enters Xifeng’s household, prior to which Xifeng and her mother discuss the price to be paid to Wangquan’s family for the marriage. Whereas traditionally in virilocal marriage the groom’s household pays the bride price to the bride’s household, here in the uxorilocal marriage arrangement the bride pays the “groom price” to the groom’s household. This price indicates that the Sun family trades Wangquan’s male rights off for money, a process Wangquan’s father treats as turning a man into a “woman.” Indeed, when Wangquan’s father comments on this arrangement, he straightforwardly names the action of marrying Wangquan off into Xifeng’s family as jia, a word used to describe the process of a woman marrying into a man’s household, as opposed to qu, which means a man marries, or rather, obtains a wife. He says, “Eight hundred yuan is not much. However, to marry one [Wangquan] off and then get a wife for the other [Wangcai] is better than to have both of you becoming bachelors” (10:20). With the central task of the household being inheritance and continuity, certain men can be turned into “women.” In this case, what the patriarchal family needs is not all men but men who can marry, labor, and provide seeds. There is a comparison here between patriarchal family discontinuity and maintaining at least one bloodline for inheritance, with the latter being preferred. In this comparison, we witness the emergence of the third party of our first triangle: Wangcai, the brother who is waiting for Wangquan’s “groom price” to get a wife.

The male bond between Wangcai and Wangquan lies at the center of this first triangle, indicating the significance of male inheritance and continuity. On one hand, in the Sun household, the primary need is to continue the family’s bloodline. Through marriage, they may achieve this goal. However, with no economic resources, the Sun household can only achieve such a goal by trading Wangquan as a “woman” to get the necessary capital needed for Wangcai’s marriage. On the other hand, in Xifeng’s household, although the woman is seemingly endowed with more agency and power, they are essentially not recognized by the patriarchal system as capable agents and have been reduced to asset carriers, that is, carrying the assets from the dead husband to the new husband. This perception, therefore, also ensures the male homosocial bond between Wangquan and Xifeng’s dead husband, upholding a continuity of patrilineality. This process similarly initiates male bonding between Wangquan and Wangcai in order to ensure the successful historical familial continuity of the Sun household, achieved by the traffic of a man as a woman and marked by a woman who, at a larger scale, functions as an asset carrier. Accordingly, Xifeng’s masculinization in carrying assets and Wangquan’s demasculinization in marrying into her household unbalance the triangle between the brothers and renders it asymmetric.

When Wangquan finds out about the agreement between his father and Xifeng’s mother to marry him off to Xifeng, he decides to run off with his lover Zhao Qiaoying and arouses the tension of the second triangle. Qiaoying went to the same school as Wangquan, and being an “educated” woman, Qiaoying is portrayed as someone who may bring a “change” to the village. At the very beginning of the film, Qiaoying brings the very first TV set to Laojing. However, as a group of villagers help Qiaoying try and eventually fail to look for signals around the village, Qiaoying complains, “Our ancestors must have been blind to build our village here” (5:10). This characterization not only indicates Qiaoying’s “negative” attitude towards historical baggage and the location of the village but also foreshadows her fate as the land of ancestors requires stability, loyalty, and belief. It cannot include an educated woman who is capable of bringing in modern technology and dares to think of leaving like Qiaoying. Qiaoying’s agreeing to leave with Wangquan denotes her embrace of mobility and willingness to disobey tradition, all factors of instability. As Wangquan’s grandfather comments, “[Zhao Qiaoying] is a woman of flowery surface and foreign allusions, good-looking but not helpful. Our village cannot keep her” (19:18). In the eyes of the old generation, Qiaoying is not an ideal woman for a wife, but an outlier, a new woman of mobility, who stands against traditional conventions, including arranged marriage. This tension recalls a 1980s’ trend of gender reconfiguration in China when the popular belief of “virtuous wife and good mother” was at the center of criticism as it “repressed women’s standing or personality” amid the three tropes that mark 1980s feminism in China: women 女性 (nüxing), personal standing 人格 (renge), and social roles 角色 (juese) (Barlow 2004, 261). Qiaoying therefore stands firmly as a representation of an emerging womanhood centralized on free will and a denouncement of traditional beliefs.

As Wangquan tries to run off with Qiaoying, his grandfather catches them and shouts to Wangquan: “Off!” (19:18). From his grandfather’s perspective, Wangquan’s choice to run away with Qiaoying is a denial of his familial responsibility: to marry Xifeng and get the money to ensure Wangcai’s marriage – in other words, to secure the continuity of the Sun family’s bloodline and name. The continuity of the patriarchal line does not care about personal happiness; rather, the household’s benefits outweigh all. Conversely, running off with Qiaoying means personal happiness, agency, and abandoning the family and tradition. Caught between personal love and family responsibility, Wangquan chooses to return home, denying the possibility of personal love. This decision signifies the fundamental difference between Qiaoying and Wangquan: Qiaoying is the new woman who is willing to leave history behind, whereas Wangquan is a more conservative man who weighs family more than personal love. In this light, Qiaoying can also be viewed as a destabilizer to the deep-rooted traditions of the family-oriented village. As a symbol of freedom of choice in love, Qiaoying destabilizes this social structure by trying to “seduce” a man to abandon his family responsibility.

In the second triangle, we see a contrast between Qiaoying, a new woman of freedom in love, and Xifeng, a traditional woman of familial prosperity, wherein the man functions as the center of the triangle and the main participant in the patriarchal system. Wangquan is torn between his desire for Qiaoying and the communal expectations for him to marry Xifeng, which causes a dynamic asymmetry in this love triangle as the film unfolds.

In addition to the triangular relationships presented in the film, the prevailing motive in the film is for the village to dig a well. For generations, villagers have been injured or killed when trying to dig a well for the Laojing. The act of digging a well is thus a piece of historical baggage imposed on the new generation. Later in the film, Wangquan’s father dies while digging the well, and his death forces Wangquan to finally accept his arranged marriage. This act of filial piety pushes Wangquan to submit himself to the traditional values of Chinese patriarchal society. Then, after Wangcai is also killed while helping to dig a well, Wangquan and Qiaoying are trapped at the bottom of a different, old, barren well. The space under the old well signifies not only a heterotopia that is free from the structural violence embedded in patriarchal tradition, but also emphasizes the cruelty of history: there have been thousands of barren wells across the land of Laojing village and each denotes not only trapped human lives, but also hopelessness. However, it is within this space of mixed sophistication that Wangquan and Qiaoying, in the face of probable death, finally unleash the desire inside them, and consummate their relationship. Surprisingly, this is the only time in the film when the well brings any trace of love, hope, and freedom, in contrast to the violence displayed in how Wangcai and his father die for the well and two villages fighting over the well’s ownership throughout the film. In other words, only within a desocialized space is freedom in love tolerated. At this point, Wangquan is already married to Xifeng, thus making this act a scandalous trespassing. However, shouting desire outweighs all in the face of death.

The film’s ending lucidly demonstrates the director’s opinion on history. At the end of the film, when money is urgently needed for continuing the generational task of digging a well, Xifeng, the woman of tradition, stands out and openly supports her husband by stating how she will continue with this generational task and never abandon it or fall back, calling for a collective effort. She declares, “For generations, no one has ever truly been able to get out of the town, if this time the digging fails, upcoming generations will continue the effort” (1:59:01). Hearing this, Wangquan smiles at Xifeng for the first time in the film. Xifeng’s open support finally wins Wangquan’s recognition and the two then have a real connection. In Xifeng’s mind, tradition and homeland are never to be abandoned. She believes in the continuity of history. In contrast, Qiaoying, as the new woman of mobility, donates her dowry and the newly bought TV set and leaves the village. This act hints at how ready Qiaoying is to fully abandon the conventions of arranged marriage that she even abandons her dowry, a necessity for women to get a good marriage in patriarchal societies. This act seems to comment on the criticism of existing social structures that turn women into “sister, wife, and mother” and construe and confine them by “role-defined, expropriated labor” by hinting at the vast possibilities Qiaoying may have in the city (qtd. in Barlow 261). Nevertheless, Qiaoying is not even present in the final scene, which demonstrates her full removal from Laojing as well as the filmic narrative. As a result, the camera casts out the new woman of freedom in love, or the destabilizer, and lingers on the traditional woman of loyalty and reproductive prosperity. In this way, Old Well’s depiction of two opposing types of women (the liberal and the traditional) in fact stands in line with the “virtuous wife and good mother” model as the stable and fertile Xifeng keeps the role of “wife” while the romantic woman Qiaoying leaves town. It validates the necessity of traditional womanhood marked by loyalty and fertility to restore a male-dominated social order on the way to prosperity and the wide possibility for a new woman is none of the community’s concern.

In the end, both asymmetric triangles are crushed: one by Wangcai’s death; the other by the banishment of an agent of societal change (Qiaoying). In the background, the triangular relationship among Wangquan, Xifeng, and Xifeng’s ex-husband also reduces into a two-person marriage between Xifeng and Wangquan. All three triangular relationships, therefore, in the end serve the prosperity and stability of one household with Xifeng and Wangquan at the center. Eventually, the marriage is truly settled as Xifeng openly supports Wangquan’s “public leadership” while he leads villagers to successfully locate a working well and find water with the help of modern technology. This dual designation serves to redeem the seemingly feminized male in a ruzhui marriage to be at the power center of both the domestic and the public arena, a last touch that fully subverts the masculinity crisis presented at the beginning and comforts the male anxiety of extinction and emasculation. The ending thus also conveys the film’s gist, which is that no matter what history or tradition have done to their (male) successors, they should not be abandoned; eventually, tradition will bring about hope. This message acutely explicates Wu Tianming, one of the most prominent “Fourth Generation” director’s message on historical turbulence (Berry and Clark 1991, 192). Answering the call of root-searching, Wu Tianming tells his audience that the root, or tradition, no matter how oppressive it may seem at times, shall be protected, insisted upon, and inherited until, with proper effort, in the case of Old Well being technology, tradition ultimately brings hope, prosperity, and new possibility.

3 Coda

Decades after China’s root-searching yearning, its citizens are still caught between modernization and tradition. Now, the ongoing tension between matriname and patriname denotes more than a binary dilemma but an intersectional social practice that is inundated in raging cyberfeminism, lingering traits of heterosexual patriarchal marriage, and a growing misogynistic culture online. Strikingly similar to Qiaoying’s removal from the village, popular feminist public opinion leaders have been constantly submerged. On the rise are women vloggers wearing personas resembling Xifeng, the kind of women who carry enough capital themselves to support the man well. Together, the traditional man and woman build a good household in harmony with older generations and honor tradition. This article, through analyzing two women’s marital fates in a village desperate for change and revival, attempts to rekindle new inspirations on contemporary China’s marital practice and its surrounding anxiety.