Conclusion

The conclusion provides a summary of the book chapters, including the genealogy, transmission, translation, and yi and li of Chinese American familism. The conclusion discusses the theoretical implications of employing a liyi framework to understand Chinese Americans and Asian Americans in relation to religious, ethnic, gendered, and sexual identities, as well as mental health and political organizing. The authors explore the implications for employing the theory of liyi in current debates about the category of religion as well as the study of religious “nones,” especially among American millennials. Future directions are discussed.

The Li of Chinese American Familism

Chapter 6 identifies how Chinese Americans maintain the value of family through rituals, including rites of passage, ethnic routines, and table traditions. Rites of passage such as the wedding tea ceremony provide individuals with distinct responsibilities within the family. Ethnic routines, including family meals, transnational visits, and reunions, inculcate the norms of hospitality, reciprocity, and face/shame. They also teach the cultural scripts of familism through table traditions, such as pouring tea. Traditions and rituals change over time, however, and second-generation Chinese Americans pass on their liyi values and ethics differently than their immigrant parents did. The second generation lack a migration story of family sacrifice and have an attenuated knowledge of Chinese liyi traditions, and racialized multiculturalism further reduces ethnic traditions to what is marketable and consumable. Chinese Americans therefore hybridize and Americanize their ethnicity, which results in a new liyi Chinese American identity that consists of food and fun.

The Yi of Family Sacrifice

Chapter 5 details Chinese Americans’ highest values and the central narrative by which they make sense of their lives: family sacrifice. Those under 30 tended to be “maximizing world-changers.” They desired to make a difference with their opportunities and careers. Those over 30 desired to be “expressive balancers,” seeking fulfillment by balancing work, community, and family. Both groups tempered these individualistic Americanized tendencies by expressing family sacrifice in three ways. First, they venerated the past, showing respect and honor to their ancestors and immigrant parents. Second, they gave back to their parents in culturally appropriate ways: hard work, good communication and food, and by including family in major decisions. Third, they centered their dreams for the future around family. The yi of Chinese Americans is an ethic of maintaining right relations with those whom one considers family.

Ancestral Roots

Chapter 2 offers a genealogical exploration of how Chinese traditions have shaped Chinese American religious affiliations and familism. Chinese adopt a plurality of beliefs for utilitarian purposes through their religious repertoire based in Chinese Popular Religion. Given their mixture of beliefs and practices that have no names, Chinese tend to identify as “nothing in particular.” Another factor contributing to the high rates of Chinese American religious nones is Confucian thought, which oriented Chinese society toward religious skepticism and an agnostic, symbolic interpretation of religious rituals. These twin approaches toward religion are the roots of modern-day Chinese atheism and agnosticism. Both reinforce the primacy of familial relations. These two traditions have undergone changes through modernization, migration, and the religious context in which they take root. The chapter ends with a survey of how these traditions have been transformed by Chinese state modernization, acculturation to the American context, and racialization.

Translation

Chapter 4 reveals that immigrant parents had mixed success in translating the liyi practices of Chinese Popular Religion to their Chinese American children due to four major barriers. First, Chinese American families transmitted practices by modeling rituals without explaining them. The second generation performed customs without fully understanding the symbols and meanings. Second, the dissonant acculturation between parents and children led the second generation to be more Americanized and less receptive to traditional, hierarchical values. Third, Christian dominance and privilege in the United States rendered Chinese practices exotic and superstitious. Fourth, gendered and racialized experiences “othered” Chinese traditions as foreign and outdated. In spite of these barriers, Chinese Americans distilled and hybridized what was most important to them from these practices to sustain familism.

Transmission

Chapter 3 investigates the educational and class-based differences in how Chinese American households transmit the liyi dimensions of Chinese Popular Religion and Confucianism. Working-class households tend to pass down the practices of Chinese Popular Religion based on fate, luck, and qi, whereas professional households tend to affirm Confucian thought to match their rational, scientific worldviews. Nearly all respondents’ parents practiced elements of Chinese Popular Religion, most notably venerating ancestors, adhering to fengshui principles of qi, and celebrating Lunar New Year. For working-class families, these practices included belief in supernatural realities and the efficacy of practices to bring about well-being and good fortune. Chinese American professional families saw these rituals as secular customs and maintained them for different reasons: to instill family responsibility through ancestor veneration, maintain good energy via fengshui, and celebrate their heritage through Lunar New Year.

Introduction

Chapter 1 introduces two key concepts, familism and liyi, and concludes with methodology and chapter overviews. While nonreligious Chinese Americans are heterogeneous in their worldviews, they are bound together by their familism, a transpacific lived tradition that prioritizes interdependence and right relationships through the meaningful rituals of being family. Moreover Chinese Americans tend to be heterodox and nonsystematic in their beliefs and practices, affirming the existence of spiritual beings and keeping home shrines, in spite of their nonreligious affiliations. American sociological accounts of “religious nones,” however, emphasize categories of belief and belonging that obscure Chinese Americans’ rituals, values, and practices. Thus this chapter discusses appropriating liyi as an indigenous Chinese framework in parallel with the Western category of religion. Liyi is a compound composed of two uniquely Chinese concepts: li (禮‎), which means “ritual propriety,” and yi (義‎), which means “righteousness.”