| 英文摘要 |
The 2022“Gender Equality Term Revision”issued by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education triggered widespread public debate over whether wai (“outside”) grandparents should also be designated simply as“grandparents.”Taking this controversy as its point of departure, this article interrogates the extra morpheme wai in wai grandfather and asks why a term that has structured Chinese kinship systems for millennia has now been recast as a“superfluous”element to be eliminated in the name of contemporary gender equality. The article proceeds in three parts. First, it analyzes the structural composition and typological classification of Chinese kinship terms, outlining morphemic patterns and rules of unilineal and bilineal descent to expose the blind spots embedded within these seemingly objective classificatory systems. Second, it examines the thousand-year distinction between zong (lineage insiders) and wai (outsiders), critically interrogating the patrilineal principle that“the father’s line constitutes the lineage”and the operation of the zong system as the law governing kinship relations. Drawing on the traditional system of the Five Degrees of Mourning Garments, this section demonstrates how the paternal and maternal grandfathers—now equally classified as“second-degree lineal relatives”—were hierarchically differentiated in premodern society, with the maternal line demoted from zong to wai, and from consanguinity to affinity. Finally, the article turns to contemporary everyday practices to examine strategies of de-centering wai, revealing the persistent specter of the ancient zong/wai distinction and challenging the deeply entrenched entanglement of bloodline, surname, and gender embedded in the taken-for-granted logic of wai. |