Acknowledgements -- Introduction: an anthropology of separation -- 1. Two festival of reunion -- 2. The etiquette of parting and return -- 3. Greeting and sending-off the dead -- 4. The ambivalent threshold -- 5. Commensality as reunion -- 6. Women and the obligation to return -- 7. Developing a sense of history -- 8. Classical narratives of separation and reunion -- 9. The politics of separation and reunion in China and Taiwan -- Conclusion: the separation constraint -- Notes -- References -- Index

1. China -- Social life and customs
2. Separation (Psychology) -- China
3. Reunions -- China