Abstract: Private letters as a type of historical data of social life have attracted attention in humanities and social sciences research in recent years. Through a holistic ethnographic narrative, this study presented 922 personal letters written between 1972 to 1995 by a couple who and whose families during that period were in a concerted effort to negotiate a job transfer back to Shanghai so the family could be united. The letters revealed Guanxi in action such as adopting specific strategies and networks, psychological changes and value alterations of the people involved, and so forth. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, the three generations of direct families remained very close. Despite the numerous socialist movements during the period, familism stayed as the core value of the couple, who were family-oriented and family happiness was the ultimate goal of their life. "Family" in this study contains two levels of connotation. First, it refers to an idealized "small family", that is, a nuclear family composed of husband, wife and their children. Second, it refers to a conflicting yet interdependent "big family" composed by parents and siblings (including married siblings and their spouses). We further argue that the compulsory and coercive moral education of the socialist movements failed to reshape the moral behavior of the social actors while familism with family "partiality" continued to exist in the cracks of the mandatory institutional arrangements of the state and successfully resisted the statism.

Key words: private letters, familism, Guanxi, statism