• Sleep before 1am every day
• Eat McDonald’s & Italy ice-cream
• …Lose weight
• Have my hair cut
• Meet my girlfriend at Shanghai
• Watch Criminal Minds S6-S8
• Go to Star Trek Into Darkness China Premiere
• Make full use of my time into BOC team
• Read works about Cultural Study and History
• Buy souveniors for my friends
• Practice the song by guitar 

Zhulianjiuzu (株连九族), also called Nine Familial Exterminations, is a feudal punishment system that has a long history dating back to the Qin Dynasty  (秦朝) 221-206 B.C.. It started as a law that punished related members of a group. If a person was guilty of a capital crime, he and all his relatives, categorized into nine groups, were sentenced to death together.

According to the wikipedia entry of Zhulianjiuzu (株连九族) it was the most serious punishment for capital offense in Ancient China:

literally “guilt by association of nine of a group/clan”; also known as zú zhū (族誅), literally “family execution” and miè zú (灭族/滅族), literally “family extermination” or “execution of nine relations”

Usually “tyrannical rulers throughout Chinese history who were prone to use inhumane methods of asserting control (compare with slow slicing, or “death by ten thousand cuts”)”  used Zhulianjiuzu (株连九族).

This punishment was stopped during the Qing Dynasty (清朝):

“株连九族，就是一人犯死罪,家族成员与其共同承担刑事责任的刑罚制度,即意味着由一个人的死罪扩展为家族成员的共同死罪。” (Baidu Baike: Zhulianjiuzu)

Lianzuozhi (连坐制), is a population control system that also started during the Qin Dynasty  (秦朝) 221-206 B.C. The system forbade residents from moving to another house without permission of their rulers. It forced residents to supervise their neighbors on a daily basis. If one family had committed crime, then all ten neighbors were sentenced for committing the crime. Lianzuozhi locked peasants to the land. They could not leave or act freely.  Lianzuozhi was also forbidden in the late Qing Dynasty.

According to Guo Qiyong (2008) in “More than ‘For The Sake of Defense’” [pdf url], Lianzuozhi’s roots are in Legalism: 

In Chinese history, there were two sharply divergent views of ethical – political theories. Confucianism regards family love as the root of morality. Legalism considers it as the triggering factor for potential crime and social instability. When the latter school of thought went to the extreme, it turned into “ the law of punishing the related family ” ( lianzuozhi 連 坐 制 ). 

In fact, from the very start, the Confucian idea of family love has been used to oppose “the law of punishing the related family.” 

There were several social effects of Lianzuozhi, according to Baidu Baike, a Chinese website equivalent to Wikipedia:

• It disintegrated traditional ties between  Chinese peasants and the land. Peasants who were focused on their land were forced to pay more attention to  relationship with their neighbors and governors.
• It also created a surveillance environment where everyone supervised each other, making every resident feel the need to protect themselves from being accused of a crime. 
• Some scholar say that it could have introduced the idea of a system of law among Chinese peasants. Peasants were forced to understand this system because they benefited from it.
• It encouraged anxious interactions between neighborhoods because people watched what their neighbors were doing. Residents interacted with their neighbors with jitteriness and even malevolence.
• On the other hand, this system could have made neighborhood more intimate with each other. Some scholars believe that this intimacy resulted in unity of peasants, and finally Qin’s collapse (an unexpected outcome). 

Although Lianzuozhi was forbidden before the establishment of PRC, during Cultural Revolution there were still remaining concept of Lianzuozhi that people would still regard children of betrayors of the PRC as bad people, and the blood of a family had consistency on good/evil behaviors. One’s relatives would be influenced by one’s identity. 

黑五类

Children of landlords, the Rich, the Rebellions, bastards and the Right were called “Hei Wu Lei (The black five, 黑五类)”. They would be watched by the government and all their social supplies would be limited and lesser than other people.

黑五类子女，也就是地、富、反、坏、右（即地主、富农、反革命分子、坏分子、右派分子）的子女。

Monitor China gives a description of what modern lanzhuozhi looks like outside of families:

if this kind of person is found working in such-and-such work place, then the supervisors or management are held responsible, or if a landlord dares to rent to such a person, well, then the landlord is held accountable. Doing things this way turns a pure and simple work or collegial relationship or a leaser and lessee contractual relationship into a joint liability system of surveillance, guarding and shouldering shared responsibility for something that originally wasn’t their responsibility at all.

There are one thing that is noteworthy about the origins of Lianzuozhi:

• The current household registration system (户籍制度) in modern China is derived from Lianzuozhi. [pdf url]

There are signs of lianzhuozhi in contemporary China:

•   In 2011, Bureau of Quality Supervision in Chongqing published a law that said any suspect breaking a food production law and their government supervisors will also be responsible. 12月6日，重庆市质监局出台《重庆市质量技术监督 局食品生产加工环节食品生产加工违法行为连坐制暂行规定》。依此《规定》，一旦食品生产加工环节出现严重问题，将采取“连坐”方式追究连带责任，“连坐” 方式主要包括主体连坐、产业链连坐、区域连坐、行业连坐、产品连坐等五个方面。（令人困惑的食品安全连坐制）

• In 2010, the government of Suining County of Jiangsu Province announced that they would issued a regulation called “Good Civil (良民)” Ranking System. This system would evaluate residents’ moral behavior and record their private information (address, date of birth…) into a open system online, that everyone can see. An officer of Suining County said that this credit evaluating system would keep people from treating in tax, education or in purchasing a house. 该县主政官员高调称要“严管民风”，让群众“一处守信，处处受益；一处失信，处处制约”。（“良民”评级制：封建连坐制的借尸还魂）

WHY I BLOG THIS: While this system of guilt by association is officially abolished, the idea of it is still around - that groups, not individuals are held responsible. This is top-down morality. Is it possible to have a collective sense of responsibility without implementing fascist methods of punishment?

The origins of Lianzuozhi (连坐制) was to prevent people from being an onlooker (看客). But nowadays Chinese society is filled with onlookers. In the western society, in a neighborhood, people feel the necessity and obligation to pay attention to their neighbors and call the police on emergent circumstances. This kind of obligation is different from what Lianzuozhi maintained in ancient China. In modern China, the remaining concept of Lianzuozhi occurs occasionally. Whether this old thought has influence on modern society remains unknown. 

My whole life has been nothing but futile wandering, I say that without bitterness or self-reproach, because I know it’s the same for most men, a great deal of words without meaning.

                                                      — The Seventh Seal