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Off the farm: rural Chinese women's experiences of labor mobility and modernity in post-Mao China (1984-2002)

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Off the farm: rural Chinese women's experiences of labor mobility and modernity in post-Mao China (1984-2002)

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Content OFF THE FARM:
RURAL CHINESE WOMEN’S EXPERIENCES OF LABOR MOBILITY AND
MODERNITY IN POST-MAO CHINA (1984-2002)
Copyright 2005
by
Arianne M. Gaetano
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ANTHROPOLOGY)
May 2005
Arianne M. Gaetano
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ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This dissertation is the culmination of many years of language study, scholarship,
and writing. Along the road to its completion, I received support from many people
who I would like to recognize and give thanks to here.
My parents, Len and Sue, above all provided the unconditional love and care that
made my academic journey both meaningful and possible. At every turn, they have
celebrated my achievements and praised my accomplishments. When I suffered
setbacks, they boosted my spirits and urged me forward. Countless times they helped
me out of financial difficulty. I am truly lucky to have such wonderful parents and I
dedicate this thesis to them. My siblings and their spouses deserve much credit too
for forgiving my extended absences from family life and accommodating to my
erratic schedule. My aunt and uncle, Michael and Sara Kenney, have provided
culinary and intellectual nourishment over the years, sending me care packages of
snacks and books and inviting me to their home for gourmet meals and stimulating
conversation.
Although the time and financial constraints of student life have caused me to miss
out on many of the key events in their lives, my friends never complained. To the
contrary, Lisa Horak, Sandi Ostrowski, Jen Schradie, and Stephanie Hawkinson-
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Opatz have cheered me on since our days together at Duke. Rebecca Thuma has
lifted my spirits with her handwritten notes of encouragement. Since coaching me
through the GREs, Elizabeth Sturcken has treated me to numerous lunches in order
to be kept current on my research. My long-time friend Elizabeth Deloughrey has
played the dual role of intimate confidante as well as professional advisor.
Jing Wang first turned me on to the study of Chinese and China, and has extended to
me her encouragement, counsel, and friendship these many years. I am grateful to
her and also our fine companions on the 1987 Duke Study in China Program, who
shared with me that memorable first adventure. I especially thank Dara Lao for
providing me lodging so many times in Hong Kong and in San Francisco.
I benefited greatly from sharing experiences and ideas with my Hopkins-Nanjing
Center classmates, and am particularly appreciative of Cui Fang, Hu Suyun, and Ye
Fanmei. Tsinghua University classmates Federica Ferlanti and Marian Katz have
shared the ups and downs of graduate student life with me. I thank Federica for the
many conversations over coffee and biscuits at the Friendship Hotel and Marian for
helping me secure housing, employment, and a social life in Los Angeles. Friends
Mary Klug, Graeme Gullick, Elizabeth Sturcken and Jen Schradie went out of their
way to visit me in China, while Grant Alger and Dan Friedman took the time to show
me around Fujian.
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In Beijing, Heini Kami loaned me her spare room and provided excellent company
when I needed a break. Fong Ku and Kari Olsen generously shared their research
contacts with me, and Eileen Otis helped me to secure an apartment. I learned much
by exchanging ideas with other graduate students doing research in China, including
Bianca Hershaurr, Cord Eberspacher, Jeanette Barbieri, and David Bello.
Early on in my fieldwork I was fortunate to meet Debbie Lowe and Jeannie
Katsigris. Each introduced me to key informants and provided much practical
assistance in my research. Over the long haul of writing the thesis, they have been
sympathetic listeners, and I have greatly appreciated their attention and advice.
Elizabeth Bowditch has also been a great friend, sending me a steady stream of
useful articles, books, and films, and sharing her knowledge of China with me.
Zhang Lixin of Beijing Normal University has been an invaluable colleague who
inspires me with her energy and dedication to raising gender consciousness. I am
also grateful to Ding Ning, who I admire so much for her feminist commitments and
her heartfelt empathy for the less fortunate. These incredible women not only helped
me in my research but also opened their homes to me, so I thank their families too.
Likewise, I thank Yin Peng, who helped me secure housing and interviews, and her
family, who proved to be the best neighbors.
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Other colleagues in Beijing who facilitated my research include Zhao Shukai and Lu
Shaoqing. They took me on visits to migrant schools, shared their manuscripts with
me, and offered me their full support long after I had left the field. Tan Shen, Huang
Ping, Bu Wei, and Zhenzhen Zheng of the Chinese Academy of Social Science
shared their research with me at various points, as did Bai Nansheng of the Ministry
of Agriculture and Victor Yuan of Horizon Research. Sara Cook took time to meet
with me to discuss Ford Foundation funded projects relevant to my topic. Members
of the Gender and Development Group and the East-West Feminist Translation
Group offered me their expertise and opened up additional channels of information.
I am deeply indebted to Xie Lihua, the founder of Rural Women Knowing All
magazine, and her staff, especially Li Tao. They patiently explained to me their
organization’s projects and goals and then invited me to learn more about it first
hand. Likewise, Wang Qi, Zhang Zhufang, Miao Minyuan, Wu Huaping, Li Zhen,
Ma Xiaoduo, and numerous others associated with the organization warmly
welcomed me into their fold and showed me the workings of this organization.
I am profoundly grateful to the members of the Migrant Women’s Club and the
domestic workers, chambermaids, waitresses, hair stylists, clerks, etc., who shared
their migration stories with me so that I could share them in these pages. I hope I
have done justice to their struggles and triumphs and accurately conveyed their
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thoughts and feelings. I would also like to recognize Zhang Ailing and the other
principals and teachers who welcomed me on my visits to schools for migrant
children. Above all, I thank my “key informants,” whose names I have disguised
(using pseudonyms) as Zhang Xiaqing, Zhou Lili, Zhou Lina, Cao Fang, and Li Mei.
I was fortunate to meet Tamara Jacka through the Migrant Women’s Club and be
invited to join her first in implementing a survey and later in editing a book. I learned
so much from our collaboration and thoroughly enjoyed it as well. Tamara has been
a generous mentor and friend, inviting me to her home in Australia, offering
constructive criticism of my writing, and sending out numerous recommendation
letters on my behalf. I am grateful to her and to all of the contributors to our edited
volume for their solicitude and encouragement.
After many years living away from USC, I was pleased to be warmly welcomed back
last year by the anthropology department faculty and my classmates, as well as by
Carole Gordon at the Graduate School, who had not forgotten my face. Rita Jones,
our graduate program coordinator, and Crag Stanford, our department chair, helped
me to unravel administrative red tape and pave a smoother path to graduation.
By opening her Los Angeles home to me last year, Charlotte Furth gave me much
more than a place to stay. I am grateful to her for sharing with me her rich life
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experience, her circle of friends, her sympathy for my academic difficulties, and her
excellent advice on so many matters. Thanks also to Erica Brindley, Jenny Cool,
Claudia Cuevas, Scott Frank, Patricia Gilson, Mike Hickey, Pensri Ho, Teresa Kuan,
Steve Schindler, Anne Sokolsky, and Juhua Wu for keeping me grounded.
My committee chair, Gene Cooper, and committee members Janet Hoskins, Stanley
Rosen, and C. Cindy Fan deserve more thanks than I can offer for their generous and
tireless efforts put toward my intellectual development. When I was living abroad
and out of state, Gene and Janet went to great lengths to keep me in the “department
loop.” Stanley invited me to dinner several times when we were both in Beijing.
Cindy worked with me long-distance on an edited book project. Each of them gave
me detailed feedback on this thesis. Gene painstakingly copyedited and proofread it.
Even now, each of them is working assiduously on my behalf to help me secure
employment, as in the past they have helped me to seek out funding or win entrance
to competitive language programs. Their greatest gift has been the precious
knowledge they have imparted to me, both in the classroom and out of it. I draw
inspiration from these role models who seem to have boundless energy and passion
for teaching, scholarship, service, and mentorship.
Finally, several institutions deserve recognition. The National Resource Center’s
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) program, administered by the East
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Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California, provided support for
my language study over several years. A Graduate Enhancement Award from the
National Security Education Program of the Academy for Educational Development
enabled preliminary fieldwork research on my topic. Dissertation research and
writing was made possible by a Haynes Foundation dissertation fellowship from the
USC Graduate School, a Peking University-University of Hawaii fellowship, an
Urban China Research Network small grant, and a Final Summer Award from USC’s
College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. Finally, I acknowledge Columbia University
Press for granting me permission to reprint excerpts from “Filial Daughters, Modem
Women: Migrant Domestic Workers in Post-Mao Beijing” by Arianne M. Gaetano,
from On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China,
edited by Arianne M. Gaetano and Tamara Jacka (Copyright 2004 Columbia
University Press).
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii
ABSTRACT xii
PREFACE xiv
INTRODUCTION: Gender and Modernity in Late Socialist China 1
The “Experience of Modernity” 1
The Fieldwork 11
Economic Reform and Uneven Development 18
Foundations of the Rural-Urban Dichotomy 26
The Hukou System, 1956-1978 30
Gender and the Hukou System 33
Migration Policy Reform 35
Hukou, Exclusion, and Inequality 39
Gender, Migration, and Employment Inequality 43
Identity, Power, and Agency 49
Migration and Women’s Agency 54
Review of the Literature: Gender and Late Socialist Modernity 58
Outline of the Chapters 62
Rural Migrant Women and Alternative Modernity 69
CHAPTER TWO: Engendering Modernity, Reinstat(e)ing Difference:
Gender and the State in Modem China 72
Introduction 72
Xianglin’s Wife: “Traditional Chinese Woman” 79
Iron Girls (tie guniang): The Socialist Liberation of (Rural) Women 90
Articulating Liberated Women’s Subjectivity 96
Shame and Glory: Migrant Women 1949-1979 101
“Divided Gender, Divided Women” Under Socialism 107
The State and Women Under Conditions of Late Socialism 119
Middle-Class Housewife-Consumers 119
Working Mothers’ Double Burden 123
The “Ricebowl of Youth” (qingchunfan) 131
Rural Migrant Women and the Nation-State 134
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CHAPTER THREE: Going “Out to Work” (chulai dagong):
Gender, Migration, and Late Socialist Modernity 137
Migration Decisions and Women’s Agency 137
The Disenchantment of the Rural 142
Gender, Kinship, and Migration 157
The Liminality of Young Rural Women 167
Compromising Virtue 172
Rural Migrant Women and the Contradictions of Modernity 176
CHAPTER FOUR: Negotiating Duty and Desire:
Gendered Experiences of Migration and Work 178
Introduction 178
Leaving the Village: The Art of Reciprocal Relations (guanxi) 179
Domestic Service 191
Working Conditions 191
“Like a Member of the Family” 200
“Professional” Cleaning Services 206
Working Conditions 206
“Professionals” 214
Accommodating to Workplace Authority 218
Challenging Authority in the Workplace 236
Negotiated Identity and Agency 242
CHAPTER FIVE: Migration as Self-Transformation 244
Introduction 244
Remittances: Material and Social Capital 249
Becoming Cosmopolitan: Shopping and Tourism 251
Developing Oneself: Investing in an Education 259
From Menial to Pink Collar: Moving Up in the Job Hierarchy 266
Marriage and the Future 271
Modernity’s Ambivalences 294
CHAPTER SIX:
The Migrant Women’s Club and Dagongmei Citizenship 298
Introduction: Citizenship in a Socialist Transformation 298
Gender, Hukou, and Exclusion from Urban Citizenship 305
New Social Space (Women Organizing Women) 310
Background to the Migrant Women’s Club 313
Moral Commitments of the Organizers 320
The Club’s Mission 323
Membership and Structure 327
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The Place and Space of the “Home” 335
A Space of Belonging: A Shared Identity? 338
Instituting Processes of Citizenship Formation 344
Prospects for Dagongmei Citizenship 353
CONCLUSION: Evaluating Late Socialist Modernity
from the Perspective of Rural-to-Urban Migrant Women 355
REFERENCES 369
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ABSTRACT
This dissertation is an ethnographic exploration of the lives and experiences of rural
Chinese women who have migrated to the city of Beijing and found work in its
informal service sector as domestic servants and chambermaids. Their experiences of
labor migration provide a window on the interconnection of gender, place, and
identity as well as power and agency in contemporary China. In their imaginaries,
the journey to the city is seen as a passage into modernity, and gaining urban
experience is symbolic of becoming modem. Through labor migration, mral women
engage with new ideas about modernity and experience the ambiguities and
ambivalence of the changes, no more so than that of their identity itself, that are set
in motion by their pursuit of dreams. Ironically, the reality of migrant life in the city
rarely fulfills such promise, because neither the state nor the market recognizes
peasants and rural migrants as equals to urban citizens and workers. Denied the
recognition by urban society as equally modem, exploited by state and market, most
mral migrant women suffer broken dreams and shattered spirits. Especially as they
begin to grapple with the ineluctable matters of marriage and return, young rural
migrant women at best are ambivalent about their “experience of modernity.” Yet at
the same time, they are empowered by their experiences, especially the exposure to
new ideas and the acquisition of new skills and their changing sense of self as
relatively modem compared to their nonmigrant peers. Most significantly, through
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their experiences, they challenge dominant ideologies of gender and place that
marginalize them in rural households, urban society, and the labor market, albeit in
limited and largely individual ways. Finally, for some rural migrant women, the
unjust dissonance between imagination and reality that they experience first-hand
becomes knowledge that empowers them to engage in more radical political critique
and protest, including collective action. Indeed, rural migrant women display
ingenuity and perseverance as they strive to imbue their migration experiences with
meaning and dignity, and despite the unequal economic and social conditions of late
socialist modernity, to “make themselves modem.”
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PREFACE
The plane glided toward its destination, the Fragrant Harbor {Xianggang, i.e.,
Hong Kong). Soon, the dark sky was ablaze with colorful lights. From the
airplane window I looked down at skyscrapers emblazoned with familiar
company names and corporate advertising logos. In the seconds before landing, I
glimpsed rows of illuminated storefronts marked by glowing neon Chinese
characters. The scene was utterly exciting, but strange. For a brief anxious
moment, I felt completely unprepared to comprehend the images before me.
The passage describes the first leg of my journey during the summer of 1987, when I
was headed to Beijing as a student embarking on a year’s study of Chinese language
and culture abroad. My first glimpse of Hong Kong harbor, the “gateway to China,”
is a vision indelibly impressed upon my memory because it was my “first contact”
with the region that I would choose as an anthropological research area, nearly ten
years later. The memory, as recalled here, also communicates much about my
background as a white, educated, western woman, which is the figurative “baggage”
I bring to this study. Finally, the vignette offers a comparison to a different form of
“border-crossing”—internal migration—that is explored in this dissertation.
On that first trip, I rather expected to find traces of an exotic and timeless culture
described in my history texts. Or perhaps, having studied about the Chinese
communist revolution, 1 was seeking a socialist utopia. These imagined Chinas were
very much creations of Orientalist thought. As articulated by Edward Said (2003), in
the colonial discourse of “Orientalism,” the “east” was the objectified “other” to the
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culture of the west, serving to reaffirm the self-conscious identity of the “west” as a
unified and superior culture.
Fortunately, I found China and Chinese people much more complex and I was forced
to revise my pre-existing stereotypes. In time I learned that there are as many
“Chinas” as there are Chinese people, or rather, as there are my experiences of them.
This dissertation is very much about interrogating the constructedness of differences
rather than assuming them, and asking key questions about how such differences are
created, how sameness is suppressed, what powerful political purposes such
differences serve, and whose realities they represent or shape.
Indeed, my fascination with the topics of rural migration and gender probably
originates from my own awareness—from that first look at Hong Kong—of my own
“otherness” as a foreigner in China. I remember that large crowds of onlookers
would gather around my American classmates and me when we appeared in public in
smaller cities and towns. Someone in the crowd might even reach out to touch a
hirsute arm or finger blonde locks. After the first experience of this, one classmate
began to jest, “the space ship has landed!” each time our bus pulled into a new town
and we prepared to disembark! Even in 2002 in cosmopolitan Beijing I could hear
passersby on the street remark on my “otherness” by calling out “foreigner” (laowai,
literally, “venerable outsider”).
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As an English teacher at the National University of Defense Technology in
Changsha, in 1991,1 was especially aware of the constructedness of difference. The
first homework I assigned to my students was to “describe a typical American.” (The
textbook I was given to use was published in the U.K. in the 1960s, and thus
included such texts such as “Take the Lift to the Loo.” I made adjustments as
needed.) While I was flattered that several students chose to describe me as a model
American, I was perplexed to read their depictions of my blonde hair, blue eyes, and
white skin, because I have brown eyes and hair and a Mediteranean skin tone. Before
handing back the graded essays during the next class meeting, I walked around the
classroom comparing handfuls my brunette hair to the hair of several students. Of
course I learned that my students were perfectly capable of “seeing” the similarity.
In her excellent (self-) analysis of the role of a “white western woman” in a Shanghai
television drama (the part played by herself), Kathleen Erwin (1995: 245) relates a
similar experience as evidence that through the term “foreigner” all non-Chinese are
reduced to one monolithic entity, which is in turn endowed with specific meanings,
such as wealth and modernity. In the context of a 1990s television show featuring a
white, western woman married to a Shanghai man, idealized constructions serve as
backdrop for constructing a cosmopolitan Chinese identity epitomized by the
Shanghai husband. In turn, the show contributes to a vision of post-Mao modernity
that reasserts male domination and masculinity (largely at the expense of the not-
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modem-enough Chinese woman). By other-regarding their “foreign” teacher, my
students likewise could maintain their distinct cultural identity against the perceived
threat I represented, including the “spiritual pollution,” that their leaders had warned
them was spread by foreigners.
Only after I gained their tmst did I learn of my students’ efforts to indulge in dreams
of studying abroad, “jumping into the sea” and becoming entrepreneurs, or
expressing alternative political opinions about Taiwan or the 1989 student
demonstrations (topics that these PLA soldier-students were forbidden to discuss
with me). It was also telling that just as I became privy to their confidences, the
university stepped in to limit my access to students outside of class. The point is that
such reductive binaries of difference are ideological in that they uphold or establish
relations of power (when they are unopposed). To challenge them is to expose
inequalities they reinforce and, possibly, provoke a reaction.
I discovered more constructions of difference beyond that of “Chinese” vs.
“foreigner.” In the early 1990s I visited tourist sites in and near Kunming, Yunnan
province, home to numerous “national minorities” (shaos.hu minzu), members of
ethnicities other than the Han majority. Traditionally costumed middle-aged women
peddled handicrafts or regional products in the marketplace while younger girls
performed folk songs and dances at guesthouses and led tours through scenic sites.
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They performed their ethnic difference to foreign tourists and urban middle-class
Chinese.
I don’t recall encountering China’s peasant “others” during my first trip to China,
with the exception of a trip through the countryside of Inner Mongolia, probably
because they were not an overwhelming presence on college campuses. But in the
city of Changsha, where I lived from 1991-92, peasants were an integral part of
urban daily life. At that time, the local economy was transitioning from the socialist
economic regime to the new, market-oriented one. I used ration coupons issued by
my “work unit”—the university—to attain a weekly allotment of steamed breads and
noodles, in the fashion of the “old” economic order. At the same time, I habitually
shopped at the many burgeoning free markets that operated outside the state
economy (and spatially outside of the campus), purchasing fresh produce grown by
farmers in the countryside who transported it to the city markets each day. Engaging
in casual conversation with these Hunanese peasants, I too adapted some local
dialect, only to be corrected by my language instructor’s properputonghua
(standardized mandarin Chinese). By the late 1990s, migrant peddlers and laborers
from very remote areas—including Tibet—were a visible and integral part of
metropolitan landscapes and economies.
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In 1998 in Beijing, I was myself mistaken for a rural female migrant such as those
whose lives I explore in this dissertation. The experience drove home for me both the
prejudice inherent in stereotypes of the peasant other and the pervasiveness of that
prejudice. I was mis-recognized by a male migrant laborer. By that time, I had lived
in China off-and-on for several years and was comfortable with the Chinese
language. Encountering trouble connecting a cable to the T.V. set in my rented
apartment, I contacted my landlord. He instructed me to call an electrician’s shop in
our gated complex. I dialed the number for the shop and reached an electrician who
said he would visit my apartment shortly. When I came to the door to greet him, the
young man showed surprise. He exclaimed, “From your accent, I thought you must
be this household’s maid (xiao baomu)\” Having detected imperfections in my
putonghua, and given the stereotype that foreigners do not speak Chinese, he
logically assumed that I must be a rural woman— someone expected to speak inferior
putonghua.
Perhaps only a non-native speaker of Chinese would be flattered rather than insulted
at being mistaken for a rural migrant woman. This fact bespeaks the contrast
between my position in Chinese society and that of the rural women I studied. As an
American tourist and student, and subsequently as a teacher and an ethnographer, I
possessed incomparable economic, social, and cultural capital. I recognize that I
represented modernity to them, and that my friendship was a sort of symbolic capital
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they could acquire. That also put me in a position of relative power. Nonetheless, I
hope that my own encounter with constructed difference as a “foreigner”—albeit
humorous and rarely hurtful—made me sensitive to their experiences. It certainly led
me to question the taken-for-granted categories that defined their identities.
It has been said that cultural anthropology is in the business of difference. I do think
that analyzing how these differences are produced and the powers they serve can
further mutual understanding. For my part as the anthropologist who relays the tales
of these rural migrant women in contemporary China, this entails commitment to
agency and to seeing modernity as it is seen through their eyes.
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INTRODUCTION
GENDER AND MODERNITY IN LATE SOCIALIST CHINA
The “Experience of Modernity”1
I left home. When the car began to move, I didn’t shed a tear, because I wanted
to go.. .to a new beginning (wo yao qu xin de kaishi). Filled only with a strong
yearning for the city, I gave no serious thought to the matter of my employment.
My aunt had prepared for me a battered old suitcase. Inside I had packed only
some clothes, books, a pen, and two notebooks. I wore a watch, and carried two
hundred yuan given to me by my mother upon departure.
My dad didn’t quite agree with the work I was setting out to do, yet he didn’t
oppose me when I insisted that I would go anyway, and said only: “Come back if
things don’t work out.” My mom was pleased with where I was headed, only sad
that I wouldn’t be able to return home often. No one else knew I was leaving; my
brother was at school, so I didn’t see him to say goodbye.
In the car, speeding along the highway, I turned my head to look out the window
at the trees passing by at my glance, and saw the budding shoots that heralded
spring, and then I cried. So quickly did the scenery flash by that I sometimes
couldn’t clearly make anything out. Still, the car continued rushing toward the
endless horizon of that highway. Beyond is the city where I am headed— a strange
and unfamiliar place. Perhaps there the sky is not as deep a blue as it is in my
hometown, and there may not be a quiet path like the one in my village. I don’t
even know why I want to go there.
This quotation is the recollection recorded in the journal shared with me by one of
my closest informants, Zhang Xiaqing,2 of her first migration in 1997 from her
-5
Shandong village to the capital to take up a job as a domestic worker (baomu) for a
1 This is the subtitle of Marshall Berman’s 1988 book.
2 1 use pseudonyms throughout the dissertation to protect the anonymity of informants.
3 The Chinese term baomu literally means “protector mother” or “swaddling mother,” and is perhaps
best translated as “dry-nurse,” as one of two categories of “menial mothers” of the late imperial-
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2
three-generation family in Beijing. Typical of domestic work, her duties would
include caring for a toddler, cleaning and doing laundry for the family, and preparing
meals. In contrast to my 1987 excursion to China to undertake a year’s study abroad
arranged and financed by a private American university, Zhang’s journey is
undertaken from a vastly different position in the global economy. Her battered
suitcase containing meager possessions indicates her household’s relative poverty
even according to domestic standards, her dizziness at the passing scenery attests to
the novelty of riding in a car, while a pang of homesickness indicates her anxious
realization of her lack of control over the future, for better or worse. Our differential
access to cultural and symbolic capital4 likewise conditioned our experiences at our
destinations. As an American student and cosmopolitan tourist, I took up a privileged
position as a “foreigner” (laowai) amid Chinese, a signifier of capitalism and western
modernity. An unskilled female labor migrant who traversed village, county, and
republican periods; the second type is the “wet-nurse” (ruma, naima) (Lieberman 1998: 158-159). By
the late Qing, dry nurses were usually mature women who had borne children and who were hired to
care for the children of elites and might also perform routine domestic work. (Households that could
afford to would hire a separate nurse for each child.) In southern China, older (e.g., middle-aged) dry
nurses were called amah (Mandarin aiyi), a term still in use today. In post-Mao parlance, baomu
generally refers to the young rural women employed in urban households as full-time, live-in maids or
nannies, that is, who provide child- and/or eldercare and/or do housework and/or food preparation. I
translate baomu in the post-1949 context as “domestic worker” rather than the more pejorative “maid”
unless the text is meant to convey such a connotation. Indeed, many young rural women expressed to
me their discomfort with the pejorative implications of the term baomu and some adopted the more
professional sounding jiatingfuwuyuan (literally, household service personnel) or jiazhengfuwuyuan
(literally, household service personnel).
4 Here I follow Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation of capital as differentially distributed tripartite
resources: material, cultural, and symbolic, each of which can be convertible to the other form
(Natrajan and Ilahiane 2003). The term “social capital” as I use it encompasses cultural and symbolic
capital, but not necessarily resulting in control over productive resources.
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provincial borders, Zhang found herself marginalized and vulnerable in the urban
economy and society by dint of her rural origin, her gender, and her low-skilled, low-
waged, and low-status occupation.
Despite these vast differences of orientation, Zhang’s passage from village to city
resonates with my own account (and memory) of border-crossing—especially the
viscerally experienced tension of the moment between departure and arrival as
pregnant with possibilities. Indeed, Zhang’s writing appears similarly modernist,
depicting the linearly unfolding tale of a protagonist who parts (albeit with
conflicting emotions) with “tradition” symbolized by the idyllic rural setting, and
seizes the opportunity to become a subject of history and modernization by
embarking on a journey toward the distant beckoning city. Her tale calls to mind the
“experience of modernity”—particularly its ethos o f ambivalence—as articulated by
Marshall Berman (1988:15) in his masterful reading of modernist texts, architecture
styles, and social environments:
To be modem is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure,
power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and, at the same
time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know,
everything we are. Modem environments and experiences cut across all
boundaries of geography and ethnicity, class and nationality, of religion and
ideology: in this sense, modernity can be said to unite all mankind. But it is a
paradoxical unity, a unity of disunity: it pours us all into a maelstrom of
perpetual disintegration and renewal, of straggle and contradiction, of ambiguity
and anguish. To be modem is to be part of a universe in which, as Marx said, “all
that is solid melts into air.”
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4
For Karl Marx, as for other 19th century European social theorists, modernity
signified the ineluctable march of history through the spread of Enlightenment values
of scientific rationality, civilization, and progress (Hodgson 2001:2). Accordingly,
scientific knowledge and resulting technological innovations together would create
rational modes of social organization and thought, thereby liberating the individual
from the alleged shackles of ignorance and tradition and making all humanity self
consciously aware of themselves as being the subjects of history (paraphrasing
Hodgson 2001:2). The quotation from Marx above celebrates this liberation of
human nature from “one-off divine creation” (Bauman 2001: 122). As Zygmaut
Bauman (2001:122) explains, “Marx and Engels praised the capitalists, the bourgeois
revolutionaries, for ‘melting the solids and profaning the sacreds,’ which for long
centuries cramped human creative powers.”
Fundamentally, modernity entails a new temporality: “a break with the past [and] the
emergence of modem times” (Hirsch 2001:132), a new historical consciousness that
involves “a repudiation of the past and a commitment to change and the values of the
future” (Felski 1995: 13). Enlightenment reasoning thus distinguished “between
traditional societies, which are structured around the omnipresence of divine
authority, and a modem secularized universe predicated upon an individuated and
self-conscious subjectivity” (Felski 1995: 13).
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Importantly, the Enlightenment was seen to hold new possibilities for identity— for
self-making and self-transformation. In Bauman’s (2001:122) words,
“‘Predestination’ was replaced with ‘life project,’ fate with vocation—and a ‘human
nature’ into which one was bom with ‘identity’ which one needs to saw up and make
fit.” As modernity’s modality of time objectifies the past and presents horizons of
possibilities located far beyond one’s present, the future becomes something to be
desired (Hirsch 2001: 143). “One can now dream of a different life—more decent,
bearable or enjoyable” (Bauman 2001: 122). The dramatic rupture with the past that
enables a hopeful future of one’s own making is reflected in Zhang’s desire for a
“new beginning” expressed in the opening passage, and in turn introduces a central
theme of this dissertation: the making and remaking of identity and subjectivity as
rural women, through labor migration, engage with new ideas about modernity and
experience the ambiguities and ambivalence of the changes, no more so than that of
their identity itself, that are set in motion by their pursuit of dreams.
According to Gaonkar’s (1999:1) eloquent summary, the global and historical
trajectory of modernity as a set of ideas is “awakened by contact; transported through
commerce; administered by empires; bearing colonial inscriptions; propelled by
nationalism; and now increasingly steered by global media, migration, and capital.”
Yet of course “modernity” as envisioned and experienced by a young rural migrant
in today’s China is hardly the same phenomenon that confronted Marx and Engels in
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6
the 19th century, given the different world historical contexts. Moreover, in recent
decades, proponents of postmodern and postcolonial critiques5 have proclaimed the
failure of the project of modernity (as progress and liberation) and exposed the
Enlightenment assumptions of this metanarrative that underlay world historical
processes of colonialism and underdevelopment, and more recently, global
capitalism.6 The literature therefore supports a healthy skepticism about what might
be referred to as the teleological discourse of western Modernity and simultaneously
opens the door to different histories of its trajectories and alternative understandings
of its meaning.
In turn, anthropologists among others studying globalization have called into
question the Eurocentric assumption that modernity is equivalent to westernization,
and in particular the “inevitable triumph of a triumvirate of capitalism, secular
5 Some scholars hold that the “modem” is passe and subscribe to the idea that we live in a
postmodernism age. The anthropology of modernity also engages with postmodern theory but alleges
that modem world historical processes and political economic structures continue to matter.
Postmodern theory challenged the universal assumptions of a metanarrative of Modernity, and this
critique is incorporated into the study of “modernities” in the plural.
6 For example, the link between modernity’s civilizing mission and imperialist practices has been well
researched. “In the discourses of colonialism, for example, the historical distinction between the
modem present and the primitive past was mapped onto the spatial relations between Western and
non-Westem societies. Thus the technological advances of modem nation-states could be cited as a
justification for imperialist invasion, as the traditions and customs of indigenous peoples were forced
to give way to the inexorable path of historical progress” (Felski 1995: 14; See also Asad 1975 and
Fabian 1983 on the intertwining of imperialism, anthropology and Modernity). Similarly, Escobar
1995 argues that modernization theories of development sorted the world’s nations into stages of
economic and social development dictated by a western model of neoliberal free-market capitalism,
technologies and western expertise, thereby reinscribing many third world nations in colonial
conditions of dependency.
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7
culture and democracy” (Ong 1999: 31). While it is useful to define modernity for
the current era of economic and technological globalization as the “cultural domain
of capitalist civilization” (Friedman 1994: 225), terms like “alternate,” “other,” or
“multiple” modernities respond to such critiques by implying that modernity is
neither a uniform or singular process emanating from the west, nor one that must be
replicated elsewhere in the world exactly as it emerged historically in Europe and
America.8 In light of such critique, I shall use the term modernity to indicate a
nationalist discourse associated with the reform-oriented Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) state in the particular historical and cultural context of late 20th -early 21st
century China. Further, I refer to “post-Mao,” “reform-era,” or “late socialist”
7 Globalization has a long history, reaching back at least to the 16th century age of global commerce
and into the colonial era (and according to Janet Abu-Lughod [1989], may be pushed back even
further). But since the late 20th century, the global spread of knowledge (ideas), communications,
technology, peoples, and capital has increased widely and rapidly, changing our experiences of space
and time (Harvey 1989). It is to the contemporary epoch that I refer by the term globalization here, in
which “modernity is now everywhere, it is simultaneously everywhere, and it is interactively
everywhere. But it is not only everywhere, it is also in a series of somewheres” (Appadurai and
Breckenridge 1995:2).
8 For example, cultural historian Shu-mei Shih (2001) contests the assumptions that Modernity
originated solely in “the west” by demonstrating how foundational modernist texts were conceived
through dialogue with and reflection upon Chinese literary and philosophical tracts, while in turn in
the early 20th century, China was sparked by the encounter with western ideas of modernity in the
context of urban semi-colonialism to generate its own “semi-colonial modernity.” In addition, Shih
problematizes reductive binary oppositions of “east-west,” by pointing out that Chinese modernists
distinguished between “the west” as metropole and “the west” in the form of semi-colonial treaty
ports, and held different relationships to modernity in each site. As another example, Aihwa Ong
(1999) has argued that some in China and among overseas Chinese claim an indigenous modernity of
“Asian capitalism” that relies on essentialized notion of Chinese culture, such as Confucian ethics and
Asian interpersonal relations. This Asian capitalism is moreover reshaping global capitalism (as she
pointed out in a talk in May 2004 at USC). However, Louisa Schein (2000) cogently observes that
claims to uniquely Asian modernity are “orientalist” in that they replicate the ideological claims of
modernity as a unified process.
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modernity (post-1978) as distinct from that of either republican nationalism (1911-
1949) or Mao-era socialism (1949-1978).9
This dissertation is an ethnographic exploration of the lives and experiences of
women such as Zhang Xiaqing, village women who have migrated to the city of
Beijing and found work in its informal service sector, specifically as domestic
workers and hotel/office cleaners. Since the early 1980s, rural migrants like them
have supplied the cheap and flexible labor that helps fuel China’s rapidly growing
economy, taking up low-wage and often unregulated and unprotected jobs in light
industry, construction, retail, and service occupations. By one recent estimate,
migrants have contributed about 20% of China’s Gross National Product since the
start of the reforms (Cai 2003: 119). Given a history of scholarship both within and
outside China that either ignored or trivialized rural women’s contributions to
China’s “development” and “modernization” via migration and labor, it is especially
important to illuminate these now (Jacka and Gaetano 2004).
9 China since 1978—following the death of Mao and prosecution of the Gang of Four responsible for
the Cultural Revolution of the previous decade—may be considered to be in the “post-Mao” era of
rule, or in the period of “reform” (e.g., Schein 2000), indicating that additional reforms will occur, or
“post-reform,” because the first reforms are in the past (Liu, X. 2000). In western scholarship it has
become increasingly common to refer to contemporary China “in transition” from socialism (i.e., to
capitalism). Some scholars therefore label the period as “late” socialism, implying an impending end
of socialism (Zhang, L. 2002), or even “post”- socialism, referring to the end of Maoism (Litzinger
2000).
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Moreover, rural women’s experiences of labor migration provide a window on the
interconnection of gender, place, and identity as well as power and agency in
contemporary China. In the imaginaries of rural migrant women like Zhang, the
journey to the city is seen as a passage into modernity, and gaining urban experience
is symbolic of becoming modem. As I will explain shortly, these particular
conceptions of place and identity as “modem” (and, antithetically, as “traditional”)
are ideological constructs. Ironically, the reality of migrant life in the city rarely
fulfills such promise, for the very reason that neither the state nor the market
recognizes peasants and rural migrants as equals to urban citizens and worker; I
explain this in detail below. The ambivalence Zhang expresses about departure thus
foreshadows the challenges ahead.
Denied the recognition by urban society as equally modem, exploited by state and
market, most rural migrant women suffer broken dreams and shattered spirits. Yet at
the same time, they are empowered by their experiences, especially their exposure to
new ideas and the acquisition of new skills and their sense of self as relatively
modem (e.g., compared to their nonmigrant peers or village elders). Most
significantly, through their experiences, they challenge dominant ideologies of
gender and place that marginalize them in rural households, urban society, and the
labor market, albeit in limited and largely individual ways. Finally, for some rural
migrant women like Zhang, the unjust dissonance between imagination and reality
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that they experience first-hand becomes knowledge that empowers them to engage in
more radical political critique and protest, including collective action.
This dissertation focuses on the experiences of migrant women and their agency,
their “independent modes of ideation and practice” and “capacity for purposeful
action” (O'Hanlon 1988: 196-197). Acknowledging migrant women as actors is one
contribution that anthropology can make to the literature on migration. That
literature has largely focused on macro-economic structures or reduced the
individual to a rational economic actor, considering migrants as “iron filings...
impelled by forces beyond their conscious control, and, like atoms stripped of their
cultural and temporal diversity, ...denied the creative capacity to innovate and shape
the worlds from which and into which they moved” (Abu-Lughod 1975: 201).
The qualitative, ethnographic methodology of participant observation is the means
best suited to discern how, through everyday practices, social actors produce and
reproduce culture. My ethnographic research leads me to conclude that, even as
political economic structures and cultural ideologies about gender and place construe
their inferior social and economic status, rural migrant women are not powerless
victims (or dupes) subjected to forces of modernity beyond their control. Rather, an
ethnographic approach stresses their active participation in the production,
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reproduction, and even transformation of discourses of difference that inform the
social inequalities of late socialist modernity.
The Fieldwork
My decision to focus the fieldwork on rural migrant women was a natural fit with my
broader interest in the changing lives of Chinese women with the onset of economic
reforms. By the mid 1990s, the migration of rural women to the cities had begun to
receive attention of Women’s Federation cadres and academics in China. Reading
newspaper reports in China Women’s News (Zhongguo Funti Bao; hereafter CWN)
on the subject while enrolled at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Research on
American and Chinese Culture during 1995-96,1 determined to pursue the topic
further. I was particularly intrigued at the attention paid to the new “social problem”
of “rural migrant woman,” whether in official discourse or sensationalist media
reports (mostly domestic but some foreign). From this background research I formed
a central research question: How is the “rural migrant woman” perceived by the
powerful—officials and urban “mainstream”—and how does this impact rural
migrant women’s experiences and self-perceptions?
Rural migrant domestic workers were a logical first focus because domestic service
was the most common job for women newly arrived in the capital. Consequently,
they also received a disproportionate share of media and scholarly attention.
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12
However, the difficulty of undertaking participant observation among domestic
workers forced me to broaden my scope to include other kinds of “menial women,”
namely the hotel and office janitors. As ethnography entails forging close
relationships with research “subjects,” I put effort into establishing a core group of
informants. I was open to chance meetings and was flexible in implementing my
research agenda, adapting it to the fieldwork situation. Thus, while most of my
informants were young rural domestic workers or janitors, some were former
domestic workers and janitors, now in other occupations.
I conducted fieldwork for this dissertation in Beijing, where I resided for 20 months
between August 1998-June 2000, and for two months (April-May) in 2002. While
conducting fieldwork, with the exception of four months in 1999 (October-January)
when I resided in a dormitory at Beijing University, I lived in formerly state-owned
apartment complexes located in three different Beijing neighborhoods. I learned a lot
about Beijing peoples’ attitudes toward migrant workers by talking informally to my
neighbors, longtime Beijing residents whose housing (although recently privatized
and occupant-owned) had been allocated them by their work unit. I also had the
privilege of talking to their hired domestic help.
For much of my time in the field, my focus was on rural migrant women domestic
workers and their employers. I interviewed 15 of my Beijing friends and neighbors,
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all from the professional (i.e., middle) class, who either currently or until just
recently had a migrant domestic worker in their employ. In four cases I also
interviewed their current domestic worker, two of whom were live-in, full-time, and
two of whom were live-out, part-time. However, I felt the interviews were
constrained by my personal relationships with the employers and soon discontinued
that interview technique.
It was comparatively easier to meet rural women employed by foreigners living and
working in Beijing. An “expat” myself, I could easily create rapport in Beijing’s
English-speaking community, and moreover, rural women with experience working
for foreigners often directly solicited work from noticeably foreign-looking (i.e.,
nonChinese) people on the streets of Beijing’s Chaoyang district (home to most
embassies and many exclusive housing complexes). In this effortless fashion I made
firm acquaintanceships with two married women, affmally related, from Anhui and
their friend from Liaoning (who several times entertained me at their employer's
residences when their employers were absent), and one unmarried young Hebei
woman. Through them I gained some insight into middle-aged rural women’s
motivations for migration and their job-seeking strategies. I also learned their views
of Chinese versus foreign employers, which made for revealing comparison. But
their wages and work conditions were far superior to those working for Chinese
nationals, and so I did not intend to include them in the overall study. Rather, I had
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hoped they might connect me to younger co-villagers working for Beijing
employers, but this did not happen.
Although initially I had intended to seek out domestic workers away from the
scrutiny of either employers or the state (e.g., without using official contacts such as
the Ministry of Labor or government-affiliated employment agencies), the difficulty
in reaching my “target population” forced me to reconsider. Thus, I turned to a semi
official organization, the Migrant Women’s Club (dagongmei zhi jia).1 0 The Migrant
Women’s Club is an organization for rural migrant women in Beijing that was
established in 1996 by a small group of urban women activists committed to the
alleviation of social inequalities between residents of the countryside and the city
and between men and women (Milwertz 2000b; fieldnotes on Xie Lihua’s
presentation to the East meets West Feminist Translation Group [Dongxifang
Xiangyu Xiaozu], November 22,1997). I learned of the Club through my
involvement with various feminist groups in Beijing during 1997-98 (when I was a
student on the IUB Chinese language program at Qinghua University). I sporadically
attended Club functions during 1999, including the First National Conference on
Migrant Women Workers’ Rights and Interests held in April 1999.1 1 From January-
June 2000 and April-May 2002 I regularly participated in the Club’s bi-monthly
1 0 The nonliteral English translation is that used by the organization itself.
1 1 For a report on that conference, see Jacka 2000.
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Sunday activities, met frequently with the Club organizers, staff, and members, and
for 6 weeks voluntarily offered English language lessons to interested Club
members. In addition, I assisted Tamara Jacka (then of Murdoch University in
Western Australia) in implementing a survey of Club members (jointly with Rural
10
Women Knowing All magazine collective). The Club had over 500 members as of
2002 (interview with Li Tao in April 2002), and the majority of its members had
worked in domestic service at some point (usually as a first job). Over this extended
period of time I came to know well a core group of 15 Club members, all single,
aged 19-32, with live-in domestic work experience—each of whom I found time to
interview at least once for a few hours outside of scheduled Club meetings. I was
able to follow up with seven of them in 2002; all but two had quit domestic service
by that time.
Meanwhile, in 1998 I made the acquaintance of four young (aged 16-20) migrant
women workers in Beijing who I would come to regard as friends over the next four
years. Through visits to their hometowns, I gained much insight into the lives of
rural migrant women in the rural and urban contexts, and broadened my inquiry
beyond that of domestic work. Zhang Xiaqing, whom I have already introduced, and
Luo Jing, her former classmate from middle school, were Shandong natives.
Although Zhang had worked as a domestic worker, she and Luo were both teaching
1 2 A total of 89 migrant women completed the survey; 24 of them were live-in domestic workers.
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16
in schools for migrant children in Beijing for the majority of my fieldwork period.
On many occasions I joined them in socializing together with their colleagues,
likewise young women from the countryside, including two women who had
experience in domestic service. At the time of my follow-up visit in 2002, Zhang
was still teaching in Beijing but Luo had married another migrant, from Hubei
province, and had moved to her husband’s village.
In addition, in 1998 an American friend introduced me to two sisters from northern
Shaanxi. Zhou Lili had worked briefly as a chambermaid at a three-star hotel in 1997
where my friend had rented a room. Zhou Lili’s younger sister, Zhou Lina, had
worked as a domestic worker in a suburb of Beijing. When I met them they were
working together in a private clothing factory in Beijing. In late 1999 they joined a
janitorial services company contracted to a four-star hotel. I visited them at the hotel,
observing them on the job, and hung out with them in their living quarters
(dormitories provided by the cleaning company), and interviewed their co-workers
and two bosses as well. In 2001, Zhou Lili married a Beijing resident, her former
boss at the four-star hotel. In 2002 she was hired to work as a chambermaid at a
state-run guesthouse. Her sister Zhou Lina quit the four-star hotel in 2001 and
worked briefly as a chambermaid at other hotels, returned home for a spell, and then,
in 2002, returned to Beijing to work in a factory assembling cassette tapes. During
the extensive time I spent with the Zhou sisters, including during my follow-up visit,
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I met numerous other rural migrant women, mainly their colleagues from the hotels.
Three young women in particular I came to know quite well: Zhao Ning, Jiang
Linlin, and Li Mei. The former two were domestic workers before finding hotel jobs.
Another American friend introduced me to Cao Fang, a chambermaid at the hotel she
stayed at during 1997-98. A Henan native, Cao had been a domestic worker in
Beijing in the early 1990s. In 2002 I was able to follow up with Cao, who had
married a fellow Henan migrant, given birth to a son (in her husband’s village), and
come back to Beijing with her family, where she found part-time work in a
restaurant.
The total sample of rural migrant women who constituted my “community” was 33.
At the time of the first interview, 21 were single; 11 were married, and 1 was
divorced. Of the total, 22 were working in domestic service, and among these, 4
were working for foreigners. Eight others had formerly worked in domestic service
for Beijing employers. Of current and former domestic workers, 24 had been single
when they first entered domestic service. Of the total sample of rural migrant
women, in addition to those in domestic service, 5 were working as hotel janitors and
4 as teachers in migrant schools during fieldwork.
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During that time I frequently interviewed and interacted with Ms. Xie Lihua, the
founder of the publication Rural Women Knowing All (.Nongjianii Baishitong;
hereafter RWKA) and the Migrant Women’s Club, and Mr. Li Tao, former RWKA
editor and editor-in-chief of the magazine Migrant Women (Dagongmei), who were
both excellent “expert informants,” along with several members of RWKA and its
affiliates (see Chapter 6). I also benefited from conversations with other experts: Tan
Shen and Huang Ping of the Sociology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences; Zheng Zhenzhen of the Population Research Institute at Peking University;
Zhao Shukai of the State Council Development Research Center; Lu Shaoqing of the
Research Center for Rural Economy at the Ministry of Agriculture; Sarah Cook of
the Ford Foundation, and numerous others. In addition, while in Beijing I attended
and participated in several conferences on gender and/or migration, including the
aforementioned Conference on Migrant Women’s Rights and Interests (1999) and
the Ford Foundation’s Rural Labor Mobility in China conference series (1999-2000).
Economic Reform and Uneven Development
Rural women like Zhang Xiaoqing are China’s “working sisters” {dagongmei),
mostly young, single1 3 daughters of farming households from relatively poor central
1 3 Age and marital status are important determinants of women’s migration in China as elsewhere (cf.
Riley and Gardner 1991). Surveys indicate that the migrant population is on average younger than the
rural non-migrant population, and within the migrant population, women tend to be younger, and less
often married, than men (Rozelle et al. 1999, 378). Survey data from the Migrant Women’s Club (see
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19
and western regions who have since the early 1980s comprised from 1/3 to over 1/21 4
of China’s “floating population” (liudong renkoit) 1 5 or rural migrant labor force,1 6
| n
which in 2004 was estimated at about 120 million. Rural labor migrants are a
symptom, and a symbol, of China’s latest experiment in constructing a modem
nation-state.
nl2) shows 94% of members sampled were between the ages o f 18-30 and 73% were between the
ages of 18-24; 81% of the total were single. In Chapter 3 I note how the younger age at marriage of
women compared with men explains the higher proportion of young and single women than men in
the overall migrant population.
1 4 Men dominated migration flows throughout the 1990s at a 3:2 proportion with women, but the
proportions varied by region. For example, in parts of rural Anhui, Sichuan, and Hunan, women
comprised a greater proportion of the out-migrant population, and they comprised a larger proportion
of the in-migrant population to the Special Economic Zones of southern China (Tan 2000: 296).
According to the 1997 Beijing migrant population census, 33.9% of total registered migrants were
women, at 779,588, and over 2/3 of them hailed from rural areas of Hubei, Sichuan, Sha’anxi and
Gansu (Zheng, Z. 1999: 290).
For a summary of existing statistical data on women’s migration patterns in China, see Jacka and
Gaetano 2004.
1 5 As I explain below, the administrative system of household registration or hukou has significantly
limited the ability of migrants to settle permanently away from home and especially in large cities,
and hence forces migrants to “float” between rural and urban spaces, hence the term. However, “
floating population” also suggests that rural laborers migrate “blindly,” as aimless drifters or vagrants,
which is incorrect. Michael Dutton (1998: 63-65) traces the etymology of the term “float” (liu) to
negative associations with social disorder or chaos, as in the term “vagrant” or “hooligan” (liumang).
1 6 There are multiple terms for “migrant” in Chinese. The migrants I refer to in my dissertation belong
to the “floating population”; they are considered temporary migrants no matter their length of stay in
the city because their household registration remains in the rural area of origin. By contrast, those
whose migration entails a change of official registration are indicated by the term qianyi renkou, more
akin to the English term “immigrant.” Among “migrants” as I use the term (i.e., indicating temporary
or unofficial migrants) can further be distinguished legal and illegal migrants. The “illegals” are those
without temporary residence permit, stable shelter and stable employment; hence they are referred to
as the “three-withouts” (samvu).
1 7 Estimating the exact size of the rural migrant labor force is fraught with difficulties. Overall
migration patterns since the 1980s have followed economic indicators, as labor flows from poorer,
inland regions (primarily in China's central and western regions) to the wealthier, eastern seaboards,
and within the eastern region, concentrating in urban areas and Special Economic Zones (Fan 1996:
32). Most migration has been intra-provincial, and women more than men are likely to engage in
intra-provincial migration, although evidence also suggests that when women do engage in inter
provincial migration, they do so at longer distances than men (Fan 2000). Moreover, instances of
inter-provincial migration were on the rise and becoming the dominant pattern for some provinces by
the end of the 1990s (Du 2000: 77). Migration occurs mainly between rural and urban areas (Mallee
1996: 120). See also Jacka and Gaetano 2004.
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20
China’s leaders convened the Third Plenum of the 11 th Central Committee in 1978,
where they announced a platform of “reform and opening” (gaige kaifeng). Under
the oversight of former Premier Deng Xiaoping, party leaders pulled away from
Mao’s vision of an egalitarian utopia achieved through endless class struggle, and in
turn rejected the Stalinist planned economy, agricultural collectivization, and focus
on heavy industry that had characterized the previous era (Goldman and
MacFarquhar 1999: 4-5). Adopting policies of “reform” (gaige), the pragmatists set
aside ideology to achieve economic recovery and raise standards of living, and used
economic performance to reestablish the legitimacy of the party (Ibid; Gries and
Rosen 2004: 4).1 8 As an editorial in the party's official paper People’ s Daily (Renmin
Ribao) in 1984 succinctly proclaimed, “the goal of developing production is to
improve peoples’ lives” (Guo 1994). The subsequent neologism “socialism with
Chinese characteristics” (you zhongguo tese de shehui zhuyi) thus implied a
continuance of Chinese Communist Party rule but a shift from socialist policies
toward market economics.
In an era of global capital, moreover, the new agenda advances the goal of achieving
a modernity that involves “getting on track with the rest of the world” (yu shijie
jiegui) (Zhang Z. 2000: 93), which is implied by the term “opening” (kaifeng). By
1 8 This new perspective is often summarized using the allusion, usually attributed to Deng Xiaoping,
that a cat can be black [capitalist] or white [socialist], just so long as it effectively catches mice.
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21
steering a course toward increasing economic growth and global competitiveness,
China aspires to reach parity with the industrialized nations, overcoming a sense of
having fallen behind the more “advanced” industrialized west. Thus the modernity
signified by “reform and opening” clearly must be situated both within the local—
the politics and history of the Chinese Communist Party-ruled state, on the one hand,
and “the global”—the nation’s self-conscious awareness of its place in the global
setting, on the other.
Economic reforms were introduced in two stages. The early phase of reforms
concentrated on agricultural productivity and the transition to a market economy.
Between 1978-1984, rural reforms were introduced that involved redistribution of
collective land to households, who in effect contract land from the state in perpetuity.
Households were permitted to make their own decisions about farming and sell their
produce on the market after contributing a grain quota or tax to the government. In
the industrial sector, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were likewise given leeway to
sell above-quota products for profit (Naughton 1999: 33).
Urban reforms, with gradual privatization of industry and land at their core, have
been the focus of economic policies since 1985. In the aftermath of the 1989
Tiananmen protests, economic liberalization was slowed down, only to pick up speed
in 1992, when Deng toured the Special Economic Zones in the south. The years
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22
1996-1997 saw a major push toward privatization of the SOEs, while privatization of
real estate has been stepped up since 2000. Naughton (1999) characterizes post-1992
reforms as “structural transformations,” measured by the transfer of a predominantly
agricultural labor force to a primarily industrial and service-based one, and
accompanied by gradual urbanization.
Since the start of reforms, China has achieved rapid economic growth, indicated by
an average GNP growth rate of 9.2% annually from 1978 to 1997, which is largely
driven by the burgeoning non-state sector that includes private and foreign-invested
firms as well collective and joint-invested enterprises (Huang 2003: 108). Rising
GNP has in turn benefited both rural and urban incomes and people’s livelihoods
have on the whole improved compared with the pre-reform era.
In rural areas, the “household responsibility system” (haochan daohu) reversed the
“scissors effect” of agriculture subsidizing industry via state extraction of rural
profits that characterized prior decades. The higher prices for state-procured grain
combined with diversification of crops to be sold on the market led to an initial
increase in agricultural household income in the early 1980s, and decreased the rural-
urban and regional income disparity (Huang 2003: 104).
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23
Urban per capita incomes have risen steadily since the reforms. Between 1978 and
1998, per capita annual disposable income of urban households grew from 343 yuan
to 5425 yuan (www.states.gov.cn/yearbookl999; downloaded 12/03/2004). The
middle class of bureaucrats, managers, and professionals that existed in the 1950s
and 1960s expanded to encompass a new generation of owner-operators and private
entrepreneurs—the new middle class (Goodman 1999: 244). In urban China in the
1990s a veritable “consumer revolution” occurred as residents’ increasing
discretionary income and leisure time created a huge market for new goods and
services (Davis 2000). It is important to acknowledge the state’s primary role in
engineering this “revolution” by setting policy that allowed markets to flourish.
However, intra-rural, rural-urban, and regional inequality have increased greatly
since the mid-1990s, and especially after 1997, not only in terms of income but also
access to social services, as state and collective provisions have been replaced with
market-driven ones (Huang 2003: 104-106). A certain degree of uneven
development and income inequality were anticipated to accompany reforms, but
eventually the benefits of reform were supposed to “trickle down.” However, some
critics, such as those affiliated with China’s “New Left,” argue that the reform
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24
polices overly favored the coastal seaboard and its urban areas, resulting in uneven
development.1 9
Rural areas continued to be disadvantaged relative to urban areas after the start of
reforms. Despite increasing agricultural productivity and increased output that
resulted from new technology and the more flexible agricultural policy, returns to
labor in agriculture were lower than for other sectors of the economy. Rural incomes
in fact began to stagnate in the late 1980s (Khan and Riskin 1998; Huang 2003: 104).
Conservative estimates put urban incomes three times rural incomes on average by
the year 2000 (Zhang L. 2004:213; see also “Rich M an...”). Policy constrains farm
households in numerous ways. Peasants suffer from a high tax burden, often
compounded by corrupt local tax collectors. State grain prices have dropped (and in
some places the state issues IOUs to farmers for grain). The local state continues to
have authority over land use and management, which constrains farmers’ ability to
expand creatively (Bossen 2002: 127). Additionally, as there is no real market in
buying and selling land (land is leased from the former collectives), peasants cannot
amass huge lots of land, such as to expand into agribusiness (Bossen 2002: 124).
Regarding this last point, some scholars argue that postponing privatization of rural
lands is good for farmers, as a survival safety net (Huang 2003: 111-112).
1 9 On China’s New Left, see the essays in Zhang X. 2001.
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25
The reorganization of agricultural responsibility also unveiled the surplus
agricultural labor that collectives had formerly absorbed, while rising agricultural
productivity made even more agricultural labor redundant. As the state discontinued
grain purchase and grain prices fell, the state encouraged new forms of income
earnings through a policy of “leave the land but not the village” (litu bulixiang). In
the 1980s, rural industry, such as the township and village enterprises (TVEs),
absorbed a large amount of “surplus labor,” and as many as 10 million rural laborers
made the transition to local industry. But most such local initiatives proved
unsustainable, especially in rural areas too remote from urban markets and far from
sources of capital investment. The most successful TVEs were located near the
newly created “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs) established on China's eastern and
southern seaboards and around port cities. These areas attracted foreign investment
through preferential policies favorable to international trade and investment, such as
tax write-offs and rent subsidies.
Uneven development and a rural-urban income gap that resulted from reform
policies provided the political-economic context for the massive rural-to-urban
migration witnessed in China after the mid-1980s. Diminishing returns to
agriculture, high tax burden on agricultural households, decreasing land allocations,
a large surplus labor force and the lack of off-farm employment opportunities, were
some key “push” factors that propelled peasants out of agriculture and villages.
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26
Meanwhile, the non-state and collective sectors generated new employment demand
in urban centers (urban centers during this period expanded to encompass a greater
share of the territory), demand that could only be met by a large and relatively
inexpensive labor force pulled from the countryside.
China’s transition from a socialist to a market economy has been and continues to be
engineered by a powerful state, and should not be seen as simply the inevitable
outcome of market forces. The phenomenon of labor migration aptly illustrates this
point. Prior to the mid-1980s, migration was strictly controlled by the household
registration (hukou) system, which was instituted in 1956 under Mao. Although the
hukou system as an “urban public goods regime” (Solinger 1999: 9) or mechanism of
resource redistribution has been made largely obsolete by the establishment of
markets, it continues to be a means of managing migration and, more importantly, it
shores up an ideology of social-spatial difference that rationalizes a hierarchy largely
along rural-urban lines (Wang, F. 2004).
Foundations of the Rural-Urban Dichotomy
At the Third Plenum, premier Zhao Ziyang addressed the Party Congress as follows:
The primary stage of socialism is the stage for gradually casting off poverty and
backwardness; it is the stage of gradually replacing a country where farming
based on manual labor forms the basis and peasants constitute the majority, with
a modem industrial nation where nonpeasant workers constitute the majority
(cited in Kipnis 1997: 169).
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27
The equation of peasants and agriculture with backwardness or lack of modernity is a
hallmark of the teleology of modernity, which was introduced to China in the late
19th century.
According to some historians, until the early 20th century, China did not have an
exact rural-urban divide but rather had a rural-urban continuum.2 0 “This continuum
changed to a ‘gulf beginning in the early 20th century, as Chinese elites engaged
with western ideas of modernity and techniques of spatial planning, administration,
and engineering” (Lu 2002: 129). By the 1900s, “as political reforms separated cities
and towns as agents of social change ... an ideology emerge[d] that looked upon
villages as the source of backwardness” (Faure and Liu 2002: 1).
2 0 In the Ming and Qing eras, the argument goes, China was characterized by a rural-urban continuum
in which villages and cities were integrated administratively and commercially such that “rural-urban
distinctions were not a significant part of an individual’s identity” (Faure and Liu 2002:1). As Faure
and Liu (2002) elaborate, first, the Chinese elites were landed gentry whose economic and social base
was in their rural communities. Government administrators (scholar-officials) were culled from every
province through the competitive civil service examinations (abolished in 1905) that were based on
mastery of the classical texts, and thus represented small towns as well as metropolitan areas (i.e.,
urban areas closer to the imperial capital). Second, village and city were similar in terms of cultural
life, as for example religious sites were scattered across both terrains rather than concentrated in
cities. Third, there was frequent communication and population movement across these areas.
Although Hanchao Lu (2002: 127) does concede, following Mark Elvin, that the cities held some awe
as the centers of administrative function (location of the government yamen), this association with
taxation, lawsuits, and other concerns only added to a predominantly negative view of the city sullied
by its association with commerce and merchants that were lowly regarded in Confucian social
hierarchy. In sum, “all of society to some degree.. .held the city to be an abomination [prior to the 20t h
century]” (Lu 2002: 128).
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28
Following decades of foreign occupation of China's “treaty ports” since the first
Opium War, defeat at the hands of the Japanese in Manchuria in 1895 further
weakened the Qing dynastic regime. Under the motto of “self-strengthening” the
nation, Qing scholar-officials began to implement “New Policies” that would “link
capital and province, city and village, in a more tightly woven whole” (Stapleton
9 1
2000: 48). New Policy reformers, drawing in a large part upon European or
Japanese models,2 2 targeted provincial capitals “as sites for model institutions”
(Stapleton 2000: 38),2 3 turning a place like Chengdu into a “veritable modem city”
(Stapleton 2000: 48). Ultimately, the New Policies may have caused “the building of
a wall between rural and urban China” (Thompson cited in Stapleton 2000: 63).
While urban centers underwent modernization, rural environs were left socially and
economically in disarray after the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Successive
military regimes of the new republic imposed high taxes on the populace to raise
their armies, placing an undue burden on peasants. As Hanchao Lu (2002: 129)
argues, the thousands of rural itinerants who migrated to Shanghai and Beijing in the
2 1 New Policy reformers included the future first president of the republic Yuan Shikai, governor-
general under the Empress Dowager Cixi of Zhili province (which surrounded Peking), whose
policies were circulated by the Beiyang Gazette (Beiyang Guangbao) and widely emulated (Stapleton
2000: 60).
2 2 Formerly cautious and selective in their application of western theories to China and protective of
cultural traditions, “after the 1911 revolution, a body of more and more vocal opinion unequivocally
and aggressively challenged Chinese society for more westernization, or in more concrete terms for
changing Chinese culture and attitudes by reference to the West” (Faure and Liu 2002: 205).
2 3 The goals of the reforms were to establish civilized customs (kai fengqt) and construct civilization
(wenming) (Stapleton 2000: 112-113). Through new institutions such as police forces, chambers of
commerce, and charities, targeted cities achieved improved public health and social order, and fought
“all that stood in the way of the progress of civilization” (Stapleton 2000: 125).
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29
early 20th century were less drawn to cities for economic reasons than pushed out of
the countryside that was rife with war and famine.
As national introspection and confrontation with external challenge and new ideas
exacerbated material and discursive distance between countryside and city, rural and
urban no longer referred merely to administrative zones but increasingly demarcated
economic and social difference and hierarchy. The ideology of modernity viewed the
rural as containing “unenlightened masses”; in contrast, the treaty ports of China’s
coast and old imperial cultural centers like Beijing were the enviable gateways to
foreign lands and centers of translation and exchange of foreign ideas.2 4
Myron Cohen (1993:155) argues that the term “peasant” (nongmin), with its
negative valence, came into use in China at this time, by way of Japanese. In
literature in the wake of the May Fourth enlightenment, the peasantry was portrayed
as a
culturally distinct and alien ‘other,’ passive helpless and unenlightened, in the
grip of ugly and fundamentally useless customs, desperately in need of education
and cultural reform, and for such improvement in their circumstances totally
dependent on the leadership and efforts of rational and informed outsiders
(Cohen 1993: 154-155).
2 4 Lu (2002) and others note that Shanghai became synonymous with a modernity equated with
westernization that was at first alien to the nation; Faure and Liu (2002: 204) stress that Beijing,
Nanjing, and Guangzhou were more attractive to intellectuals and socially mobile elites not because
they were, like Shanghai, western treaty ports but for their prior cultural importance as centers of
learning (formerly imperial academies but now the first modem universities).
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30
This generally negative view of the peasantry remained even in the wake of a
massive peasant-based revolution that resulted in victory for the Chinese Communist
Party.
The Hukou System. 1956-1978
Mao Zedong’s revolutionary discourse glorified “poor peasants” as the ideologically
pure “backbone of the revolution” whose poverty could be instructive to urban
workers (Kipnis 1995: 114; Kipnis 1997: 168; Potter 1983: 475). (This view turned
to practice in the Cultural Revolution, when scores of urban youth were sent down to
the countryside to live and toil with peasants.) Orthodox Marxism, in contrast,
considered the peasantry unable to recognize itself as a class and pursue its class
interests as a revolutionary force, and therefore but a transitional stage on the road to
proletarianization (Potter 1983: 474-475). (Engels referred to the “foolish state” of
the peasantry; Marx saw them as requiring leadership of towns [Ibid.]). Yet Mao also
aired more contradictory views of the peasantry that reinforced the need for a
revolutionary vanguard to lead the peasants out of darkness (Potter 1983: 475 and
497 n\ 1).
Mao also professed that the socialist revolution would abolish the antagonistic,
exploitative relationship between the city and the countryside (Kipnis 1997: 165).
Certainly metropolises like Shanghai were purged of capitalist exploitation and
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31
imperial domination when brought under Communist dominion (profits turned over
to Beijing, nationalization of resources, etc.). But the centralization of control of
economic and social resources by the powerful party-state in practice made a rural-
urban dichotomy even more pronounced. The lynchpin of this socialist planned
system was the institutionalization of the household registration system.
In 1956, the “household registration system” (hukou zhidu) was established. The
nation”s population was classified into either agricultural or non-agricultural
households, which in turn were mapped onto residential distinction, such that
“farmer” households became synonymous with rural residency, and “worker”
identity with urban residency, though in fact some urban hukou holders were farmers
and vice-versa.
The hukou system combined with a Soviet-style centrally planned economy
organized the allocation of resources, whether labor, goods or services. Urban
residents were assigned to work units— industry, research, defense or government
organs— which were guaranteed “iron rice bowls” providing a lifetime of
employment and welfare, including housing, education, and medical care, to their
members. Rural residents were organized into cooperatives and, briefly, into
2 5 The hukou system is described in detail in Kipnis 1995; Potter 1983; Cheng and Seldon 1994; Chan
and Li Zhang 1999).
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32
communes that provided the state with quotas of staples, which the state distributed
to urban areas at subsidized price, and were otherwise self-sufficient. Cooperatives
had the burden of providing welfare for their members, so the quality of services
varied according to the productivity of the entity. While the difference in standard of
living between rural and urban areas was not large, urban workers, cadres, and
intellectuals generally enjoyed a better material life, their basic needs guaranteed.
The household registration system was more or less fixed. First, registration was
inherited. Second, hukou transfer was difficult. Among urban workers, transfers
between work units required special permission of the work units involved, and was
nearly impossible. In addition, the hukou system ensured that rural-to-urban
migration (and vice-versa) was severely restricted (with the exception of periods of
national disaster or political upheaval). With the state, through the work units, the
sole distributor of basic goods and services, whether directly or through allocation of
subsidies and ration tickets, it was nearly impossible to exist outside the work unit
system in urban areas. Even overnight stays outside of one’s place of residence
required registering with police authorities. The hukou system together with the
economic structure of urban life severely restricted rural-to-urban migration, and also
limited intra-rural or intra-urban migration.
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33
Thus Dorothy Solinger (1999: 1-14) argues that hukou determined one’s material
and social prospects, and urban hukou became a symbol of social status as well as
legal residency. Under the hukou system, rural residents were well aware that urban
residents led a more privileged lifestyle. Peasants referred to urban residents as
“those who eat the public grain” (chigongliang de) as if to stress that they alone had
to toil for their subsistence, and peasants actively strategized to secure the prized
urban hukou. Ultimately, the rural-urban divide became a form of symbolic capital
and indicator of hierarchical social status, and persists as such into the present.
Ironically, Kipnis (1997: 169) notes, the hukou system reversed any glorification of
poor peasants that existed during the revolution.
Gender and the Hukou System27
The hukou was not a gender-neutral system, for it also institutionalized gender
hierarchy. Until 1998, policy declared that hukou be inherited through the maternal
2 6 Potter and Potter (1983: 303-312) explain in detail. The best bet for men was to join the army
(much fewer women were recruited into the army). The army did not guarantee permanent transfer to
urban areas, but for period of service it treated the peasant-soldier as a worker, with regular salary and
benefits. Attaining entry to the army was a cause for public celebration, as peasants alike recognized
the dearness and value of the limited paths to upward mobility. Alternately, peasants could work their
way up through Party ranks; cadres at higher levels would be granted urban registration and benefits.
Kipnis (1997: 166-167) describes the slim hopes of even the brightest youth in Fengjia village to test
into the best regional schools in hopes of getting into college, which would also bring urban hukou
and a work assignment (fenpei gongzuo).
2 7 See also Jacka and Gaetano 2004: 16; Fan 2000; Davin 1999: 122.
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34
98
line (Cai 2003: 121). Clearly the inheritance policy was originally intended to
dissuade entire families from migrating to urban areas, as well as minimize the
economic burden on the state of extending urban benefits to dependent family
members of its rural-based urban personnel, such as soldiers, county and township
level cadres, and others. Dependents of such personnel were most likely to be wives
and children, as more men than women were recruited into the military and party
ranks. Even marriage, a traditional pathway to upward social mobility, did not
guarantee the transfer of hukou from rural to urban. Moreover, the maternal
inheritance of hukou and its implications for residence and education of future
offspring, who would be assigned rural hukou and hence be denied access to urban
public goods, was a major disincentive for urban men to marry rural women. A
general prejudice toward the peasantry was another disincentive. In general, such
9 0
intermarriage was considered a form of downward social mobility for urban men.
Generally speaking, opportunities for female rural hukou holders to acquire urban
hukou were far fewer than for rural men, and thus rural women had a
disproportionately slimmer chance of social mobility through legitimate hukou
2 8 In Beijing as recently as 2002, however, migrant children bom to Beijing fathers and rural mothers
were still being denied local hukou in practice, and thus these offspring, like all migrant children in
the city, were denied equal access to urban public education and medical services.
2 9 For example, the urban youth who were “sent-down” to the countryside as part of the Cultural
Revolution class struggle, in order to learn from the peasants, agonized over the decision to marry
locally, for they knew it was unlikely that their spouse and children could ever hope to transfer hukou,
and thus have no opportunity for employment, education, and etc. in the city. Tellingly, many urban
husbands divorced their rural wives when they were offered the chance to return to the city and regain
urban registration, knowing their wives and any future children would be unable to secure such a
transfer yet themselves not wanting to remain in place of no opportunity.
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35
transfer. Hukou is thus an important factor explaining gendered patterns of migration
and work and the contradictions faced by migrant women.
Migration Policy Reform
The reinstitution of markets in the 1980s meant the state could no longer control
migration by linking basic goods and services, especially food staples and housing,
to local hukou registration, because peasants could manage to survive away from
their villages by purchasing goods on the market. By the early 1980s, migrants
plying produce and offering services at open markets had become a common sight in
large cities like Beijing. In response, the State too began to gradually loosen
restrictions on migration, allowing peasants to reside temporarily in towns and
31
cities. At the same time, corrupt officials in cities and towns profited from the illicit
sale of urban hukou, so that individuals with wealth and official connections could
• 39
obtain an urban hukou.
3 0 See also the discussion in Jacka and Gaetano (2004: 18-20).
3 1 Importantly, in 1984 the State Council decreed that migrants to market towns could obtain a zili
kouliang chengzhen hukou (‘self-supplied food grain hukou') by showing local employment and
residency (Jacka and Gaetano 2004: 18).
3 2 In the 1990s, the State Council formalized the sale of urban hukou—the so-called “blue-stamp
hukou”—to wealthy investors or entrepreneurs. More recently, in 2001, the State Council approved a
directive allowing municipalities to grant urban residence permits to migrants in small towns and, in
large metropolises, to certain “talented personnel,” such as college-educated professionals and skilled
technicians (Jacka and Gaetano 2004: 18-20).
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36
Over the course of two decades since the implementation of the first reforms,
migration has been a controversial issue that has been debated among China’s
officials, policy makers and academics. Generally speaking, strong resistance to any
form of migration at the start of the reform period gave way in the mid-1980s to a
pragmatic tolerance for managed migration alongside firm intolerance of blind
migration, enforced through strict control measures and policing. As a consequence
of reform policies and relaxation of migration restrictions, the household registration
system has been transformed from an instrument that suppressed migration
altogether to a tool for managing migration flows and disciplining migrants (Wang,
F. 2004).
Successive nation-wide measures were put in place in the mid 1980s by the Public
Security Bureau (PSB) (i.e., the police) to ensure that migration would be orderly
and contained. Primary among them was the requirement that migrants apply, for a
fee, for a temporary residence permit (zanzhuzheng) at their destination, and renew
the permit periodically (Chan and Li Zhang 1999: 832-833). Furthermore, like all
Chinese citizens in the reform period, migrants were to carry a national personal
identity card (shenfen zheng). In addition, the Ministry of Labor required migrants to
arrange for an employment registration card (waichu renyuan liudongjiuye dengji
ka) prior to leaving their locality and then apply for a work permit (jiuye zheng) with
their employer at their destination, also for a fee. Also, labor recruitment agencies
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37
often required migrants to obtain a certificate of good health. For women, the costs
of migration were slightly higher. Under the national family planning regulations,
migrant women of child-bearing age were to carry a “marriage and fertility permit”
Qiunyu zheng) and register with the Ministry of Family Planning in their destination
to ensure their compliance with the national birth planning program. (Some women
reported having to return to their village for annual inspections.)
The fees charged by the various government organs for permits were not
standardized and there was little oversight to reign in corruption. Whether due to the
high costs of fees or lack of information about the regulations, fewer than half of
migrants in 1997 appeared to comply with permit requirements, according to the
PSB (Zhao 2000). Sporadically, the PSB pushed to enforce permit regulations,
usually by subjecting migrants to random searches, and rarely by targeting
employers of migrant labor. Campaigns to “sweep” (qingli) the homeless, drifters,
beggars, and vagrants from Beijing’s streets usually coincided with visits of foreign
dignitaries to Beijing or the intensification of the national “strike hard” (yanda) anti
crime campaign. At such time, fear of being detained (in a temporary jail) and fined
or repatriated to the village intimidated migrants to either comply with regulations
and renew permits or stay off the streets to avoid detection. I recall walking with
Zhang Xiaqing and Luo Jing to a restaurant outside their school gates, where I would
treat them to a goodbye lunch before my departure late in the spring of 2000, and
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38
Zhang silencing Luo for fear that a PSB officer might overhear her Shandong accent
and demand the young women show their residence cards, which were not up-to-
date.
Since 2000, the State Council has undergone a sea change in its attitude toward rural-
to-urban migration from one of control to encouragement, and from concern with the
costs of migration for cities to the benefits of migration for rural China, as well as
concern for migrants’ own well-being. Migrants are now recognized to be integral to
lessening the rural-urban income gap as they bring remittances back to the village
and apply new knowledge and skills to the benefit of rural industry. In a series of
recent directives, the State Council ordered an end to all discriminatory labor
practices and the practice of detention and repatriation of migrants (the latter in
response, in part, to the death of a migrant during detention in Guangzhou).
Ultimately, the State Council plans to dismantle the hukou system by 2005, although
there is much debate as to whether the directive will be implemented so soon.
3 3 China’s conservatives fear that an open and unregulated national labor market might result in
undesirable large-scale urbanization and rapid increase in urban poor, such as is seen in many
developing nations characterized by large population of urban poor living in ghettos. Academics and
policy makers on China’s New Left, however, call for the end to the hukou system on the basis of
rural discrimination. Many, including some on the State Council, view the hukou system as a barrier
to sustainable growth, which is measured by the quality of life rather than simply hard economic
indicators. According to this argument, only by allowing the rural population equal chance to avail
themselves of economic opportunities will China meet the goals of economic transition out of
agriculture and into the modem industrial/service sectors. This shifting discourse reflects the alternate
visions of modernity put forth by vocal academics and policy makers. Interestingly, the result of
dismantling the hukou system also serves the interests of neoliberals and those who promote China’s
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39
Meanwhile in the mid-1990s, municipal governments in large cities like Beijing,
concerned about labor unrest among the millions of workers recently furloughed
from State Owned Enterprises, passed regulations barring the allocation of job
contracts in nearly 200 industries and occupations to migrants. Although the more
recent State Council directives should override the earlier discriminatory local
regulations, news reports and eyewitness accounts suggest municipal governments
have not yet implemented the national directives. Similarly, the Ministry of
Education and PSB together in 1998 ordered that localities could not deny schooling
to migrant offspring, but did not provide a mechanism for enforcing such
regulations. Consequently, in large cities like Beijing, attainment of urban hukou
remains far out of reach of ordinary rural migrants, and restrictive regulations
continue to have negative repercussions on migrants’ daily existence.
Hukou, Exclusion, and Inequality
Without the local urban hukou, rural labor migrants into the present are virtually
excluded from the rights and privileges associated with urban citizenship (Solinger
1999: 3-7; Zhang, L. 2002). Since the mid-1990s, the restructuring of the state sector
has eroded much of urban workers’ economic benefits, beginning with the life-long
employment guarantee (the “iron rice bowl”), and is a major factor in the creation of
further integration in to global markets, and see household registration as a barrier to creating an
efficient and open labor pool for capitalist development.
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40
a new social strata, the urban poor.3 4 Nonetheless, old patterns of discrimination by
hukou/origins have hardly disappeared, and urban citizenship still ensures certain
privileges while remaining an important marker of social distinction for its
association with the ideal of middle class (Wang, F. 2004).
Migrants as a whole are disadvantaged in the urban labor market compared with
urban counterparts. They are contracted to state and collective firms mainly as short
term and flexible workers, and are even more favored by the burgeoning non-state
sector. Although the allocation of jobs by hukou has been greatly eroded in
contemporary China, the above-mentioned restrictions on employment in certain
occupations, migrants’ relative low education, skills, and work experience compared
with urban workers, and perhaps most important, their dearth of established urban
social contacts—to enterprise managers or officials—ensure their relegation to jobs
that urbanites eschew. These jobs were known as the “3-D” jobs because they were
dirty, dangerous, and degrading. Even the term “migrant worker” (dagongzhe is the
plural form; dagongzai refers to young men and dagongmei to young women)
3 4 This new social stratum has just begun to receive attention by policy makers, social workers and
academics within and outside of China. As it usually refers to both urban and rural (migrant) hukou
holders, it shows a loosening of the view of migrants in cities as noncitizens.
3 5 Migrants tend to be more highly educated than their rural peers, but less educated than their age-
mates in urban areas. Among migrants, women may be slightly less educated than men. In our survey
of 89 migrant women members of the Migrant Women’s Club, Jacka and I found that 17% had just
elementary level education; 44% had a middle school education (having completed 9 years of
compulsory education); and 28% had some secondary school education (including vocational school
as well as 4-year high school education).
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41
implies a distinction in kind from the urban worker (gongren) in the state sector. The
verb “to work” (dagong) connotes casual, manual labor and is not the same verb use
to indicate the “work” (gongzuo) of the urban “proletariat” (Pun 1999: 3; Jacka 1998:
44n3).
Rural labor migrants are not only economically marginalized in the urban economy,
they are also spatially marginalized by residence patterns in cities, forced to form
shantytowns on the city outskirts. (The privatization of housing and real estate
market that developed in the late 1990s made it legally possible for migrants to rent
property in the city. A majority rent in the older sections of the city center or on the
outskirts of the city, renting rooms in houses owned by former peasants.) Even
“successful” migrants such as the Zhejiang entrepreneurs of Beijing have been hard-
pressed to form permanent residential communities, due to prohibitions against non
local hukou holders owning or constructing buildings (Zhang, L. 2001). Living
conditions of young women migrants I encountered ranged from a small private
room occupied by one family’s domestic worker to a basement dormitory that
housed the migrant workers of a janitorial service contracted to a four-star hotel, in
which two workers assigned alternating shifts shared one dorm bed.
Migrant informants who lived in this dormitory faced a long daily commute to work,
about one hour by bicycle on a major thoroughfare. The ride was not only exhausting
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42
but also risky. During a street sweep in 2000, one male migrant on his way to the
hotel for work was detained by the police and put in a detention center until he could
raise money to pay a fine. Young women traveling urban streets were especially
vulnerable to sexual harassment: Zhou Lili was attacked by a “hooligan” (liumang),
a male up to no good, cycling home after her night shift as a chambermaid. Other
migrants invested in a monthly bus pass, which afforded passage on only the oldest,
slowest and most crowded of Beijing’s buses. (These were increasingly rare during
my last visit in 2002, as more of them had been replaced by “greener” [i.e., fuel*
efficient and pollution-free] models that did not accept the monthly pass and charged
as much as seven times more.)
Until recent educational policy reform, local hukou was a mandatory prerequisite to
enrolling children in the urban school system. Since policy relaxation, all urban
schools are, in principle, open to rural children. However, many schools flaunt the
new directives and charge steep and arbitrary fees to discourage enrollment by
migrant children. Migrant parents thus generally opt to school their children back in
the village under the care of grandparents or aunts and uncles, or enroll them in less
expensive, makeshift schools operated for rural migrant children by migrant
entrepreneurs, which are of mixed quality. Regardless, the association of education
with hukou remains an impediment to the permanent settlement of rural families in
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43
Beijing into 2004. Finally, urban citizens alone may participate in elections and
community-based political, social, and recreational activities.
The reform policies and subsequent loosening of migration restrictions have given
new opportunities for peasants to find work in the cities. However, upon arrival in
the city, peasant migrants encounter new forms of disciplinary authority exercised
through institutions of the state and market that aim to control, manage, or assimilate
the threat to urban social order and morals that peasants symbolize. As Eric Florence
(2004) persuasively argues, it is these new techniques of power themselves that in
fact produce peasant-migrants’ “difference” from the urban populace, against which
an urban identity is in turn solidified.
Gender, Migration, and Employment Inequality
The migrant workforce is also segmented into gender-appropriate categories of work,
allotting male migrants both more occupational choices and greater earning potential.
In large cities like Beijing, male migrants are concentrated in construction and
industry, which affords the highest wages, while young rural women are
predominantly employed in the service and retail sectors, where wages are lower.
3 6 Using 1990 census data, Yang and Fei (1996: 780) found female migrants overwhelmingly
concentrated in the service sector: 28.5% as housemaids; 21.8% in restaurants, and 16% as cooks and
kitchen help.
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In the late 1990s, some of the lowest paid female migrants included domestic
workers such as Zhang Xiaqing, who earned between 250 and 400 yuan per month.
By contrast, the lowest-paid male migrants, engaged in garbage picking and
reselling, earned 400 to 600 yuan per month (room and board, however, not
included) (Feng 1997: 59-60). Gender rather than education or age appeared to
account for such a discrepancy in wages, at least among rural-to-urban migrants.3 7
Arguably, this segregated labor market benefits migrant women by reserving certain
jobs for them without competition from men. Young, single rural women are the
preferred workers in the light industrial enterprises—especially textiles, apparel,
toys, and electronics—clustered in the Special Economic Zones of southern and
coastal regions (i.e., Guangdong and Fujian provinces), whose favorable investment
climates have attracted many foreign-invested enterprises, most of which are export-
oriented manufacturing firms (Pun 1999; Tan 2000). Likewise into the present, rural
women have a virtual monopoly in urban domestic and restaurant service work.
According to the 1997 Beijing migrant labor survey, 71.8% of female migrants were engaged in retail
(jingshang) and service (wugong) (Zheng, Z. 1999). The average monthly wage of a (male) migrant
construction worker in 1999 was about 900 yuan, compared to 500-600 yuan for waitresses (Xin M.
2000: 256-258.)
3 7 Wang and Zuo (1997) found that when other factors (education, experience, age) are controlled, a
female migrant still earns 22% less than male migrants.
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However, in both industry and service sectors, women were likely to be
•5 0
disproportionately concentrated in low-skill, low-wage jobs. The only lucrative
work available to rural women has been in the so-called entertainment sector, which
ranges from massage and escort services to outright prostitution, which is illegal.
Moreover, rural migrant women’s relative youth and inexperience and their distance
from kin reinforce their dependence on employers and make them highly vulnerable
to gender discrimination and sexual harassment, especially in the unregulated,
informal, private service sector. Consider this entry from Zhang’s journal:
When I arrived at the place where I was to work, I discovered I would be caring
for a naughty three-year-old boy, washing clothes, cleaning the house, and
cooking meals. Before I’d even set down my worn suitcase, the boy’s mother
assigned me a long list of tasks. I felt like a bondservant from the old imperial
days... .My bed was a cot placed in a comer of the living room. Every night the
family stayed up late watching TV; I could only wait until they turned off the set
to get to sleep, and in the morning I had to quietly rise before they awoke, to
prepare their breakfast. .. .One evening, I stood in the kitchen boiling pot after
pot of dumplings while they ate at the table. By the time I was finished, there
were only a few dumplings left on the table. As I put these into my bowl and
headed into the living room, I heard Auntie say to her husband, “Why not let her
eat yesterday’s food?”
Moreover, ideologies about place (mrality) and gender collude to construct rural
migrant women as an easily exploitable and “flexible” workforce (Harvey 1994), and
reinforce the structural obstacles (i.e., the hukou system and labor market
3 8 In foreign-invested industries of the Pearl River Delta Special Economic Zone, rural women are
concentrated in production assembly, where they barely earn their keep, and rarely trained as their
male peers for advancement (Tan 2000). Moreover, according to a recent New York Times report
(Kahn 2004), migrant worker wage rates have been stagnant for a decade in such industries.
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46
segregation) to their occupational and social advancement. Like their male peers,
rural migrant women are often subjected to anti-rural prejudice, whereby they are
seen “by nature” to be lacking civility or discipline, which in turn justifies their
social subordination. In addition, as the quote from Zhang’s diary suggests, the
perception of forms of labor like domestic work as “servile” contributes to
employers’ prejudicial attitudes and exploitative behaviors toward their rural
employees, and makes workers themselves feel stigmatized and ashamed (discussed
further in Chapters 2 and 4).
Among foreign-invested enterprises in China, managers appear to believe that
young migrant women are inherently docile and therefore easier to manage, that they
are particularly suited to performing delicate and repetitive manufacturing tasks, and
that they are expendable and therefore ideal for firms linked to a global market that
requires flexible labor (Lee 1998). Although not universal, similar gendered
stereotypes have been found among corporate management elsewhere in the
-2Q
developing world (Elson and Pearson 1984). Their rural background and position
3 9 Although this gender construction appears to be global in scope, numerous ethnographies suggest it
is one that is not universally held, but is rather “made” in the process of globalization (Freeman 2000).
Global images of docile female factory or service workers are moreover negotiated with local cultural
constructions of gender, as well as class, race and ethnicity, and by women workers themselves, who
in some parts of the world have managed to create viable alternative images of model workers, often
drawing upon cultural repertoires of alternative gender identities (Ong 1991). For example, in Hong
Kong (Lee 1998), the Philippines (Chant and Mcllwaine 1995), and the Caribbean (Freeman 2000),
local cultural/historical images of capable matrons have been adapted by management, who in turn
prize matronly workers, allowing women to hold onto their jobs following marriage and pregnancy.
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47
as male dependents (whether daughters or wives) rationalizes their low wages
relative to urban counterparts or skilled male migrants. In general, rural migrant
women workers are under great pressure from employers to remain single and avoid
pregnancy in order to keep their jobs in industry, and routinely dismissed should they
request maternity leave (Tan 2000). Employers of Beijing domestic workers and
hotel housekeepers likewise hold stereotypes about people from the countryside and
women that justify exploitative labor practices, often in the name of paternalistic (or
maternal) care.
In addition, local cultural constructions of gender, kinship roles, and patrilocal
marriage norms further justify a perception of young rural migrant women as
temporary and flexible workers. All rural women are expected to marry and, after
marriage, take responsibility for the domestic sphere, raising children and serving
their husbands’ family. Thus migration and work appear as but an “episode” in
young women’s life course, prior to marriage and motherhood (Davin 1998: 237).
Yet even if rural migrant women were to challenge such norms, as I argue they in
fact do, they nonetheless have few alternatives. Opportunities for rural women to
marry urban men and settle in the cities (i.e., hypergamy) are limited, for reasons
relating to the hukou system and the class hierarchy it helps maintain that equates
such marriages with (men’s) downward social mobility. With the expectation of
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48
marriage and few urban prospects, most rural women return to the countryside to
settle down.
Eileen Otis (2003: 197) argues that the state relies on rural households to
provide an economic buffer to support this flexible workforce. While migrants
work in cities, their rural households are responsible for providing care for
children, the elderly, and the infirm. Migrants return to their rural households
when there is no longer work for them in the cities. In turn, state policy
implementation supports patriarchal village governance structures.
Tan Shen’s (2000) finding that dagongmei in South China’s factories sometimes
need to borrow money from home is another example of how rural households
underwrite labor costs. The advantages of maintaining the flexible labor force of
migrant workers in part explain why the state has not made efforts to help rural
migrant women expand their employment opportunities, maintain their jobs after
marriage, or settle longterm in cities with their spouses and offspring. The state also
shapes cultural ideas about gender, as I elaborate in Chapter 2. By celebrating filial
daughters, virtuous wives, and good mothers, the state reinforces those rural
patriarchal beliefs and practices that make rural women’s duty to the rural household
and family primary.
Given these facts, rural migrant women would seem to be the pitiable victims of
China’s latest effort to become a modem nation-state. However, attention to their
agency, through conversations and participant observation, reveals a more complex
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49
scenario. Although young rural women are generally powerless to right the injustices
of their situation, they express satisfaction about their personal growth that has
resulted from their experiences of migration and work, and they articulate higher
expectations of their futures. Yet, their discovery of new horizons of possibility also
makes them more vulnerable to disappointment. Especially as they begin to grapple
with the ineluctable matters of marriage and return, young rural migrant women at
best are ambivalent about their “experience of modernity.”
Identity. Power, and Agency
As historian Joan Scott (1991) notes, experience is not self-evident; understanding
experience requires prior knowledge of how identity and subjectivity are socially and
discursively constructed.
When experience is taken as the origin of knowledge, the vision of the individual
subject (the person who had the experience or the historian who recounts it)
becomes the bedrock of evidence upon which explanation is built. Questions
about the constructed nature of experience, about how subjects are constituted as
different in the first place, and about how one’s vision is structured—about
language (or discourse) or history—are left aside (Ibid: 777).
The production of the subject involves relations of power. As Michel Foucault
theorized, domination is exercised through symbolic production, and social identities
are effects or products of discursive power, not external to it. He therefore denied an
agency based on “an unmediated and transparent notion of the subject or identity as
the centered author of social practice” (Foucault cited in Hall 1996: 5). Agency is
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constrained or enabled according to a subject’s social position in a particular
historical and cultural context.
Young rural migrant women’s experience of modernity is fraught with ambivalence
and conflict. Zhang, for example, simultaneously is pulled in contradictory
directions. Gender and kinship establish Zhang’s primary identities and roles as a
young woman and a daughter. But the opportunity to leave the village and become a
wage earner in the city presents alternative possibilities that might challenge or alter
these.
Although I have described Zhang as a labor migrant, in the opening passage she
stresses that employment, and by implication earning money, was not central to her
decision to migrate. Rather, she expresses a desire to go the city, which beckons with
its strangeness, because it is a place of “new beginning.” As the site of all that is
associated with modernity, the city promises a new identity. How Zhang perceives
this possibility is indicated by the contents of her satchel: books, pens, notebooks.
A few years before taking leave of her village, Zhang’s was forced to give up the
dream of attending high school in order that her younger brother could have the
opportunity to do so. Her family could afford to put only one child through high
school and her father, the family head (jiazhang), favored his son’s education. In the
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51
reform period, the state has withdrawn support for public schooling in the
countryside and forced rural schools to charge tuition. An outstanding middle school
student who likely would have earned a satisfactory test score on the high school
entry exam, Zhang instead settled for a two-year vocational school where she earned
a primary school teaching credential. Meanwhile, to the disappointment of his
parents and especially his sister, Zhang’s brother proved to be a poor student; he
failed the high school entry exam. As she sets her sights on the city, Zhang harbors a
plan to continue her education, and a dream of someday becoming a journalist or
professional writer.
Education is a Confucian virtue and, historically, was a primary means of social
mobility (e.g., under Maoist socialism, a college education guaranteed even to
peasants an urban residency and employment). In the market economy, in response
to demand for skilled labor, education is infused with new value, both economic and
symbolic. An association between the city and a modem education combined with
family gender politics and Zhang’s individual talent all factored into her desire to
migrate.
In the city, in the eyes of officials and urban employers, Zhang is looked down upon
as a dagongmei. In China as in other modernizing nations like Malaysia (Ong 1987),
Thailand (Mills 1999), Tanzania (Hodgson 2001), and South Korea (Kendall 2002),
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52
gender “delimits the contours of the modem” (Kendall 2002:34). In fact, for much of
modem Chinese history, debates about modernity and national identity have taken
place on the symbolic terrain of gender difference and constructions of womanhood
(e.g., Duara 2001a; Edwards 2000; Lee, L. 1999; Rofel 1999; Schein 1996; Barlow
1994). Attention to the “cultural struggle”4 0 over the definitions and meanings of the
social category dagongmei therefore illuminates conflicting interests and orientations
of the Chinese state and other social groups within China vis a vis the reforms and
concomitant social changes, and provides insight into the shifts of power relations
that result from such contestations.
My dissertation considers how dagongmei identity is forged through social and
cultural discursive practices as well as how rural migrant women as agents negotiate
these forms of power to construct their own identity, whether through
accommodation or resistance to dominant norms and meanings. The concept of
agency and the formation of subjectivity have received much attention by scholars of
global modernity, many who presume modernity to be coterminous with the
emergence of the autonomous individual (Friedman 1994: 213),4 1 often assumed to
4 0 Aihwa Ong (1991) applies the term to describe the contest of power over the definition of identities
and affixing of meanings of subalterns, such as women workers in the transition to global modernity,
in order to consider worker’s interests and resistance beyond the narrow confines of class
consciousness to the realm of symbolic expressions.
4 1 For theorists such as Friedman and Bauman, “to speak of individualization and of modernity is to
speak of the same social condition” (Bauman 2001: 124). But the disenchantment of modernity does
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53
be male. The term agency as used in feminist scholarship, on the other hand, is a
corrective to “autonomy” or terms associated with western Enlightenment discourse,
that allows for culturally relative formulations of subjectivity and power (Wolf 1992:
23). According to Joan Scott (cited in Wolf 1992: 23), agency may be “action taken
in specific contexts, but not entirely autonomously or without constraint.” Indeed,
“agency can involve passivity, accommodation, and withdrawal as much as defiance
and resistance” (Wolf 1992: 24).
A notion of agency is central to conceptualizing resistance to dominant discursive
practices of gender and modernity (Thakur 1997: 26). Bourdieu drew upon
Foucault’s theory of discursive power to argue that domination is imposed and
legitimized through forms of symbolic production (discourses), but emphasized the
role of social actors in unconsciously producing and reproducing discourse, and
social identity, through practices guided by the habitus: “active dispositions
embedded in the agents’ very bodies in the form of mental dispositions, schemes of
perception and thought” (cited in Thakur 1997: 27; cf. Bourdieu 1977: 72, 78-79).
Bourdieu’s practice theory successfully integrates “structure,” “discourse,” and
“agency”: Habitus produces a “‘common sense’ through which individuals relate to
social structures which are in turn specific to particular types of material conditions
not necessarily lead to “disenchantment” of caste, kinship, or other communal forms of identity with
individualization (e.g., Hirsch 2001).
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of existence” (Thakur 1997: 27). But because subjects are positioned in multiple
contexts simultaneously, Bourdieu observed, there are variously dominant “doxa”
and resistant “heterodox” discourses that structure any symbolic field (Thakur 1997:
29; Bourdieu 1977: 164-168). By becoming wage earners and residing in the city,
then, rural women may construct new identities as workers and urbanizing women
that challenge their positions as marginal members of their rural households and as
second-class citizens in urban society. Bourdieu might describe this as deploying
heterodox discourse to challenge the prevailing doxa. Yet as Lila Abu-Lughod
(1990: 53) notes in her survey of Bedouin women’s resistance tactics, discursive
regimes of power are manifold, and “if the systems of power are multiple, then
resisting at one level may catch people up at other levels.” In other words, resistance
through subversion at one level of power may simultaneously entail subjection at
another level of power.
Migration and Women’s Agency
An important contribution of the pioneering works in the field of “Women in
Development” (WID) in the 1970s and 1980s was to situate Asian women’s
experiences of industrialization not only in terms of their new productive roles in
wage labor, but also in the wider social relations of kinship and the family (Wolf
1992: 9). I too consider rural women’s identities as shaped by the family and village
community as well as in the context of urban work and social spaces. Much of this
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early literature focused attention on the question of the effect of migration and
industrial employment on the patriarchal Asian family. The majority of scholars
found that patriarchy, and the kinship and gender ideologies and practices which
comprise it, were impervious to, or even strengthened by, women’s experiences of
migration and participation in production.4 2 Despite experiencing some autonomy as
factory workers or domestics in cities and despite earning independent wages, rural
women’s belief in patriarchal ideologies of filial duty lead them to hand over their
wages to parents, who in turn reinvested in sons, perpetuating the patrilineal,
patrilocal, and patriarchal kinship and gender system.
As Aihwa Ong (1988) has charged, such literature deployed the “non-Westem
woman” as a measuring stick for the progress of western modernity and pronounced
Asian capitalist experiments to be successes or failures by determining whether they
further women’s rights as modeled on western feminism (my italics). The
pronouncements of third world women as “liberated” or “oppressed” by patriarchy or
capitalism can easily fall into the trap of assuming universal categories of “sex” and
“gender,” as well as “patriarchy” and “capitalism,” regardless of unique historical or
4 2 Examples include Andors 1978, Arrigo 1980, Greenhalgh 1985, Huang 1984, Kung 1994 (1978),
and Salaff 198.
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cultural contexts (Ong 1998).4 3 Thus, more current research attempts to learn about
the actual processes and meanings of global modernity experienced by those in the
non-West. In fact, a second reading of these classics of WID literature reveal often
detailed ethnographic descriptions of changing conceptions of gender within a
particular locality during times of social transition (Ong 1991).
In a review of literature focused on rural Chinese women and economic reform,
Yuen-Fong Woon (2000) urges that fruitful research must move beyond the
polarizing debate over women’s identities as either “filial daughters,” such as
depicted by Janet Salaff (1981) and Lydia Kung (1994), or “rebellious daughters,”
which Woon argues is the position taken in recent studies by C. K. Lee (1998) and
Heather Zhang (1999).441 concur with Woon’s call for a nuanced approach to the
processes by which rural women workers balance tensions they face simultaneously
as “individual actors and in the context of the family and workplace patriarchal
structure[s]” (Wong 2000: 162).
4 3 Some exceptions to this literature include works describing marriage resistance among women in
silk-producing regions of Guangdong and Hong Kong, e.g., Topley 1975; Sankar 1984, 1978; and
Stockard 1989.
441 take issue with Woon’s assessment of Lee (1998). I find Lee sensitive to modernity’s tensions,
whereby young women who seek modernity and independence are constrained by capitalist
workplace discipline in the global factory, that ironically exploits their very identities as filial
daughters, and in turn limits their ability to experience full autonomy.
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Young rural women exercise agency when they select available alternatives to
engage in purposeful action. Such choices variously enable and constrain women’s
autonomy, but are nevertheless expressions of their agency and decision-making.
Indeed, rural migrant women display ingenuity and perseverance as they strive to
imbue their migration experiences with meaning and dignity, and despite the unequal
economic and social conditions of late socialist modernity, to “make themselves
modem.”
Victoria Lawson (2000: 174) observes that “migrancy creates especially fluid forms
of subject position, a ‘state of in-between-ness’ in which migrants have a critical
edge due to the very disruptions and perspectives that migration produces.” I
likewise suggest that rural women’s changing visions of themselves and their
futures, gleaned through labor migration, reflect their awareness of other possibilities
for being-in-the-world that could be a basis for social change. Moreover, a focus on
young rural migrant women’s experiences and agency is theoretically useful for
critiquing the discourses of Chinese modernity that portray rural women as
embodiments of timeless or backwards “tradition” but not as subjects of (their own)
history.4 5
4 5 Feng Xu (2002) argues that rural migrant women can “shatter the silence of a unified nationalist
discourse” of modernity, not only revealing the inequalities that underlie China’s economic miracle
but pointing the path toward a more equitable future. Flowever, it is important not to “romanticize”
the resistance of women; careful ethnography suggests that women have complex subjectivities and
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Review of the Literature: Gender and Late Socialist Modernity
As mentioned above, modernity as a temporal modality of linear time necessarily
constructs its “other” in the form of the past, which is often reified as (ahistorical)
tradition or (retrogressive) backwardness, against which the new and progressive are
discursively discerned (Gaonkar 1999; Rofel 1999; Lee, L. 1999). This binary in turn
commonly presumes gender associations whereby the modem is coded as masculine
and tradition is coded feminine. Dorothy Hodgson (2001:9) summarizes,
Modernity not only presumes and promotes such gendered binaries as
nature/culture, domestic/public, past/future, and traditional/modem, but it
genders them, usually rendering the first, devalued term, female and the second,
privileged term, male.
Feminist scholars thus have argued, for Europe and the west, that the meta-narrative
of modernity drew upon and reproduced assumptions about gender difference and
inequality to justify the exclusion of women from public life and produce
inequality.4 6 Studies from the perspective of the nonWest, however, find gender to be
but one axis of difference that modernity constructs, and moreover suggest that the
are not necessarily “opposed” to power so much as negotiating power, both through resistance and
accommodation (Abu-Lughod 1990).
4 6 Feminist historians (Felski 1995; Landes 1988) have demonstrated that key symbols of modernity
in Europe were modeled on public life in 18th century Europe, a realm of social activity that generally
excluded women (and which was also limited to certain classes and races), and thus “woman” and
characteristics associated with the feminine/private sphere were excluded from modernity altogether.
For example, core enlightenment values such as reason and individual subjectivity were associated
with masculine character, and universalized at the exclusion of feminine values of emotion and
community, reinforcing and producing exclusion of women from participation in the public sphere.
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particular forms of masculinity/ies and femininity/ies valorized by modernity are
neither universal nor uniform.
For example, Lisa Rofel (1999: 287-288) found alterity to be a central component of
the discourse of modernity, which she defined as “an imaginary and continuously
shifting site of global/local claims, commitments and knowledge, formed within
uneven dialogues about the place of those who move in and out of categories of
otherness.” In her 1999 ethnography, Rofel traced the complex interplay of
inflections of modernity with Chinese state nationalism—from revolutionary to
socialist to post-socialist versions—on three generations of Chinese women workers.
She found that cohorts who came of age under different historical circumstances held
different conceptual understandings of gender, labor, and women’s liberation, which
in turn oriented each generation differently toward the modernity that the reforms
ushered in. In addition to localizing and historicizing modernity, Rofel showed that
distinct groups of women imbued post-Mao modernity with distinct meanings, in
terms of their own identities, which in turn informed their diverse attitudes toward,
and choices made in regard to, work and family life. Rofel’s contribution, which I
build upon, is to push the ethnographic study of modernity beyond simple East/West,
male/female binaries, to consider the competing narratives of modernity within the
Chinese nation-state.
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However, as Rofel’s book heavily privileges state-constructed gender ideologies, it
likewise curtails consideration of gender constructions in other arenas outside of the
state, such as rural patriarchy or the feminist movement (Wardlow 2002). Moreover,
by isolating the factor of generation, Rofel sidelines other vectors of identity that are
equally important determinants of orientations toward modernity, such as ethnicity.
In contrast, both Ralph Litzinger (2000) and Louisa Schein (2000), in their
respective studies of the Yao and Miao national minorities, address the construction
of ethnic differences in late socialist China. Both of their studies claim to move
beyond modernity as a hegemonic discursive practice of the Chinese state that
produces subaltern subjectivity. Rather, each author argues that party-state visions of
modernity are neither monolithic nor do they completely eclipse voices from the
margins of the nation—of ethnic minorities who occupy hinterland territories and
who until recently were not benefiting greatly from economic reforms.4 7
Schein’s work is particularly relevant to mine as she focuses on minority women’s
agency in socialist modernity. She uses the term “internal orientalism” to describe
4 7 Litzinger (2000) suggests that in the post-Socialist era in particular, the Party-state actively solicits
ethnic minorities’ support that is necessary to further its reforms, using politics of “cultural
govemmentality” in contrast to more heavy-handed indoctrination and assimilationist policies of the
Mao era. The Yao, for their part, consent to the national cause of development, in which they
participate largely through ethnic tourism, in exchange for freedom to worship and express
themselves ethnically. In addition, postsocialist modernity as a form of power is not wholly with the
party-state apparatus but is dispersed, such that some Yao elites can publicly claim certain of their
traditions (problematic though the concept of a unified indigenous culture may be) as having seeds of
socialist modernity. For example, the Yao practiced types of family planning long before the state
ordered it done, because their indigenous marriage and land cultivation methods made this a practical
thing to do.
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a relation between imagining and cultural-political domination that takes place
inter-ethnically within China. In this process, the ‘orientalist’ agent of dominant
representation is transposed to that sector of the Chinese elite that engages in
domestic othering (Schein 2002: 388).
Historically, the Miao and young Miao women in particular have been the internal
others of a masculinist Han modernity. Representations of these ethnic females from
geographically remote regions of China connote backwardness and exoticism by
means of their lowly social position in terms of age/generation, minority status,
gender, and place. Through detailed ethnographic study, Schein documented the
gender politics involved in such efforts to define the Miao as internal Other. Miao
women in villages popular with tourists as well as those costumed entertainers who
performed “traditional” dances and rituals in restaurants, hotels, and theme parks in
the cities, became acutely self-conscious of their representation as simultaneously
exotic and alluring and backwards and abhorrent. “Confronted with a larger society
that lauded their difference even as it stigmatized it, the practices of Miao women in
cities revealed a dialectic between collusion in and resistance to their representations
as Others” (Schein 2002: 395). She illustrates that the cultural production of
minority/female representations is not wholly dominated by the state but participated
in by a variety of civil society actors— Han elites, local elites, and “local cultural
practitioners” including women themselves, for whom identity poses contradictions
(paraphrase of Schein 2002: 403).
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These studies illuminate how the relations of power involved in configuring
discursive practices of modernity as part of, and in reaction to, state nationalisms
may privilege the temporal identity of one group of people (i.e., urban/government
elites) over another (i.e., rural migrant subalterns). Reflecting on the contested notion
of modernity in socialist Vietnam undergoing economic reform, Philip Taylor (2001:
9) stresses the importance of paying attention to “what differently placed [i.e., in
power] people really do say” about modernity. By listening to the voices of rural
migrant women, who have heretofore been largely ignored or silenced, I endeavor to
show how they too contribute to the design of China’s future.
Outline of the Chapters
This dissertation is suffused with the theme that late socialist modernity is
“gendered.” First, I argue that the policies of economic reform are informed by a
state-nationalist discourse of modernity in which gender is a central organizing
principle. Focusing on gender opens a path to critique powerful beliefs and
ideologies that underlie social inequalities that have accompanied China’s recent
economic growth. Second, I show that rural women—gendered subjects—are
integrally involved with global capitalism and transnational flows through their roles
in production, consumption, and reproduction. As a corollary, rural women are
incorporated into these capitalist processes in ways that both reflect and challenge
existing gender ideologies and gender relations. Third, as agents they negotiate
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among various and contradictory aspects of identity: as filial daughters, virtuous
maidens, and docile workers, as well as independent, modem, cosmopolitan women
and citizens. Overall, economic reforms paradoxically provide both obstacles and
opportunities to rural migrant women as subjects and agents of China’s drive to
become modem in a globalizing world.
Chapter 2 first historicizes and then deconstructs the discourse of modernity in
China. I argue that the nationalisms of both the republican and socialist states
enshrined an “internal orientalism” that singled out women and peasants as the most
oppressed and backward elements of society, thereby justifying their “liberation” as
dictated by urban elites or the state, not necessarily in women’s own or best interest.
As explained above, the discourse of modernity demarcates spatial relationships as
well as configures time.4 8 Under unique historical circumstances, an ideological
difference between rural and urban society that privileged the cosmopolitan over the
provincial emerged in late 19th and early 20th century China. The peasantry became a
necessary Other against which the nation’s modernity or degree of civilization
(wenming) were defined and measured. In literature and political discourse, peasant
4 8 M. M. Bakhtin (1981: 84-258; Kipnis 1997: 173) discusses the “chronotope,” a literary device that
allows the “materializing [of] time in space” (Bakhtin 1981: 250) and which is intrinsic to linguistic
representation. Similarly, Fabian (1983) explores the spatial-temporal characteristics of
anthropological discourse and methodology, exposing how world regions and cultures have been
allocated to separate planes of time by Enlightenment discourse.
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women in the urban landscape especially embodied “deep divisions, confusion, and
unresolved tensions between tradition and modernity” (Ong 1988: 89).
Furthermore, I argue that as market reforms and structural transformations have
intensified in China since the 1980s and adhere more closely to western models of
development, China’s rural-urban divide has widened. Ideologically, a
“developmental map of moral geography” has been imposed on China’s landscape
(Liu 2000: xi). Although state policy and planning are responsible for the uneven
landscape in which inland rural areas appear economically sluggish in contrast to the
dynamic urban and coastal areas, being from a “poor and backward” (pinkun luohou)
region has taken on a social and moral taint that stains those least able to successfully
accumulate capital, and those geographically most remote from the urban centers of
modem life. In this schema, to reside in the countryside, and to be a peasant, implies
being left “behind” temporally in the drive toward progress.4 9
Peasant women’s sense of being left behind may be particularly acute. Discursive
practices of gender enshrined in reform policy and institutions relegate them to the
“unproductive” roles of both farmer and housewife, reinforcing their geographic and
symbolic distance from urban centers of modernity while also strengthening rural
4 9 But for discussion of some masculinist chronotypes of peasant “backwardness” and their subversive
potential against state socialist modernity, see Kipnis 1995.
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patriarchy. The discourse of late socialist modernity at best positions rural women as
behind-the-times, such that migration appears to be the inevitable progression of
history, a temporal as well as spatial movement toward rural women’s advancement
and liberation. At worst, it views rural women as outside modernity and history.
In Chapter 3 I draw upon my fieldwork to show that young rural women’s
motivations for migration are indeed rooted in large part in their identification with a
discourse of modernity that posits an urban identity as progressive in
contradistinction to the backward villager. Migration promises to remake their
identity from that of peasant to cosmopolitan, from bumpkin to sophisticate, and to
raise their “quality” (suzhi). The discourse on population quality has been a feature
of modem Chinese history, and was rejuvenated by former president Jiang Zemin as
the key concept to promote a “socialist spiritual civilization.” It appealed to ethics to
guide people through the rapidly changing social context. As Ann Anagnost (1997:
75-97) has argued, the meaning of “quality” has been flexibly interpreted depending
on the needs of the state for certain kinds of citizen-subjects. The post-Mao state has
thus endeavored, through social campaigns and institutional practices aimed at
raising the quality of the populace, to construct a national subject whose identity
depends not on political orientation but rather on economic performance or
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productivity (Ibid: 77; Feng Xu 2000: 4; Gries and Rosen 2004).5 0 In contrast to the
worker-subject of the Maoist era, the new national subject of late socialism is not a
collective entity involved in class struggle and valued for its political dedication but
an individual who freely exercises (rational) choice in the marketplace and is
distinguished from other individuals by ability (nengli) (Hoffman 2003). Those
individuals who are successful at accruing material wealth and social status are said
to have quality, hence ability.
Discourse about quality, argues Hairong Yan (2003b), serves to reinforce in migrants
a sense of worthlessness that can only be rectified through self-improvement,
achieved through commodity consumption. Moreover, argues Pun Ngai (2003), the
insatiable desire for new commodities propels ever more rural youth to leave their
villages and accept the low wages of urban industrial and service jobs, feeding the
engine of global capital with an endless supply of cheap labor, increasing demand,
and increased profits. I concur with Pirn (2003) and Yan (2003b) that, by adapting
this dominant discourse, young women ironically may circulate neoliberal values
that reinforce the material and discursive distance between the urbanite and the
peasant, and continue the cycle of migration and capitalist exploitation. At the same
5 0 Discipline is inculcated in workers and citizens by the quality-raising discourse and accompanying
practices. For example, during the 1990s, the concept of quality was evoked in propaganda stressing
that citizens should obey the family planning law, observe public hygiene, and abide by traffic
regulations, as well as in campaigns to eradicate illiteracy and improve secondary education
(Anagnost 1997: 75-97).
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time, from a gender- and person-centered perspective, things appear more benign.
The decision to migrate pits young rural women against certain entrenched ideas
about gender generally held by parents and village elders, and can be read as an
exercise of agency and act of self-determination.
Chapter 4 emphasizes the fluidity and multiplicity of identity. Through labor
migration, young rural women forge new identities while reworking old identities.
Although rural women desire the trappings of modernity, they are also responsive to
a sense of filial duty to their parents and family. Away from home they become
adept at balancing “duty” and “desire,” even when these conflict (see Collier 1997).
Rural migrant service workers negotiate among multiple roles and identities as
daughters, women, and employees, and in so doing reveal their complexity as
subjects. For example, they apply “traditional” kinship-derived ethics (of virtue and
filiality) and modes of interpersonal relations to the “modem” sphere of capitalist
labor exchange. As wage earners, then, rural women bring to bear their identities as
dutiful daughters.
Chapter 5 reflects upon the ways that the experience of labor migration changes the
self-perceptions and worldviews of rural women, and in turn influences how they
approach the future. I find that the urban experience of young rural women has
potential to challenge widely held beliefs about gender and to transform gender
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relations in rural areas. For example, his daughter’s untiring efforts to pursue
educational opportunities offered in the city impresses Zhang’s father to admit his
error and shortsightedness in not supporting her education in the past. Zhang may
become a beacon of hope for the next generation of young women in her village.
Migration generally raises young migrant women’s expectations of marriage and
empowers them to make independent decisions about their own futures, even over
parental objections. However, with higher aspirations comes potential for deeper
disillusion and disappointment when these cannot be met. Indeed, the rigid barriers
to rural migrant women’s upward mobility in urban society coupled with societal
pressure to marry and settle down may cause acute anxiety and psychological
distress for some young migrant women.
Finally, in Chapter 6 1 consider how one organization for migrant women in Beijing
is taking on the entrenched rural-urban divide and advocating for gender equality by
empowering rural migrant women as (urban) citizens. The efforts of organizations
such as this one are slowly reshaping the image of the dagongmei long held by
policy makers and urbanites alike with positive implications for improving how rural
migrant women are treated in urban society and in the economy. However, even in
such well-meaning organizations there is a tendency for urban elites to represent and
speak for their rural sisters. In short, rural migrant women as yet do not have access
to a public (democratic) sphere in which their demands to be recognized for, and
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fairly compensated for, their contributions to China’s late socialist modernity can be
voiced.
Rural Migrant Women and Alternative Modernity
A focus on gender and women’s agency brings to light other perspectives on late
socialist modernity. For rural migrant women, the “experience of modernity” is
sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable; it is both empowering and
disempowering; it is ambivalent.
Zhang’s first stint in Beijing a domestic worker did not last long; barely three months
on the job she gave her notice, apparently in a dramatic confrontation with the
mistress who accused her of negligence in her work.
I was furious. I declared, “I quit! Find somebody else. I’ll give you a week to
find a replacement for me, then I’m going.” .. .Auntie complained, “So you are
just going to leave us in the lurch?” “No,” I said, “I’ll continue to do my job and
do it well until you find a replacement.” Uncle pleaded, “My wife really doesn’t
want you to go. She says you work really hard and well. We’ve already had
several domestic workers quit on us, and if other hear you are leaving too, well, it
wouldn’t sound good.”
I nodded, and thought to myself, “You folks are so concerned for your ‘face,’ but
give me no self respect. Why can’t you people just treat your employees fairly?
You say that worker was lazy, the other was a glutton, but you never look to
yourselves [for the reasons they quit].
Zhang exercises agency by talking back to her employer and threatening to quit, and,
more importantly, by recording her experience and recreating her anger in the pages
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of a diary. Although “voting with the feet” is but an individual act of protest and
resistance that does not fundamentally alter the conditions of exploitation or injustice
of the work situation, it nonetheless demonstrates Zhang’s confidence and gumption,
qualities fortified by the very experience of labor migration that she is here
protesting!
As she prepared to take leave of her first Beijing employers, Zhang was subjected to
one further humiliation:
I gathered together my things back into the same old suitcase I arrived with two
months before, and sat in the living room to watch TV.... The mistress emerged
from the bedroom, looking ill at ease. She looked at me suspiciously and said, “A
pair of my old shoes is missing from the balcony [laundry room]. If you wanted
them, just take them, but why not let me know?” She gave me a penetrating look.
... I thought, “She has accused me of theft!” I told myself, “Don’t pick a fight
with her. You are leaving in the morning for good.” But if I didn’t set her
straight, she’d believe I’d stolen her shoes. ... When her husband arrived home, I
heard her telling him about the shoes. I stood up and threw open my suitcase,
shouting, “Take a look! You’ll see there’s nothing of yours. You are too much!
Although I’m from the countryside, I still have self-respect. Don’t you have any
decency [xiuyang\l\”
By appealing in the last sentence to ethics, and perhaps a particularly Confucian
humanism (xiuyang, often translated as “cultivation,” is a quality associated with
Confucian ethical thought), Zhang places herself on higher moral ground than her
urban employers. By her actions and words, she inverts the dominant construction of
migrant identity as inferior and of low quality. She creatively infuses the debased
identity of rural migrant with value—of honesty and integrity—and thereby accuses
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her urban employer of shallow and unjust (and indeed illegal) behavior. Although
her appeal to Confucian ethics may be read as a sign of her “traditionalism,” I
believe it shows Zhang’s ability to carefully weigh the pros and cons of modernity,
and creatively apply alternative values to critique modem urban life. This example
on the one hand underscores rural women’s ambivalent position vis a vis late
socialist modernity, due to the lack of choices women like Zhang have in the labor
market. On the other hand, it also shows that agents have some capacity to
selectively draw upon aspects of modernity that are beneficial, and discard what are
not, and in this way take some control of their lives and futures as daughters,
workers, and citizens of contemporary China.
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CHAPTER TWO
ENGENDERING MODERNITY, REINSTAT(E)ING DIFFERENCE:
GENDER AND THE STATE IN MODERN CHINA
Due to the obstacles of traditional customs and the level of social development in
China, women's status is still lower than men, rural women's status is lower than
that of urban women, [and] in order to realize real equality between men and
women and bring the initiative of women into full play, it goes without question
than we still have a long way to go. (Peng Peiyun, Chairwoman, All China
Women’s Federation, in Peng 1995: 6)
To increase the employment of women and expand their areas of employment in
the course of establishing a socialist market economy, readjusting the urban and
rural industrial structure, and developing the tertiary industry. (Goals of the State
Council’s Program for the Development o f Chinese Women, 1995-2000)
The positive effects coming from this housekeeper market are clear. Family
members can devote more time to work, while housekeepers not only make
money, but also improve their cultural quality due to the influence of urban
civilization. ... They understand that a woman should have a life outside of the
fields and the kitchen. This awareness will surely help improve the quality of life
for women in the rural areas. (Yang Ji. “Housekeepers Help Others and Better
Themselves.” Beijing Review, Dec. 5-11, 1994: 22-23.)
Introduction
According to Beijing lore, the pioneers of the so-called “migrant labor tide”
(mingongchao) that began in the early 1980s were young rural women seeking work
in domestic service— doing childcare, laundry, cleaning, or eldercare- in urban
households. The first wave of baomu came mainly from Anhui province, in
particular from Wuwei county, which had a history of women entering domestic
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service, as well as from Sichuan and Henan provinces (Liu 1998: 111). By 1986, an
estimated 50,000 young rural women had entered domestic service Beijing.5 1 As
demand for their services increased steadily over the subsequent decade, ever more
rural women migrated to Beijing.5 2
Given that the socialist revolution had purportedly eradicated class by eliminating
capitalist labor relations as well as feudal servitude, their reappearance in the form of
domestic service in the 1980s was puzzling. The explanation of the official women’s
organization, the All-China Women’s Federation, which promoted domestic service,
was couched in the socialist rhetoric of “women’s liberation.” In the Mao era, the
claim that socialist revolution liberated women and hence achieved gender equality
became a truism. Yet in the post-Mao era, women’s studies academics as well as
Women’s Federation cadres, such as former Women’s Federation chairwoman Peng
Peiyun quoted above, acknowledge that women, especially rural women, still have a
lower status than men. One area of gender inequality of concern to the Women’s
Federation is the so-called “double burden” of working women’s dual reproductive
and productive roles. According to revolutionary socialist rhetoric, the contradictions
5 1 According to a May 1986 China Daily report cited in Browning (1987). Another source estimated
35.000 domestic workers were in the capital by 1986 (“Baomu de sanda...”).
5 2 By 1989,400,000 rural women were reported to be working in Beijing (Huang X. 1992: 99).
Nationally in 1989, as many as 3 million rural women were working in urban households (Dai and
Dempsey 1998: 11). A 1992 survey of Beijing households forecast an annual demand for at least
50.000 domestic workers (Liu 1998: 107).
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of women’s employment should disappear with the socialization of domestic labor.
Affordable domestic service was thus touted as a solution to this age-old problem, at
least for urban women workers.
As the second quotation indicates, the State Council established the goal of women’s
development through the promotion of women’s employment opportunities in the
developing “tertiary” sector of the economy. Increasing women’s productive (e.g.,
waged work) opportunities had long been central to socialist efforts to redress gender
inequality. As a new employment opportunity for rural (migrant) women, domestic
service was thus also touted as a means to raise their social status, as suggested in the
third quotation.
In fact, domestic service is more accurately illustrative of the state’s contradictory
stance regarding “the woman question.” The “gendering” of the tertiary sector as an
explicit policy goal somewhat undermines (or belies) the commitment to gender
equality. First, many jobs in the tertiary sector that are seen as appropriate for
women are of the “informal” variety—poorly compensated, poorly (if at all)
regulated, offering little by way of benefits and protections. Second, many such jobs
(e.g., retail, entertainment, restaurant work) rely on and reinforce gender ideologies
that may maintain patterns of gender inequality. For example, sexily clad greeters
(hostesses) commonly employed to lure in clientele construct an image of feminine
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servility or objectification for a predominantly male gaze. Similarly, promoting
domestic service as a distinctly women’s occupation does not challenge a household
division of labor by gender or gender ideology that associates housework with
women.
Domestic service is also indicative of the unfulfilled promise of socialism to smooth
over the “great contradiction” between the rural and urban. In the context of uneven
development and a less restrictive but still relevant hukou system, the urban domestic
service labor market produced a class relationship between rural and urban women;
this new class relationship (of rural migrant worker, urban boss) is found in other
tertiary sector occupations too, such as in hotel and office cleaning.
In sum, in the reform era, the development of a domestic service market allows the
state’s “feminine arm” (i.e., the Women’s Federation) to continue to pay lip service
to a commitment to “women’s liberation,” while transferring from the state to
individual households the costs of reproducing the (male/urban) workforce. In rural
areas, this burden falls to the (unwaged) rural housewife, and in the cities, to the low-
paid rural migrant woman.
A similar argument about class if not gender holds for janitorial service, as both male
and female migrants engage as hotel and office cleaners. However, gender difference
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and inequality are produced through specialization of tasks in hotel service, as I will
demonstrate in Chapter 5. For example, female hotel janitors clean rooms, which can
be interpreted as an extension of their role in the household, as the hotel “chamber”
simulates the interiority of the home, where they help their mothers in domestic
chores. Depending on whether the hotel/office is state-owned, joint, or private, the
state may or may not directly profit from the low-cost migrant labor. But the
contracting of jobs outside state control to private bidders at lower costs increases
profits in the tourism and travel industry and hence helps grow the economy,
indirectly benefiting the state.
This chapter maps out my theoretical argument that the Chinese party-state in the
reform period has a vested interest, both economic (capital accumulation and
extraction) and political (need for social stability), in maintaining a “flexible”
workforce, that is, one that is productive, disciplined, and responsive to the
vicissitudes of the global economy. Rural migrant women meet this demand as they
are incorporated into discursive practices that result in “divided gender, divided
women,” to borrow Huang Xiyi’s (1999) apt phrase. Specifically, state policies that
promote the feminization of the tertiary sector and the tiered segmentation of the
urban labor market by household registration (i.e., urban and rural origins), together
with cultural ideologies of gender difference and rural “otherness,” position rural
migrant women at the bottom of the urban economic and social hierarchy. In this
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77
chapter I do not explore the possibility for rural migrant women to exercise agency
and negotiate new roles and identities as wage earners and urban citizens despite
their social and economic marginalization in the city. That will be the focus of later
chapters.
This chapter instead addresses a broader question: What is the relationship between
rural migrant women and the Chinese nation-state? Addressing this question requires
some historical background. The figure of the rural peasant woman has been central
in the masculinist narrative of the modem Chinese nation, as the symbol of the
nation itself. In the eyes of May Fourth intellectuals and Chinese Communist Party
(hereafter, CCP) founders alike, women and peasants symbolized China’s weakness
in an international setting. Liberating them from imperialism, capitalism, and
feudalism became the clarion call of the CCP-led socialist revolution and a
cornerstone of socialist policy. The consequent social advancement of these formerly
oppressed groups have became the measuring stick for the modernity of the nation
state and key to the CCP’s claims to legitimacy in leading the nation to a better
future through reform and opening. Ironically, despite rural woman’s centrality to
nationalist discourse and hence to the production of national identity, real rural
women were marginalized from the echelons of state power.
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Given the linear time frame of which the modem nation-state is the climax, claims
about modernity (whether of republican enlightenment, socialist liberation, or
market-socialism’s prosperity and development) require such discursive
constructions—woman, peasant, migrant— set in a timeless past (i.e., “tradition”)
that can be contrasted with a glorious present and promising future. Such categories
of difference are ideological constructs, yet have real consequences as they inform
institutional practices oriented toward the various missions of enlightenment, or
liberation, or modernization of these “others” (e.g., the unenlightened, or the
oppressed, or the backward); they shape subjectivities and thus may exact the
consensual participation of social groups involved in nation building.
In particular, associations between rural women and “timeless traditions,” or “low
quality” and “backwardness” naturalize rural women’s economic and social situation
and obscure institutional structures—whether the household registration system,
labor market regulations, or rural patriarchy—that restrict real rural women’s
capacities to benefit from the policies of reform and opening. Such “common sense”
understanding of rural women and modernity is evidenced in the third quotation,
which implies that rural (migrant) women stand to gain most from urban service
sector employment because they are less socially advanced (i.e., not as modem, not
as civilized, and not as emancipated) than their urban counterparts. Importantly, to
the extent that rural women themselves are invested in the identities and roles carved
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out for them by the nation-state, they too may embrace the teleological claim of a
brighter future promised through reform and opening as a means to achieve that
more modem, civilized and progressive identity. We can expect this to reinforce the
status quo of social hierarchy, even as it empowers women individually.
This chapter delineates the identities and roles of the rural woman as constructed
through late imperial Confucianism, republican, and revolutionary nationalisms, in
order to provide a historical foundation for understanding contemporary
constructions of gender and rural/urban difference in late socialist modernity. Such
background provides the framework against which rural migrant women of the 1990s
understood their migration experiences as meaningful and the ways they negotiated
identity.
Xianglin’s Wife: “Traditional Chinese Woman”
The maids (baomu) who enter cities are no more the ignorant (yumei wuzhi) and
suppliant (suiren baibu) “maidservants” (nilyongren) like Xianglin’s Wife
(xianglin sao),5 3 but rather are “panners for gold” (taojinzhe) who have distinct
goals and who actively pursue opportunities, especially for higher income.
(Meng 1995: 260)
We used to believe that maids (baomu) had to follow protocol (guiju), and act
like menial women (baomu), but what is suitable protocol? Does it mean acting
like Xianglin’s Wife? We are not sure. (Tang and Feng 1996: 52)
5 3 Sao refers to ego’s (male) elder brother’s wife, rendering both Xianglin’s Wife and Elder Sister
Xianglin as accurate translations.
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These two quotations attempt to make some sense of the phenomenon of young rural
women’s migration to the cities and entry into domestic service in the reform period
by comparison to a fictional character from the famous 1924 short story “The New
Year’s Sacrifice” (Zhufu), penned by the preeminent May Fourth writer Lu Xun
(1881-1936).5 4 The story tells the tragic tale of a poor rural woman oppressed by the
“warped morality” of a patriarchal society (Kazuko Ono 1978: 98). Xianglin’s Wife
is a recently widowed poor village woman. Resolved to maintain widow chastity,
and hence uphold the neo-Confucian code of feminine virtue,5 5 she enters the Lu
541 consulted Lau 1987 for a Chinese version of this story and Wang, David 2000: 271-272 for
analysis.
5 5 Neo-Confucianism is identified with the later Song dynasty, and its key tenets continued to guide
social life and culture into the late imperial period. By die Song dynasty, “a normative Chinese family
had taken deep root across class and regional boundaries” (Ebrey cited in Ko 1994: 11). This kinship
system was firmly grounded in the principals of patriliny, filial piety, and patriarchy. This meant that
daughters ultimately married out of their natal households and that their offspring belonged to their
husband's lineage. Sons, on the other hand, represented continuity of the ancestral line, and it was
their filial duty to care for elderly parents and carry on the lineage. Gender relations were spelled out
in Confucian doctrine, which established “twin pillars” guiding gender relations: the demarcation of
separate spheres (described below) and the “thrice following” (sancong) (Ko 1994: 6). Sometimes
translated as three “obediences,” these latter established guidelines for feminine behavior modeled on
family relations. Accordingly, a woman should follow the authority of her father in her youth, her
husband in marriage, and her son in widowhood. Formal laws (e.g., Qing legal codes) reinforced
Confucian doctrine and thereby maintained a woman’s disadvantage relative to male superiors.
Confucian codes of conduct also constituted a gendered system of ethics (Ko 1994: x). A woman’s
moral virtue was measured by her adherence to the ideal of the “virtuous wife and good mother”
(xianqi liangmu) and the sexual mores it implied. For example, a highly virtuous woman remained
chaste until marriage and loyal to her husband after marriage, and to her husband’s family in
widowhood. Throughout the imperial era, widow chastity was promoted as a paragon of virtue
through “cults of chastity” that idolized chaste widows in memorial. Prohibition against widow
remarriage was especially widespread in the strict neo-Confucianism of the late Qing court (Mann
1997: 25). So-called “morality pamphlets” (shanshu) that were widely circulated in Qing times used
Buddhist-inspired descriptions of the punishments of Hell that awaited women who transgressed
moral codes to educate women in Confucian orthodoxy (Eberhard 1977). Xianglin’s Wife’s fear of
such punishment for her immorality escalates her descent into madness (Wang, David 2000: 271). Her
violation, although not of her own volition, of the code of widow chastity causes her social ostracism
and spiritual and mental anguish.
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81
household as a domestic servant (niigong) to support herself. But her determination
is undermined when her mother-in-law sells her into remarriage. Tragedy follows, as
her second husband succumbs to typhoid, and their infant son falls prey to a pack of
wild wolves. Now twice-widowed, mourning her child, and still poor, Xianglin’s
Wife returns to her former position in the Lu household. Yet as a remarried widow,
she is considered impure and polluting, suffers the ostracism of the village
community, and is excluded from ritual preparations for the annual New Year’s
sacrifice. Taunted by villagers that the King of Hell will punish her for her
transgressions, Xianglin’s Wife descends into insanity and is forced out of the Lu
household to beg on the street. The narrator, an educated urbanite making a
customary visit to his hometown at the new year, meets her by chance on the street.
She beseeches him to answer her question about whether the soul lives on after
death. The narrator is perplexed, and fails to give a definitive answer. Later that
night, Xianglin’s Wife dies of exposure, presumably tormented to death by the fear
that her innocent suffering in this life will continue eternally.
Historian Dorothy Ko comments that Xianglin’s Wife represents the “quintessential
‘traditional Chinese woman’ in the minds of most Chinese” as she conveys requisite
qualities of a “victimized woman”:
Sold as a commodity, called by her husband's name, she has no identity of her
own, and worst of all, is so steeped in the ideology of her oppressor that she
blames her misfortunes on herself (Ko 1994: 2).
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Lu Xun's Zhufu must be read in the context of a body of so-called May Fourth
literature produced in the warlord period (1915-1927) between the Manchu
abdication of the Qing throne (1911) and the start of the “Nanjing Decade” of
Nationalist (Guomindang; hereafter, GMD) rule.5 6 In such literature, the ubiquitous
figure of the suffering “traditional Chinese woman” epitomized by Xianglin’s Wife
became a metonym or allegory for the nation itself and its vulnerability to foreign
domination. As women as a group were disadvantaged in Chinese society, their
plight highlighted the backwardness of the nation-state, and even more so when
combined with the poverty of the peasant (Larson 1998: 32; Feuerwerker 1998: 245).
The trope of the “traditional” woman in the nation’s past hardly does justice to the
complexity of late imperial womanhood as it was actually lived. While enduring
(e.g., elitist, Confucian) values of feminine virtue and gender ethics permeated late
imperial social life, women were in reality very differently positioned in patriarchal
structures of kinship and class and thus their ability to conform to such gender norms
varied.5 7 “Traditional Chinese woman” was rather a discursive creation of male
5 6 Following the collapse of the first alliance between the Nationalists (GMD) and the Communists
(CCP) (1924-1927) and the former’s completion of their Northern Expedition, the GMD established
the capital of the Republic at Nanjing, while the CCP was forced into hiding and retreat. The GMD
and CCP formed a second alliance at the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan, in 1937,
which held through WWII.
5 7 Tani Barlow (1994) theorizes that pre-modem China did not have one overarching, prediscursive
category of meaning, “woman.” Rather, gender was “differentially positional,” configured relationally
by kinship, generation and age (e.g., terms representing females included daughter-in-law, wife,
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83
intellectual elites who, in their public positions as scholars, largely controlled the
terms of debate on gender.5 8 Wang Zheng (1999: 60) argues that choosing to
promote the rights of society’s downtrodden was a strategy whereby intellectuals
could legitimately promote the values of Western individualism without appearing
self-serving, given a Confucian cultural context in which “to be ethical and moral
was to fulfill social obligations to others.” By focusing on the emancipation of
women for the sake of national well-being and modernity, “the modem intellectuals
not only were able to express their own alienation and frustration [with a changing
society] but, more important, could now also locate their own social positions in a
turbulent world,” as leaders of the new nation (Ibid.).
daughter, etc.). Gender was conceptualized through the principle of complementary relationships.
Only in the modem era, when Chinese intellectuals adopted the western idea and terminology of
“woman” (niixing), was woman construed as the biological sexed “other” of universal man. Without
disagreeing with Barlow’s discursive explication of gender in Chinese history, Wendy Larson (1998:
36-40) adds, drawing upon the work of Meng Yue and Dai Qing, that even within discursive
categories of the family, women were considered men’s social inferiors. Sally Leiberman (1998: 24)
concurs that women’s roles in premodem China differed significantly from men’s and were
“distinctly women’s” in that all roles associated with women reinforced the ideals of feminine virtue:
diligence, intelligence, modesty, chastity, humility, benevolence, and sincerity.
5 8 Lieberman (1998) suggests that writing about menial mother figures appealed to writers’ childhood
experiences and memories of their surrogate mothers. Most May Fourth literati were gentry who had
themselves been raised by wet-nurses and servants, from whom they gleaned insights into lives of
rural masses. Writers like Lu Xun, Ruo Shi, Ba Jin, and Lu Yin, whose works are discussed by
Lieberman (1998); Qu Qiubai, whose nursemaid is fondly recalled by Ding Ling in her memoir of the
poet (Ding Ling. 1980. “Wo suo renshide Qu Qiubai tongzhi” [My aquaintance and comrade Qu
Qiubai]. Xinhua Yuebao [News Monthly] 5: 155-63, referenced in Spence 1981: 150); Bai Xianyong,
author of “Yuqing Sao” (Yuqing’s Wife) (discussed in Chow 1994); and Xie Bingying, author of
Diary of Woman Soldier, all wrote about menial mothers. In regard to their childhood nurses and
servants, these writers expressed contradictory emotions of nostalgic longing for the surrogate
mother’s love and repulsion at the traditional system of inequality that made possible that servitude.
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84
Lu Xun’s story Zhufu makes clear the implicit assumption of the May Fourth male
intellectual of his key role in national salvation. The two main characters are
Xianglin’s Wife, who is pitiable in her unwavering belief in the very patriarchal
gender and kinship ideology that causes her social and economic abjection, and the
narrator, an enlightened male intellectual who knows the “true” source of her
suffering. The story sets into relief the vast social and economic gap between the two
characters and imputes to the intellectual the power to resolve the subaltern woman’s
suffering. However, in ultimately failing to unequivocally answer Xianglin’s Wife’s
question by either rebuking her tormentors (i.e., society) or intervening to help her,
the narrator is left after her death with an “everlasting guilt” (Wang, D. 2000: 271).
Rey Chow (1994: 245) elaborates: “the effect of Lu Xun’s stories is always that of
guilt, which we may describe as an emotion created—in the privileged—by the
disparities between privilege and subaltemity.” The uncertainty and wavering
authority of the male narrator in Zhufu has been interpreted as conveying Lu Xun’s
characteristic despair and pessimism toward the May Fourth project of cultural
rejuvenation and the role of intellectuals as national saviors.5 9 Perhaps the Chinese
Communist Party was able to channel this powerful emotion of guilt into selfless
sacrifice to the cause of the revolution and, ultimately, intellectuals’ loyalty to the
5 9 Duara (2001b: 25) interprets Xianglin’s death as a “communal sacrifice” that allows both the
narrator (as the voice of Lu Xun) to be purged of his existential guilt and the village community to
forget its inhumane treatment of the poor woman. This reading more powerfully underscores Lu
Xun’s nihilism, for it suggests that even the enlightened self of the intellectual cannot fully escape
from a traditional mindset, and thus despairs that any revolution can be truly radical.
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85
Party. Indeed, Lu Xun and many other prominent New Culturalists/May Fourth
intellectuals joined the CCP shortly after it was founded in 1921.
In May Fourth intellectual discourse, rural woman symbolically mediated the
contradictions of a society that was eagerly applying aspects of western culture to
national concerns while simultaneously contending with imperialism.6 0 On the one
hand, literary representations of “traditional woman” helped galvanize the scholar-
student movement for radical change, beginning with an attack on the Confucian
family.6 1 This in turn paved the way for the emergence of a “new woman” (xin
• • f \ 0 •
niixing) who was at once modem and feminist in a western sense. The discourse on
6 0 China’s intellectuals embraced ideas and values from western culture even as they daily
encountered the indignities of foreign imperialism in the treaty ports without contradiction, argues
Shu-mei Shih (2001). China’s “semi-colonial” situation contrasted to that of outright colonization by
one foreign power, such as occurred in India by the British, in that it was neither uniform (involving
multiple imperial powers) nor pervasive (limited to treaty ports), and this allowed for Chinese
intellectuals to take a “bifurcated view” of the west; they embraced metropolitan cultural modernity
from abroad while bracketing western colonialism at home. May Fourth literati thus took western
modernity as a universal without confronting the ideology of domination enabled by that vision of
modernity.
6 1 Modernity imported from the west ironically provided the tools with which Chinese elites could
critique the past and ultimately strengthen China against foreign aggressors (Shih 2001). Western
liberal humanism, particularly the idea of an “abstract human being with inalienable rights,” with its
claims to universality, particularly appealed to this generation (Wang Z. 1999: 12). The concept of the
autonomous individual may have resonated on a personal level with these educated men who sought
to break out of the confinement of patriarchal family obligations and forge their own futures (e.g.,
Glosser 2002; Chan, C. S. 1993). At the same time, as heirs to the imperial civil servant role of
providing counsel to the emperors, these intellectuals likewise believed themselves responsible for
charting the course for China’s future as a united and sovereign nation-state. Liberal humanism thus
provided a means to attack the Confucian idea of selfhood as enmeshed in hierarchical social relations
(of minister to ruler, son to father, and wife to husband), which they blamed for creating a weak and
submissive populace.
6 2 In attacking the root of Confucian social order, the family, May Fourth intellectuals necessarily had
to tackle the foundations of gender hierarchy, such as the principles of the three followings (Wang Z.
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86
new woman enabled educated women to embrace a new, modem subjectivity, such
as articulated in the new “women’s literature” {ntixing wenxue).6 3 However,
embracing this new discourse ironically distanced educated, urban women from their
rural and working-class sisters with whom they sought to unite.6 4 Moreover, the
1999: 12). Moreover, influenced by European and American feminist movements (mainly suffragist)
that were at their peak in this era, Chinese intellectuals associated feminism with modernity and came
to view women’s emancipation as a necessary stage of social development or evolution (Wang Z.
1999: 13). The goal of exposing such gender oppression was not simply to better women’s lives,
however, but to make women aware of their own “independent personhood” (duli renge) and thus
create a new subjectivity, the “new woman” (xin ntixing) who was conceived of as “politically aware,
patriotic, independent and educated” (Edwards 2000: 116). Modeled on Nora of Ibsen’s drama “The
Doll’s House,” she was a “courageous figure who put into practice an agenda of ‘total westernization’
{quanpan xihua) and antitraditionalism” (Shih 2001: 300). Thus the May Fourth era introduced a new
discourse that provided the possibility for a gender identity outside of and independent of the
Confucian kinship system, that in turn allowed women to stake claims to their inalienable rights as
human beings to participate as equals to (universal) man in the public sphere for the sake of national
salvation (Wang Z. 1999; Yang, M. 1999).
6 3 The short-lived trajectory of a women’s literature of the 1920s attests to the gender hierarchy within
intellectual circles. Beginning in the May Fourth era, educated young urban women began to write of
their own struggles as they negotiated traditional and modem gender ideals, and explored subjects as
women’s psychology and the politics of domestic life. Some of these works of modem Chinese
women’s literature were critical of the masculinist tone of Chinese nationalism espoused even by
progressive (male) intellectuals. In hindsight, Carolyn Brown (1993) notes, the very label “women’s
literature” imputed an essential difference to women’s writing as implicitly inferior to men’s
literature, which presumed to speak for universal truths, perhaps making the fate of women’s writing
inevitable. In subsequent decades, introspective writing by 1920s women writers like Ding Ling,
author of Miss Sophie’ s Diary, came under attack by both conservatives and leftists alike. Soon,
feminist analyses of modernity were displaced by male intellectuals determined to control the terms of
a debate whose central focus was the nation and in which “the feminine functions as a theoretical
principle and not as a social category linked to specific women’s issues” (Shih 2001: 205).
6 4 New Culturalist/May Fourth ideas reached a receptive audience in a generation of young women,
predominantly urban, who had benefited from the late Qing reformers’ efforts to promote women’s
educational opportunities (Wang Z. 1999: 14-15; Johnson 1983: 23). During the 1920s, the efforts of
these intellectual activists accomplished the opening of higher education and formerly male
occupations to women, and the incorporation of the principle of gender equality into GMD and CCP
party platforms (Wang Z. 1999: 19). Urban women activists generally advocated for a liberal feminist
agenda of women’s education and economic opportunities, autonomy in marriage decisions and
finances, participation as equals to men in political and public life, and “concern for other oppressed
women” (Wang Z. 1999: 16). The “other women” who were objects of their concern included
working-class and peasant women. The promotion of universal women’s education and property
inheritance rights, the abolition of foot-binding and the sale of women as maids and prostitutes, and
the opposition to the practices of arranged marriage, concubinage, and adopted daughters-in-law
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87
alleged “excesses” of the modem woman (including urban women’s political
activism) incited backlash by (male) conservatives and leftists alike.5 5 Such backlash
relied upon the positive re-valuation of rural woman as exemplars of authentic
especially impacted rural women. These goals were incorporated into the agendas of several women’s
organizations, including the student activists’ Feminist Women’s Association (formed in 1922) and
the CCP and GMD joint women’s platform (of the 1925 Revolutionary Army) (Wang Z. 1999: 336-
337; 340). But women organizers faced great obstacles in trying to unify diverse categories of women
divided along political, class, provincial and other lines, and thus often modified their feminist goals
for working class and rural women (cf. Gilmartin 1995: 71-95). My point here is merely that working-
class and rural women were the largely silent majority whose interests were articulated by their
progressive, urban activist “sisters.”
6 5 During the period of Nationalist rule (1926-1936), a heated debate over the May Fourth “new
woman” occupied the urban Chinese press (Brown 1993; Edwards 2000; Larson 1998; Lee, L. 1999).
At this time, commercial interests based in and around the treaty port began to appropriate and
popularize the May Fourth image of a new woman. In advertisements for products (especially popular
were the calendars that featured this technique) and on the movie screen, the “modem” (modeng) girl
became synonymous with the idea of the urban, with westernization, and with capitalist consumer
culture (Lee, L. 1999). Some intellectuals criticized the commercialized modem girl as falsely
modem; the “true” modem woman, they asserted, neither indulged in hedonistic pleasure nor catered
to men’s pleasure, but instead sought emancipation through moral education. A modem woman
whose interests were not aligned with nationalism, and who did not require (male) intellectuals’
spiritual guidance, apparently threatened the (male) intellectual’s identity and authority. Brown (1993)
argues that intellectuals projected onto the debate over modem woman their concerns about their
decreasing influence in government, as their traditional power to advise and inform public policy was
gradually usurped by representatives of the commercial and military interests upon whom the
Nationalist government increasingly depended. Edwards (2000) concludes that the new woman was
gradually done in both by the progressive intellectuals who created her, but then lost control over her
popularization, as well as conservatives within the GMD, who found her too radical. In literary
debates and within both parties, male intellectual leaders launched a moralistic critique of gender and
femininity in order to exercise their own holds on power in volatile political circumstances. Moreover,
the conservative literary backlash against imaginings of modem women both reflected and
contributed to the Nationalist’s persecution of modem-looking young women— identified by westem-
style garments and short haircuts-when troops under the conservative wing of the GMD headed by
Chiang Kaishek initiated the violent “White Terror” campaign in 1927 to purge its ranks of
Communist Party members and sympathizers. In the wake of the violence, the Nationalists moved the
capital to Nanjing where they held sway for the following decade until forced by Japanese invasion to
retreat to the interior. In the Nationalist-controlled areas, the feminist new woman was further undone
by conservatives resistant to progressive reforms and changing gender relations who promoted
“fascist Puritanism,” e.g., traditional qualities of feminine virtue, under the guise of the New Life
movement begun in 1934.
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88
“tradition,”6 6 Either way, male elites discursively “divided gender,” construing
women as the least modem and most traditional of the two sexes, and they “divided
women,” depicting rural women as the least modem and most traditional of all
women.
Over the subsequent decades, nationalist tendencies displaced so-called narrow (i.e.,
bourgeois) feminism represented by the new woman (see n67).6 7 Leftist writers
continued to feature subaltern figures in their writing, but they now portrayed them
as valiant and self-sacrificing revolutionaries and as liberated subjects under party
guidance. In a 1942 lecture, “Talks at Yan’an Forum on Literature on Art,” Mao
Zedong laid out the blueprint for literary representation in New China.6 8 Under
socialist realism, peasants were exalted for their revolutionary potential. In his Talks,
Mao eulogized Lu Xun (who died in 1936) as “a great thinker and a great
revolutionist,” (cited in L. Lee 1985: 3) and exemplary writer of “an optimistic,
6 6 Duara (2001b) observes this construction of womanhood—as repository of essential national/ethnic
identity and culture—to be a fundamental characteristic of the modem nation-state. Schein (2002;
388) articulates a similar observation about ethnic minorities in Chinese nationalism: “For 20t h
century China... an internal Other (or Others), in the form of non-Han peoples positioned at the
geographic-cognitive periphery of the Chinese state, came to represent the hope for the recovery of a
self weakened and threatened at the center by the vicissitudes of the foregoing decades of radical
change.”
6 7 As Wang Zheng (1999: 133-134) explains, the CCP retrospectively attached this label and that of
“bourgeois feminism” to feminists who did not expressly espouse social revolution as a precondition
for addressing gender issues, a form of feminism it associated with the Nationalist GMD
sympathizers.
6 8 This directive was successfully implemented within the CCP in large part through a concomitant
rectification campaign to reign in overly independent artists and writers, among them Ding Ling,
whose vocal protest about sexism in the ranks of party leaders is generally thought to have initiated
Mao’s Talks.
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89
heroic literature that served the Party’s goals and extolled the masses” (Goldman
1985: 182.). Dorothy Ko (1994: 2) connects Mao’s praise for Lu Xun’s depictions of
characters like Xianglin’s Wife to the party-state’s quest for legitimacy: “To claim
credit for the ‘liberation’ of women, the CCP and its sympathizers perpetuated the
stark view of China’s past as the perennial dark age for women.”6 9
In the aforementioned quotations, Xianglin’s Wife is specifically meant to exemplify
the “traditional” menial woman or domestic servant, and serves as a contrast to her
“modem” counterpart, the young maid (domestic worker) of the reform era, who,
like Xianglin’s Wife, is both female and of rural origin. The author of the first
passage expresses admiration for the pluck and determination of contemporary
young rural migrant women. The authors of the second passage concur, offering that
young rural women of the reform era choose to go out to work in domestic service
by “their own volition” (zhudong, zizhu, ziyuande), granting them an agency that is
denied the ‘traditional Chinese woman.’ The contrast to the invented past (in the
form of the victimized woman) codes the present as “progressive.” Significantly, the
allusion elides the intervening decades of socialism that claimed to have liberated
women like Xianglin’s Wife from the oppressive bonds of “feudal patriarchy” (a
6 9 Ko (1994: 2) claims that western scholarship has also contributed to the creation of a stereotype of
traditional Chinese woman, and, I would add, of traditional society itself. From the work of social
historians like Ko, anthropologists, and others, a more nuanced image of women in “traditional,” or
imperial and republican era China has emerged, that emphasizes the regional, ethnic, and class
differences among women and is attentive to historical change.
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90
gender and class system of oppression) and the fetters of traditional, “superstitious”
(mixing) beliefs and practices.7 0 In fact, as I explain next, the post-Mao state
acknowledges that women’s liberation is an ongoing process and that the problem of
gender inequality has yet to be solved and that achieving these goals requires first the
modernization and development of the economy.
“Iron Girls” (tie guniang): The Socialist Liberation of (Rural) Woman
In both the May Fourth and socialist revolutionary versions of Chinese modernity, a
majority-male intellectual elite predominantly controlled the terms and conditions
through which Chinese women could identify and articulate gender oppression and
become modem—“enlightened” or “liberated.” Maoist propaganda typically
glorified the self-sacrificing, patriotic spirit of peasant and working-class women,
thereby preserving the nationalist impulse of the May Fourth era and reaffirming the
“timeless authenticity” of the socialist nation-state. As Prasenjit Duara (2001a: 372)
argues, “despite the communist will to repudiate the entire past, to forge ahead and
master the future, they still needed to identify an abiding communist-nationalist
essence and anchor it within the individual self.”
7 0 The metaphor of patriarchy as keeping women in binds or shackles was common in Mao’s
speeches. See his speech, “Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” in the
Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 1. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1965.
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91
What was new in the socialist revolutionary discourse, however, was that the
category of womanhood shifted, as the individualist new woman (ntixing) of May
Fourth feminism was replaced with the collective funii, who emerged through
political praxis and who was “subordinated to the dominant categories of class and
state bio-political designs for reproduction” (Barlow 1994: 254; Yang, M. 1999: 39).
Following Marxist theory, particularly the teachings of Engels, the CCP leaders had
come to view gender inequality as fundamentally an effect of a class system, which
in the Chinese case would be addressed in the course of peasant-landlord class
struggle. The consequence of ascribing the source of women’s oppression to class,
feminist scholars recognize, was that gender as a revolutionary category of analysis
gradually disappeared from political discourse, although gender continued to
function in reality as a principle for organizing power.7 1 Rather, the socialist
revolution claimed gender equality (nannti pingdeng) by fiat at the moment of the
proletarian victory in 1949, and foreclosed further critical feminist discourse for
successive decades, as the All China Women’s Federation became the official
mouthpiece for women of China.
7 1 The myth of Maoist “gender erasure,” both in public discourse and in individual consciousness, has
informed the post-Mao critique by women’s studies scholars and feminists both within and outside of
China (Honig 2000). Although in the Mao era, there was little room for dissent from the political
cliches of women’s emancipation in public discourse, ideas about gender and gendered practices were
deployed privately, as some recent historical research explores (e.g., Hershatter 2000; Honig 2000).
Nonetheless, a conviction that gender was not a category with which women could identify under
socialism has perhaps made a new generation of women more eager to embrace post-Mao re
valuation of gender in essential, sexed (biological) difference (e.g., Li X. 1999).
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92
Women’s liberation and gender equality were narrowly conceived to be the
movement of women into socially productive labor— work located outside the home
and oriented beyond the household, which was to be facilitated by the socialization
of domestic responsibilities. As Emily Honig (1985: 330) summarizes:
Marxist orthodoxy, particularly the formulations of Engels, provided the Party
with a convenient rationale for compromising on issues of gender equality.7 2
Women’s liberation, the theory promised, would evolve as a ‘natural
consequence’ of socialist revolution; women’s participation in economic
production outside the home would be a sure-fire guarantee of their ultimate
emancipation.”7 3
Communist victory did bring many changes to rural women’s lives, perhaps none
greater than breaking down the taboo on women’s participation in agricultural
work.7 4 Under land collectivization and during the push to form communes, able
7 2 Engels’s insight was that women’s domestic responsibilities for reproduction (i.e., the physical
reproduction of life as well as provision for its material and social reproduction) impeded their
participation in the productive sphere, and that only by producing for surplus rather than use-values
would women’s contribution to production be equal to that of men (Johnson 1983, 157).
7 3 Judith Stacey (1983) argued that the CCP compromised on the “woman question,” particularly the
promulgation of the Marriage Law and the constitutional right of divorce, when faced with
recalcitrant rural patriarchy in the liberated areas in the decades of war preceding the CCP victory in
1949. In addition, Kay Ann Johnson (1983: 65) demonstrated how the party needed rural women to
engage in production to replace male labor lost to fighting the Japanese and the civil war with GMD,
in a desperate effort to improve the economy to support the war effort and make the areas under party
control self-sufficient. Over time, the party put sole emphasis the expansion of women’s role in
production as the means to gender equality and improving attitudes toward women, and paid short
shrift to addressing gender relations and inequalities through alternate channels (Johnson 1983: 71).
7 4 Conventional wisdom holds that in most areas of China prior to Liberation, particularly in the north,
women were less involved in agricultural work, and more closely observed Confucian ideals of
gender segregation by remaining within or close to the home. While it had been customary for women
in certain southern areas to work in the fields, their labor was usually only seasonal (Davin 1976:
250). However, drawing upon her own research and that of Fei Xiaotong conducted decades
previously, Laurel Bossen (2002: 99-102) reports that women in Lu Village, located in southwest
China, did upwards of 50% of farming during the war with Japan. Bossen (2002: 101) cautions that
the common wisdom stems from one study, by David Buck, which has been faulted for numerous
inaccuracies, and advises such assumptions about women and farming not go unquestioned.
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93
bodied women were mobilized to “go out to work” and labor in the fields alongside
men, in record numbers.7 5 Most importantly, a work point system of remuneration
quantified and made visible their labor contribution to the work teams and to their
families, as suggested in the slogan “women hold up half the sky.”
Especially during the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution
(1966-76), rural women were encouraged with slogans like “what men can do,
women can also do” to take on tasks like plowing, formerly the purview mainly of
men, as men were recruited to work on large-scale civil engineering projects (Wolf
1985: 82; Bossen 2002: 106-112 and nl6 above). Women were also recruited into
rural cooperative industries, especially light industry. Widely circulated images and
stories of labor heroines (in the 1950s) and (in the 1960s and 1970s) “iron girls” (tie
guniang) who embodied the principles of women’s emancipation and gender
equality supplanted the iconic image of the “traditional Chinese woman” of the pre-
Liberation era.7 6
7 5 In rural areas during the early stage of co-operativization between 1950-1957, women’s
nondomestic productive participation rate reportedly increased 6-fold to 60% of working-age women
(Croll 1982: 225). During the push to form communes during the Great Leap Forward (1958-60),
rural women’s participation in nondomestic production reached an all-time high of 90% of rural
woman (Ibid).
7 6 On 1950s labor heroines, see Hershatter (2000). The iron girls were later ridiculed as abnormal role
models for women by the post-CR press (Honig 2000). In fact, most women’s work experiences
during the Cultural Revolution were far from the ideal of the iron women of propaganda (Honig
2000). Both Hershatter and Honig, same volume (2000), explore how individual women re-produced
female subordination in their personal lives even as they pioneered new paths for women in public, in
agricultural labor and political participation, as part of the political impetus to overcome class
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94
With the advent of socialism, “going out” to work in the fields or factory lost its
former stigma. The “old society” considered such women shameful because they had
transgressed neo-Confucian ideals of gender that assigned genteel women to the
domestic sphere (the “inner quarters”).7 7 In the late imperial worldview, women’s
domestic activities were also moral acts, whereby work performed in the inner
quarters was equated with feminine virtue and elite status, while activities that took
boundaries in the 1950s and 1960s. Likewise, in their scrutiny of visual images of iron girls and labor
heroines featured in Cultural Revolution posters, Evans (1999) concludes that “gender equality” was
not complete even in these visual forms of Party propaganda.
7 7 A pillar of Confucian doctrine that comprised the late imperial gender system was the demarcation
of gender through differential social spaces of inside (nei) / outside (wai), whereby the former is
coded feminine and associated with women, and the latter masculine associated with men. Literally, at
least in elite households, women and men were accorded separate living quarters, with women
secluded in the “inner chambers,” spatially located in the interior behind walls (Bray 1997: 130). The
binary also established separate spheres of social interaction for the sexes, relegating women to
“inner” domestic realm comprised of family, household, relatives, and so on extending outward, and
according men with status as mediators of the “outside” world of public life. The separate spheres
were envisioned in this classical philosophy as complementary and maintaining them essential to
public morality and social order, and even cosmological harmony (Bray 1997: 130; Ko 1994, 13). On
the one hand, women wielded considerable authority, particularly in those households having the
social and material conditions to uphold Confucian ethics, within their prescribed sphere of influence
(Bray 1997: 130.) However, women were also negatively portrayed as dangerous to the moral order
thereby necessitating their control by seclusion (Ibid.). Separate spheres also established distinct but
complementary forms of productive activity for men and women, encapsulated in the phrase “men till,
women weave” (nangeng niizhi). From the Song era forward, “the idea was that upper-class men
studied and went into government, lower-class men were farmers, craftsmen, or merchants. Women
were responsible for preparing food, looking after children and the elderly, and producing textiles and
making clothes” (Bray 1997: 131-132). The inner quarters were the locus of productive activity that
was valued as integral to the household economy and, moreover, essential to the maintenance of a
well-ordered polity (Bray 1997: 181). Confucian doctrine explicitly connected “womanly work,”
epitomized by weaving of cloth used to make clothing for the family, to a harmonious society, for
through it women learned filial piety and female virtues of thrift, frugality, and diligence (Bray 1997:
243). As a corollary, textile production was seen as a means of enculturation and of civilizing non-
Han peoples or commoners to elite norms (Bray 1997: 243-245). By contrast, being idle was
perceived as a moral threat (Bray 1997: 244).
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women outside this realm were comparatively less virtuous or “womanly” and
7 R
indicated lower social status.
By contrast, the new society provided women who went out to work a new
subjectivity and a new identity as “liberated women” which they could proudly
embrace. For example, working-class women who had entered the workforce prior to
Liberation interviewed by Lisa Rofel (1999) offered convincing evidence that they
did experience Liberation as a positive reaffirmation of their sense of self. One
interviewee, who had labored in the silk factory since her youth and whose mother
had served as a maid in her widowhood, recalled how the tradition of binding young
girl’s feet (xiaojiao) conspired to keep women oppressed: “Women weren’t
supposed to go out; this way they couldn’t rebel. Now women are liberated, they can
do what they want. Women can go out to work” (Rofel 1999: 69).
However, historian Gail Hershatter (2000) cautions that scholars cannot really know
for certain whether, prior to 1949, rural women were actually stigmatized in their
own communities for going out to work in the fields or going out to market, as so
many commonly did, even as their behavior clearly violated elite norms of feminine
propriety. What was certain was that rural women associated certain risks with this
7 8 In this sense, the separate sphere doctrine inflected class as well as gender divisions and maintained
a Confucian social order that was grounded in hierarchy as well as complementarity.
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behavior, ranging from rape to vicious gossip about loose morals. Hershatter (2000:
83) therefore concludes that “what the revolution did for these [rural] women was
not so much to remove the stigma of ‘outside’ labor as to change the context and the
rewards associated with it.” More specifically, “the revolution succeeded in
capturing the loyalty and hard work of its [rural] labor heroines because it provided
them with the basic conditions of existence, as well as possibilities for recognition
and glory” (Ibid: 93). From Hershatter’s argument it follows that Liberation should
have made the lives of rural women at work in fields and marketplaces more
tolerable and even socially, as well as economically, rewarding.
Articulating Liberated Women’s Subjectivity
A great effort in consciousness-raising had to be made in order for peasants to
implement and accept these new forms of social organization and accompanying
ideas. In the early years post-Liberation, communist work teams canvassed villages
to instill a revolutionary consciousness in the “masses” and carry out campaigns for
land reform. The central task of communist cadres was to replace the existing, non-
antagonistic idioms of kinship and lineage through which villagers related to one
another with Marxist tenets of “class” and “class struggle,” terms alien to a largely
agrarian and pre-capitalist countryside (Anagnost 1997: 30). Indeed, determining the
appropriate class labels (jieji chengfen; e.g., landlords, rich peasants, middle
peasants, and poor peasants) to assign each individual, while roughly corresponding
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97
to their household’s relation to the means of production (i.e., land and tools), was a
complex undertaking fraught with compromise and contradictions (e.g., Feuerwerker
1998: 33; Hinton 1966; Myrdal 1965). Moreover, instilling a class consciousness
was not simply a matter of making social and material reality manifest; rather, it was
a means of hierarchically organizing the population by their political loyalties to the
70
cause of the revolution (Dirlik paraphrased in Anagnost 1997: 30).
The “speaking bitterness” (suku) performances of class oppression and liberation that
were orchestrated by the communist party work teams were central to this
politicization of the peasantry.8 0 Ann Anagnost (1997: 29-30) explains:
The narrative structure of ‘speaking bitterness’ provides a new frame for the
reworking of consciousness in which the speaker comes to recognize himself or
herself as a victim of an immoral system rather than bearer of bad fate or
personal shortcoming. [Peasants would] see their specific place in a historically
peculiar social formation’ in a way which was entirely new to them but which
still articulated with their sense of social reality.”
Through this participatory consciousness-raising technique, peasants came to
recognize themselves as exploited “masses” along with the workers, and real—and
7 9 Some interviews I conducted with elderly Beijing intellectuals to learn about the situation of
domestic servants prior to Liberation indicated the extent to which class terminology entered popular
psyche and personal narratives during the periods of land reform and class struggle. For example, by
way of explaining why his family employed a variety of servants to do housework and cooking for the
hired “long-term laborers” or farmhands ( < changgong), Mr. Wang noted that his family came from the
“landlord class” (dizhu). His wife likewise indicated that her family had a male live-in cook
(chuishiyuan) because they were a “capitalist class” (zichan jieji) household.
8 0 A few eyewitness accounts of speaking bitterness campaigns include those of Hinton (1966: 40-41),
who recorded the testimony of Wang Ch’ung-lai's wife, a peasant whose life story parallels that of the
fictional Xianglin’s Wife (e.g., both women’s children were mauled by wolves), and of Myrdal (1965:
234-36).
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often violent— confrontations with their oppressors ensued. Moreover, in the
revolutionary act of “standing up” (qilai) or “turning over” (fansheri), as the process
was described, peasants embodied the plight of the nation, and thus connected their
own village-level class struggle to the larger project of national salvation. In this
manner, Anagnost concludes, the revolutionary process effectively constructed both
the exploited classes (the masses) and a unified society acting in the national interest,
which the party represented.
In revolutionary rhetoric instilled through speaking bitterness narratives, the New
Culturalist/May Fourth trope of the oppressed “traditional woman” was essential to
the construction of a linear narrative that produced the new, emancipated “woman”
ifunii) under socialism. Thus, speaking bitterness performances often featured the
motif of the suffering peasant woman.8 1 Consider this interview conducted in the
mid-1990s by Chinese Academy of Social Science scholars (Tang and Feng 1996:
49-50) with a 79-year old retired “menial mother” (lao mazi) from Wuwei county,
Anhui province, named Yang Ma (ma, the character for mother, was a common
appellate of this older generation of domestic workers). Yang Ma had dedicated her
8 1 Anne McLaren (2000) explains: “In ‘speaking bitterness,’ communist cadres coached peasant
populations in the Marxist formulae of accusation and complaint in order to throw off class and
patriarchal oppression.” McLaren offers convincing evidence that speaking bitterness probably
became such a widely accepted and effective vehicle for inciting rural revolution because of a long
tradition in oral culture of peasant women’s bridal laments.
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99
life to caring for the children of urban gentry before retiring to her (husband’s)
village. The scholars present Yang Ma’s life story as follows.
Yang Ma became a child bride at age 15, and one after the other bore two sons
and two daughters. In 1945, her village awash in the floods, her husband urged
her to abandon her newborn daughter and go out to work as a wet nurse. She
made her way to Shanghai by begging for food, where she was recruited to
become a wet-nurse. However, each time she held her employer's child, she burst
into tears as she was reminded of her youngest daughter’s hungry mouth. In her
grief, her breast milk dried up, and she was forced to find new employment.
Yang Ma continued to care for children and do housework, but never again did
she nurse a baby. Shortly afterwards, her youngest daughter at home died. This
made Yang Ma weep for many years, and blame her husband her whole life.
From then on, she maintained employment in a high-level intellectual's
household, and followed that family from Shanghai to Beijing, raising first her
employer's five children and then their offspring as well. Only in 1989, at 74
years old, did she leave her employer's village to live out her old age in her
village.
Yang Ma’s oratory movingly conveys the emotional power vested in the image of
the suffering “traditional woman,” here as a mother mourning for her children as
well as a woman forced to lower herself by compromising her virtue (according to
Confucian doctrine, discussed above).
Yang Ma’s story is typical of peasant women’s speaking bitterness testimonies in
that she blames her suffering on her husband.8 2 When given the opportunity to
8 2 From research on Republican China’s divorce court documents, Kathryn Bernhardt (1994: 206)
learned that many wives “expressed great resentment that their husbands’ failure to support the family
had forced them to seek outside employment as servants, waitresses, or factory workers.” Clearly, a
mark of a woman’s class was having a dependable male provider as the head of the household. These
women could petition for divorce on the grounds of husband’s failure to provide for them under the
Republican Code of 1929-1931.
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publicly lament, peasant women commonly pointed an accusatory finger at their
husbands, “their immediate oppressors,” according to Kay Ann Johnson (1983: 80).
However, as the CCP revolutionary work teams aimed to instill class consciousness
rather than a feminist consciousness, Communist work teams in charge of the
campaign would attempt to redirect peasant women’s anger away from their ‘“ errant
comrade husbands” and target the couples’ joint oppressors, the landlords (Ibid).
Yet, Yang Ma’s testimony is also curious. Although her working years bridged the
1949 watershed, she appears not to have experienced “Liberation,” as her
recollection decades after the revolution still provokes intense feelings of anger and
shame. Based on her ethnographic research, Rofel (1999: 67) also concluded that
Liberation was not enough to completely nullify working-class women’s memories
of feeling ashamed about their poverty, migration, and work—their transgression of
patriarchal gender norms. Historically constituted memories and inherited traditions,
including Confucian prescriptions about gender and morality, continued to resonate
with women who “went out to work” after 1949. In the next two sections I explore
the multiplicity of gender identities and roles that Liberation and state socialism
made possible.
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Shame and Glory: Migrant Women 1949-1979
As the above testimony suggests, maids, nannies, and even wet-nurses were
available for hire after 1949, but they grew increasingly rare. Migration was severely
curtailed with the imposition (in 1956) of the household registration system, and this
in turn limited supply of domestic workers as Tang and Feng (1996: 50) explain:
“Although from 1949 to the eve of reform, despite the strongly fortified divide
between city and countryside, a few rural hukou holders were able to enter the city to
work as maids; in fact the city could no longer provide the shelter [that it had in the
past to so many Wuwei women].” Without local hukou, as I explained in the
introduction, it was extremely difficult for rural migrants to procure basic necessities
of food and housing. Moreover, it was a violation of regulations to reside away from
one’s place of registration. Given such restrictive conditions, households who could
afford to employ menial women from the countryside were mainly just those of high-
ranking revolutionary and government cadres (ganbu), party members, and
intellectuals, who enjoyed privileges that ordinary households did not.
In government-connected households, the situation of rural domestic workers was
distinctive, as I learned from a Beijing man who was retired from the Chinese
Foreign Service. When he and his wife were raising their three daughters in Beijing
in the 1950s and 1960s, they engaged live-in nannies to help them with childcare. He
explained to me that the state provided subsidies to cadre households in variable
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102
amounts and forms depending on the cadres’ rank in the government agency,
expressly for securing domestic help, usually middle-aged rural women. His
household received extra ration coupons for rice and other staples to feed the extra
person, as well as a stipend for their domestic workers' salary. The Foreign Service
work unit also arranged for the transfer of their domestic workers’ household
registration from their villages to Beijing, where it was entered into his family’s
household’s register. These domestic workers, as well as private chefs, security
guards, and personal physicians who attended to the members of cadre households,
could be considered state employees. However, many more rural women who
became nannies in the 1960s and 1970s did not secure urban hukou (Yan 2003a:
582; interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Wang).8 3
8 3 The recruitment of household help in the New China was partially informal—by word of mouth-
but also somewhat institutionalized. According to a newspaper account (“Zhuji de shouzhang...),
Zhejiang Province’s Mochengwu village was known as the home of ‘Zhejiang Aunties,’ middle-aged
women who were recruited to work in the households of several top officials between the 1950s and
into the 1980s. The village’s history as a “maid village” began with just one villager, Wu Yinfeng,
who went to Beijing to be the nanny for the household of the Minister of the Railroad Transportation,
Xu Guansheng in the 1950s. ‘Old Wu’ then took it upon herself to introduce as many as 20 other
village ‘sisters’ to similar jobs for the families of such leaders as former vice premier Wang Zhen and
former president Hu Yaobang. Wuwei county in Anhui province was even better known for its
history of sending out women to work as menial mothers in urban households. This area of Anhui
province came under communist party control during Japanese occupation, as the military
headquarters of the 7th division of the New Fourth Route Army (Gong 1998: 57; Tang and Feng,
1996: 50). The many generals and cadres who were from Anhui, or who were stationed or fought in
Anhui, naturally recruited from among local women when their households required wet-nurses and
nannies. Gong Weibin (1998, 58) explains how a recruitment procedure developed in the 1960s and
1970s: “The central government often went through the provincial revolutionary standing committee
to directly recruit domestic workers from the county. The county revolutionary standing committee
and the public security bureau would then examine and select from the candidates selected by the
communes and brigades.” These villages have stayed on the map into the Reform era as sending areas
for domestic workers.
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Under New China’s Constitution, ratified in 1949, exploitative, capitalist labor
relations were prohibited. However, domestic service was not at first systematically
incorporated into the planned economy, and so the conventional view of household
help as a private, family matter remained intact (Yan 2003a: 582). Only with the
advent of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) was domestic service attacked as
ideologically suspect (i.e., bourgeois) and exploitative (i.e., constituting a capitalist
labor relationship). The political turmoil during the Cultural Revolution interrupted
the careers of the few remaining domestic workers in the cities, as the households of
intellectuals and party leaders were fragmented or even destroyed, and private
domestic service was attacked as an exploitative and bourgeois practice. Household
heads who were “sent down to the countryside” (xiaxiang) for a decade to learn by
laboring among the peasants had little choice but to send their live-in domestic
workers back to the countryside. The retired Foreign Service officer told me with
regret how he sent his household’s nanny, Old Liu, back to her Hebei village,
although he was certain she would not be welcomed back by her unfilial son and
daughter-in-law who had abandoned her years before. When he and his wife returned
to Beijing after ten years of hard labor in the countryside, they tried to find Old Liu,
and learned that she had passed away.8 4 The fact that they sought to find her attests
8 4 Similar tales of separation and loss are recorded in the many memoirs of the Cultural Revolution,
usually authored by intellectuals and party officials. For example, Rae Yang (1997: 128-9) recalls a
suicide of a neighboring family’s nanny “because she lost her job and had no children to support
her,” and describes proudly how her own father promised to continue to provide support for her
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104
to endurance of Confucian ethics and traditi onal bonds of loyalty between employers
and domestic servants.
The chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Chen and Sun (1984:103-104) suggest,
tarnished the very institution of domestic service:
Still fresh in people’s memory is the decade of turmoil when a few
housekeepers, instigated by the ‘revolutionary rebels,’ exposed the ‘secrets’ of
the employer families and exercised dictatorship over them. These
housekeepers, strong and energetic, clearly in the prime of their lives at that time,
extorted a large sum of money as ‘severance pay’ before they left the employer
families. With severance pay as high as 500 to 600 yuan, the employers, singled
out as ‘monsters and demons,’ had to borrow money everywhere to meet this
alarming demand. One college lecturer was subjected to criticism outside his
home, while his son, still a child, was subjected to dictatorship at home.
Tyrannized by the housekeeper, the child lost his sanity.
In the context of the “decade of chaos,” the retired Foreign Service officer assured
me, only the party leaders continued to have household help.
In late imperial China, rural women in urban domestic service were stigmatized and
shamed for their transgression of the Confucian ideal of separate spheres. In her
analysis of the shameful feelings of rural women who had migrated out of China’s
villages and found work in urban domestic service during in the 1970s, Hairong Yan
beloved nursemaid, “Aunty,” who had neither kin nor funds to survive alone when the chaotic politics
and policies of the Cultural Revolution dispersed members of her household. According to her
memoirs, the banks in Beijing at that time froze the accounts of all state-supported domestic workers.
On the other hand, Yue Daiyun (1985: 172-3) relays that domestic workers were incited by the
revolutionary committees in the cities to organize against their employers and demand compensation
for years of exploitation.
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(2003a: 582) points not only to their violation of the norms of rural patriarchy, but
also to their failure to become the Liberated subjects of state socialism:
In both the city and the countryside, these rural migrant women were
transgressors: In the countryside they had transgressed the sphere of local
patriarchy and thus raised anxiety about their gendered personhood; in the city
they were transgressors of the proper subject position of rural woman as defined
by ideologically espoused heroic agricultural labor, and they reinvoked the
specter of the past through domestic service. This notion of transgression and
contamination thus constitutes a vague source of shame for these women—vague
because it is caught uneasily between the state ideology of women’s liberation
and the continued presence of patriarchal power that defines what a proper
woman is through the spatial circumscription of her labor.
Whereas for many women who embraced the class label of “worker” gender identity
may have been less relevant after 1949 than before (Rofel 1999: 80), this clearly was
not the case for the migrant domestic “worker” of the post-1949 period.
The devaluation of domesticity and domestic labor in Marxist socialism, as
explained by Tamara Jacka (1997), also illuminates why the domestic service
“worker” in the Mao era might have been a vainglorious identity. Whereas the public
sphere (wai) and the domestic sphere (net) were considered complementary by
customary Confucian ethics, the new Marxist-Maoist emphasis on labor performed
outside the household established a clear division and hierarchy between the
domestic and the public spheres, and accorded each with new gender significance.
Thus after Liberation, the domestic sphere was perceived as inferior, nonproductive
and feminized by contrast to the public sphere of production. In sum, although
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106
performing waged labor, a domestic “worker” was not acknowledged as such, due in
part to the location and content of her “work,” and its continued association with
O f
women’s domestic role.
Again, however, it would be presumptuous to assume that the experience of all
women who entered domestic service after 1949 was similarly shameful. For
example, one former domestic worker is quoted as saying: “I only went out [into
service work] because I knew I could rely on the government” (Tang and Feng 1996:
50). This woman, who probably worked in a cadre household, equated domestic
service with a small income and a guaranteed “mouthful of rice” (yifen kouliang) for
herself and her children. Another Wuwei woman explained her entry into domestic
work using the dictum used by Mao to describe the mutual relationship between the
Party and the people: “The fish help the water; the water helps the fish,” as if to
suggest her patriotic spirit (Tang and Feng 1996: 50). Speaking bitterness and
uttering political slogans are narrative devices made conventional by revolutionary
tactics and teachings, but which evoked different, even contradictory, emotions and
identities retrospectively associated with domestic service.
8 5 Jacka (1997: 35) also links the low status and stigma of contemporary domestic service to its
location in the degraded domestic space.
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This anecdotal evidence suggests the range of beliefs and ideologies that likely
impacted on how rural (migrant) women of the new era conceptualized their own
identities. Rural migrant domestic workers as presented here evaluated their
experiences and self-images positively or negatively in reference to Confiician
patriarchal norms, nationalism, and new ideas of domesticity, and in terms of their
identities as virtuous wives and good mothers as well as good socialists. The above
discussion also reveals that gender and rural-urban difference did not disappear after
1949. To the contrary, as the next sections reveal, socialism entailed the continual
production of gender and rural-urban difference for the political and economic
expediency of the modernizing nation-state.
“Divided Gender. Divided Women” Under Socialism
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, western feminist scholars began to look critically
at the Chinese socialist revolutionary claims of gender equality, and generally
concluded that the revolution for women’s emancipation was “unfinished” or
“postponed.”8 6 The researchers pointed to the state’s narrow focus on women’s
economic roles, or gender issues in the public but not the private sphere, and the
incomplete overhaul of the patrilineal, patrilocal kinship system as chief obstacles to
8 6 The history of women under Mao can be read in the following sources: Davin 1976; Croll 1978;
Stacey 1983; Johnson 1983; Andors 1983; Wolf 1985, among others. The works by Croll, Stacey, and
Johnson are based mainly on readings of the official Women’s Federation publication and Emigre
interviews in Hong Kong. W olfs work is based on officially sanctioned interviews in China in the
early 1980s.
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addressing ongoing gender inequities. The return to a market economy in the reform
era posed yet more challenges to Chinese women, as well as unprecedented
opportunities. In this and the following section I focus on how an ideology of gender
difference and separate spheres contributed to the feminization of certain categories
of (service) work, and how, in a context of a rural-urban dichotomy upheld by the
hukou system, rural and urban women were differently treated by the state.
Relative to men, women consistently comprised a smaller proportion of the non-
agricultural workforce and a smaller proportion of the workforce in the state-owned
sector.8 7 Before massive restructuring of the state sector was undertaken in the late
1990s, it provided the most generous employment benefits of any sector, including
subsidized housing and medical care, guaranteed salary and pension, and other social
welfare needs. Thus this gender division in employment disadvantaged women
relative to men. Of women employed in the non-agricultural sector, however, the
no
majority was concentrated in state-owned enterprises throughout the 1980s. Rates
8 7 Women’s share of the workforce peaked at 20% in 1960, during the Great Leap Forward, and, by
the end of the Cultural Revolution, had reached 33%, and continued to rise during the early reform
period, declining after 1996 (Jiang 2004: 207-209). Women constituted about 33% of the labor force
in state-owned enterprises.
8 8 About 65% of women in the labor force were employed in state-owned enterprises in the 1980s,
compared with just 30% in private and collective sectors (Jacka 1988: 15).
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109
of non-agricultural employment for urban women, moreover, have been consistently
higher than those for rural women.8 9
Even as their rates of participation in the workforce steadily increased, women had
the primary responsibility for domestic labor.9 0 This enabled and reinforced the
treatment of women as a reserve or flexible labor force compared with men, to be
mobilized and retrenched according to economic and political expedience, and
contributed to their limited career opportunities and unequal pay for equal work,
relative to men. A gender division of labor in the workforce that resulted in lower
levels of earnings and limited career choices compared with men further reinforced
women worker’s flexibility.
In both rural agriculture and industry, gender differences in job assignments tended
to disadvantage women economically.9 1 For example, agricultural tasks assigned to
8 9 For example, during the Great Leap Forward, the number of female employees in publicly owned
enterprises increased to 7 million, a 113% increase from the previous year, as women replaced male
workers who were diverted to large-scale capital construction projects. About 2.5 million rural women
were recruited into the workforce at this time, though urban women still comprised the bulk (55%) of
this new female workforce (Huang X. 1992: 94). Since the reforms, rural women’s share of the non-
agricultural workforce has increased steadily (Jin 2004).
9 0 Women’s primary domestic role was seen as an extension of their reproduction function, and also
suggested some continuity with Confucian ideas of separate spheres of social activity, despite the
Communist’s attack on such values. Although the Women’s Federation frequently campaigned to
mitigate women’s “double burden,” such as by imploring men to do a fair share of housework, the
basic assumption of domestic labor as primarily women’s concern was not directly challenged.
9 1 An exception was the Cultural Revolution—the highpoint of Maoist egalitarianism. Despite
gendered job assignments, income differentials between male and female urban (state) workers were
low (Wang Z. 2000: 63-64).
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men were often classified as “heavy” and “skilled,” and thus were more highly
remunerated than jobs labeled “light” and “unskilled,” which were assigned to
Q'y
women. Moreover, although cultural beliefs (“feudal superstition”) about purity
and pollution of women, or taboos on gender mixing, as well as beliefs rooted in
essentialist, biological-based claims of women’s innate physical or mental inferiority
to men may have underlain the coding of certain tasks as suitably feminine, these
categories were in fact rather flexible (on taboos see Wolf 1985: 81-82; Croll 1982:
228). Arguably, job categorizations depended on the range of opportunities
available to men; as women came to take up those jobs formerly undertaken by men,
the jobs were reclassified as “light” (Jacka 1997).9 4 Moreover, while these binaries
were ubiquitous, there was great diversity in classification of agricultural tasks
across geographic regions (e.g., Wolf 1985: 84-85; Bossen 2002; Jacka 1997).
Furthermore, under the collective’s work-point scheme, rural women appear to have
been unfairly compensated, reflecting a general assumption that men should be the
primary income earners (Wolf 1985: 88).9 5 Among urban workers, women were
9 2 However, these jobs did not necessarily exclude strenuous manual labor, such as portering well
water (e.g., Davin 1976: 264-267; Croll 1982: 228-229; Wolf 1985: 81-82).
9 3 Interestingly, Davin (1976: 268) reports that although women did work the same teams as men, they
were more often organized into women’s teams, in large part due to the taboo on gender mixing.
9 4 Thus, during the Great Leap Forward, as men moved into more remunerative jobs in construction
and ironworks, women performed formerly “heavy” jobs (Croll 1982:228-229; and see Honig 1986
for historical parallel in industry.)
9 5 The actual process by which women were disadvantaged in the collective’s work point scheme was
complex, but could include a lower daily remuneration ceiling for women than for men, as well as
consistent assignment of lower-paid “light” tasks. Reported work participation figures paint a picture
of women as seasonal or part-time agricultural production workers, averaging fewer working days per
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I l l
relegated largely to jobs in light industry or retail, which paid less than heavy
industry and technical jobs, where they performed jobs traditionally considered
feminine, such as silk spinning or textile weaving. The entry of women into rural
industry reflects a similar pattern of gender segregation between light and heavy
industry (Jin 1998).
Marriage and reproductive duties conspired to reinforce the perception of women’s
secondary position relative to men in the workforce. Women employed in the state
sector by regulation received special exemptions (e.g., from strenuous physical
labor) and privileges (e.g., monthly menstrual rest days), and were given an earlier
retirement age than men. Working mothers in particular were guaranteed maternity
leave, breastfeeding breaks, and daycare facilities (Wolf 1985: 58). In practice,
violations of women’s labor-protections laws and regulations were not uncommon
(Croll 1995: 122, citing a 1989 survey result). Yet the very existence of such
protections encouraged a view of women as less steady workers than men, justifying
gender inequality in training and promotions. In addition, the costs to the state of
providing women workers’ benefits was a disincentive for employing them, and was
cited as a root cause of discrimination against women in hiring practices in the early
year compared to men (Croll 1982:225-226; Wolf, citing Tbomberg, 1985: 80). The campaign to
criticize Lin Biao and Confucius from 1973-1974 was a short-lived attempt to address this issue. See
discussion in Johnson (1983: 194-207) and Jacka (1997: 38-39). Bossen (2002: 111-112), however,
cites the assignment of “light” coded tasks rather than number of days worked as root of gender
inequality in workpoint assignment.
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period of reform, when industrial competition heated up.9 6 The disproportionate lay
offs from the state sector of women workers relative to men since the imposition of
structural reforms can likewise be attributed to gender discrimination in the
workplace structure (Wang Z. 2000: 66).
In rural areas, continuance of patrilocal and patrilineal kinship protocols meant that
upon marriage, women often departed one work team and entered another, causing
the former work team or brigade to lose labor power. This reinforced the perception
of women as temporary workers, and negatively impacted their overall opportunities
for training and promotion. Similarly, Laurel Bossen (2002: 95-96) reports from the
locality she studied in Yunnan that, during the re-allocation of collective land to
households in the early 1980s, as male village heads and team leaders became aware
of women as holders of land, they devised regulations to guide land transfers through
marriage. The new regulations exhibited a patrilineal bias: married-in daughters
would be allocated collective land but married-in sons in most cases would not.
9 6 In the reform period, media reported extensively on gender discrimination in the urban job market
(Honig and Hershatter 1988: 250-255; see also Bian et al. 2000). In 1988 and 1992, the Women’s
Federation’s lobbying efforts generated successive legal provisions guaranteeing and protecting
employment benefits for women, including maternity leave, early retirement, and limitations on
physical exertion (Woo 1994). However, while the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and
Interests, as well as the more general Labor Law of 1994 should apply to all workers and all women
without exception, in actual practice there are very real barriers to enforcing the laws, especially
among informal sector where migrant workers congregate (China Rights Forum 1999).
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Socialism conveyed to women contradictory messages about their identities and
roles in production. Such messages were also a means of regulating women’s labor.
For example, during the push to form large-scale communes and the intensification
of capital construction in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution periods,
propaganda urged women to put their national, public, duty in advance of domestic
concerns (Croll 1974: 44-50; Johnson 1983: 180-186; Jacka 1997: 31; Hershatter
2000: 100). So-called iron girls were extolled for postponing marriage into their mid-
20s and seeking mates within their work brigade; such model behavior benefited the
collective economy by maintaining a more stable supply of labor power and keeping
land within brigades (Lai 1995: 300). In contrast, during the economic slowdowns of
1953-1957, 1961-1965, and in the early 1980s, propaganda focused on women's
primary domestic roles as wives and mothers, and emphasized the benefits to women
of “returning home”—taking early retirement or working only part-time (Croll 1974:
0 7
44-50; Jacka 1990; Beaver et al. 1995). Unsurprisingly, rural women workers were
usually the first to face such lay-offs.9 8
9 7 Jacka (1990) attributes the “return home” campaign of the 1980s to several factors, including the
dearth of unemployed youth in big cities as Cultural-Revolution era urban “sent down” youth returned
from the countryside, the decreasing productivity of state-owned enterprises, and gender
discrimination against women. Furthermore, she advises that this period saw a shift in women’s labor
force participation from the state-owned sector to the private sector, rather than an overall decrease.
From 1981 to 1986, the percentage of the female labor force employed in state-owned enterprises fell
from 67% to 65%, and in the private and collective sectors it rose from 33% to 35% (Jacka 1990, 15).
9 8 For example, between 1961-63, nearly 2 million, or 70%, of rural women who had entered urban
industry at the start of the Great Leap Forward were sent back to the villages (Huang X. 1992: 96).
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Consider this article from a 1963 issue of Women o f China (Zhongguo funu), a
Women’s Federation publication directed at women cadres, which advises its readers
to “Treat the Relationship between Work, Children and Household Chores in a
Revolutionary Spirit” (reprinted in Croll 1974: 44).
A certain chief of women's federation wrote:
Before her marriage she worked actively, but as soon as she got married, since
both her husband and she herself had a good income and they had a loveable kid,
their little family lead a very wealthy, comfortable and pleasant life. She
indulged in this sweet little home, and although they had a home-help to look
after the child, she did not have confidence in her [i.e., the ‘home-help’] and
spoiled the kid in every possible way. She spent a lot of time in thinking about
her husband’s clothes; she normally was working in the office, physically, but
engaged at home mentally. As the situation developed, she began to be afraid of
hardships and was unwilling to go to the countryside, unwilling to do women’s
work [i.e., revolutionary work on behalf of the Women’s Federation]. Under the
circumstances, her comrades as well as her husband were not satisfied with her
and she herself felt very miserable. Soon after assistance was given by her
comrades, she began to change her ways. She realized then that what she was
thinking before was not in conformity with the revolutionary interests. Therefore,
she stood up again and plunged herself into work. It was the same person, and the
problems were the same, but owing to the raising of consciousness, coupled with
the correct thinking, the way of managing work as well as the child and
household chores became correct and the differences showed in her work.
Through the intervention of her comrades, who presumably undertook ideological
thought-work to “correct” her political orientation, the cadre in question changed her
attitude and was then able to balance the demands of her political work and her
family responsibilities. Implicit in this anecdote is the state’s exhortation of women
to sacrifice to the greater good of the nation and the cause of socialist construction,
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115
and seemingly transcend petty bourgeois domestic concerns." This passage also
showcases the assumption of women’s primary responsibility for domestic labor, and
thus tacit acceptance of essentialist notions of gender difference that assign women a
primary role in the family as an extension of biological reproductive function.
However, the cadre is ultimately to transcend gender identity in the domestic sphere
as she fulfills her true identity as a socialist comrade in the public sphere, which is
gender neutral, or more accurately, based on the male model of the political leader
(e.g., Meng Y. 1993).
Mingyan Lai (1995) characterizes the woman party cadre under socialism as a
discrete gender that marks her as different from most women, as her privileged
position in the public patriarchy allowed her to escape the domestic role altogether,
and hence become gender-neutral or more like a man. While the above passage
clearly demonstrates that women cadres too suffered a “double burden” (or perhaps a
triple burden of work, domestic labor, and political duties), the passage also alludes
to certain privileges afforded cadres, namely the hiring of “home help.” 1 0 0 Ironically,
the editors are uncritical of the class issue implicit in the hiring of “home help,” very
9 9 Beginning in the early 1960s, in magazines like Women o f China (the predecessor to China
Women’ s News), outspoken women leaders boldly called attention to women’s “double burden”; in
1964, party leaders trivialized such concerns as “petty bourgeoisie-ism” and censored Women of
China for treating the contradiction between production and reproduction as an exclusively woman’s
issue rather than a class issue to be addressed through revolutionary ideology. In the years leading up
to the Cultural Revolution, the magazine’s chief editor was first fired and later the Women’s
Federation was disbanded for several years, from 1963-1969 (Jacka 1997: 37; Johnson 1983: 180-81).
1 0 0 Hershatter (2000) suggests that hired home help was also available to socialist labor heroines.
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likely a woman from the countryside, who enables the well-positioned (urban hukou-
holding) cadre to maintain the fiction of “liberation” and gender equality and, aided
by thought-work, negotiate the contradictions posed by multiple and contradictory
(gender and political) identities.
Although, according to Marxist-Maoist political ideology, the forward march of
socialism and the eventual socialization of the domestic sphere promised to eliminate
contradictions that perpetuated gender inequality, efforts to socialize domestic chores
were largely unsuccessful.1 0 1 Privileged urban women (cadres, intellectuals etc.) had
available more resources than most women to draw upon to alleviate their “double
burden” and resolve the contradictions posed to their gender under socialist doctrine
of emancipation and participation in production. Moreover, as recipients of state
benefits distributed through the work units, urban women workers had more social
support than did rural women in self-sufficient agricultural collectives.1 0 2 Yet rural
1 0 1 Alleviating measures included provision of subsidies toward the costs of domestic labor,
particularly food preparation, childcare, and nursery schools, and the wholehearted socialization of
domestic labor during the height of collectivization. However, the most daring experiments in
socialized household services, particularly communal canteens, have been largely acknowledged as
failures, because families found the quality of such services poor and even outright resisted the
communal ideal which these services promoted. Moreover, it’s worth noting that communal services
almost exclusively recruited women to their staff, and thus publicly mirrored rather than challenged
the division of labor by gender in the household. (Detailed descriptions of commune services are
found in Sidel 1974 and Croll 1974: 62-66. See also Jacka 1997: 32-35.
1 0 2 Rural collectives, being self-sufficient, were at more of a disadvantage than state-subsidized urban
industries in providing assistance with domestic costs and labor that might have enabled more women
to better balance work inside and outside of the home. Daycare and nursery schools were not often a
low priority for brigade or work team leaders, themselves usually men. As a result, rural areas had
few nursery schools (Wolf 1985: 122 citing Thomberg). Rural work teams or brigades appear to have
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1 f tt
women’s double burden was the most onerous. Positioned at the bottom rungs of
the ladder of economic opportunity, rural women’s unwaged labor in the domestic
sphere subsidized the rural farmer whose labor in turn subsidized the urban worker.
Without a doubt, following Liberation, urban women more completely identified as
“workers” and participants in creating a public sphere than did their agricultural
sisters (Wolf 1985). Urban work units thoroughly penetrated their lives, providing
most of their social welfare needs (along with the residential organizations),
beginning from the moment they received a job assignment after completing
schooling. Even the domestic realm was not wholly private, as work units assigned
residences and as space limitations meant families often shared kitchens and latrines
with their neighbors and colleagues. Although, in practice, women workers were not
equal to men in production and continued to be primarily responsible for domestic
set up daycare services only during the harvest season(s), reinforcing the observation that rural
women were part-time or seasonal workers (Side! 1974: 84-85). The most extensive facilities for
daycare and nursery school in the rural areas were formed during the Great Leap Forward, and
disbanded shortly thereafter (Wolf 1985: 121-122). By comparison, according to official report in
1971, upwards of half of all urban infants aged 1-3 spent time in daycare, with only 10% of urban
mothers being full-time caregivers (Sidel 1974: 83). Accounts by visitors to China in the 1970s (Sidel
1974) and 1980s (Wolf 1985) corroborate that urban areas generally had more and better facilities for
daycare, nursery school and kindergarten than rural areas. Most of the urban employers visited by
Wolf (1985: 58), including clinic, school, shop, and neighborhood and state factories had canteen
facilities, and the larger factories also had nurseries. Urban residents were also served by
neighborhood community centers, run by local Women’s Federation branches and/or residents’
committees and staffed by older women retirees, offering subsidized childcare, eldercare, food
services, laundries, barber shops, and so on (Croll 1974: 73-78; Sidel 1974: chapters 4&6). While
larger urban work units provided canteens for workers into the 1990s, dining services even at the
height of collectivization in the Great Leap Forward never fully penetrated rural areas.
1 0 3 Urban women who were sent-down to labor among the peasants during the Cultural Revolution
often complained of the challenging workloads (Honig 2000).
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118
tasks, they were more closely identified with the revolutionary vanguard than were
their rural sisters.
The socialist state emphasized and extolled different aspect women’s identities in the
interest of regulating women’s labor, depending on their position in the public
patriarchy—that is, whether they worked in rural agriculture or urban industry (Lai
1995). If, as Lai (1995: 303) argues, “it is relations to the public patriarchy that
produce and signify genders in the Chinese state discourse of socialist construction,”
then “not only are the genders available to females in the urban and rural settings
different, but there need not be one gender [identity] for all females in either the
urban or rural contexts].” In its regulation of land transfer, the state (through the
brigade) interpellated rural women into “gender identity within the official discourse
of socialism through the institution of socialist marriage,” in their roles and identities
as socialist daughters (Lai 1995: 300-302). In contrast, through the work unit, which
subsidized the costs of reproducing the urban workforce, the state was more
concerned with the regulation of urban women as working mothers.1 0 4
1 0 4 Lai in fact does not make as explicit a potential hierarchy of genders between identities and roles
available to urban versus rural women as I have done here but merely emphasizes the different
positions that state discourse assigns women as daughters dutiful to the state and mothers sacrificing
for the nation.
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This foray in history and theory provides food for thought about gender and identity
in the post-Mao period. I can only conclude that socialism was a mixed bag for rural
women. It positively revalued formerly degraded roles and identities, but not
completely. It introduced new opportunities for women to exercise agency and to
accrue status for themselves and their households, but did not fundamentally alter
gender inequality and even exacerbated a rural-urban hierarchy. Given this history, it
is no wonder that Women’s Federation representatives (e.g., Peng Peiyun, quoted
above) and feminist scholars (e.g., Tang Can and Feng Xiaoshuang, quoted above)
alike would view the reforms and market economy as a chance for rural women to
“catch up” to the level of development and modernization enjoyed by their urban
sisters. However, as I have cautioned, narratives of modernity have historically
presented gender and rural-urban differences as temporal and essential rather than as
shaped by ideology and political economic structures. To counter such
misrepresentations I have presented the political, economic, and social context that
produced certain formations of gender and rural-urban difference during the socialist
period. I continue to do so in the following section, turning to the reform era.
The State and Women Under Conditions of Late Socialism
middle-class housewife-consumers
Mao allegedly quipped that washing machines would never liberate women; only by
transcending such petit bourgeois domestic concerns would women be emancipated.
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The re-establishment of markets and the subsequent consumer revolution “turned
this dictum on its head” (Robinson 1985: 42). One of the first major purchases by
urban households in the 1980s was indeed the washing machine (Ibid.). The
Women’s Federation likewise integrated such technological devices into its ideology
of women’s liberation, proclaiming with hyperbole, “The socialization of household
labor without a doubt is Chinese women’s second liberation!” (Guo 1994). The
rhetoric effectively evokes continuity in the official position on "the woman
question” from the Maoist era into the reform period, in turn reaffirming and
legitimating the role of the state, via the Women’s Federation, as the central
champion of women’s issues.
The new emphasis on consumer spending reversed the policies of suppressed
consumption and controlled production of the Mao decades (Wang Danning 2000;
Lu, H. 2000; Wang, S. 1995: 153-56). In the 1960s, the party-state won over the
urban working classes to its policies of controlled spending relative to savings by
showcasing the household budget plans of model housewives and mothers, and by
linking the feminine virtue of “frugality” with patriotism (Wang Danning 2000).
Similarly, in the reform period, the state disciplined its citizens in correct
consumption habits by harnessing the domestic role of women, mainly urban middle
class women, as household managers (jiatingfunu). In the era of market socialism,
the household is a site for politically condoned consumption practices; by contrast,
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consumption practices taking place outside of the domestic sphere appear to threaten
the state’s hold on power (Davis 2000: 12).
In particular, women's domestic consumer activities were linked to the national
project of development and modernization. For example, a conference was convened
in 1984 to address “women and China’s contemporary social lifestyle,” at which the
following statement was issued:
The socialization (shehuihua), electrification (dianqihua), and mechanization
(jixiehua) of household work [are] key to modem social life, in accordance with
the development of modem production forces and in keeping with the demands
of social progress (Guo 1994).
The conference thereby motivated women to engage in consumer practices out of
patriotic duty and the desire to modernize their households. Likewise, the version of
the housewife so often featured in the pages of new women’s magazines of the 1980s
and 1990s was a fully modem consumer, surrounded by the latest gadgets and
interested in home decor (Hooper 1998: 179; Andrews and Shen 2002: 149-150).
Representations of women like that of the middle class housewife-consumer at once •
reflect the influence of a burgeoning market economy that is increasingly integrated
with global capitalism and in turn serve to induce commodity consumption by
appealing to consumer’s desires and fantasy (Hooper 1998: 188; Evans 2000: 236).
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Such advertisements rely on essential constructions of gender identity, conveying a
modest sexuality (Andrews and Shen 2002: 146).1 0 5
However, the quintessential middle-class dream of the “good life” (xiao kang zhi
jia),1 0 6 measured in (ownership of) material goods, required an endless supply of
cheap migrant labor to produce goods and provide services, and thus depended on
the rural-urban hierarchy maintained by the regulated urban labor market (Lu, H.
2000; Chen, N. 2001). The example of the domestic service labor market in urban
China in the 1980s exemplified the role played by the state in constructing gender
and rural-urban difference. Indeed, the guarantee of a cheap and flexible female rural
1 0 5 To a certain extent, the consumer culture that has generated such imagery evidences the
withdrawal of the state from management of citizens’ everyday lives, and hence the emergence of
individualism (Hooper 1998: 188). However, as Hooper (Ibid: 187) observes, advertising images
often portray Chinese woman as “an amalgam of modernity and tradition” that reinforces the state’s
position that modernization can occur without wholehearted westernization and thus symbolizes a
distinctly Chinese path to modernity. Similar to representations of women in nationalist discourses of
the May Fourth and republican eras, the post-Mao urban housewife-consumer also “integrates
modernity with the best features of being Chinese” and “retains allegedly Eastern cultural virtues”
(Hooper 1998: 187; e.g., Andrews and Shen 2002: 146). On the other hand, Evans (2000: 236)
believes that some representations of Chinese women, particularly those that construct a sexualized
“feminine beauty,” reflect the larger field of global consumerism in which the Chinese market is
located, and thus are in fact Western fantasies of the “Oriental woman.” Evans argues, “The Chinese
woman in these images is no longer mainly identified with local Chinese concepts of Chinese identity,
whether these invoke the past or Chinese patriarchy,” rather, she “symbolizes China’s economic
success on the international stage” (Evans 2000: 236). Regardless, Evans (Ibid.) argues that such
images emphasize women’s dependency on husbands or boyfriends for the commodities they desire,
reinforcing women’s kinship-derived, essential-biological, family roles, as (future) wives and
mothers. However, Andrews and Shen (2002) also find ample images of successful independent
businesswomen in 1990s lifestyle (women’s) magazines, suggesting that women can earn an
independent income and achieve alternate constructions of womanhood than the housewife-consumer
outlined here.
1 0 6 The term “xiao kang” appeared in classical (Confucian) texts to refer to a “society of ‘relative
comfort’ where people pursued private interests and gave priority to advancing family interests.” Such
a society of individuals “was considered morally inferior to the society of ‘great equality’ (datong)”
(Lu, H. 2000: 125).
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migrant labor force was critical to the state in order to reach its goals of economic
growth by encouraging demand spending (i.e., satiating consumer demands for
affordable goods and services) and of maintaining the urban labor force, which was
especially problematic in the context of state decentralization and withdrawal from
welfare provisioning.
working mothers ’ double burden
In early 1980 Beijing, urban residents still relied on their work units for subsidized
housing, healthcare, and retirement support, and turned to their residential
neighborhoods for low-cost childcare and education, as well as food, laundry, and
repair services. But demographic and economic pressures increasingly strained the
ability of the state to help provide such services, and so it urged municipalities like
Beijing to take local initiative to invest in urban renewal and planning in order to
meet demands for affordable, quality services to residents (Robinson 1985: 46).
First, as the growing economy incorporated greater numbers of urban women into
the paid workforce, demand for help with housework and childcare rose. New
“scientific” surveys of time allocation in housework corroborated that women
performed the bulk of household labor in terms of number of tasks and time spent.
One report on such survey findings bemoaned: “If we were to compare these results
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with those from a developed nation, the time allocation of household labor of
Chinese women would far surpass theirs” (‘Wn zhi gongjiawu...”).
Early childhood education was a major concern of the state in its endeavor to
construct a socialist spiritual civilization and educate (future) citizens and another
arena that targeted women in their domestic roles (as mother). After 1981, the state
and municipal governments increased funding toward establishing nursery schools
and kindergartens and providing teacher training (Robinson 1985: 47-49). However,
numerous articles in the Beijing press in the early-to-mid 1980s attested to an acute
shortage of daycare and preschool facilities, and recorded complaints that existing
facilities operated and staffed by the local Women’s Federations or resident
committees were notoriously under funded and poorly staffed (Robinson 1985: 46-
50).1 0 7
Rising incomes meant households had more money to spend, and those households
with children or grandchildren tended to allocate a large percentage of discretionary
income on children. Traditionally, children, namely sons, were elderly parents' sole
means of support, so children were seen as insurance in old age (Davis 1991; Ikels
1 0 7 Examples of such coverage from pages of Beijing Evening News (Beijing Wanbao) include:
“Loving Children Like a Mother” (April 1,1983); “Several Nurseries’ Caregivers Receive City’s
Recognition” (April 8, 1983); “Provide Pre-School Education to Toddlers Being Looked After by
Their Grandmothers,” (May 6, 1983); “Raise the Quality of Home Toddler Daycare” (July 7, 1983);
“City Has 8000-plus Childcare Facilities” (October 9, 1983).
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1993). Even after 1949, urban workers continued to depend on their children for
post-retirement care, to supplement pensions and government welfare. The “inter-
generational contract” of mutual care of parents for children and children for parents
was in fact written into China’s Constitution (Croll 1999:694). Children became all
the more precious objects at the center of family life—earning the moniker “little
emperors”—following the implementation of a family planning policy in 1978 that
limited most urban families to just one child per couple (Milwertz 2000a). The
policy’s challenge to the traditional agreement between the generations may have
made it all the more imperative to raise an only child as a “superior child,” as the
child best able to meet with success in society would likely be the most reliable
caregiver later (Milwertz 2000a). Superior children, moreover, required great
financial investment.
A major welfare problem faced by the state in the reform period was the care of the
elderly. China's population was aging at a rapid rate, yet older people were living
better and longer, in large part as a result of political stability and economic
development (Ikels 1990). Longer life expectancy strained the ability of children to
provide extended care for aging parents while the burden of supporting retirees and
pensioners strained already un-profitable state enterprises. In addition, as the
proportion of the population under age 15 declined and the working-age population
grew increasingly mobile, many elderly went without care. State-run nursing
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institutions were few and of poor quality, and generally served only the very
destitute or abandoned. (With the exception of those reserved for retired cadres
exclusively.) Private nursing homes and hospices were too few and prohibitively
expensive.
In response to these crises in social services, which fell disproportionately on urban
women, the Women’s Federation recognized that the goal of socializing household
labor could be achieved by applying principles of the market economy, including by
developing a domestic service industry. The organization’s historical involvement in
urban community services, and the continuing association of domestic labor with
women, predisposed the Women’s Federation toward establishing the country's first
company to recruit, train, and place female domestic workers in Beijing households.
The March 8th Housework Service Company (sanba jiawu fuwu gongsi) named for
the date of International Women’s Day, was founded in December 1983 by the
Beijing Municipal Women’s Federation and staffed by its district (Chaoyang,
Jinsong Siqu) representatives. The March 8th Company quickly became the model
for successive branches and similar companies in other cities.
At its inaugural, the Beijing Chaoyang March 8th Company was heralded by the
authorities for “doing something really good for women and children” (“Chaoyang
jiawu...”). The fact that the local Women’s Federation was closely involved in the
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founding of such a company of course reinforced the notion of domestic service as
exclusively women’s work, and, although the company did not specify gender in
seeking applicants, in practice it geared toward recruitment of women. Since its
start, the company has in fact placed very few men in domestic service.1 0 8
Originally, the company sought to motivate, organize, and train “youths waiting for
work” (daiye qingniari)— urban high school or junior college graduates awaiting
State-assigned work—and the urban unemployed (Ibid.). Yet the applicant pool soon
failed to meet demand (Ibid.). One problem was that urban youth, who were eligible
for employment in state-run factories or collectives, engaged in domestic service
only as a stop-gap measure and quit when more desirable work came along.1 0 9
Almost simultaneous with the founding of the March 8th Company, groups of young
women from Anhui, Sichuan, and Henan began arriving from the countryside. The
unique circumstances of rural-to-urban migration (i.e., its temporary nature due to
1 0 8 The few men who pass through companies like the March 8th are newsworthy. A caption below a
photo depicting a young migrant male who would like to find work as a domestic worker, printed in
China Women’ s News (2 January 1986), reads: “It’s doubtful that there’s an employer brave enough
to try him out!” An article in the Beijing Evening News (22 May 1998) announces the arrival of the
“first male maid” at Beijing’s Chongwen District Trade Union Household Service Reemployment
Center. The article explains that 46-year old Can Sheying is a laid-off steel worker who collects 280
yuan per month from his former employer and receives free re-training in household service at the re
employment center. Can is quoted as saying to the reporter: “What, don’t you believe this? Should I
feel ashamed? Once you are no longer ashamed, you can do this [work].” Such reports reinscribe
domestic work as women’s work that is somehow demeaning or ludicrous when undertaken by men.
1 0 9 For example, in a letter to the editor in Beijing Evening News (11 June 1983: 2), a Beijing domestic
worker tells how she was reluctant to do such a job while waiting for a work assignment, and
immediately quit domestic service once her assignment came through.
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hukou regulations and, in case of rural migrant women, the marriage system),
combined with the gender division of labor, structured rural migrant women’s entry
into the urban labor market in a manner that resulted in their relegation to the lowest
rungs of the informal service sector, in jobs such as domestic service. Across the
city, spontaneous “maid markets” appeared, as rural women sought positions in
domestic service. Initially, municipal authorities and urban residents welcomed the
markets. But as the markets grew, so too did authorities’ concern about social
disorder and crime therein; likewise, residents complained of their encroachment on
residential public space and noise. Moreover, the Women’s Federation regarded the
markets as direct competition, and sought to have them regulated or banned. In 1986,
with the approval of the Beijing Municipal Government, the Beijing Labor Bureau
designated the domestic service employment introduction centers run jointly by the
Women’s Federation, the Federation of Trade Unions, and the street committees as
the sole officially authorized channels for migrant job seekers in domestic service.1 1 0
1 1 0 Since the 1990s, numerous for-profit, private domestic service placement agencies have been
founded in Beijing, under the sponsorship of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau (gongshangju).
Under Labor Bureau regulations, these are illegal, and subject to fines and even closure, as routinely
occurs. Yet they appear also to exist in a “gray area,” in that Labor Bureau regulations are largely
unenforceable, and because there is some degree of confusion as to the “legality” of these other types
of agencies. In my own exploration of private firms, I found that most offer no higher wages for
domestic workers than official agencies, nor does their structure differ much from the official
agencies. In fact, they usually also rely upon the recruitment channels established by the county-level
Women’s Federation and Labor Bureau. However, they may be more lenient about fees and contracts,
and thus appeal to the pocketbooks of employers and domestic workers alike. Should the agency or its
clients require court adjudication, however, they would likely receive less favorable protection than
would agency or clients of the official middlemen.
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The March 8th Company made use of the complex political networks of Women’s
Federation cadres to recruit rural migrant women into urban domestic service.
Company representatives from Beijing traveled to meet their counterparts at the
county and village levels to set up recruitment chains. Often county-level Women’s
Federation or Labor Bureau officials accompanied recruits to Beijing and ensured all
were placed in homes before reporting back to parents in the villages. Likely the
reassurance of a local government representative eased parental anxiety about
sending daughters as young as 16 to a distant metropolis. Parents’ release of their
daughters to Women’s Federation representatives symbolized a transfer of
patriarchal authority from the realm of family to a representative of the state,
reinforcing a paternalistic relationship between recruits and company personnel and
ultimately employers.
In its mission statement, the March 8 Company promised to promote national
development and “contribute to the construction of the “Four Modernizations” (sihua
jianshe) (“Chaoyang jiawu...”). The development of a domestic service industry thus
dovetailed with the reform goals of expanding production of goods and services for
the urban developing markets, conveniently targeting urban women and their
households to stimulate consumption. In propaganda, women were promised that
domestic service would keep them free of “petty worries” (hougu zhiyou) and
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130
provide them more leisure time. Improved leisure time, of course, is linked to
increased consumption activities, further stimulating the economy (Wang, J. 2001).
The Women’s Federation also expressed enthusiasm for privatized domestic service
as a means to cultivate its urban political base.1 1 1 In numerous articles in China
Women’ s News in the mid-1980s, the industry was touted to be the new solution to
working women’s double burden and a means to raise the status of women
(“Fanzhong de jiawu...”). Domestic service would be an antidote to gender
discrimination in urban industry, improving the job prospects for urban women
workers by removing enterprises' burden of providing for the needs of women
workers (e.g., “ Fanzhong de jiawu...”).
The state had a vested interest in ensuring the availability of rural migrant women for
the growing domestic service industry. Commercialized household goods and
services lightened the state’s heavy welfare burden while simultaneously placating
its important urban political base. Yet it also excused the state from its former
commitment to legislating gender equality in employment, and left intact the division
of labor by gender in the household. Moreover, it produced and reinforced
stereotypes of gender and rural-urban difference that continue to divide the genders
and divide women of their common interests vis a vis the state and the market.
1 1 1 The pro-urban bias of the Women’s Federation is likewise noted by Jacka 1997: 31.
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the “ ricebowl of youth ” (qinschunfan)
In 2002, Zhou Lili introduced me to her supervisor (banzhang) at the state-run
guesthouse, a middle aged (i.e, 33 year-old) working mother who had an associate’s
degree (dazhuan) in library science but had voluntarily “jumped into the sea”
( .xiahai) and entered the hotel industry in the late 1980s, expecting to earn a higher
income and better opportunities for advancement. She complained of both gender
and age discrimination, and expressed envy for young migrant (waidi) women like
Zhou, whom she believed could easily find jobs due to their appearance (waimian).
As Zhang Zhen (2000) reports, global modernity and capitalism in China infuses
new value to youthful vitality and looks, which young Chinese have in abundance.
Young women in particular can link youthfulness to “sexuality, speed, glamour, and
money.” Eating the “rice bowl of youth” (qingchunfan) refers to turning one’s youth
and femininity into capital. Young women are certainly preferred for clerical, sales,
and entertainment jobs because they can attract customers by projecting an image of
femininity and youthful energy. They are the so-called “modem flower vases”
(xiandai huaping)—secretaries, clerks, hostesses, public relations “Misses” (xiaojie),
etc., who are hired to adom offices, shops, and restaurants and attract (male) clients
and customers (Hooper 1998).
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Zhang Zhen (2000) seems to celebrate the opportunities for young women due to the
premium on youth and (female) sexuality, but does not explore the underside of the
“ricebowl of youth,” such as potentially exploitative occupations like urban
prostitution, where rural migrant women are concentrated. In particular, youth is
valuable to capital, as young workers can be worked hard for a few years, then
dismissed without incurring long-term investment costs. Many co-workers at Zhou’s
hotel were middle-aged women who were hired by the hotel on short-term,
contractual basis after being laid-off from their state-sector jobs. (Some were
actually laid-off and then rehired by the state-run hotel itself, as part of its internal
restructuring). Comparing herself to one such coworker, Zhou remarked: “I’ll be just
like her in twenty or so years, only I won’t even have a pension.” Zhou clearly
recognized that youth is ephemeral and cannot guarantee a secure future, especially
in the context of the rural/urban dichotomy and the hukou system at its core, and
cultural pressures on young rural women to return home and settle down to the life of
a good wife and mother.
In domestic service as in janitorial services, young rural women are sought for their
relative youth largely because it implies deference to superiors (elders), and because
it suggests an ability to toil long hours at exhausting physical labor. Such qualities
lend rural migrant women a distinct advantage in the labor market against urban
women workers recently laid-off from the restructuring state sector, but they enter
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1
the labor market on distinctively inferior footing. Finally, it is important to keep m
mind the stigma that affects women who enter certain service occupations. Jobs that
involve cleaning dirt and serving others (e.g., members of a household or hotel
guests) evoke historical associations with low-status and gender transgression, and
thus are undesirable and even shameful. Women service workers complain of feeling
inferior (diren yideng) and subject to vicious gossip about their suspect morality:
Beijingers look down on us, especially those of us in the service industry, for in
their eyes, all young women who enter the service industry (Juwa hangye) then
easily become “bad women” (Xin Y. 1999).
The demand for youthful and feminine workers in such occupations as domestic
service and hotel housekeeping is met by rural migrant women because, due to their
work inexperience and low levels of education and skills relative to their urban
peers, they have few alternatives. In response to my question, “Why did you choose
this kind of job,” hotel janitor Li Mei sighed: “What else am I qualified to do?”
However, I agree with Wang Zheng (2000: 73) that women strategize as agents
within such service occupations, actively seizing the ricebowl of youth for their own
1 1 2 A case in point is domestic service. In 1994 (Wang Z. 2000: 79) it was officially recognized as a
technical occupation, and deemed the science of “home economics” (jiazheng). The Women’s
Federation, through its affiliated domestic service employment agencies, instituted training centers in
the new science and awarded a technical certificate. Needless to say, the upgrade coincided with
efforts to re-employ laid-off urban women workers who were reluctant to enter domestic service, an
occupation they found shameful due to its association with servitude as well as rural women.
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advantage, and are thus hardly “passively constructed ‘decorative objects.’” She
argues that entering domestic service should be seen as evidence of women’s
creativity, given limited options, turning a familiar gender role into waged activity
(Wang Z. 2000: 77). I will focus on these positive aspects in future chapters.
Rural Migrant Women and the Nation-State
The quotes that opened this chapter illustrated how rural women’s social status has
been a benchmark for the modernity of the nation-state. Whereas republican
nationalism blamed women’s relative low status on a combination of class and
gender oppression (feudal patriarchy) that revolution sought to redress, late socialism
attributes women’s relative low status to the underdevelopment of “productive
forces” and the low “cultural quality” of rural women in particular, and seeks redress
through economic and social development and modernization. A socialist narrative
of women’s liberation through collective class struggle under CCP leadership has
been neatly replaced by a neoliberal capitalist discourse about the market and
individual choice. In this schematic, today’s rural women appear to have greater
freedom to exercise agency than did their “traditional” counterparts like the fictional
Xianglin’s Wife and the previous generation of women who were raised in the Mao
era. This contrast between women of the present and the past also elevates the status
of the rural migrant woman against her non-migrant peers (who fail to take initiative
to develop themselves), imbuing this emergent identity with a certain cultural cache.
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However, as the above has made clear, the narrative of modernity and historical
progress belies the policies, institutionalized practices, and ideologies that together
produce gender inequality and rural-urban hierarchy. I have tried to show that the
division of labor by gender and ideas about gender, labor, and rural-urban difference
are social discursive constructs that have been impacted by state interventions
throughout China’s modem history. It follows that while late socialist modernity
may offer more choices to rural women for self-determination, including migration
and work, the contours of such possibilities are delimited by state, global capital, and
rural patriarchal power. Thus, rural migrant women’s exercise of “agency” and
“choice” always involves negotiation within power. Young rural women’s
expectations and hopes for a better future thus can be difficult to achieve in reality.
My informant Zhang Xiaqing, already introduced, was ashamed to admit that she
had been a domestic worker in Beijing. This was a secret that she shared only with
her close family and, after a time, myself, but which she kept from her school friends
and fellow migrants. Her shame likely stemmed from a multitude of sources,
including the transgression of Confucian prescriptions of feminine virtue, the
association of domestic service with servitude and with domesticity, and a sense of
her failure to “make herself modem” by taking advantage of new opportunities to
raise her quality. At the same time, migration opened up new possibilities for identity
and self-making, including the option of choosing to “eat the rice bowl of youth.”
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After the fiasco of her first work experience in domestic service, Zhang did return
home. But soon, through her middle-school contacts, she located another job in
Beijing (on the city’s periphery). Together with her former classmate Luo Jing,
Zhang traveled again to the capital where she became a teacher in an elementary
school for migrant children. Over time, Zhang’s realization of the difficulty of
achieving her dreams gave her the confidence to speak out against the injustice of
such employment and seek a better employment situation.
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CHAPTER THREE
GOING “OUT TO WORK” (chulai dagong):
GENDER, MIGRATION, AND LATE SOCIALIST MODERNITY
Migration Decisions and Women’s Agency
Xie Aimin left her Anhui village for Beijing in the early 1980s. The youngest of five
children, she was the first to leave the village to migrate for work. In her
recollection, she described her decision to migrate as being an exercise of her own
agency, requiring firm resolve against initial parental opposition.
I was fifteen, going on sixteen, when I announced: “I’m also going to Beijing.”
My father disagreed; I decided for myself. My sister-in-law didn’t agree either,
saying I was too young. But I had little to do at home...Later I said to my father
again: “I want to go out to work, and I won’t come back for five years.” I had
made up my mind. I said, “I’ll be back when I’m twenty-two”—I was then
seventeen—I said, “In five years I'll come back only once.” They still didn't trust
me....Then my mother supported me a bit, and saw that I had nothing to do at
home, that I didn’t have any interest in farming. She urged [my father], “Let her
go out to work.”
In deciding to migrate, most of my informants were initially opposed by their
parents. Understandably, parents were concerned for their children's safety, their
worries fueled by tales of unscrupulous employers and the dangers of city life as
recounted by returning migrants.
The elders in my village returning from work in Beijing said the city had lots of
tricksters and bad people, people who wouldn’t give you your salary or would
cheat you.. ..Because of what returning migrants said, my parents worried, and
didn’t want me to come to Beijing.
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Concerns for the safety of young women in particular were compounded by the
threat of sexual harassment and abuse, and of falling prey to traffickers selling
women into marriage or prostitution.1 1 3
At home there are a lot of women who have been sold, especially from Sichuan
and Anhui. I know some. They are adults, 30-something, who are unmarried
[men] and can’t get a wife through other means, so they buy one. There are lots
and lots. They sell people like they sell commodities.
Young women too were concerned by such stories, such as that heard and confirmed
by Ma Ning about a 19-year old boy from her Shandong village who allegedly was
kept a virtual prisoner in Beijing by a boss who withheld his wages for three months.
When finally the young man got away, he walked for two weeks on foot from
Beijing to Shandong.
After I heard this story, I was incredulous. How could this thing happen? It's
terrible, like he was a beggar for half a month! Having trusted that boss once,
now he will never trust again. He won’t go out to work again.
Yet despite the hardships that the journey and city life promise, certain young
women were quite persistent in their efforts to win parental support and in their
determination to leave the village. The magazine Rural Women Knowing All
provides some examples of the more extreme tactics deployed by determined young
women. Gao Zhihua (1999) wrote that she “secretly left my parents a note, and
1 1 3 Trafficking in women is an officially acknowledged and widely reported crime that appears to be
on the rise in the decades since reform (but see Whyte 2000 for argument that trafficking is only more
visible, not necessarily on the rise).
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hurriedly boarded a train headed far away.” Dai Chengjiao (1996) refused to eat or
get out of her bed until she won her parents’ permission to leave home. Those who
were persistent found comfort and strength in the knowledge that they had made an
autonomous decision, and passionately resolved to stay the course.
My mother and I are very close, like sisters even, so the first month that I was in
Beijing, I missed home so much that I often cried, and I wondered why I had
ever wanted to make myself suffer so! Later, though, I thought, “this was the
path I myself chose, and there’s nothing wrong with that!”
At the macro level, economic reforms provided the conditions for migration.
Regional uneven development, rural-urban income disparity, rural industrial policy,
the changes to the household registration system, and the creation of new jobs in
private, joint venture, and foreign direct invested industries and services created
necessary “push” and “pull” conditions, respectively, in which migration occurred,
and affected men and women in different ways (as explained in the introduction).
But it is at the micro-level of the household where decision-making about labor
allocation and resource distribution occurs, in accordance with roles and identities
ascribed through gender and kinship.
In neoclassical and structural analyses of migration, households are assumed to
strategize for the optimum balance of resources among family members, including
by organizing the migration for waged work of its surplus laborers, as they respond
to changes in the political economy (e.g., Trager 1988). But feminist attention to the
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role of women in migration—whether as “women who wait” or as migrants—has led
to criticism of the so-called “household strategies” approach for failing to account
for intra-household dynamics, and the possibly competing interests of household
members differently positioned by gender and kinship. (For a summary and critique
of household strategies, see Wolf 1992.) As the examples above highlight, rural
Chinese daughters frequently decided to migrate over at least initial objections of
parents or other household members. While a daughter’s migration ultimately
benefited her natal household, the concept of “household strategy” is nonetheless
insufficient to folly encompass the many rationales for migration expressed by
individuals.
Young women’s efforts to overcome parental opposition to migration, and their
stoicism in face of fears and homesickness, suggests that the decision to migrate was
ultimately an expression of young women’s agency. Migration was in fact
understood by young rural women in Post-Mao China as more than a response to
poverty or uneven development. While “due to poverty” was frequently the knee-
jerk response to the question of “Why did you migrate?”, further questioning always
elicited a variety of motivations (Lee 1998). Rather, a complex set of desires and
ambitions— from helping family and community, escaping boredom or postponing
marriage, to seeking to acquire new skills or improve education so as to avoid a life
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of farming, or seeing the world and satisfying curiosity about urban life— factored
into young women's decisions to migrate.1 1 4
In this chapter, I show how the discursive practices of the late socialist state intersect
with gender and kinship to influence decision-making about migration at the level of
the rural household and individual. Desire for the trappings of modernity associated
with the city and rejection of an increasingly devalued identity of “peasant”
propelled China’s youth off farms and out of villages. Yet, the social division of
labor by gender in the rural farm household and gender ideologies of separate
spheres, exacerbated by the policy of household responsibility farming, positioned
rural men and women differently in regard to migration. For men, migration was
seen to be an extension of their masculine roles and identities as ascribed by the
division of labor in the household and a patrilineal kinship system. For women,
migration challenged the motherly and wifely roles and ideologies enshrined in both
rural patriarchy and official constructions of rural womanhood. These differences
explain in part why more men than women migrated throughout the 1980s and 1990s
and why the majority of female rural-to-urban migrants were primarily unmarried,
young women.
1 1 4 Evidence from my own interviews is corroborated by Eklund 2000, Lee 1998, Meng 1995, Peng
2003; Sun 1998, Tan 2000, and Zhang, H. 1999 among others.
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For young, unmarried rural women, moreover, migration held special promise but
also posed certain dangers. Soon to reach the point in life when decisions about
marriage must be faced, young rural women were understandably anxious about their
future. Migration was seen to provide some respite, a postponement of the marital
decision, and even an opportunity to forge a better future, whether through
expanding choices of marriage partners or of career trajectories. Given the insecurity
characteristic of this stage of life, many young rural women put great faith in the
transformational potential of migration. Yet in pursuing such individual desires,
young rural women risked negative repercussions to themselves and their families
for their perceived immoral behavior. In response, they devised inventive
compromises with Confucian-inflected gender norms, taking pains to satisfy both
desires and duty.
The Disenchantment of the Rural
China’s pre-eminent (late) sociologist, Fei Xiaotong, introduced the world to
“peasant China” and explained the cultural logic of peasants’ strong spiritual
attachment to “the soil,” such as manifest in the worship of the Earth god (Tudi). In
his words (Fei 1946: 38):
We often say that country people are figuratively as well as literally 'soiled,'
(tuqi). Although this label may seem disrespectful, the character meaning 'soil'
(tu) is appropriately used here. Country people cannot do without the soil
because their very livelihood is based upon it.
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In contemporary lexicon, being soiled or earthy (tuqi) is rarely a proud or defensible
identity but rather a sign of lacking civilization and culture. Even in 1946, when Fei
penned his famous essay, urban intellectuals (like Fei himself) distinguished
themselves from their “earthy” rural counterparts, in much the same way that
urbanites do in the post-Mao period. As I argued in the introduction, development
policies of reform vastly widened the rural-urban income gap and underscored
negative connotations of peasantry as less cultured and less modem, and hence more
inferior, than urbanites.1 1 5
Whatever beliefs or behaviors exhibited by peasants that are not in step with the
CCP’s political directives or that appear to threaten political or social order are
subsequently considered to be remnants of a feudal past and trivialized as
superstition and evidence of peasant backwardness or poor quality (Kipnis 1997:
167). (By contrast, anti-government propaganda or other unsanctioned cultural forms
in urban areas, such as pornography, are blamed on foreign influence and labeled
"bourgeois liberalism" (Ibid.: 168). Associating peasant culture with the habits of the
past reinforces a sense that the rural community is out of step with the progress of
1 1 5 In essence, the post-Mao reforms continued a historical discourse of modernity that posited the
peasantry, and women in particular, as a necessary "other" against which the nation’s civilization and
progress could be defined and measured. From May 4t h era through socialist revolution and into the
present, the peasantry has been associated with those negative qualities marked as “traditional” and
“anti-modem,” whether ignorance as opposed to enlightenment, dirt as opposed to hygiene,
coarseness of manner in opposition to refinement, superstition rather than secularism, magic rather
than science, and so on.
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the nation-state, civilization, and modernity. Given that rural youth have the greatest
potential to migrate out of the village, due to the combination of pull-push factors
already discussed, it is therefore not surprising to discover that they are most
vociferously critical of ideas and practices they consider too “traditional,” impatient
with those villagers they perceive to be attached to peasant ways of life, and
frustrated by their own “lack” of modem qualities.
When I accompanied Zhang Xiaqing on a return visit to her Shandong village during
the Spring Festival of 1999,1 became aware of the distinctions rural youth make
between concepts of “tradition” and “modernity.” Zhang identified local folk beliefs
and practices and certain rituals of non-contractual relational obligations (guanxi) as
“backward,” and contrasted these to new technology, scientific methods, technical
skills, and rational social relations imported from the city by returned migrants.
For example, I was curious about some of the activities I observed among villagers
in preparation for the New Year, such as setting up a spirit tablet (to the kitchen god)
and sweeping the courtyard before lighting incense in the kitchen, or lighting incense
sticks in courtyard entryways to welcome the ancestors or scare away bad spirits. But
whenever I asked Zhang to explain these happenings to me, she would only shrug
her shoulders dismiss such activities saying, “I don't know, it's just what the old
people do. I detest these superstitions (fengfian mixin).”
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During my second day in Zhang’s village, I learned that my gift of a stuffed animal
(a rabbit, which was the zodiac symbol of the New Year) to a cute young girl from
the Li family next door to the Zhang’s had unwittingly triggered some clan
contention in this two-surname village, causing great distress to Zhang's mother in
particular. At her mother's request, Zhang reluctantly intervened, explaining the
situation to me and suggesting the remedy of distributing more stuffed animals to
key children of the slighted Zhang clan. But despite being unable to avoid personal
involvement in the situation, Zhang herself was extremely apologetic to me and
embarrassed for what she regarded as "backward" behavior and concern for social
hierarchies that she felt reflected the "low quality" (suzhidi) of certain villagers.
Kipnis (1995) suggests that rural China since reforms consists of two types of
people: those who are "peasant and proud" and those who are ambivalent about
peasant culture. In the Shandong village studied by Kipnis, as in Zhang’s village, it is
mainly elderly and women who fit into the former category, and mainly men and
migrant youth in the latter. By objectifying certain villagers as backward, and
identifying others as progressive, Zhang herself reproduced the social hierarchy that
privileged the urbanite over the peasant.
However, it is not only returned migrants or only rural youth who keenly discern
between rural and urban levels of development and of culture. Most of rural China is
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timed in to radio and television programs that objectify rural life and present back to
villages images of peasant character that reflect the stereotypes of urban producers,
(e.g., Efird 2001). On New Year's Eve in the Shandong village, I shared in the
excitement of eating a meal of dumplings prepared earlier in the day while watching
CCTV's annual gala variety show, which attracts a massive viewer audience each
year. Watching television was made possible in Zhang's village only within the past
few years, with the introduction of electricity. (At that point, the village had just one
telephone attached to a line extending from the main road.)
Zhang and her fellow villagers together took pride in demonstrating to me the ways
in which the village was modernizing. They displayed for me new commodities and
renovated homes purchased or financed largely through migrant remittances, took
me on tours of new enterprises established by returning migrants who had been
exposed to scientific technology and acquired new skills while working outside the
village, and called upon the villages’ few secondary-school graduates to practice
their rudimentary English with me.
Zhang singled out certain villagers whom she proudly introduced to me. In addition
to two (male) students learning English who held aspirations of passing the college
entrance exams, I was introduced to the county school's English teacher, Zhang's
educated father and uncle (both had attended high school) and other returned
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migrants. Half a day was spent touring greenhouses with a (male) relative in a
nearby village who had invested the savings from his 13 years as a construction
worker in the city into new hothouse technology for profitable tomato cultivation
business.
On a walk through the village that drew numerous villagers out of their homes and
into the lanes, I was specifically shown renovated courtyards (with ceramic tile
mosaics) and newly constructed houses (made of concrete rather than brick-and-
mud), and even a shiny new tractor.
Finally, one night Zhang and I were invited to the house of a neighbor, a returned
migrant, who had purchased a karaoke/VCD machine with his earnings. A large
group of villagers gathered around the TV, and Zhang and a few other young people
took turns crooning Hong Kong and Guangdong pop tunes. The younger girls and
elderly women present, many of whom wore "peasant" garb—pink or blue
headscarves covering their hair—giggled, with hands in demure fashion covering
their mouths, at the “foreign” (mainly Asian) soft-porn video images (ie., of gyrating
scantily clad models) that accompanied the song lyrics.
Although proud of the achievements of its students and returned migrants, some
villagers also expressed worry about the momentous task still ahead of raising their
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own and villagers’ overall “low cultural level” (wenhua chengdu di). In particular,
young people I spoke with in that village and those who migrated to Beijing
recognized that their lack of marketable skills, training, and education would
severely limit their ability to compete in the modem economy. As Beijing domestic
worker Liu Fanmei said to me, “In the countryside, our cultural level is limited, for
there are few books and magazines to read.” Henan native Xie Aimin concurred:
We rural folk for the most part, apart from farming, have never learned anything.
[In Beijing] everyone reads books and the newspapers. But not us, we don't have
these habits, nor the material conditions.
The reform-era state recognizes that “illiteracy and low levels of education cannot
generate the cultural and economic capital necessary for development” (Wang, J.
2001). The drive for economic growth and global competitiveness has placed a
premium on technical training and intellectual scholarship over the political
dedication of the prototypical manual worker (industrial or agricultural) celebrated
during the Maoist era. Knowledge is now equated with formal education and
technical training, embodied in diplomas and certificates, and supplemented by new
technologies such as print and television media, computers and Internet. Many young
women aspire to compensate for their lack of substantial schooling by attaining new
knowledge and skills that can be gleaned simply through expanding their horizons
through migration and learning on-the-job skills at work, and perhaps ultimately by
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pursuing study toward a degree. Knowledge and experience are capital to be
accumulated via migration.
The so-called “knowledge economy” —the subject of numerous best-selling books
in recent years in China—contributes to the continued devaluation of rural China and
agriculture in particular. In classical Confucian doctrine, agricultural work
represented manual labor (wu), and was opposed to mental labor (wen), which was
associated with high culture and civilization. In imperial times, manual and mental
labor were perceived to be complements (Bray 1997). But in the reform era,
agricultural labor is clearly less prestigious.
Compared with the projected image of the high-tech sector, not to mention industry,
as technological and efficient, agriculture (which in China is not highly mechanized)
appears technologically primitive. The spatial location of agricultural work in the
relatively underdeveloped countryside—where foreign investment has yet to trickle
down—furthers its inferiority to forms oflabor, namely industry and service, that are
primarily associated with urban areas and clean, modem factories or high-rise office
spaces. As one new arrival from the countryside to Beijing remarked:
What a big city! Compared with our village, it's like another world. Only then did
I realize the difference between the village and the city was so great, so great
(Wang Q. 1996: 7).
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Of course, the city is no substitute for the countryside in the mind of a homesick
young woman:
Our houses in the countryside are really spacious. The city is so noisy. High-rise
apartments aren’t as comfortable as our village houses, and the air [in the city] is
not as fresh. In the countryside there are green trees and green grass. There you
feel good.
Yet, as my informants emphasized to me, farming is “extremely hard, physically
exerting labor.” Li Mei noted that women in her village (of her mother’s generation)
sneer at the suggestion that factory or clerical work might be equally difficult. ‘“Just
let those [urban] women try standing bent over crops all day!’ they say.”
The physical hardships of agricultural work would surely be less objectionable if
agriculture were profitable. In this regard, the deepening of reforms has hit farmers
hard. Receiving little fiscal outlay from the central government, rural local
government is dependent on peasants for their own salaries and budgets, and the
peasant’s tax burden has steadily risen during the reform period. Meanwhile, grain
prices have in fact dropped, and will continue to fall against the world market
competition now that China has entered into the WTO. Given the unpredictability of
nature, physical exertion, high tax burden, and low financial reward, it is little
wonder that young people hope to avoid the hardship of life as a farm household.
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Ethnographic evidence from rural south China’s Chen village (Chan et al. 1992)
suggests that agriculture loses its appeal for reasons other than tangible physical
hardship or earnings. Rather, distinctions of gender, class, and spatial location
intersect to shape villager’s perceptions of rural life and peasant identity, and
consequently their attitudes and behaviors toward farming. Chen village’s spatial
proximity to Hong Kong and to a newly constructed Special Economic Zone
provided an opportunity for working-age men to earn relatively high wages in
construction (in Hong Kong) or in factories very early in the reform period. Chen
village women substituted for departed men in agriculture, leading in the short-term
to a feminization of agriculture in Chen village. Eventually, however, even married
Chen village women found lucrative factory employment, mainly in the nearby
township enterprises (to which they commuted daily), in turn leaving agricultural
11 f \
work in the village in the hands of recent in-migrants from poorer areas.
Eventually, nearly all Chen villagers opted out of agriculture when other choices
were available.
1 1 6 In the short span of just 6 months in 1979, Chen village lost nearly 200 able-bodied laborers,
mostly young and married men, in a mass migration across the border to Hong Kong where they
found lucrative employment in construction firms. The loss of male labor forced Chen village women
to move into agriculture. A year later, the nearby county capital was declared a Special Economic
Zone, thus attracting Hong Kong enterprises and, in turn, off-farm employment. In the wake of this
transformation, Chen village women moved out of agriculture and took day jobs in the new factories,
where they earned lower wages than offered further away in Shenzhen, but gained ability to juggle
their domestic and family concerns. Back in Chen village, migrant laborers recruited from poorer
regions of the province took over local agricultural work; by 1990, 90% of the population of the
nearby county town was non-native.
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Interestingly, researchers observed that the new generation of village youth (males),
particularly those who could rely on the remittances from kin in Hong Kong where
wages were relatively high, opted out of the labor force entirely, and lead rather
profligate lifestyles. Few among this “lost generation,” as the researchers labeled the
youth, "deigned to hold a job, unless a Hong Kong--based relative was willing to buy
them a truck that would elevate them to the prestigious status of an owner/driver"
(Chan et al. 1992: 293). Even their working wives (my emphasis), often the family
breadwinners, refused to work in agriculture:
They, like their unemployed husbands, refused to be seen in the farm-fields.
During the 1980s a prejudice had rapidly developed in Chen Village against
agricultural labor, even though farming one's own land could net about the same
amount of pay as factory work. But farm work had come to be seen as 'backward'
and physically onerous, unlike the 'modem' and thus more high-status factory
labor (Chan et al 1992: 297, also cited in Jacka 1997:141.)
In Chen village's transition from rural backwater to SEZ satellite town, agriculture
was subsequently devalued not only because villagers could avail themselves of
more lucrative sources of income, but also because villagers became more
consciously selective of their choice of work. Significantly, agriculture’s devaluation
among Chen villagers was concomitant with the entry into the fields of increasingly
marginalized groups— women, the aged, and village outsiders.1 1 7 The example of
Chen village implies that agriculture’s falling prestige as a form of labor is
1 1 7 Others have likewise observed that the devaluation of agriculture and the feminization of farmwork
come hand in hand (Croll and Huang cited in Fan 2000: 436).
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153
attributable not only to its high material cost and low remuneration, but to its
symbolic association with distinctions of gender and class.1 1 8 Thus, young men first
eschewed agriculture as emasculating “women’s work,” and eventually most Chen
villagers eschewed it as lower class work—associated with poor in-migrants.
My field research suggests that for women especially, laboring in the fields is
undesirable as it conflicts with indigenous and global cultural prescriptions of
femininity and beauty. In late imperial China, elites associated femininity with
confinement to the "inner" quarters, and thus equated beauty with whiter and softer
skin, as darker skin and rough hands were signs of laboring "outside,” and hence a
marker of the lower class. Indeed, women refer to laboring in the field with the
expression "being burnt by the sun" (shai taiyang), making the connection between
agriculture, dark skin, and class explicit. And, as one migrant woman featured in Li
Hong’s 1997 docunientary Out o f Phoenix Bridge {Peking Blues), intones: "We
[rural women] prefer not to labor in the sun." The class implications of darkened skin
were likewise evident among the Shandong peasants studied by Kipnis (1997: 175)
in the 1990s, where families with discretionary income kept their daughters from
farming, for fear that blackened skin resulting ftom daily exposure to the elements
would ruin their daughters' marriage chances.
1 1 8 The example of Chen village suggests that rapidly rising expectations of wealth and modernization
may fuel discontent and even social deviance when youth meet with thwarted expectations. (In
chapter 5 I will explore similar theme of broken dreams among rural migrant women.)
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Young women's aversion to agricultural work may be interpreted as a reversal of the
“gender neutrality" purportedly promoted by the Maoist state in favor of alternate
visions of femininity, particularly standards associated with western modernity, just
as the Maoist exhortation to rural women to enter farm work in full force reversed
earlier elite prescriptions of femininity. At the same time, Chinese women are today
bombarded with advertising images that promote a global ideal of beauty and
femininity, which is based on a white, western image (e.g., white skin, double
eyelids and light-colored hair). Harriet Evans (2000) argues that these global images
associate the rural peasant with increasingly racialized projections of physique (i.e.,
as “dirty” or “black”) that imply moral and qualitative inferiority (and see Schein
1994). The modem woman is thus oppositionally constructed through images of
“subordination and exclusion, most notably of the rural, uneducated, and poor”
(Evans 2000: 238). Avoiding farmwork is thus a key means for rural women to
appropriate a modem, cosmopolitan feminine appearance, along with using such
cosmetics as the ubiquitous “whitening” creams and lotions. Similarly, I have
observed that even women engaged in agricultural work strive to incorporate the
“modem” look into their everyday appearance. It is not surprising to see young
mothers in rural China hoeing their family plot while wearing high heeled shoes, a
store-bought blazer, earrings and make-up.
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155
I have argued that the neoliberal ideas that circulate in the global capitalist market
place emphasize productivity not political orientation as the ideal characteristic of
the worker (see my introduction). My conversations with both migrant women and
men support the argument that today’s rural youth have internalized a discourse that
celebrates the market and places the onus for economic success on individual choice
and ability. As Migrant Women’s Club staff member Wang Xiangfen intoned: “As
long as you have ability (nengli), you’ll find a way [to succeed in the city].” Migrant
youth commonly articulate their goals for migration in reference to catch phrases like
“self-development” (fazhan wo ziji) and “raising quality” (tigao ziji de suzhi) and
“challenging oneself’ (duanlian ziji). As what one does rather than who one is (i.e.,
one’s family background) increasingly defines identity in China, “going out to work”
(ichulai dagong) is fast becoming the only way for rural youth to fully realize their
potential. No wonder that migration is fast becoming a rural rite of passage into
adulthood.
The flip side of this belief, however, is that failure to find success in the city suggests
a character flaw or moral failing of the individual, which has grave repercussions
that I will explore in chapter 5. This was conveyed to me when Zhang introduced me
to her cousin and two of her middle school classmates, all young women her age
who likewise had gone out to work, to the provincial capital Jinan. One by one, her
cousin and classmate lamented how the lack of decent wages and steady work forced
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156
them to return home. Returning to the village should have implied their readiness to
settle down and get married, but their attitude was one of resignation and defeat.
After visiting with them, Zhang Xiaqing herself was despondent. She vowed, to me
and to herself, as she did again repeatedly, that she would not return to her village
until she had “accomplished something.”
At the same time, going out to work appeals to many rural youth as a means to
display patriotism and make a contribution to the nationalist drive for economic
growth and modernity. Some of my informants therefore articulate their selfless
devotion to developing their villages for the benefit of the nation.
In the discourse of late socialist modernity, the city is a dynamic space of growth,
maturity, and improvement that contrasts to an unchanging and tradition-bound rural
space. Cultural constructions of gender and class, as well as global discourses of race
and femininity, contribute to the negative perceptions of agriculture and rural life.
This devaluation of agricultural work, rural customs, and peasant identity explains
why peasants might desire occupations other than farm work and even to “leave both
the farm and the village” (litu, lixiang). In seeking to fulfill their desires through
migration, rural youth ironically validate the moral geography of development and
re-inscribe urban-rural hierarchy. Conveniently, the migration of young rural women
meets the needs of the labor market and capitalist management for a youthful,
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relatively cheap, and flexible labor force. However, migration must also be viewed
as a meaningful odyssey of change and personal development for the individual. This
is particularly so for young women, as I shortly explain, due to their position in the
household in the context of a patrilineal kinship system.
Gender. Kinship, and Migration
In rural China in the post-Mao era, women's association with the domestic sphere
and roles of wife and mother, contrasted to the perception of men as the primary
producers in the household economy, to some degree determined that, overall, fewer
women than men migrated and, among women who did migrate, most were young
and unmarried.1 1 9 By the 1990s, a general pattern of division of labor appeared in
rural China whereby women, children, and the elderly remained in the village to
undertake farming, childrearing and housework, as well as to attend to any family
1 1 9 Other factors determining the gender imbalance in migration were touched upon in the
introduction. These included the difficulty for women to procure official change of hukou for
themselves as well as their offspring, even through marriage to an urban hukou holder, and the greater
earning potential and work opportunities for migrant men. In addition, households often seek to
maintain a safety net by holding onto their land, rather than returning it to the state (Davin 1999: 123).
Yet so long as families retain use rights to their plot, they must turn over grain to the state. While
some households in which every member leaves the farm may hire others to farm their land, many
choose to keep a family on the farm, either elderly parents or young mothers. Finally, young women
may have added incentive to work die lands of the their husband's ancestors, for as newly "married-
in" daughters in law their claims to their husbands' family's land is tenuous; cultivating the soil may
be an embodied means of cultivating land rights and ties to in-laws, lineage, and ancestors (Bossen
1994). Yet, entire families do migrate from rural to urban China, and appear to increasingly do so
(Fan 2000: 448).
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“sideline” business,1 2 0 while a majority of men left the village to work off the farm,
as seasonal or casual laborers. By 1990, rural women’s share of agricultural work
was nearly equal to men’s, at 48% (Jacka 1997: 128). Significantly, the association
of women with agricultural work only exacerbates its overall devaluation,
reinforcing gender inequality along with rural-urban hierarchy.1 2 1
In the early stage of decollectivization (early 1980s) rural women were
disproportionately made redundant or surplus agricultural labor and exhorted to
“return to the home” (Jacka 1990; Beaver et al. 1995). The household responsibility
system returned decision-making about production to the household head, usually a
male, which tended to reinforce patriarchal authority in the household and shore up a
household division of labor by gender (e.g., Judd 1994; Summerfield et al.l 994;
Davin 1998; Zhang W. 1998). Historically in China, cultural conceptions of gender
difference and separate spheres, articulated through the homologous pairs
male::female and outer::inner have consistently structured labor relations and framed
1 2 0 Sideline businesses involve little investment and made use of existing household infrastructure and
labor. They could include raising small animals, running a dairy, or handicrafts. Though some women
have apparently developed successful industries from these modest beginnings, sidelines have not
significantly challenged the conception of women's work, and are even considered an extension of
domestic work regardless of their ability to generate large profits for the household, according to
Jacka (1997: 147). See also Judd 2001.
1 2 1 On the other hand, preliminary research on women who must engage in all aspects of farm work
after the migration of a spouse notes that these rural women become de facto household heads, take
on unprecedented new responsibilities, and gain self-esteem, and thus benefit from their new role,
even as they may also be overburdened by both domestic and farm labor (e.g., Bossen 2002; Murphy
2004).
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perceptions of women's work relative to men's, even as the actual work that men and
women respectively engaged in continually fluctuated (Jacka 1997). Interestingly,
the tenacity of the cultural conception of separate spheres was such, in the reform
period, the “domestic sphere” of “women’s work” expanded to incorporate
agricultural labor and sideline business (Jacka 1997). Even when earnings garnered
by activities in the domestic realm were significant, the domestic and feminine
associations meant such labor was consistently devalued relative to the “productive”
work of men. Jacka (1997) as well as Judd (1990) highlight how gender ideologies
intersect with those of space and labor to devalue agriculture and sideline
occupations. Recent sociological research both corroborates such a theory, but also
finds that when compared with off-farm wage work, regardless of the gender of the
laborer, rural-based agriculture and sideline businesses are rarely labeled as
productive, bona fide kinds of “work” (gongzuo) (Henderson et al. 2000).
The division of labor by gender in the farm household, which contributes to gender
differentials in migration, is reinforced by a patrilineal kinship system. In rural
China, young people are raised with a strong sense of filial duty, and children have
historically been the primary means of support for the elderly. Sons especially are
expected to bear responsibility for care of their parents in old age. Because Han
Chinese figure descent patrilineaily, sons are viewed as providing a family with
continuity, and their responsibility to their natal households only increases over the
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life course. The kinship system thus reinforces the belief that men be the primary
producers and contributors to the family economy.
In the pre-socialist era, inheritance laws and custom dictated that sons would inherit
land from their fathers, reinforcing filial loyalty (Zhang, H. 2004: 83). Land reform
and collectivization interfered with the inheritance process and weakened this father-
son bond (Ibid). Nonetheless, continued customs of postmarital residence and the
economic contributions of the elderly as members of the collective (i.e., in the form
of workpoint allocations) ensured elder males a certain social status. In the reform
era, the absence of any collective social security or pension has meant that rural
elderly who are not self-sufficient must rely on their offspring for financial and
social security. Yet the decreasing economic contribution of rural elders, in the
context of limited authority in land distribution matters, has negatively impacted
their former high social status.1 2 2 The state has responded to reports of children
shirking filial duties with propaganda stressing filial duty as civic virtue (Ikels 2004).
In most of rural China, sons take on the bulk of financial support for their retired
rural parents (Jun 2004; Miller 2004; and Zhang, H. 2004). In addition, recent
research suggests an increasing role for rural daughters in parental care, particularly
in providing emotional and physical support, as the elderly spread the burden of
1 2 2 Although households farm family plots, this land is leased from the state, and is returned to the
state at the termination of the contract or expiration of the leasee (Miller 2004).
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161
social support among family members (Zhang, H. 2004; Yan Y. 2003: 180-181).
Despite the changing social practices, filial ideology remains powerful, and earning
cash through migration is one means by which sons in particular can fulfil their filial
obligations.
The convention patrilineal descent may also greater pressure on men than on women
to earn income. Much of rural China observes patrilocal marriage customs, in which
sons “marry in” (qu) a “daughter-in-law” (xifer). While couples may increasingly
establish a separate residence upon marriage (an effect of increasing prosperity and
changing social mores), they most likely do so in the husband's village. The groom’s
family is expected to provide bride wealth, cash and consumer goods presented to
the new couple at marriage. Economic prosperity has raised expectations of brides-
to-be and their families; the groom’s family is pressured to provide a new residence
for couple at marriage, which requires an outlay of tens of thousands of yuan (cf.
Yan 1996; Kipnis 1997; Liu, X. 2000).1 2 4 In the survey of migrant workers in
1 2 3 Of course this is not the case across all of China; marriage practices in rural China have varied
historically and geographically, as well as by ethnicity. For example, marriages in pre-Liberation
China tended to be village- and clan- exogamous, occurring within a distance of several miles, but
intra-village marriages became increasingly common under collectivization, though less commonly
within one surname group (but for an exception, see Liu, X. 2000: 54) and usually among different
work teams (which were often synonymous with clans). With reform, village exogamy is again the
norm. Moreover, marriage may occur across very long distances, such in the form of marriage
migration.
1 2 4 The age of marriage has paradoxically been lowered since reforms (officially, 20 and 22 for
women and men respectively), with women commonly marrying by age 20. The younger age of
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enterprises in four cities throughout China, researchers Song, Knight and Jia (1999:
88 table) found that more male respondents than women cited pursuit of "higher
income" as their motivation for migration, whereas the majority of female
respondents chose social reasons, such as "to get life experience."1 2 5 Of course, this
finding might simply be a factor of men's greater earning potential. Nonetheless,
preparing for future marriage is one expense shouldered disproportionately by young
men.
In contrast to sons, the patrilineal, patrilocal kinship system construes daughters to
be temporary and therefore expendable members of the natal household. At
marriage, daughters leave their natal households (chujia) and take on the identity of
“daughter-in-law.” In fact, marriage for rural women is commonly referred to as
finding a "mother-in-law's home” (popo jia), reaffirming that a bride's primary
responsibility is not to her own parents, but to her in-laws. As future daughters-in-
law, young women are considered to be only temporary members of their natal
households.1 2 6 As a result, relying on a daughter for the maintenance of the
marriage appears to be concomitant with increasing wealth, as a sign that men can afford a bride
earlier in life.
1 2 5 However, Woon (2000)’s interviews revealed this to be the primary motivation for male and
female migrants alike. The discrepancy with other research (e.g., Lee 1998), Woon offers, might be
attributed to her survey location, in Guangdong’s small towns (Woon 2000: 151).
1 2 6 A daughter's temporary membership in her natal household should not, however, be exaggerated.
Anthropologists and social historians have shown the ongoing links of married women with their natal
households (e.g., Judd 1994) and the importance of affinal ties in rural social life and economy.
Elisabeth Croll (1984) argues that in rural areas since reform, daughters are increasingly valued
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163
household economy could be only a temporary measure until her marriage. Thus,
whereas a son’s migration may be seen as integral to the household economy and to
the continuation of the family, a daughter's migration is more likely considered a
means of relieving the natal household of the expense of her daily subsistence by
being self-sufficient, rather than as earning potential.1 2 7 A daughter's labor— helping
in the fields and aiding mothers at household tasks—is, moreover, replaceable in
farm families where younger siblings are present to take over household tasks.
The consequence of note here is that when women do migrate for work, they are less
likely than men to be expected to earn more than their own keep. Li Shanshan put it
thus: “I didn't think about making money. Back then, for a young women in the
village, it was just enough to find a stable and safe (anxin) job.”
precisely for their very capacity to “marry out.” A daughter’ s “good” marriage creates reliable affinal
ties that may expand her natal household's social and economic networks. Similarly, in the
Heilongjiang village studied by Yunxiang Yan (1996: 39-41), parents encouraged daughters to marry
near their natal homes in order that they might make use of new affinal ties for business and trade
functions. Relying on one’s consanguineal kin as a business partner was less desirable to villagers
because feuding over inheritance rights could easily disrupt the business. Yet even these examples
emphasize the critical importance of and centrality of marriage in a young woman's life.
1 2 7 In very poor households having few laborers, young women’s help in family farming is certainly
critical to the household economy, but those who can migrate are already somewhat peripheral to that
economy. Hence their remittances tend to supplement the household budget, allowing for enhanced
consumption power (see Lee 1998 and Fan 2004). Studies of rural proletariat in industrializing
Taiwan and Hong Kong argued that unmarried women were valued for their ability to earn income for
their natal households, and were married later in order that their parents could profit from their labor.
Most migrant women in reform China also contribute to their family's income, although the difficulty
of earning income in the city makes their remittances irregular (e.g., Tan 2000). Nonetheless, there is
growing evidence from some villages that rural daughters’ increasing contributions to their
households’ economy through remittances is having a favorable impact on parents’ evaluation of their
daughters’ worth. Interestingly, this does not necessarily change ideas about gender differences.
Rather, daughters are seen as naturally more dutiful than sons, who are seen as naturally prone to
squandering their hard-earned wages on gambling or other vices (e.g., Lou et al. 2004).
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164
A corollary of the pivotal position of sons is that they generally receive a greater
proportion of household resources compared with daughters. In the reform period,
the cost of rural education has risen at the same time that the national government
has decreased funding to local schools. When families are unable to afford to educate
all their children, it is most often daughters who are withdrawn from school, in part
because educating someone else’s future daughter-in-law is not considered an
investment equal to educating a son.1 2 8 Indeed, a common refrain among my
informants was that they had dropped out of school, voluntarily or not, to allow
younger siblings to attend. Others lost interest, feeling that education was not so
important.
Wang Rong describes how the birth of a brother impacted her education, and
expresses great regret about having to cut short her own education. Wang Rong was
the middle daughter in a large family that included three elder and one younger
sisters, and one baby brother. After the birth of her younger brother, Wang Rong’s
mother voluntarily underwent sterilization, and was never fined for "excess births"
(chaosheng) because Wang Rong's uncle was party secretary of their Northern
Sha'anxi village. But the large number of children and the cost of education strained
1 2 8 Some scholars have argued that demand for women’s labor in the light industries of the Special
Economic Zones, together with the family planning policy, are favorably influencing parental
attitudes toward investing in daughters’ educations (Zhang H. 2003). While this is a welcome
improvement, it does not negate the principal of privileging boys: it is unlikely that parents would go
so far as to devote a household’s resources to daughters at the expense of sons.
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165
the family's resources. Wang Rong recounted with strong emotions how her parents
forced her to drop out after just one year of middle school. Wang Rong cried and
pleaded with them to let her stay in school, even physically scuffling with them.
Recalling that event years later, she was emotional, and still felt angry, although she
said she understood now that poverty gave her parents no other choice. None of her
elder sisters completed middle school either, but only Wang Rong showed such
resentment and stubbornness about quitting. She quipped, “I have the personality of
a boy!”
Like several of my informants who told similar stories, including Zhang Xiaqing,
Wang Rong put up quite a struggle when she was forced to leave school, and felt
bitterness and anger as she recalled that fateful day.1 2 9 However, her characterization
of her strong yearning for schooling as inappropriate for a girl also suggests the
extent to which young women may be invested in gender norms. Similarly, many
young women were proud of how their remittances or their absence from the
household would help finance or free up resources for younger siblings' education,
1 2 9 Consider the story of Li Mei (also discussed in chapter 5), who had been a promising student until,
at the end of her second year of middle school, she fell ill and was forced to stay at home from school
for one year. Lying in bed and worrying about missed schoolwork, Li Mei grew so despondent that
she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. She slept for four days and three nights, and no
one in her family was the wiser since she was already ill. Even after her recovery, Li Mei never
completed her studies, in part because her family could ill afford to send three children to school.
School fees per child were 1000 yuan annually, one-third of the family’s annual income (from
farming) of just 10,000 yuan. Also, her family did not see education as very important.
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166
1 ^(1
and usually siblings included at least one brother. Nonetheless, this story also
suggests that some young rural women may choose migration because in fact they
have little to risk, having already lost hope of bettering themselves through
education. Interestingly, as I will explain in Chapter 5, one positive, unintended
consequence of migration and work is that it allows young women to reflect upon
and question the fairness of gender-selective practices with regard to schooling
decisions made in their own households.
In general, a host of factors, including the kinship system and culturally constructed
gender roles, as well as state-supported policies and propaganda that buttress beliefs
about filiality and gender difference, circumscribe the opportunities for wives and
mothers in rural China to migrate while enabling the migration of young daughters,
sons, and husbands. Moreover, as I argue in the following section, young women’s
desires to migrate are particularly strong because of their liminal position in the
family, the kinship structure, and the lifecourse.
1 3 0 In a survey of female migrant workers to the Pearl River Delta, involving 1021 interviews of
migrant workers in 9 townships and districts of 6 cities, 1/4 of respondents said they sent their
remittances home to be used for house renovation or construction—often in preparation for a
brother’s future marriage, for their own dowries, or for their young siblings’ school fees. While
employed in the apparel factoiy and later as hotel janitors, the Zhou sisters were able to remit about
100 yuan a month, about 25% of their salary, to supplement their parents’ income. In particular, their
earnings were used to pay for their mothers’ medical bill and for tuition for a younger brother.
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The Liminalitv of Young Rural Women
During my visit to Zhang Xiaqing’s natal village, I met some of the neighbors'
children who had come over to the Zhang’s courtyard to visit. The three young girls,
aged 8,12, and 15, were gaily dressed for the holidays in red cotton-padded jackets,
their long hair decorated with red ribbons or covered by a red scarf. The youngest
was still enrolled in school, but her older sisters had not completed middle school. I
asked these two what they typically did all day? "Nothing," and then, "Just play"
were their replies, which my friend and her parents later confirmed.
Zhang Xiaqing's neighbors, at least the elder two, are typical of many young village
women, who might choose to migrate if given the opportunity. Migrant women
interviewed in Beijing often echoed such feelings of boredom. "There was nothing to
do in my village" {mei shi gan) or "I was idle" (lao xianzhe) were the most common
refrains I heard as women described their reasons for migration. A daughter's
marginal position relative to sons in the household economy in part explains such
responses. Yet taken in a metaphysical sense, such responses are articulations of
young women’s liminal position at a critical juncture of the life course just prior to
marriage.
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Following the completion of formal schooling1 3 1 and prior to settling down, young
rural women are liminally poised between carefree youth and responsible adulthood,
which is traditionally conferred upon marriage. For nearly all rural women, opting
out of marriage altogether is unthinkable as well as impractical, but it looms large on
the horizon because it signifies a certain loss of autonomy and end of idealism, even
as it holds promise for the future. The ambivalence about marriage is in part rooted
in the unique structure of marriage in rural China in which, Elisabeth Croll (1994:
210-211) argues, young women experience time as "discontinuous" or as a rupture,
as one life ends and another begins.
Sons take brides in order to continue the family line via offspring. The very
terminology "to marry" (chengjia), literally to create a family, reinforces marriage in
the interest of procreation. Of course, the emphasis on childbearing is at once a long-
established custom and a practical strategy, all the more necessary in the reform era
to provide social insurance in old age and reproduce laborers for the household. For
the most part, rural marriage has been seen to be primarily for the formation of a
stable nuclear family and only secondarily for individual emotional or sexual
fulfillment,, although this is changing (Yan 2003). Indeed, most rural couples bear
children shortly after marriage. Moreover, for young brides, childbearing may be a
strategic choice; a new bride's position in her new household is liminal, and insecure,
1 3 1 Compulsory education in China is nine years, as mandated by the state, through middle school.
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169
until she bears a child, particularly a son, which becomes the basis for her own
"uterine family" (Wolf 1972).1 3 2
Given that marriage implies spatial relocation and new identity as a member of a
new family, and possibly in a new household, it is no wonder that many young
women view marriage both with trepidation and anticipation. In fact, most young
women imagine limitless possibilities for their future, only to be largely disappointed
• 1 ,
by reality. New brides married far from home may find themselves unable to get
along with their in-laws, or be homesick.1 3 4 Moreover, in the context of late socialist
modernity, young rural women who fail to achieve social mobility through marriage
or otherwise avoid becoming a peasant farmer’s wife may feel keen disappointment.
In extreme forms, rural women may express disillusionment with love and marriage
through suicide. Although China has 21% of world's population, it is responsible for
44% of world's reported suicides, and 56% of women's suicides globally (Phillips et
al. 2001). Nearly 20% of deaths among young rural women aged 15-35 are the result
1 3 2 Not only is there pressure for young couples to procreate, but since reforms there is increasing
pressure on women to bear sons, who are traditionally valued for their association with agricultural
work. Pressure on rural households for male farm labor under the household responsibility system
contributed to undermining the initial “one-child” family planning policy (Greenhalgh and Li 1995).
On the other hand, recent scholarship points to lessening of son preference in areas where women’s
employment opportunities, including via migration, are established and in concert with the promotion
of smaller families through family planning (Zhang, H. 2003; Short 2003).
1 3 3 Croll 1994: 209-212; cf. Emotions o f Rural Chinese Women (Zhongguo nongcun funu qinggan
zishu) 2000.
1 3 4 For a study of adaptive strategies of brides who marry far from home, see Tan and Short 2004.
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170
of suicide (Ibid.). While the roots of such high suicide rates are still being
investigated and debated, evidence indicates that young women's frustration with
their inability to change the course of their rural destiny are a factor. For example,
according to a report in the South China Morning Post (October 15,1988), in rural
Jiangxi province in 1988, “fifteen young women dressed themselves in choice
clothes and threw themselves in group into a lake. Some of them were reported to
believe that after they died they might return to live better lives as urban girls.” This
anecdote reinforces my observation that some rural women may face migration
without care for its potential risks, for they truly feel they have nothing left to lose.
Facing an uncertain future after marriage, young women may thus seize upon
migration as the last chance for autonomy and independence, resulting perhaps in
some sense of continuity between youth and adulthood. In addition, as I explore in
chapter 6, migration may also be a conscious or unconscious strategy for young
women to change their destiny (mingyun). By remaining in the cities, young women
can delay marriage in the hope they might make a better match than what would be
available to them in the context of their local home community— namely, a fellow
peasant.
To the many young rural women who complain of boredom, migration promises
some diversion and even a chance to "find excitement" (zhao renao) or otherwise be
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171
useful and productive. As I suggest above, feelings of restlessness may be tied to
young women's life course and their mixed attitudes toward their future married life.
In addition, the position of daughters as “temporary” members of their natal
households, combined with gender roles and expectations, mean that young
women—at least those with brothers-- are generally not generally expected to be
primary contributors to household income either through agricultural participation or
off-farm work, but instead are appreciated for becoming self-sufficient, saving for
their own dowry, or providing supplemental income to the household. Thus, young
women's desire and opportunity to migrate are shaped within the context of rural
gender and kinship. Consequently, migration should not been seen as an outright
rejection of roles and identities associated with rural women as members of families,
kin groups and villages—that is, as dutiful daughters and (future) virtuous wives.
However, migration has consequences for rural women, their families and rural
society as it infuses new meaning to these gender identities. Moreover, the migration
decision does demonstrate young rural women’s efforts to take control of the present,
if not the future, and instills them with a sense of purpose and direction.
This social construction of gender also supports capitalist managers’ view of migrant
women workers as a flexible labor force. As culture dictates that young rural women
will ultimately return to the countryside, marry, and settle into the role of mother and
farmwife, managers can get away with compensating them at rates beneath that
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172
necessary to support an entire rural household, keeping them dependent on their
families for medical or other expenses rather than receiving company benefits, and
firing them upon marriage without severance pay or a pension. Young rural women’s
temporary and outsider status in the urban environment that is maintained by the
household registration system and discriminatory labor practices then appears a
“natural” consequence of gender.
Compromising Virtue
Unmarried daughters leaving their villages caused parents and village elders
consternation because migration appeared to challenge their traditional authority in
matters of young women’s sexuality and marriage (Wolf, D. 1992; Mills 1999).1 3 5 In
China, communist revolutionary strategy promoted modem ideas of "free choice
marriage" in both urban and rural areas as a means to weaken local forms of
authority and identity (e.g., the patriarchal clan and family) while reinforcing
individuals’ identification with and loyalty to the nation and party-state. China’s
1949 Marriage Law abolished practices of arranged marriages and marriage
transactions like bride price, which were denigrated as "feudal." Land reform and
collectivization, as mentioned above, transferred control of land holdings from
patriarchal clans and elders to the state and its representatives, in turn reinforcing the
1 3 5 Mills (1999) also points to the importance of parental control of a daughter’s labor power and
earnings.
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independence of the individual in decisions about marriage. Since Liberation,
arranged marriages have grown increasingly rare, yet mate selection absent of
parental involvement is still not the norm. Generally, in the reform period as before,
rural youth rely on intermediaries, whether family, friends, or even professional go-
betweens, to facilitate marriage introductions; these practices coexist with the
modern ideal of “romantic love” (Parish and Whyte 1978: 173; Yan, Y. 2003: 61-
63).
In light of such changes, or despite them, young rural women’s marriage prospects
continued to be linked to virtue, among other factors like age and appearance. As
marriage occupies a central place in rural women’s life course, parents and daughters
alike wished to maintain a young woman’s good reputation. Yet because migration
connoted moral impropriety, it threatened to sully a daughter’s reputation and hence
the family’s good name. As explained in Chapter 2, in China during the republican
and early communist periods, before the establishment of the household registration
system, women who sought work outside of the village, and itinerant women in
general, were considered morally suspect and lacking in feminine virtue.1 3 6
1 3 6 According to elite neo-Confucian standards of behavior, women were to be confined to the “inner”
sphere of physical and social life, interacting only with close kin. Those women who violated such
gender prescriptions were assumed to be sexually promiscuous and therefore disreputable. Often
poverty or family tragedy, such as widowhood, was the catalyst for moving out of the village, and so
women’s migration was also associated with economic deprivation and the lower classes. (Mann
1997: 30-44; Pruitt 1967).
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According to elite neo-Confucian standards of behavior, women were to be confined
to the “inner” sphere of physical and social life, interacting only with close kin.
Those women who violated such gender prescriptions were assumed to be sexually
promiscuous and therefore disreputable. Often poverty or family tragedy, such as
widowhood, was the catalyst for moving out of the village, and so women’s
migration was also associated with economic deprivation and the lower classes.
(Mann 1997: 30-44; Pruitt 1967).
In the Post-Reform era, this gendered construction of virtue was further imbricated in
1T7
a moral discourse on wealth. Official support for increased consumer spending in
the reform period was tempered by popular outrage against corruption and official
1 3 8
condemnation of excessive consumption outside the parameters of law and order.
Such ambivalence toward wealth was mapped onto discourse of women's sexual
virtue, not least because some of the highest paid jobs for female migrants in the city
involved the commercialization of female sexuality, as in the entertainment sector
(see Zheng 2004). In this sense, the bodies and character of young migrant women
were blamed for the challenges to social mores wrought by liberalizing consumption
1 3 7 Liu (2000, pp. 12-14,167-8) attributes the moral discourse on corruption and wealth and a
nostalgia for the Maoist era, expressed by peasants in the North Shaanxi village he studied, to
villagers' increasing sense of powerlessness and anxiety about being left behind in the quest for
economic and cultural modernity. More generally, the moral discourse on consumption reflects
unease with increasing social stratification, a glaring reversal of Maoist ideals of equality and
hallmark of the Deng legacy.
1 3 8 In addition to punishing corrupt officials or factory bosses, the state has periodically cracked down
on "vices" such as prostitution, pornography, the production of phony goods, and so on.
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habits, particularly of "deep-pocketed" (dakuan) middle class men, challenges which
threatened the stability of the nuclear household and the official construction of
"woman" as a "virtuous wife and good mother" (Sun 2004). Thus in the early 1980s,
rural elites were scandalized by the first exodus of unmarried daughters from the
1 TO
village, and lamented it would make the village “look bad.” Only as more women
from any one village or county participated in migration did criticism about the
corruptive influence of wealth abate, and local officials even facilitated young
women's migration when they realized the value of their remittances (Gong 1998:
60). Nevertheless, young rural women considering migration had to weigh the
consequences of being associated with such negative stereotypes as excessive
consumption and devise ways to balance their desires and goal for migration with
their concerns for their future marriage decisions. As Li Shanshan explains:
When I went out to work, my family didn't really support me. They worried that
a girl who went out would ruin her reputation (mingxin bu haoting), so I told
them that I wasn't "chasing money", I was just going out to work in a safe place.
Young rural women contemplating journeying out of the village risked violating
gender norms associated with rural patriarchy as well as the official construction of
womanhood, both of which reinforced rural women's position as a (future) wife and
mother as primary, and the role as migrant-worker as secondary.
1 3 9 Gong 1998: 60, quoting a local official from Wuwei county, Anhui province, the origin of many
domestic workers in the 1980s.
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Rural Migrant Women and the Contradictions of Modernity
In late socialist modernity, rural youth are discursively inscribed in a moral
geography and teleology of modernity such that leaving rural China is perceived to
be mandatory to modernizing oneself, one’s family, village, and the nation. As
neoliberal discourses shape ideas of self and subjectivity, participation in migration
and wage work are also becoming a means for individuals to cultivate their
individual talents and exercise individual prerogatives. Thus migration is a new rite
of passage into adulthood.
In addition, a cultural construction of gender based on an ideology of separate
spheres, a gendered division of labor, and a patrilineal kinship and marriage system,
in tandem with state policies and propaganda that reinforce these, leads to highly
gendered migration patterns. In particular, women’s migration decisions tended to be
based on non-economic considerations and were formulated in the context of their
liminal position in the household and family, as well as in the lifecourse, which in
turn strengthened the lure of the city and modernity in their eyes.
Recognizing the motivations and goals propelling young rural women to the cities is
key to understanding their ambivalent attitudes toward their experiences of migration
and work and toward the future, which I explore in the next few chapters. On the one
hand migration allows them to express and pursue their desires and is therefore
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empowering. Most importantly, migration has “unintended consequences” of
transforming existing rural gender relations and ideas about a daughter’s worth, even
as cultural categories of gender and identity remain salient. On the other hand,
beyond the village young rural women encounter much hardship and heartbreak,
leaving many yearnings unfulfilled.
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CHAPTER FOUR
NEGOTIATING DUTY AND DESIRE:
GENDERED EXPERIENCES OF MIGRATION AND WORK
Introduction
This chapter continues to explore the complex construction of identity by analyzing
young rural migrant women’s everyday reality as they journey to the city and find
work, in their everyday lives on the job, and their interactions with urban employers
and coworkers. Speaking of rural Chinese women workers in early 20th century
Shanghai’s cotton mills, Emily Honig (1986:135) observed: “daily routine
represents the social reality from which their consciousness of themselves as women
and as workers eventually emerged.” So too in this chapter I hope to illuminate how
new ideas and experiences of migration and work impacted the identities and
subjectivities of my informants in Beijing.
In the following sections, I describe the migration journeys, job searches, and work
experiences of rural women who enter service occupations. I argue that the structure
and labor process of domestic work and housekeeping as well as employee-employer
relationships tend to reproduce gender and rural-urban (i.e., class) differences and
hierarchy; moreover, gender difference often mediates class and vice versa.
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My research also suggests that rural migrant women are not merely passive victims
of oppressive discursive practices that relegate them to servile jobs and second-class
social status in the cities. Rather, in various ways, they creatively adapt “traditional”
cultural beliefs and social behaviors to this new context, which allows them to
mediate the contradictions posed by “modernity.”
Agency can be discerned in young women’s adaptation of familiar gender and
kinship roles and identities to unfamiliar contexts, such as in their use of reciprocal
relationships, or guanxi, and affective ties, ganqing, in the workplace. I show that
while social relations of a personalistic nature benefit employers by reinforcing class
inequality, they are also a form of social capital that benefit rural women by
facilitating job searches, improving work conditions, and attaining upward mobility.
Leaving the Village: The Art of Reciprocal Relations (euanxi)
The cross-cultural literature on internal and transnational migration indicates that
migrants utilize place-based social networks of kinship and co-villagers to facilitate
their migration. Similarly, young women in the village learn about city life and work
opportunities mainly from their close relatives and friends, as this quote from Xie
Aimin suggests:
Before, I didn't know anything about Beijing. I learned about Beijing from my
elder brother's wife. She went to Beijing and said how everything there was so
great.
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The literature suggests that local social networks expedite migration by providing
access to information (about destinations, jobs, housing), material support (loans,
housing) and survival knowledge after arriving in the city, as well as companionship.
In China in particular, the lack of institutional support for migrants and the high costs
of such formal linkages as employment agencies, which levy fees and are often
shady operations, reinforce informal migrant networks. In essence, social networks
are a form of social capital that lead to material benefits.
These social networks are particularly critical to young rural women whose
migration pathways are otherwise constrained by gendered social mores. Given the
cultural proscriptions against mobile women discussed in Chapter 2, social networks
based on kinship and native place assuage parental concerns for their daughter’s
physical safety and moral reputation. Generally, someone familiar— a relative, co
villager, friend or former classmate, usually someone older who is already
established in Beijing— is trusted to provide accurate information about job
opportunities, arrange for short-term lodging in the city or introductions to
prospective employers, and ideally be accountable for a new migrant's personal
safety and moral integrity. I quote Xie Aimin again here:
I had no way to go out, not knowing anyone. But then my mother sent some gifts
to that old lady, who then took me out to work.. .Her daughter was my primary
school classmate.. .In her employer’ s household there was a dormitory, like those
ones they used to have at People's University specially for domestic workers. I
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lived with her there, for more than a month.. .later she found me a
place.. .helping a couple care for an infant.
In keeping with local practices of social reciprocity and relationships (guanxi), a gift
establishes an obligation to reciprocate. Here, the local woman is made accountable
to Xie Aimin's mother for the young woman’s safe arrival and care in Beijing. This
example suggests ways in which the logistics of the migration journey may be a
result of negotiations of young women with their concerned parents. By facilitating
young women's search for work in a secure manner, social networks provide the
chance for daughters to actualize their own ambitions to go to the city with the
approval and support of their families.
Participation in the production of social networks and reciprocal relationships
(guanxi) is an integral expression of peasant identity (Kipnis 1997; Liu, X. 2000;
Yan Y. 1996). Such relationships are further cemented by an emotive or affective
component (ganqing). The filial sentiment shared by children and their elders is the
ultimate source of human relations or gwaraxi-building in rural China (Kipnis 1997).
Young rural women are thus “naturally” motivated in their capacity as filial
daughters to choose particular migration pathways that produce guanxi for
themselves and their families.
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However, in the eyes of the Chinese state as it espouses modernization and
development, such personalistic networks formed outside of formal institutions are
not “modem” and rational but rather remnants of the feudal past. Yet scholars of
guanxi in China have cogently argued that social networks and reciprocal relations
are central to the reproduction of social life in both mral (e.g., Kipnis 1997; Liu, X.
2000; Yan Y. 1996) and urban China (e.g., Yang, M. 1994; Wank 2000), and have
tangible and subversive effects, namely as they challenge state claims to hegemony.
In fact, social networks are very much forms of cultural and social capital.
In rural China, the art of guanxi-building in the public arena is generally considered
mainly a male purview in part because, as “ guanxixue involves mixing with a wide
assortment of people in society, it is not good for a woman’s social reputation (M.
Yang 1994: 79).1 4 0 A daughter’s migration may depend upon her family having
established guanxi networks with kin and co-villagers not only to facilitate her
journey and urban employment but also to protect her reputation. However, her
migration may also be productive of further guanxi for the family, as in turn she
helps to facilitate kin and co-villager’s migration and urban employment. Ultimately,
forging new social ties with employers and urbanites, she may even expand her
1 4 0 According to the literature on guanxi, rural women’s opportunities and capacity to generate guanxi
mainly occur in the context of their domestic roles as daughters, wives, and mothers— such as on
occasions of weddings and childbirth (Yang 1994: 81). Women’s roles in guanxixue tend toward
maintaining good relations with kin and friends, rather than gaining material or political benefits
(Ibid: 28).
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family’s social network beyond the village. In this way, a daughter’s migration helps
her family accrue symbolic and social capital, with positive benefit for family’s
material and well-being. Moreover, young rural women themselves can feel proud to
be seen by others as the “go-to” person who has “connections” outside the village.
However, this pull of duty may exact from a rural daughter a sacrifice of some
autonomy, as it enmeshes her in ongoing obligations of reciprocity. For example, Wu
Xiaomei found her job when Beijing administrators of the state-supported charity
Project Hope visited a school they funded in her hometown where Wu’s sister
happened to be a teacher. Through her sister’s introduction, Wu met a Project Hope
administrator from Beijing who invited the young woman to Beijing to provide
childcare as a live-in domestic worker for the administrator’s household. Given
Project Hope’s support for her sister, Wu felt obliged to accept the job offer. She
worked for the Project Hope administrator’s family for two years, even after she
realized that her monthly salary of just 200 yuan was far below the going rate for
domestic service. Similarly, Tian Weiwei became the domestic worker for the
household of a family friend, a revolutionary cadre retired from the Ministry of
Finance, at the behest of her father, a lower ranking cadre. However obligated Tian
was to accept such a request, she interpreted the opportunity as an expression of her
father's support for her ambitions: “My dad wanted me to go out and get life
experience (duanlian).” For the sake of preserving the social relationship between
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184
her father and her employer, though, Tian also endured ridiculously low wages in her
new position:
I earned 50 or 60 yuan per month. It was low. Back then domestic workers were
earning about 300 yuan a month, in 1993. Over three years my salary was raised
to 100 yuan... .Usually, whatever humiliation I suffered, I didn't speak up.
Guanxi likewise both enabled and curtailed Zhou Lili’s migration and work
opportunities. Zhou’s father had worked in the coal mines since his youth, but in the
1980s he became a cadre in a government office in the county seat. That position
allowed him to expand his social networks beyond the remote mountainous village.
Using his connections, Mr. Zhou found Zhou Lili work weaving carpets in a
township and village enterprise (TVE) when she was just 14 years old. Later he
found her a job in a provincial town, in a factory that produced plastic sacks. When
after six months of work Zhou Lili still had not been paid, her father found her a
waitress job in a restaurant in the county seat. But his feisty daughter did not get on
with the chef, whom she claimed frequently criticized her for being clumsy and
sloppy. In defiance, thrice Zhou Lili quit the restaurant and returned home, only to
have her father personally escort her back to the restaurant. Zhou Lili explained that
her father was forced to do so to maintain his “face” (mianzi)m or reputation among
those contacts who had helped him find his daughter the job, and with whom he had
guanxi obligations.
1 4 1 See Hu 1944 and Yang 1945: 167-72 for anthropological discussions of this Chinese concept.
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Just as first-time migrants rely on the help of others to facilitate migration, so too
returned migrants are obligated to become facilitators themselves. Rural
communities depend greatly on migrants and other villagers with urban connections
for information about job opportunities and for job introductions. In a visit back to
her natal northern Shaanxi village, hotel worker Zhou Lili was accosted by her
fellow villagers demanding introductions to jobs, while her Beijing husband was
approached by go-betweens (i.e., informal matchmakers) inquiring about the
availability of prospective husbands from among his friends! Zhou Lili’s reaction to
such pressure was a mixture of annoyance and pride at her own enhanced social
standing:
You just can’t help everyone, and not everyone has the capability to do well in
Beijing. Nor can I do much as I make so little money myself and my husband is
unemployed. But in their eyes we are better off than them, so if I don’t help, they
will say I’m selfish.
As her words imply, the impetus to perpetuate the social networks is not removed
from concerns about social obligations and maintaining or gaining face. As another
migrant woman, also a hotel worker, intoned, “If you don’t help fellow villagers,
they will gossip about you back in the village.” Fear of harmful gossip, including of
sexual and moral bent, in part drives young rural women to fulfill reciprocal guanxi
relations. Guanxi is thus a cultural practice that indirectly enforces young rural
women’s social roles as daughters and members of kin-based social networks. Yet
there are also material and social benefits in attending to such social ties. For
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186
example, the Zhou sisters as well as their father often received gifts from the families
of young village women, or the young women themselves, seeking the Zhou’s help
in going to Beijing and/or find jobs in Beijing. Together the sisters brought half a
dozen young women to Beijing.
In general, few migrant women pursued job opportunities independent of informal
social networks. Some did find jobs by responding to print advertisements or
attending county labor recruitment fairs, such as those organized in conjunction with
the Women’s Federation that targeted recruitment of domestic workers.1 4 2 But
official channels of recruitment were neither systematized nor extensive, and
furthermore, because they charged fees for services, were not cost effective for most
migrants. Migrants were also wary of such organizations, having heard widespread
rumors (many of them true) about being tricked out of the application fee, or worse
(e.g., tricked into prostitution). Leafing through a newspaper one day in my Beijing
apartment, Zhou Lina pointed out which job advertisements she suspected were out
to “trick people” (pian ren). Run by strangers, not kin or co-villagers, such agencies
appeared untrustworthy and risky.
1 4 2 For example, the first 200 members of the Migrant Women’s Club were young women recruited
through their local (county) Women’s Federations and Labor Bureaus and placed as domestic workers
by the March 8 Domestic Service Introduction Company.
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On the other hand, young women who found jobs of their own accord seemed to
have a profound experience of learning and empowerment by the process itself,
gaining important skills of research, interviewing, projecting self-confidence, and
negotiation. Ma Ning, who had located her first employer through the Beijing
Dongcheng Women's Federation's Domestic Service Introduction Company, spoke
of the negotiating skills needed to be a successful interview candidate.
At first, it was me who negotiated with the employer. Those people there [i.e.,
the company personnel], they don't go out and find an employer to talk to you.
It's you who seeks out the employers. You must rely on yourself. Like, if the
employer looks down on you, you must convince them [they can] rely on your
ability. They asked me if I could do certain chores. Then we signed the contract.
I was really nervous. It's your first time seeing each other. Employers are really
nervous too. You try to see what they are like, see if they seem O.K.
Generally, however, the lack of alternative job recruitment pathways pushed women
into dependence on family and peer-based social networks.
Utilizing kinship networks and cultural notions of reciprocity is also an effective
response to potential dangers faced by young women during on the migration
journey. By traveling with a familiar escort, such as a co-villager, male kin, or even
a county Women's Federation official, most young women accommodated concerns
for personal safety as well as social reputations in their journey to Beijing. As Li
Shanshan explains,
[In my village] some of the heads of households whose thinking was rather
'feudal' (fengjian) said it was bad for girls to go out to work, that it was better for
men to go out. But in my case, my older brother was in Beijing, and he went out
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188
with me. My mom was worried at first, and I was a little worried about coming
so far, but having relatives [in Beijing] helped.
Even those who dared travel alone cautiously prepared for every possible
emergency, including failure to find work at their destination, as did Liu Fanmei:
Going out to be a domestic worker, I also worried that I would be cheated
(shoupian). Then what would I do? So that day that I went out I took some
money, including enough for the return fare and three days' living expenses. This
money came from my parents, because I'd only done house chores and worked
on the family plot. If something happened, I would only stay in Beijing one day,
visit Tiananmen Square, and then go home.
Social networks were also a source of emotional support and companionship for
young migrant women away from home for perhaps the first time in their lives.
Wang Rong told me how her elder sister, already working in Beijing, kept her
company every night for the first week that Wang Rong was in Beijing. Wang Rong
did the same for their younger sister when in turn she came out to Beijing to work.
Groups of young women from one village may form small, informal communities in
the city, only to be replaced by the peer group, which consists of other migrants,
such as co-workers, not necessarily lfom one area.
Finally, when rumors regarding young women’s behaviors flow back home through
channels of co-villagers and co-migrants, such social networks serve to extend the
reach of rural patriarchal authority into the cities, regulating gender and enforcing
standards of sexuality and morality expected of village daughters. For example, Xie
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189
Aimin expressed the following disdain for another rural migrant, whose similar
background would certainly have been the grounds for solidarity had she not been
judged of low moral quality due to a lust for money:
Their household had two domestic workers, one to cook, and I took care of the
baby. That one who did their cooking was also from Anhui, and we were about
the same age. But her motive in coming out to work was just to make money.
Similarly, Zhou Lili explained how she determined which co-villagers were
deserving of the chance to migrate to Beijing with her help. By 2002, Zhou
explained,
I’ve helped six or seven [female co-villagers] already, and more want to come.
But I have to check out their household’s situation first. If their reputation is
good, I’ll help them come out, but not otherwise.
In response to my query about what factored into her consideration of their
“reputations,” Zhou replied:
For example, whether their family is stingy, whether the kid is naughty and steals
stuff, whether villagers say bad stuff about them or look down on them. It
doesn’t matter if their household is rich or not, it’s about what the rest of the
village thinks about them. I helped two girls find work in a clothing factory in
Beijing. But not long after they arrived, about two months, one started skipping
work. There was a man in the courtyard where they resided who flirted with one
of them, the pretty one, and bought her clothes and took her out on dates. When
she ‘saw the money, her eyes opened wide’ (ta jian qian yan kai); she just saw he
had money and stopped going to work, and spent nights with him, and didn’t
come back [to sleep]! I didn’t know what they were up to, just that she would go
out [at night]. I couldn’t control her. Later, her dad called me up and said that
although we’re the same age, I had more experience (bijiao dongshi) and asked
me to watch her (guanjiao), make sure nothing happened. So I wrote a letter to
her father. I wrote, ‘You best understand your own daughter. She’s an adult; I
can’t tell her what to do. She does what she wants to do. If this isn’t okay, I’ll
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190
send her back to you.’ After the New Year, our boss fired her, because she often
stayed out all night and didn’t show up for work. Then she went back home to
the village, and didn’t come out again.”
These examples illustrate that social networks (guanxi) and affective bonds
(ganqing) are integral to the migration process, and are particularly significant for
this understanding of gendered migration patterns and the reproduction of gender
roles and identities, as these are imbricated with kinship relations and filial
sentiments. Use of guanxi networks is a practical strategy for young rural women
constrained by a dearth of formal channels of migration and recruitment. Using
guanxi is also culturally and personally meaningful to them. By upholding
obligations of social relations (guanxi) that migration entails, dutiful daughters
express their devotion to their families. Indeed, because participation in guanxi
networks through migration allows young rural women to accrue social as well as
material capital for themselves and their families, it can be seen to be empowering
women. However, utilizing guanxi networks may not fundamentally challenge
hierarchies of gender and age in the rural household. Indeed, it may reinforce a rural
patriarchal kinship structure and related gender roles. Moreover, as C. Cindy Fan
(2004) has observed, gendered social networks of female kin and co-villagers that
facilitate the migration of rural women from China’s countryside also contribute to
the homogenizing of women’s migration experiences, and replicate gendered
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191
divisions of labor into the urban arena. Now I turn attention to rural migrant
women’s work experiences.
Domestic Service
workins conditions
As is common among rural-to-urban female migrants in other places and times,
young rural Chinese women are channeled into live-in domestic service as a first job
in the city. Although domestic service pays relatively low wages compared to other
jobs available to migrant women, it appeals to many newly arrived women migrants
in Beijing as a matter of convenience. Live-in domestic service requires relatively
little initial capital outlay yet resolves the immediate crisis of finding shelter.1 4 3
Additionally, as domestic work is regarded by workers and employers alike not as
skilled labor, but rather as an extension of women's social roles as mothers and
wives, it is wide open to newly arrived young women with no prior work experience
or with low educational levels.
Live-in domestic service is hard work that is poorly remunerated. But the aspect of
this occupation that most influences workers’ self-perceptions is its social stigma, as
commonly acknowledged. The stigma associated with domestic work appears to
1 4 3 Whereas employees of the contract cleaning company, whose work conditions I explore below,
were required to acquire a Temporary Residence Permit issued by the Public Security Bureau in order
to keep their job, privatized domestic service was not as rigorously policed. Often a domestic worker
would merely register with her employer’s residence or neighborhood committee, for a nominal fee.
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result from its historical association with poverty and gender transgression, like
female migration generally, but is compounded by its association with servility.
Performing intimate tasks not for one's immediate kin but for strangers, despite
compensation, seems to be virtual servitude. In emphasizing to me the demeaning
quality of domestic work, Xie Aimin gave the example of "cleaning dirty diapers"
daily. Still others point to the lack of respect and human dignity accorded domestic
workers as exacerbating the social stigma of domestic service. A rather extreme
example was that told to me by a part-time (live-out) domestic worker, whose
employer refused to allow her to clean the toilet with anything other than her bare
hand. Fortunately the worker was able to quit her employ immediately, since she
had other part-time jobs. Zhang Xiaqing, whose story is excerpted in the
introduction, experienced a similar indignity, caring for the spoiled child of a
working couple who continually blamed her for their son’s shenanigans, yet objected
if she tried to discipline the child. She was particularly humiliated when she was
made to wash the child’s feet—considered the dirtiest part of the body and a rather
intimate act— in front of the adults, who laughed when their naughty son splashed her
with dirty tub water.
Not only employers and urbanites, even fellow migrants might show disrespect for
domestic workers. Tian Weiwei's general sense of strangeness and inferiority in the
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city was compounded by her interactions with migrant vendors at the produce
market:
I never regretted [coming out]; it's just that, doing domestic service, you feel like,
when you've just started, like when you are going to market, everyone has a bad
attitude toward you. ... They hear by your accent that you have just come o u t....
[The vendors] know you are a domestic worker.
The stigma of domestic work threatens to ruin one's reputation at home as well,
damaging one's pride, and one’s family’s face (mianzi) if not also one's marriage
prospects. In order to save face in front of other villagers and sometimes even
family members, many women hide the truth of the work they do in Beijing. In Tien
Weiwei’s words: “Back home, if you say you are a domestic worker, it's like you are
inferior (direnyide ng).”
The overlap of work and living space, and the physical proximity of a domestic
worker to her employer, blur the boundaries between work time and rest time, and
public and private space, leaving domestic workers particularly vulnerable to
exploitation.1 4 4 Live-in domestic workers reside with members of their employer's
household, in apartment buildings (loufang) or in one-story brick houses (pingfang)
similar to their homes in the village. Labor bureau regulations stipulate that domestic
workers are supposed to have their own rooms, but most double up in their
employer's household with their elderly or youthful charges (Beijing Laodongju
1 4 4 There is an extensive literature on the unique work conditions of domestic service, including
Rollins 1985, Romero 1992, Nakano-Glenn 1992, and Anderson 2000, to name but a few.
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1995,1999). Not only because of living arrangements, but also because of the
demands of care-giving for infants or for the sick or incapacitated elderly, who
demand round-the-clock attention, domestic workers may be called upon at all hours
of the day and night. Characteristically, domestic workers frequently complain of
being overworked and exhausted. As Xie Airnin complained, “I never slept until
after ten o ’clock at night. Everyday I cried and cried.”
A typical day for Li Shanshan, caring for an elderly couple, began earlier than she
was accustomed to in the countryside:
In the morning, Beijing people get up earlier, at 6 A.M. I helped them wash their
hair, then heated them some milk, and went outside to the courtyard to purchase
breakfast and fresh milk.
Demands on their time made workers complain of “having no time for one’s self’
(meiyou ziji de shijian). At most, domestic workers rest one day a week, but most
have no days off unless they request to return for a visit to their village. “They didn't
offer [time off], and anyway, I had nowhere to go,” Tien Weiwei explained. Li
Shanshan elaborated:
Working in someone's house, you are restricted (shou yueshu). If they say you
can't go out, you can't go out. If you go out, you still have to worry, afraid that
they'll get angry when you return.
Moreover, the tasks of a domestic worker are all-encompassing and never-ending.
Most domestic workers take care of housecleaning, laundering, marketing, food
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preparation, cooking, and dishwashing for the entire household each day, on top of
ministering to the special needs of children and elderly and attending to the needs of
visitors or guests. In addition, most employers require more of their employees than
just the basic requirements of household reproduction, sometimes making demands
simply to display their power over her very person, not just her labor (Anderson
2000). Among the domestic workers I met, running errands, escorting children to and
from school, and even helping out in the family businesses were routine demands
made by employers. For example, Tian Weiwei had to care for a three-generation
family of five. The household head demanded an extra meal each night:
When I first started, the workload was very heavy. The (male) household head, at
ten P.M., would need to eat a 'midnight snack' (yexiao), so I prepared four meals
(a day). That elderly man had taken part in the revolution, and was used to eating
a late-night snack.
The old man's status as a former revolutionary, a "national treasure," increased his
authority over the younger woman, who would seem disrespectful to refuse to
accommodate his wishes.
Often domestic workers do not control where they work or for whom they work.
Some domestic workers are dispatched by their employer to care for a sick or
terminally ill household member confined to a hospital, sleeping in the hospital
dormitory or even in the sick room with their charge and taking orders from their
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196
employer, their patient, and the nurses alike.1 4 5 Others are hired as domestic workers
only to be employed as full-time workers in their employer's private business. For
example, Ma Ning worked during the day at the family's drycleaning business, but
also did laundry and cooking for the family as needed. Another domestic worker
tended her employer’s clothing stall during the daylight hours, and returned to their
residence at night to cook and clean. Still others are "lent out" part-time as a favor to
their employer's friends, or are casually traded back and forth between related
households.
Not only do domestic workers rarely control the content of their work, neither do
they control how they do their work. As they leam their tasks, they are frequently
supervised by their employer or a household member, and in turn have to police their
own actions, leading Ma Ning to conclude:
Working in someone else's home is not like being in your own home. You have
to remember that. You have to get used to their home. You must have a sense of
propriety (fencun) when you do things in other peoples' homes.
Surveillance by an employer may be a blatant indicator of mistrust. Not a few
domestic workers have “voluntarily” proffered their bags for inspection prior to their
departure. Recall how Zhang Xiaqing’s employer indirectly accused her of taking a
pair of her shoes on the day prior to her scheduled departure, a few days after she
1 4 5 Some nurse's assistants (hugong; hull) are paid by the hospital as temporary staff; others are
domestic workers hired by the patients or their families.
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had given notice. Zhang angrily gave a verbal description of the contents of her
suitcase, noting that “I came here with one pair of old shoes and am wearing them
now,” and offered to have her suitcase searched. Embarrassed, her employer backed
off, denying she had implicated Zhang.
Given the limited occupations available to migrant women, domestic service is not
an unreasonable choice, particularly for a first job. Yet the social stigma of the work,
often reinforced by degrading treatment from employers, undermines much of the
gains of going out to work. Moreover, employer's control of worker's spare time, the
lack of privacy, and lack of freedom to manage the process of work can leave
workers feeling psychologically “stressed and depressed” {hen yayi). For many,
domestic work feels akin to indentured servitude or slavery, as Liu Fanmei
poignantly conveyed: “I felt that I had been sold into someone's home.”
The unique features of domestic service—its location in private space, the overlap of
work and leisure space and time—make domestic worker particularly vulnerable to
exploitation. Though no comprehensive statistics exist to indicate what percentage of
domestic workers experience mental or physical abuse, surveys suggest rates could
be as high as 65%, with verbal abuse predominant (Tang 1998). Women's Federation
officials likewise acknowledge that sexual abuse of domestic workers by employers
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is not uncommon.1 4 6 At a 1999 conference on migrant women worker's rights, one
migrant woman testified publicly about the sexual harassment she experienced in her
employer's household, at the hands of her elderly male charge (Tian 1999). Extreme
cases of physical and sexual abuse of domestic workers have caught media attention
and garnered popular outrage.1 4 7 Yet very often such reportage sensationalizes
violence and perpetuates stereotypes of rural women; rarely does it offer critique of
the systemic or institutional causes of such tragedies (Sun 2004). Moreover,
mundane forms of exploitation are rarely addressed, perhaps because domestic work
is not seen in the same light as other occupations.
On paper, China's Labor Law (1994) guarantees the rights of all workers, including
migrants, whether employed in the formal state or joint-venture sector or in the
private and informal sector; in practice rights are frequently violated.1 4 8 The
invisibility of paid domestic work to public scrutiny and its common acceptance as
women's work or “chores” (jiawu) rather than skilled work compromises migrant
domestic workers' legal status. In fact, domestic workers are legally considered to be
1 4 6 Discussion at Migrant Women’s Club with Deng Xiaohui, a lawyer for the Women's Federation,
May 11, 1999.
1 4 7 Examples include: “Death of a maid leads to suit.” Beijing Daily (Beijing Ribao), November 9,
1999; “Employer’s window has a hidden danger: Unwary maid falls several floors.” People’ s Court
Daily (Renmin Fayuan Bao), September 19,2000. See also my discussion of the cases of Wang Li
and Xiao Li in chapter 6.
1 4 8 For examples culled from domestic and overseas media reports, see Chan 2001. Shenzhen lawyer
Zhou Litai, an advocate for migrant workers in export-processing factories, reports an accident
statistic of 30 limbs lost per day among 10,000 factories (cited in Larmer 2001).
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members of their employer's household, rather than bona fide workers. In domestic
service, employee-employer relations are treated as interpersonal relations, covered
only by the civil code, which is less comprehensive than the Labor Law.1 4 9 No
wonder that most rural migrant women, such as Gao Yamei, doubt that “the law” can
protect them: “There is no legal protection for dagongmei. [Only] if your relative is
an official can you get legal help; otherwise, forget it. It [the law] is not for the
people.”
Although domestic service in Beijing is somewhat regulated by guidelines
promulgated by the municipal Labor Bureau, and enforced by the domestic service
job placement agencies affiliated with the Women's Federation, these are suggestions
without teeth, and workers are largely skeptical that companies would or could
enforce the regulations. Ma Ning reported:
If little things happen, small things, and you find the Women's Federation
directly, they might not care. Like my friend, she had some sort of disagreement
with her employer, and so she returned to the company. The company said, 'you
and your employer can talk it out and resolve this yourself. You don't need to
bother u s.' They didn't care. They said, 'Resolve it yourself,' and only come to
them if you can't resolve it yourself. But we only went to them because we
couldn't resolve it ourselves! . ..Those people there [in the company office], their
talk is empty (kong) and they are irritable (jizao)... They don't have a very good
attitude.
1 4 9 Confirmed by Zhou Wanling, a lawyer with the Federation of Trade Unions, at her talk at the 1999
Conference on Migrant Women's Rights.
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“ like a member o f the family”
Labor performed in the intimate space of the home by daughters, wives and mothers
is often described as a labor of love, as it is rarely directly remunerated. As labor
performed in this intimate space, and often involving caring for infants or elderly,
domestic work involves emotional expenditure, even when performed for a wage. In
China, the location of domestic work in the employer's household, its legal status,
and its popular image all contribute to the construction of the domestic worker as “a
member of the family,” which implicitly produces an emotional bond between the
worker and her employer’s household. Social relations between the domestic worker
and her employer emulate kinship relations of the extended family by adopting such
forms of address appropriate to age, generation, and gender. Hence, female
employers are addressed as granny, auntie, or elder sister; and male employers as
grandfather, uncle, or elder brother. Domestic workers are referred to by their last
names preceded by the diminutive “little” (xiao), or as “little sister” (Amei) or “little
girl” {xiao guniang).
As Active kin, employees and employers are assigned ideal roles and behaviors, and
their relationship appears governed by affective ties (ganqing). For their part,
employers often perform “emotional work” for their domestic worker, caring about
their employee's health and well-being, bestowing her with hand-me-down clothes,
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and sending her home at holidays with gifts and good wishes for her family.1 5 0
Affective ties ideally compel employers to take an interest in their domestic worker's
intellectual and moral development, as well as her future. For example, employers
might provide reading materials to encourage their employee to improve her literacy,
and might tutor her or even provide some tuition for a formal course of study. When
her services are no longer necessary, employers may help their employee find a new
position, and perhaps even introduce her to her future husband.1 5 1
In return for employer's care and patronage, employees are obliged to be diligent and
honest, respectful and obedient, and loyal, like dutiful daughters. One Beijing
employer, Mr. Li, praised his family’s former domestic worker, a young woman
from Henan, as an exception to most young rural women working in the city:
At that time [1989], maids were relatively new to Beijing, and they were all from
the countryside. They were simple and honest (pushi) and they didn't have any
evil thoughts or habits (meiyou shenmo huai xinyan). When they did their work,
they weren't lazy or slow, or quick to quit.
In looking back nostalgically at the rural migrant maids of the early reform period,
Mr. Li implies that today’s domestic workers are more often dishonest, indolent, and
unreliable over the long term.
1 5 0 “Emotional labor” in relation to the personalistic employee-employer relations in domestic service
and other care-giving professions has been widely documented by Rollins 1985, Romero 1992,
Nakano-Glenn 1992, and Anderson 2000, among others.
1 5 1 In this sense the relationship somewhat mimics the “master” (s/w/w)-“apprentice” (xuesheng)
relationships of male artisans in pre-communist China described by Cooper (1998: 50-53).
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By contrast, good domestic workers place the needs of their employer in advance of
their own interests. For example, I was to go to a park one day with Ma Ning and her
friend on their day off (Sunday), but only Ma Ning showed up to our appointment.
Her friend was invited at the last minute to accompany “her family”—her employer
household—on an outing. Without denying that employers and workers can, and
occasionally do, become companions, ultimately the needs of employers always
come first. For another example, Wang Rong was studying typing part-time, while
working as a full-time, live-in domestic worker. She was grateful to her employer for
giving her the time off to study, and for the generous offer of use of her employer’s
son’s word processor for her practice: “ Aiyi [her employer; literally, “Auntie”] is
willing to help me. As long as I have no other tasks at hand, I can study.” But lately
she had been unable to practice, she explained: “I can’t use it now because he [their
son] is preparing for the high school entry exam, and because they need me in the
house.” Wang’s aspiration to learn this new skill would have to be put on hold while
she attended to the needs of her employer’s son and household.
Ultimately then, affective ties maintain the asymmetry between an employer and her
domestic worker (Anderson 2000: 122-125). Even as fictive kin, employers are still
in a position of authority as elders who can, consciously or not, manipulate
emotional bonds to extract more labor power from their employee. In reality, a
minority of domestic workers felt their actual situation approached the ideal of “like
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203
a member of the family.” After four years of loyal service and ongoing connection to
1 ^0
her employers, Tian Weiwei remarked, “Still, they aren't my own family.”
Despite the Active kinship relationship between employers and their domestic
workers, the latter are daily reminded of their difference. Their lack of urban
household registration makes them dependent on maintaining good relations with
employers, neighbors, and, especially, representatives of the residential committees
who keep the household register books and thereby bestow on them the right to live
with an urban family.
In addition, young women from poor, remote mountainous regions in particular may
encounter strange habits, new consumer goods, and unfamiliar technologies in the
urban environment, which reinforces their dependence on employers for such
information. Ma Ning was matter-of-fact about the lifestyle habits she learned as a
domestic worker in an apartment block:
In the high-rise, everyone wears slippers, and ordinary clothes, and eats good
food everyday, and takes a shower daily. The high-rise is very clean, and
everyday you must wipe the tables and mop the floor.
1 5 2 The contradictions of reality versus ideal of domestic workers as family members was explored in
the television series 28 Maids for Professor Tian’ s Household that aired in late 1999 in Beijing. In
that show, an urban family concludes that actual female kin—mothers and daughters—are the best
“household help.”
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Employer Mrs. Tian tells how her former domestic worker, a 19-year old young
woman from a village in Inner Mongolia, was overwhelmed by the vast gap in
technology and lifestyle between her home and Beijing:
Regarding lifestyle habits, she was fine in the house. But I recall most clearly
that she couldn't figure out how to lock the door, nor open it; perhaps her home
was too out-of-the-way (bise), too remote (pianpi) [i.e., so they didn't require
gates or locks]. The simplest of everyday common sense she couldn't understand,
so she felt a lot of pressure, and wanted to go home.
Additionally, young domestic workers lack the experience of marriage and childcare,
and hence skills of cooking, childrearing, and so on, which their relatively older, and
generally married, employers have already mastered. As Ms. Xia said of her former
and well-liked domestic worker, “I didn't care whether she lacked experience. As
long as she had love for the child (aixin), that's all that mattered. The rest I could
teach her.” Yet the asymmetrical flow of knowledge from employers to employees
further reinforces the latter’s authority and superiority.
Even where domestic workers have knowledge to contribute, this knowledge is often
belittled as unsuited to urban tastes. A common example concerns food preferences.
Many migrants to Beijing come from the south—Anhui, Sichuan, and Henan
provinces, for example, where food tends to be spicy and meals tend to include rice.
As northerners, Beijingers claim to prefer less spicy food, and eat more noodles and
breads. Cuisine from the wealthiest cosmopolitan areas of China, Guangzhou and
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Shanghai, neither of which are noted for spicy food, are generally accepted as the
epitome of gourmet fare. In contemporary parlance, then, cooking “too spicy”
cuisine has become a euphemism for poor, low-class fare. Most domestic workers
are thus made to adapt to their employers’ food tastes.
However, employers may attribute such differences in knowledge to “natural”
inferiority of their rural workers, drawing upon stereotypes of the peasantry as lazy,
coarse and clumsy, or physically hardy. For example, Ms. Xia described her former
employee thus:
She was rather a good domestic worker, except that she was a bit coarse (cucao),
being from the countryside. For example, she often burned clothes when she was
ironing. She was not very careful, but was rather coarse. She enjoyed fetching the
replacement gas tanks (for the cook stove) from downstairs. She enjoyed heavy
work like that, but not delicate tasks. If I asked her to patch up a rip in my child’s
clothes, she wouldn’ t be willing.
This “rural difference” in turn justifies employers’ increased surveillance and
discipline of their rural employees, or naturalizes their heavy workload or harsh
treatment.
The structure and process of work and labor relations in domestic service complicate
class. In domestic service, the class relationship, in the classic sense of unequal
power relationship based on different positioning vis-a-vis means of production, is
understood through gendered kinship identity, rural-urban difference, and generation.
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These discursive practices, then, comprise the “practical” class relationship, the
actually experienced relationship, between domestic workers and their employers,
which complicates young worker’s lived experience of class.1 5 3
“Professional” Cleaning Services
working conditions
Like domestic workers, those who clean apartments, offices, and hotels as janitors
(baojie yuangong) or chambermaids (fuwuyuan), perform menial labor, and thus
have relatively low status even among other service workers. Often they work for
contractors who provide cleaning services to hotels or office and residential
complexes. Female employees of such companies often use the term “maid” (baomu)
to refer to themselves, or are called such by their bosses. However, a hotel
chambermaid or residential housekeeper is considered more “professional” (zhiye
hud) than a domestic worker. First, a clear demarcation of work and leisure space
and time and the emotional distance between workers and bosses contribute to a
sense that this is clearly a contractual, capitalist work relationship rather than a form
of servitude. Second, janitorial work is not feminized per se, and hence is not
downgraded to the extent that domestic service is. However, gender does structure
the division of tasks within the occupation. As janitors, men tend to occupy positions
1 5 3 Ortner 1998 refers to a classic sense of class as an unequal relationship based on control of the
means of production, compared to a practical, pace Bourdieu, sense of class understood through
gender or kinship.
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considered “skilled,” such as shift supervisor, and undertake tasks classified as
“heavy,” such as operating floor waxing and polishing equipment. In hotels, male
housekeeping staff may enter guestrooms to deliver room service goods and luggage,
but chambermaids are almost exclusively female. Although a few women I knew
who had worked as both live-in domestic workers and as apartment and office
cleaners did not distinguish between the two occupations, most hotel housekeepers
and chambermaids I came to know felt that belonging to a work unit (danwei), rather
than belonging to a household (/7a), made them superior to domestic workers.1 5 4
Zhou Lili and Zhou Lina found work in late 1999 at a professional cleaning company
(baojie gongsi) that was contracted to provide housekeeping services to a 5-star
hotel, through the intervention of a former co-worker from the apparel factory, a
woman whom they refer to respectively as “master” (shifu). Interestingly, according
to municipal regulations in 1999, migrant workers were forbidden from being
employed as hotel or restaurant service attendants (fuwuyuan) (Wang 1998: 50).
When I asked the hotel’s housekeeping manager, who had solicited the contract
cleaning company’s services, about the ordinance, he first denied that such
regulations existed, but later he admitted to them. He explained that the hotel had
1 5 4 Again, the existing literature on domestic service in other contexts, such as among immigrant and
minority women in the USA, suggests similar hierarchies of “professionalism” by work arrangements
and content. For example, live-in domestic workers rank below part-timers, and those working
directly for a household rank lower than those working for a contractor (Salzinger 1991).
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until recently been state-owned, but had since become a Sino-Japanese joint venture.
As a state enterprise, it had lost money, in part providing urban employees with so
many benefits. Hiring a contractor to provide housekeeping and other services, he
admitted, saved the hotel a lot of labor costs.
Comparing the costs of “regular,” full-time hotel workers, who must hold an urban
household registration, with the cleaning contractor’s migrant labor force left no
doubt of the truth of the supervisor’s comment. Urban employees of the hotel were
of two types: those “permanent workers” (gongren) hired in the 1970s or early
1980s, who had subsidized housing and guaranteed (life-long) employment, and
contract workers (hetonggong), who did not have housing benefits but shared with
permanent employees other benefits, such as a legal labor contract, health coverage,
pension plan, severance pay, end of year bonuses, and various perks (e.g., gifts).
Their monthly base income was generally thrice that of migrants assigned similar
tasks, yet they worked a 40-hour week, resting on the weekends.
The migrant employees of the cleaning company received few benefits and low
remuneration. The cleaners did not have a formal labor contract, health insurance,
guaranteed severance pay, or retirement benefits, and were left out of distribution of
bonuses or profit-sharing. They were provided rudimentary housing in dormitories
located several miles from the hotel. The migrant workers were allocated bicycles,
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209
although new bikes were rarely purchased, but only circulated, and often shared,
among the employees. Bikes were frequently stolen and not replaced by the
company, forcing most workers to take the bus to work at their own expense, or
double up on co-workers’ bikes. The cleaning contractor provided uniforms and paid
for twice-weekly dry-cleaning; employees provided their own cloth shoes.
Employees usually enjoyed two meals a day using meal coupons, which were to be
taken at the employee cafeteria (located in the hotel basement), usually a meal prior
to and during their long shift. Like housing, meal coupons were also deducted from
monthly salary. Workers were also charged fees for their urban temporary
registration and work permits, costing as much as several hundred yuan a year,
which were deducted from their wages. The two sisters earned a daily rate of only 15
yuan after their clothing, food, lodging, and other expenses were deducted, for an
average pay of 400 yuan per month, similar to the going rate for a full-time, live-in
domestic worker. Occasionally workers received bonuses, such as at the New Year
holiday, or promotional materials (e.g., sample products such as shampoos or
washing powder that the hotel was considering purchasing in bulk), and gifts.
However, such bonuses were more infrequent than those awarded regular hotel staff.
As one hotel housekeeper summarized: “It’s better to be a contract hotel employee
(linshigong) than an employee of the cleaning company (baojie gongsi).”
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Hotel housekeepers worked long hours. The early morning and afternoon shifts
stretched to 10 hours, including a half hour meal break, 8 working hours, and the
daily meeting/pep talk, which workers found most odious. The meeting was lead by
the shift supervisor, usually a male migrant worker, who reviewed individual
workers’ successes and mistakes, lectured about policies or procedures if necessary,
then distributed the next day’s assignments and meal coupons. Cleaners worked
seven days of the week, with no scheduled rest days. Zhou Lili explained, “If you are
a dedicated worker, your request for some time off (such as to visit your home) will
be granted.” But workers did not receive pay for their absences, and were paid
“overtime” as incentive to work on the national holidays. Housekeepers worked
shifts: morning, afternoon, or overnight; those on the overnight shift slept in cots in
rooms near the courtesy desk on each hotel floor, where they might be summoned to
fetch guests hot water or unlock their doors during the night. The night duty and the
rotation of shifts over the course of several days provided a modicum of rest
time/time off.
Housekeepers’ duties included keeping the utility closets stocked with supplies;
maintaining the restrooms; washing, waxing, and polishing floors; vacuuming and
steam-cleaning carpets; washing windows; and dusting furniture in the hotel’s public
areas, mainly the lobby, conference rooms, restaurants, hallways and business
offices. Not a detail was to be missed: 1 remember Zhao Ning rushing to erase from
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the floor a black scuff mark made by a passing guest’s shoes while I was hanging out
as a “participant observer” in the lobby cafe. Housekeepers with the cleaning
company were often paired up with regular hotel staff to man the hotel’s health club
and spa, to work in the restaurants, or to assist chambermaids. Whatever the specific
task, noted Li Mei, being on one’s feet all day was “exhausting” (xinku); she
complained frequently of pain in her back when bending to vacuum carpets or mop
floors. Among chambermaids, there were daily quotas for how many rooms must be
cleaned, and, according to Zhou Lili, workers would only reluctantly help someone
else to meet her quota.
The company provided rudimentary accommodation, paid through a monthly
deduction from worker’s pay. The dormitory consisted of several rooms on the
basement floor of a high-rise apartment building a distance of about % hour by
bicycle from the 4-star hotel. The dormitory rooms were crowded: bunk beds lining
every wall accommodated 8 -1 0 workers per room. The rooms were dank and dark,
mosquito-infested in the hot season and clammy and cold in the winter, and smelled
of the adjacent toilets. Workers decorated the wall space around their bunk bed, but
could neither afford nor were allowed to make major renovations. The demarcation
of work and leisure space and time was more distinct among housekeepers than
among domestic workers. However, housekeepers were not completely free from
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supervision where they lived, and were frequently paid unannounced visits by their
boss.
Traveling between the dormitory and hotel was a risky undertaking, especially
during the “street sweeps,” as many of the cleaners, especially the new hires, lacked
proper documentation (e.g., work permits and temporary registration permits). The
cleaning company boss complained of the mountain of paperwork and slow
processing at the relevant government bureaus, which sometimes blocked
applications due to quota limits. Of course, as the company charged employees for
the documentation fees through withholding a portion of their pay over the course of
several months, the delay in applying for documentation of new workers lessened the
company’s risk that the employee would leave before the fines could be reimbursed
in full. As a result of their semi-legal status, many cleaners were anxious about their
commute from hotel to dormitory. Several female migrants in particular gave in to
fear and begged their boss to cart them to the dormitory in his van at the end of their
shift, and he often obliged. Yet in one week in the spring o f2000, three male
employees were caught just outside their dormitory, and detained for days until they
had posted bail, which they borrowed from the boss.
Workers were to be neat and attractive in appearance. All cleaning company workers
were required to shower daily after their shift, using the communal employee
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showers in the hotel’s basement, and dress in the cleaning company uniform, which
Zhou Lili deemed “ugly.” The cleaning company boss told me that he judged
potential new hires primarily on the basis of their figure and appearance (xingxiang).
Specifically, he explained, he looked favorably upon taller, thinner, and lighter
skinned applicants. In his opinion, appearances are what mainly distinguish urban
and rural residents, and he voiced his commitment to helping groom his workers in
standard dialect (putonghua) and correct their “hick” (tu) appearances in order to fit
into urban society. Presumably, then, short, stocky dark-skinned applicants too
closely resemble stereotypical peasants to be easily transformed into urban
prototypes. In addition, he sought out candidates who were intellectually nimble and
quick (lingli), because they alone could be trained. He said his greatest frustration
with migrant workers, who he referred to as “outsiders” (waidiren), was their
disinterest in studying, implying that most are lazy, and therefore are slow learners.
While on duty in the hotel, workers were instructed to be unobtrusive. They were
identified as the cleaning company employees by their matching uniforms, but were
not issued individual nametags like regular hotel staff. Although they received some
pointers in hotel etiquette and guest relations, they were mainly instructed to remain
invisible and silent, entering rooms to clean up only after guests had exited. Workers
were expressly forbidden to socialize with guests beyond a simple greeting, using the
respectful “Sir” and “Madame” to address guests, but instead were instructed to refer
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guests with questions to the concierge, whom they likewise addressed as “Sir.” As a
result, the slightest acknowledgment by a guest could make someone like Zhou Ning
happy all day, as I recall her delight in telling me of being greeted by a German
tourist encountered in the ladies room.
“ professionals ”
Professionalism defined the relationship between the workers and their bosses. They
addressed the cleaning company boss and the hotel housekeeping staff manager as
“Sirs.” Social distance between workers and bosses was maintained not just
linguistically but also through spatial and bodily protocols. The cleaning company
boss’s small basement office was separate from employees’ facilities (i.e., locker
room, showers, and mess hall) located elsewhere in the basement. Workers, with the
exception of shift supervisors on duty, had to knock, announce themselves, and wait
for permission to enter the office.
Despite this display of professionalism and social distance, employers were in
practice often informal and familiar with the workers. As in domestic service, a
family metaphor guided relationships within the company. The bosses were
considered father figures, the workers children, and co-workers addressed one
another using sibling terminology. As in domestic service, however, this familial
template emphasized employers’ paternalistic orientation toward rural workers,
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reproducing stereotypes of rural inferiority. The more casual relationship between
employees and their boss was a specific managerial strategy developed by the
cleaning company boss. He explained to me that his college courses in psychology
were very useful in his current position supervising migrant workers. He also felt
that it was his duty to society to prepare these rural youth for modem life, and foster
their well-rounded development. The challenges of managing migrant workers, he
felt, were twofold: first, helping them adjust to Beijing society, and second,
grooming them for 5-star hotel work. He stressed the importance of building
affective ties (ganqing) with his employees, and of being flexible, not rigid
(biaozhun), which he said was the management style of the 1960s and 1970s. He
took credit for correcting his employees’ mistakes by guiding them in the right way
of doing something, rather than just meting out standardized punishments. Only by
patiently educating them, he felt, would he be able to raise their “low quality” (suzhi
di) and thereby contribute to society as a whole.
The extent of his concern, and his authority, was evident in his daily efforts to
educate his workers in urban habits and appearances. For example, in his office one
afternoon, the Zhou sisters arrived, freshly showered and had changed out of their
uniforms. I commented favorably on their neat and stylish attire of long dark skirts,
dark blazers over sweaters, and upswept hair (which they had formerly worn in long
ponytails). Looking smug, Zhou Lina turned toward her supervisor and asked,
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216
“Don’t I look like a city woman now?” He teasingly answered, “No,” and pointed to
her heavy, thick-soled shoes. Turning to me, he smugly took credit for their
developing fashion sense.
The supervisor’s solicitude extended beyond the workspace into the dormitories and
their private lives. Such total responsibility was exhausting, he once complained,
forcing him to forego holidays with his wife to attend to his homesick rural workers.
One young woman was the subject of much gossip, as it was evident from her
absences at night that she was sleeping with a boyfriend. Eventually she became
pregnant, and the boss immediately dismissed her, presumably to allow her to return
home and marry her boyfriend.
Through such solicitous acts, the supervisor exacted loyalty and productivity from
his workers, who in turn fashioned themselves as docile and obedient in order to
curry his favor. The cleaning company boss was in fact well liked by most workers,
as he was considered reasonable and fair, friendly and solicitous toward his
employees, and moreover had a sense of humor. In retrospect (in 2002), Zhou Lina
said of her boss:
He was good to his employees, and knew how to talk with them. He never yelled
directly at anyone, but instead would just tell someone what they had done
wrong, and tell them how to correct the problem and then give them a chance to
do better. He veiled his criticisms of employees through humor, making us all
laugh. Everyone liked him. I learned a lot from him.
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Just as the affective bonds forged by urban housewives or working women and their
female domestic workers uphold rather than challenge rural-urban asymmetry, so too
the personal attentions of the cleaning company boss toward his female workers’
cultural and social development reinforced his authority as an urbanite and as a boss.
Moreover, such acts reproduced gender hierarchy. His fatherly solicitousness of their
education and grooming rested upon stereotypes of rural character and “natural”
differences, which were reproduced in their subjection to such disciplinary practices,
while his paternalistic concern for the moral propriety of his young female workers
underscored their “feminine” vulnerability and justified his oversight.
Young rural migrant women in Beijing engage in arduous work in service jobs that
demand long hours of labor, are poorly remunerated and without benefits, and are
variously stigmatized. In addition, labor processes conspire to reproduce and
naturalize hierarchical relationships between workers and employers along the lines
of origins, age and generation, and gender. In such occupations, workers are
positioned as passive objects to be inculcated through their supervisor’s paternalistic
supervision with a new sense of identity as modem, disciplined workers.
Domestic service and hotel housekeeping are considered unskilled forms of labor, in
large part because they appear an extension of women’s housewifely roles, and this
is especially so for domestic service, which therefore is less prestigious than hotel
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work. These occupations provide little growth opportunity for young rural women,
who are valued mainly for their youthful energy, feminine docility, and rural
simplicity and hardiness. Nonetheless, young rural women exercise agency as they
negotiate employer’s expectations and demands, their daughterly roles and identities,
and their own aspirations.
Accommodating to Workplace Authority
A management stereotype of young rural women as docile daughters is daily
reproduced through the labor process of service work. Yet by striving to become
model workers, domestic workers and hotel housekeepers alike may exact moral
concessions from superiors that lead to improved work conditions and material
benefits, thus strategically furthering their own ambitions. Furthermore, workers do
take pleasure and pride in doing their jobs well and meeting employer expectations,
and hence challenging views of such labor as servile or unskilled. Young migrant
women may in fact be empowered by their capacity to construct meaningful
identities and to further their own goals by accommodating to authority in the
workplace.
Young migrant women take measures to ensure they remain physically safe and
socially upstanding in their migrant destinations, as much for themselves as for their
parents or doubtful elders back home. Many young women justify their choice to
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enter domestic service in particular on the grounds that it is “safe” (anquan) work,
implying that it is not harmful to either one's person or one's reputation. In Wang
Rong's words: “I don't care anymore that domestic work is a low-status job. In my
opinion, safety is most important.” As pointed out in the introduction and chapter 2,
it is not so much the content of “work” so much as its spatial location and the social
relations of the worksite that impart value. Cooking, cleaning, and caring for the
elderly, sick, or newborn are considered appropriate tasks for women not only due to
an association with women’s “natural” roles as homemakers and nurturers, but also
because the work is performed within the domestic sphere of the home and for
members of a family. In particular, domestic work is said to be “calm” (tashi) in
comparison to other jobs that are available to young rural women new to Beijing.
Wang Lifang explains:
When you first go come out, getting a job in a home [as a domestic worker] is
okay. You can't find any good job, and you have no place [to sleep], unless you
go to a little restaurant, but that's so unsafe (luari)1 5 5 ... getting a job with a
household is a bit safer.
In contrast, restaurants, bars, saunas and nightclubs are mixed-sex venues, where
sexuality is marketed and may be served to anonymous clientele along with culinary,
recreational, or entertainment services (including sexual services). Jobs in these
1551 have translated this term in numerous ways so as to reflect the context in which it is invoked.
Thanks to C. Cindy Fan for sharing her understanding of what migrants attempt to express by
invoking this term, mainly a lack of security and safety.
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locations are thus undesirable for young women because they threaten to
compromise an otherwise virtuous reputation. Zhou Lili unconsciously demonstrated
her internalization of this gendered morality when, filling out an application to
become a waitress in a bar, she penned the word “safety” on the response line next to
the question “What are your job requirements?”
Hotel chambermaids may find their reputations among villagers sullied by the
association of hotels, which often have bars, saunas, and nightclubs on their
premises, with sexual service. As Zhou Lili acknowledged, “Villagers don’t know
anything. As soon as they hear ‘hotel’ they think you are working as an escort
(,sanpei).”1 5 6 The Zhou sisters learned this first hand when fellow villagers, seeing
that a letter one had written home to their parents was composed on hotel stationery,
began gossiping. Her father immediately set about using his personal contacts to find
his daughters more “decent” jobs in a factory. When, two years later, the Zhou sisters
took up hotel housekeeping again, the family schemed to hide the truth of their work.
In discussing their daughters’ work with relatives or other villagers, the Zhous (and
their daughters) emphasized that it was a “5-star hotel for foreign guests,” and hence
prestigious (and perhaps also “foreign” such that local standards of behavior might
not apply). In 2001, in order to be hired as a chambermaid by the state-run
1 5 6 Literally, “three accompanies,” because they accompany (men) in three ways: drinking, dancing,
and sex.
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guesthouse, Zhou Lili had to sign a confession stating she had never been active in
the outlawed “cult ” falungong. When her statement was forwarded to the county
government for verification, the local officials (who all knew her father) marveled
only that she had become a civil servant (i.e., government employee)! In return visits
home, Zhou was vague about divulging details of her menial work, but generous in
her descriptions of the high-level government officials who stayed at the hotel and in
handing out souvenir pens inscribed with the titles of political conferences or the
names of ministries. By appearing compliant with the gendered constructions of
social propriety and morality of rural patriarchy, the Zhou sisters were able to work
away from home without reproach from people back home.
Women also consider the capacity of accommodations provided in various jobs to
accord safety and propriety. Live-in domestic service meets these requirements as
workers usually live under the same roof as their employer’s household, much like a
family. Most resided with members of their employer's household in apartment
buildings (loufang) or in one-story brick houses (pingfang) similar to their homes in
the village. Labor bureau regulations stipulated that domestic workers were supposed
to have their own rooms, but most doubled up in their employer's household with
their elderly or youthful charges (Beijing Laodongju 1995, 1999). A few were lucky
enough to be housed in “domestic worker quarters” offered by large work units, such
as university campuses or the apartment buildings of a prestigious work unit. Such
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arrangements might include a private room, or the chance to share a room with peers.
Regardless of the actual degree of comfort afforded by a domestic worker’s
accommodations, the symbolism of its location in the courtyard and home makes it
symbolically safe and respectable.
Other forms of accommodation appear relatively unsafe. Restaurants are notorious
for poor living conditions; waitresses often sleep on restaurant floors or tables, and
are forced to catnap during slow afternoon hours to ensure a full night's sleep.
Factory workers and hotel staff are likely to be housed in dormitories. In the southern
China Special Economic Zones, dormitories are considered secure accommodations
for young women, largely because they are single-sex occupied and strictly managed
with curfew policies, security locks, and live-in chaperones. By contrast, the lack of
supervision of migrants at the hotel dormitory described above provoked the Zhou
sisters to express displeasure at the casual (luan) behaviors they felt such quarters
bred. They indicated that some of their coworkers had become “bad women” Qiuai
niireri), exhibiting reckless behavior such as spending the night with male coworkers
in the men's dorm room, or with boyfriends elsewhere. Like other migrant women,
the Zhou sisters were fully aware that errant young women would likely find
themselves forced to return home, either at the request of parents or at the discretion
of bosses, and thus had every reason to counsel one another to pursue romance
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cautiously. By criticizing such behavior, however, these sisters reproduced the
gendered discourse on sexuality that mandates parental and managerial oversight.
For a several young women I met, domestic service was a preferred job because of
its living arrangements. Compared with a rural courtyard-style farmhouse or a
dormitory, a room in a house might provide a quiet place conducive to reading or
study. Those domestic workers caring for the elderly might have some leisure time
(i.e., afternoon siestas) in which to read or attend classes, while their earnings could
generate enough petty cash to invest in study materials. In fact, domestic workers so
oriented seek out employers they think will be more sympathetic to their cause. I
often heard young women say that it was best to be a domestic worker for
intellectuals, such as university professors or government researchers, because highly
educated employers would be most amenable to an employee’s demands for time off
for study, or might provide tutoring in speech or reading, or loan materials from their
private library.1 5 7
1 5 7 Unable to provide such perks, working-class employers, on the other hand, are less desirable.
Usually these households only hire live-in help temporarily (i.e., to help a woman during postpartum
period), or hire part-time, live-out workers, because they have less physical space in which to
accommodate a domestic worker. Of the employers I surveyed, these types of households have a
much harder time holding on to help, and therefore have many more complaints about the domestic
service industry. Foreign employers, offering as much as four times the wages of Chinese employers,
are also highly desirable, though numerically relatively few.
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The fictive kinship template that guides the employer-employee relationship in
domestic service especially accords a patina of safety and propriety, as it mimics the
farm family. Just as at home, the young rural woman is under the care of her elders,
supervised by her fictive aunt or grandmother. Rural parents implicitly entrust
employers to supervise their daughters' moral development, to closely monitor their
young employee's social life and activities or take appropriate disciplinary measures.
Employers of domestic workers are uniquely able to use this to their own advantage,
extracting more labor power from their employee, due to their almost limitless
control over their employee’s leisure time and space. Moreover, by restricting their
employee’s opportunities to meet with migrant friends, an employer also ensures that
her domestic worker does not leam of better job opportunities or warn prospective
replacements of her employer's negative aspects.
However, explicit parental demands can greatly inconvenience employers of
domestic workers, especially when requests lead to the sudden departure of their
only employee, disrupting the entire household’s schedule. One employer
complained to me of the trouble of having to suddenly return her domestic worker to
her parents' care when they requested it, after they had found out that their daughter
had found a boyfriend without first seeking their approval. Others told of parents
requesting their daughters' presence at home for a family emergency, because they
needed help on the farm, or to introduce her to a prospective husband, and feeling
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225
prevailed upon to comply. From the perspective of a young rural woman’s parents,
then, domestic service is a relatively “safe” form of employment for their daughters.
Likewise, the cleaning company supervisor’s paternalistic solicitude toward his
housekeeping staff helped assure parents of their daughters’ well-being. The
principle of in loco parentis and his dedication to upholding social order obliged him
to maintain moral order among his employees, including the aforementioned
dismissal of a “wayward” young woman. Of course, the practice of firing workers
for“immoral” behavior saved the company the potential cost of providing prenatal
healthcare or maternity leave.1 5 8 Moreover, although this boss bemoaned labor
turnover, and boasted that on his watch, labor turnover was low, he also confessed
that he was never unduly inconvenienced by a worker’s departure, as “migrant
workers are easily replaceable.”
The personalistic employer-employee relationships involving emotional and social
bonds, such as found in live-in domestic service, have been viewed by most scholars
of labor studies as one method of employer domination and exploitation of workers.
The focus on women’s agency in this section, however, also illuminates the logic
1 5 8 As Wang Zheng (2000) shows, urban women workers in various sectors of the economy have
likewise been affected by the lack of enforcement of legal protections for their reproductive rights, as
they have become increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the market and of lay-offs. Yet
migrant workers were never the recipients of such entitlements (China Rights Forum 1999; Chan
2001).
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behind young migrant women workers’ acceptance of these labor relations, including
their own investment in their identities as filial and upright rural daughters. Recently
some scholars, informed by Foucauldian view of power as “capillary” and diffused
(Fraser 1989), have considered the ways that workers can hold power over their
employers by appealing to emotion and manipulating affective ties (e.g., Ozygin
2001: 126-151). Chinese employers of domestic workers and hotel housekeepers
alike expressed a sense of public duty to educate their employees and guide their
social development. Young women themselves often not only accepted the
paternalistic solicitude of their employers but also voiced preference for shared
affection (ganqing) between themselves and their superiors, in return for material,
social, as well as emotional advantages over the long term.
At the very least, the care of a kind employer helps young women combat
homesickness. Wang Rong described how in her first few weeks in Beijing she
missed home so much that she was clumsy and absentminded in her job as a
domestic worker. Instead of scolding her for this behavior, she recalled, her
employer kindly asked what was the matter and was sympathetic. Others felt a close
relationship with an employer would be more likely to lead to mutual respect and
dignity. Gao Yamei told of how, newly hired as a domestic worker, she instinctively
retreated to her own room when she learned her employers were expecting a visit by
relatives. She was so pleased, though, when one of the guests, a CEO of a company
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227
no less, sought her out to say hello, asked her where she was from, and carried on a
conversation about her home province. She articulated that for her, employers show
affection (ganqing) by treating their employees as social equals.
Although the more professional work conditions of factory work or hotel
housekeeping, in particular the separation of work and leisure space/time, accords a
slightly less intimate employer-employee relationship than in domestic service, Zhou
Lili and her sister held strong expectations that bosses demonstrate affection for
workers by being involved in employees’ emotional lives. In their job sewing
undergarments in a small apparel factory, for example, the sisters were continually
harassed by a young errand-boy. One day, Zhou Lili and the young man got into a
heated argument when he called her by a sexual slur. She angrily slapped him and
they might have come to blows if her sister and others had not intervened. But
because the boss did not censure the young man nor mediate in this argument, Zhou
Lili accused him of not being “a good boss” and of having no sense of how to
properly conduct “human relations” (renqing). Soon after, the sisters quit this job
and found their job at the hotel. Relative newcomers to Beijing and to factory life,
the sisters expected their boss to come to their aid and defend their honor, such that
they in turn would feel protected and respected.
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Young rural women also realize that to have a relatively pleasant work environment,
rather than one characterized by strife, they must get along with their employer. With
this in mind, women cautiously assess potential bosses and work environments prior
to agreeing to a job. For example, Liu Fanmei weighed carefully her options in
choosing a prospective employer. Like many domestic workers seeking to avoid
conflict with an employer, she preferred to care for the elderly rather than the
newborn, because over-protective parents might be too hasty to blame their domestic
worker should their child be harmed. She also preferred to work with the elderly
because of her positive experiences with her own grandparents.
Doing domestic service, entering a household, it's like entering a mini society:
you must deal with human relations (chuli guanxi). ..Before I signed the [work]
contract, I checked out the situation; if I didn't like what I saw I could always
return home, right? So I asked whether the household had any sick people, [and]
how many people? They said [there was] only an old couple, two people, nothing
complicated, so I figured it was ok. Also, my grandpa had been so good to me, so
I'm good with elderly. Some domestic workers' situation is complex, they maybe
have to care for sick people, or for children, and the burden of childcare is the
greatest.
Once hired, maintaining good relations with employers requires being a model
worker, that is, being honest, disciplined, and industrious. Domestic worker Li
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Shanshan boasted of her housework skills and ability to please her employer, doing
her job well and following codes of discipline.1 5 9
The old lady wasn't happy before I came. Before I arrived, for a year she was not
very happy, and drove out another domestic worker. Our relationship though was
very good. She said the first one went out too much, and didn't know how to do
the chores. Rural people who come out, they are different from urban people.
Me, from when I was small I did housework, and I was attentive to hygiene. And
I could do things carefully. In my hometown I helped my parents cook and wash
clothes, so I could do all of those chores.
Her superior performance distinguished her from the previous household help, whom
Li Shanshan stereotyped as exhibiting more "rural" habits: being clumsy,
undisciplined, and stupid. Her sense of accomplishment, then, stems from her sense
of being superior to other migrant women and her acceptance of capitalist work
discipline.
Most young women experienced domestic work, especially tasks of caring for the
elderly or infants, less as a job than as an expression of basic human nature, and
particularly woman’s nurturing “nature.” In a letter of thanks to the Migrant
Women’s Club (reprinted in the Club’s January 2000 newsletter) for their support,
nurse's assistant Li Jianfeng expressed her sentiments that caring and sacrifice for the
benefit of others is ample reward for a thankless job:
1 5 9 Constable (1997) demonstrates the pleasures of deference and submission to employers' ideals in
her ethnography of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, which she sees as expressions of their
exercise of power over personal body care and discipline.
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I've been in Beijing only 3 months. I first thought that domestic work was low-
class work (xiadeng de gongzuo), and that I was inferior to others (bi bieren di yi
deng). But after joining the Migrant Women’s Club, I feel this job is noble
(guangrong), and I am making a contribution to the nation. Through my work, I
make the last days of elderly people more pleasant, and allow their children to
rest easy.
Young rural women who strive to be model workers expect employers to reciprocate
their loyalty and hard work, either through raises or other rewards. Cao Fang
attributes her success in life to her industriousness and dedication to her job: T m
not beautiful, but I’m very capable (nenggari)” But in her first job as a domestic
worker in Beijing, her employers did not sufficiently appreciate her ability, in that
she was underpaid and exploited. The next household to hire her appreciated and
rewarded her capability by sharing their books and knowledge with her. “I learned so
much from them,” she said of the elderly couple for whom she cared, retired high-
level intellectuals. Their daughter, a middle school teacher, provided Cao with the
course books necessary to self-study for a high school degree, which she did while
under their employ.
Some domestic workers were rewarded for their loyal service with support for
learning a new skill or help finding a new job when their period of service ended. Li
Shanshan, for example, had cared for an elderly lady and her tempermental husband
for 4 years. In gratitude, their middle-aged daughter asked Li Shanshan what she
wanted to do, and helped her find a cigarette-and-liquor stall to manage after her
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231
services to the family were no longer required. Li Shanshan reflected on the freedom
she enjoyed in her new job, compared with domestic work:
It’s more free (ziyouyidian). You do things yourself (ziji ban, ziji gan). It’s
definitely better... .If I want to go out to play, I go out and play. Now if I'm tired,
I can sleep. There's no one who manages me. It's more free.
Ye Yanling is an exceptional example of a model domestic worker who turned a
close relationship with her employers to her own advantage. When I met her in 1999,
she had been in Beijing for seven years, during which time she worked continuously
for one family, caring for an elderly couple. A few years earlier, she determined to
stop remitting her wages home to her mother, who had kept the earnings for her
daughters' dowries, to instead invest in classes and study materials. At first her
employers were supportive of her attending night classes, and she earned a technical
degree in accounting. Yet when she announced her intention to pursue a college
degree program, her employers objected strongly.1 6 0 She then offered to quit their
service, but they were even more displeased. Ye Yanling said she understood their
predicament: they felt she was irreplaceable, as only she could understand their
habits and preferences. Eventually the two parties were able to strike a compromise.
1 6 0 Employer support for study toward a technical degree {zhongzhuari) but objection to pursuit of a
college degree (dazhuan) is a common theme among the many domestic workers I know who are
part-time students. Employers likely realize that studying for a college degree will cut further into
their domestic worker's time and budget, leading to increasing demands for time off and higher wages,
and ultimately lead to a job change. Yet their objections also hint of a disdain for rural women's
pursuit of upward mobility.
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Ye Yanling's employers helped her find a new day job, doing odd-jobs at their
daughter's work unit, a government press. In exchange, Ye Yanling continued to
board with them and provide help with the evening meal. Eventually she supervised
her full-time replacement, a co-villager she had located for them through her social
contacts.
Ye Yanling attributes her success to her patience, hard work, and dedication to her
job and her employers, as well as her diplomatic skills:
I think when you first start working in a household, you shouldn't think that you
are going to be able to make demands like time off to study. You have to
consider that you are being employed, and you have to get your work done and
perform the tasks well. Then you wait some time and see that you [your
employer and yourself] get along well, and then you can mention that you want
to study, no problem. So when I introduce my co-villagers to jobs, I tell them
just do your job well for a year or two, and wait until you have gotten used to the
environment, and wait until you are more capable....Anyway, after she [the co
villager] works for a year, her thinking will have changed though her
environment has not! She'll go out on the street, look around, and she'll slowly
start to reflect, 'Hmm, shall I change my job? Should I study something?' It's
certain her thought process will have changed. Myself, I appraised my situation
and thought perhaps I could use the environment, my employer, or some other
person. That's what I tell friends: 'This isn't bad [work], you get along [with your
employer], you can talk [with the employer] and have a place to live and to eat.
You can wait until you understand the environment and you have the ability to
figure out how to implement the next step, one at a time.'
Ye Yanling's success at actualizing her aspirations for education rested upon her
ability to delicately and patiently balance her obligations to family with her own
goals and the demands of her employers over a long period of time.
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The familial-like setting of domestic service, and the caring work of domestic
workers who minister to elderly or infants, may especially engender strong affective
bonds between employees and employers. Indeed, some domestic workers remained
close to their employers or elderly charges long after the job ended. Tian Weiwei, for
example, forged a close relationship to the elderly lady of the household where she
worked for four years, although she did not enjoy such affection from the other
household members. Like many other former domestic workers with similar feelings,
Tian Weiwei remained in contact with this woman over a long period of time,
continuing to pay her a visit from time to time. Their relationship is thus one of
ongoing mutual obligation: “She and I are affectionate (you ganqing). Like right
now, if I didn't have a job, she would help me.”
Similarly, hotel housekeepers like the Zhou sisters strove to please their employer in
return for small concessions, such as permission to switch shifts among co-workers,
take days off, or hire their siblings and friends (the Zhou’s younger brother was hired
to the hotel in 2001). They were also careful to stay on good terms with the young
men who were the shift supervisors and who had the power to distribute extra meal
coupons. In these examples, young women housekeepers are using sexual difference
and even flirtation to exact favors. With female bosses, however, they use different
tactics. Thus during my return visit in 2002, Zhou Lili impressed her new supervisor
by introducing her to a “foreign Mend,” me, and treating us both to an expensive
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234
western meal—at McDonalds. In return for this favorable treatment, Zhou’s
supervisor happily granted her next request for time off.
Whereas domestic workers have fewer opportunities to network outside of the
household in which they are employed, hotel housekeepers have multiple pathways
for networking, or building guanxi. In addition to currying favor from their bosses,
hotel housekeepers also pay close attention to their interactions with co-workers,
especially older and longer-term employees, and even hotel clients, from whom they
gain knowledge, friendship, and job opportunities.
For example, Zhou Lina cultivated a close relationship on the job with a co-worker
whom she worked with in the hotel sauna and spa area. Zhou Lina was in charge of
picking up discarded guest towels and keeping the fixtures shiny, while her co
worker logged in the guests and distributed towels. Her co-worker was a 25-year old
Beijing high school graduate attending college part-time, studying Traditional
Chinese Medicine. Zhou Lina affectionately and deferentially called her “Elder
Sister,” and looked up to her. Her friend, in turn, genuinely took pity on the
overworked young migrant worker, and often let her take catnaps behind the counter.
She also passed on all sorts of company gifts and sales promotions that she received
in her capacity as a “regular,” urban employee. After Zhou Lina quit the hotel, her
“elder sister” provided emotional support and advice, as well as offering a place to
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sleep (which she declined) and shower (e.g., the hotel employee locker room). (I
became part of their relationship as a “gift” to be exchanged, when Zhou Lina
introduced me to her friend, who was eager to practice English with me.) Even in
2002, over a year after Zhou Lina had left that hotel, the two remained in close
touch.
Zhou Lili similarly found emotional support among the older, married coworkers—
mostly Beijing women laid-off from state sector jobs—who she worked alongside at
the state-run guesthouse. A newlywed, she benefited from her new “Aunties’” advice
on matters from smoothing relationships with her mother-in-law and sexual pleasure
to the proper use of fabric softener.
Housekeeper Li Mei became acquainted with several middle-aged women who had
health club memberships at the hotel spa and paid frequent visits to it. Gradually, she
began addressing them as “Auntie” and confiding in them. Eventually, one proposed
that Li Mei quit her job at the hotel and become her domestic worker. Li Mei trusted
the woman to be a decent and even generous employer, and so gave the offer much
consideration, talking about it with me at length one day. But ultimately she
declined, for she did not want to lose the—albeit limited—freedom of her hotel job,
which at least gave her hours and time away from her boss.
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A focus on worker’s agency reveals the shortcomings of much of the literature on
labor relations, which has largely viewed paternalistic and caring acts by employers
as another means of dominating workers and masking class relations. Yet for young
rural women of my ethnography, work is understood and accorded meaning when it
is experienced through cultural constructs of gender and of kinship, particularly
emotions (ganqing) and social relations and reciprocity (guanxi). It is also important
to note the efforts and achievements of young migrant women in extending social
networks to encompass employers and coworkers, as well as kin and co-villagers (as
described earlier in this chapter). The example of these young women suggests that
rural women are gaining valuable new skills of negotiating complex human relations
in the public sphere— the urban labor market— and that these skills aid in humanizing
and improving their workplaces and work conditions, to some extent.
Challenging Authority in the Workplace
The foregoing discussion of service workers’ efforts to become model employees
and form close relations with their employers is but one strategy of improving work
conditions and furthering individual aims. Employers may not reciprocate in a timely
and just manner to their employee’s conscientious work ethic, or fail to reciprocate at
all. In such scenarios, workers may feel a lack of ganqing, and young women are
quick to question the rationale for their subordination. As young rural women extend
their sojourns in the city and gain more life experience, they increasingly reflect
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upon and question roles and identities that heretofore imbued their work lives with
significance. On a daily basis, too, workers challenge unjust work conditions,
devising strategies to make their work lives more humane, and even directly
confronting superiors. The ultimate show of resistance from workers is to “vote with
their feet,” and quit. By confronting authority in the workplace, then, young women
challenge the stereotype of the docile worker.
The contradictions of the intimate relationship between an employer and her
employee, particularly in domestic service, could erupt in deeply emotional conflicts.
Wang Rong generally got on very well with the 3-generation family she worked for,
being particularly attached to the young grandchild. But she was really upset by the
incident that resulted when her male cousin came for a visit, and stayed the night in
her room, a basement apartment that had a separate entrance from her employer's
main apartment. The gatekeeper saw him arrive at night and leave the next morning,
and reported this information to her employers. They immediately jumped to the
wrong conclusion, and scolded her harshly without stopping to hear her explanation:
“I was so wronged (yuanwang), so humiliated (weiqu). They knew me for so long
and yet they still mistrusted me?”
Wang Rong was upset by the breakdown of mutual trust between her and her
employer, but did not criticize the principle that her employers should take an
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238
interest in her personal life, including dating activities. In fact, she is one of several
domestic workers I know who accepted or actively requested an employers' help in
meeting prospective Beijing bachelors. Yet, in anger and retaliation, Wang Rong did
take action by not speaking with the family and boycotted work for the rest of that
day.
Liu Fanmei found herself reflecting on the rationale for her employer's care and
protection, as she struggled to assert her own desire for autonomy against concern
for her safety and reputation:
Now I'm in domestic work, and there are a lot of restrictions, like it's not
convenient to make phone calls. At first I didn't really understand. Moreover, at
the house I work in now, [my employer] doesn't want me to make friends, it's
best if I don't socialize much. However, she let's me receive calls from my
parents and encourages me to call them. She says I'm a young girl, and I still
don't understand the ways of the world. What if I encountered some bad guys,
what then? She has a point, but I don't wholly agree, because one can grow up
and mature, and can know how to discern peoples' characters. Like the Chinese
saying, “with time you can see peoples’ true nature” (ri jiu jian rewciri).
Employers’ strict control of workers’ social lives left young women like Xie Aimin
feeling lonely, and led her to devise tactics to connect with other young migrant
women.
[My employer] wouldn't let me go out. I really missed my friends (laoxiang), and
I wanted to go see them, but she said No way. You've been here how long and
already you want to go out?' I’ d been there just about one month, when one day
while I was helping her fetch fresh milk I spotted someone who appeared to be
from the countryside. I asked if she was from Anhui, and she said she was! When
I found that friend {laoxiang), and chatted with her, I felt so much calmer (tashi).
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Li Shanshan likewise chafed under her employer’s continual surveillance, and
invented creative excuses to find time and space to herself, or to spend with friends
from home.
Sometimes when I had nothing to do, I would go out and chat with them. They
were from my county. We all knew each other. Some of them ran stalls making
snacks, some were resellers (of used goods). I often went there to chat with them.
I didn't have actual days off, but if there was something I wanted to do, I could
say, “I've got something to do” or “I'm going to mail a letter,” and then I would
have about two hours. Whenever I had nothing to do, I would leave.
Similarly, although housekeepers appeared submissive and attentive when
interacting with their supervisors, in fact they took a number of risks while on the job
in order to circumvent management and make their daily routine more tolerable.
Some tactics were individual, such as pilfering small items like shampoos and
sewing kits from the hotel rooms for their own and friends’ use. In addition, I’ve
explained that housekeepers would cultivate good relations with their (male) shift
supervisors in order to acquire bonuses like extra meal coupons and key work
assignments, often in competition with colleagues.
Other tactics relied on cooperation of fellow workers. For example, with a co-worker
covering for them, workers would take periodic catnaps or attend to personal affairs
while on duty. One common scenario involved making telephone calls to friends
from hotel rooms, which was explicitly forbidden behavior, while a co-worker
patrolled the hallway as a lookout, in case the supervisor were to catch them in the
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act. I received scores of illicit phone calls from the Zhou sisters speaking in hurried
and whispered voices from the hotel. Co-workers also tolerated hosting one
another’s friends (e.g., co-workers) and relatives in the worker dormitory for short
term stays.
Workers at the 4-star hotel between 1999 and 2001 engaged in a spontaneous
collective protest of the state’s temporary residence permit regulations. Rather than
pay the fee to re-register for a new permit each year, the housekeepers one by one
adopted the practice of altering their previous years’ temporary resident permits and
work permits. Both the cleaning company and hotel housekeeping supervisors tacitly
agreed to such a practice, pretending not to notice the forgeries. Interestingly, this is
an example of how guanxi networks—here, between workers and supervisors—can
be used to evade state regulations (in this case by withholding fees from the Public
Security Bureau, a government agency).1 6 1 Through such small acts of resistance or
“weapons of the weak” (Scott 1985), domestic workers and hotel housekeepers alike
reinterpreted their worth, helping themselves to what they saw as the benefits and
treatment they felt they deserved.
1 6 1 Compare with Mayfair M. Yang’s (1994) study of guanxi as a tool for redistributing state
resources.
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Unfortunately, in March of 2001, Zhou Lina’s forged permit was rejected, and she
was ordered by her immediate boss to shell out the fee for a 1-year renewal, at a cost
of several hundred yuan (to be deducted from her monthly pay). She strongly
objected that such a request was unreasonable, because although the renewal would
extend the permits for one year, once the cleaning company’s contract with the 5-star
hotel ended, her permits would be invalid. (It so happened that the housekeepers had
learned that the contract would expire in June.) The hotel housekeeping supervisor
actually took her side, agreeing that she could just take her chances of being caught
with a fake permit until the contract expired. But perhaps on principle, the cleaning
company boss refused to authorize the tampered permit, and issued the ultimatum:
“If you don’t pay, you can leave.” Unwilling to pay the unreasonable fees, and with
wounded pride, Zhou Lina chose to quit.
In retrospect (in 2002), Zhou Lina admitted: “The boss [of the cleaning company]
was good to me, but at that time, I felt very hurt.” Even after quitting, she was hurt
by the loss of affective bond between herself and the boss who she had come to
respect and trust. Regarding the injustice of the government regulations, she said that
although she was tempted at that time to speak out and express her outrage,
conventions of guanxi prevented her from humiliating her boss by verbally attacking
him. In particular, Zhou remained silent out of respect for the forewoman (shifu)
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from the apparel factory where she used to work, who had originally introduced the
Zhou sisters to the cleaning company boss.
“Voting with her feet” was the only way for Zhou Lina to protest to her boss about
the unfairness of the government regulations and his part in enforcing them without
damaging her social relationships with, in this case, a fellow migrant. Resigning
from the job restored Zhou Lina’s sense of justice, and certainly showed that she is
in no way “docile.” Yet the act of quitting was a wholly individual one that did not
lead to any systematic change. Guanxi, which bound Zhou Lili in reciprocal and
asymmetrical relationships, also limited her means of resistance. Nonetheless, her
action expressed her sense of herself as a citizen and a worker entitled to fair
treatment.
Negotiated Identity and Agency
In the cities, young rural migrant women are incorporated into global capitalism as
docile, cheap and expendable, so-called “flexible,” labor in the low-wage and often
stigmatized service sector jobs. Neither the trappings of modernity nor social
mobility easily accrue to these new workers. Rather, the low status and wages of
manual labor and service work reinforce rural women’s inferiority and outsider
status in the urban milieu.
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Despite the exploitative nature of young rural women’s workaday lives in Beijing,
and against the social stigma of menial jobs, they persevere with remarkable
optimism and energy. They take pride in their ability to make choices of work that
do not compromise their virtuous reputations, and take pleasure in certain aspects of
becoming model workers. Although, in exchange for an employer’s paternalistic
protection, young women sacrifice a certain degree of autonomy, they also find
comfort or companionship in such personalistic ties, and are granted certain
concessions from employers as reward for their good behavior. When these
strategies of accommodation to authority fail to gain them any advantages, rural
migrant women “vote with their feet” and seek out new employers. In short, young
rural migrant women make strategic compromises with household and workplace
forms of authority, and carve out new roles between duty and desire and docility and
rebellion.
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CHAPTER FIVE
MIGRATION AS SELF-TRANSFORMATION
Introduction
In oral and written narratives of young Chinese women’s migrations, the moment of
going 'out to work' is a trope that marks a turning point in a life story. As Zhang
Xiaoping writes in Rural Women Knowing All (Zhang X. 1999):
Perhaps I was bom to labor (dagong). At age 16, the year I graduated from
middle school, I followed some others and went out to work. At that time I was
naive, filled with illusions, and going to the city was my greatest desire.
A naive young girl prior to leaving her village, after acquiring the experiences of
migration and work Zhang no longer considers herself naive but wise, even jaded,
for she realizes that her desires have been "illusions." Likewise, most young women
I met felt changed by migration. Some were embarrassed by how stupid (shagua) or
naive (danchun) they were when they first came out to work; others stressed how
wise (dong shi) and confident (zixin) they had since become. Such testimonials
suggest that women mature and grow through the experience of migration, even as
their stories reproduce ideologies of rural-urban difference, in which the former is
coded as backward or unchanging, distanced from or outside the time-space of
modernity.
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Two experienced domestic workers, Ye Yanling and He Qinyin, here reflect a
common opinion that time and experience transforms migrants from dupes to savvy
opportunists:
Ye: Yes, yes, those girls who have just come from the countryside are real
peasants (didi daodao de nongmiri).
He: Yes, they are very nai've (danchun).
Ye: They arrive in this big city and they don’t understand anything.
He: Right. But when you come out, you don't stop reflecting. For example, at
first you accept a low salary because at home you did household work and you
didn't even get one penny. But after you get to Beijing and you live in this
environment, and you gradually meet other people, you begin to compare
yourself with others in this occupation (tonghang), and you realize they are
making more money. So [a rural migrant woman’s] point of comparison shifts.
At first she compared herself to people at home, then gradually she will compare
herself with other people, including her superiors, and find areas where she is
dissatisfied.
These experienced domestic workers agreed that their long sojourns in Beijing had
made them more savvy and mature. Consequently, they felt superior to those
villagers who had not migrated and to recent arrivals to the city from the countryside,
and both nostalgic for and contemptuous of their former selves. Gradually their
frame of reference shifts and, as they began to compare themselves to urban peers or
employers, they too aspire to have more opportunities to make money and improve
their lives.
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Sarah Lund-Skar (1994) theorizes that migration distances migrants from their
origins both physically and metaphysically, and hence transforms their very
identities and subjectivities. Home is experienced by migrants through memory as
loss, or is objectified in their minds, even as they maintain ties with their origins.
This separation of the self from point of origin occurs through the subject's
awareness of her own “difference,” such as from non-migrant peers. This sense of
distance and differentiation is augmented when migrants are marked as “peasants in
the city.”
Rural migrant women in the city become keenly aware of their perceived differences
from urban residents, differences evidenced in the historical and contemporary
discursive politics of the household registration system and labor market,
respectively. Yet, while dominant discourses construct rural identity as naturally and
irrevocably inferior (i.e., backwards, traditional), rural migrant women insist upon
their ability to change and improve themselves. They do so, as I explain below, by
becoming consumers, acquiring material goods, skills, and knowledge that are signs
of modernity and cosmopolitanism. They measure their self-transformations by
comparison to fellow villagers, especially during annual trips home. The sense of
self-development can be seen to be empowering.
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However, by labeling newcomers as naive, experienced migrants imply that the onus
of improving a situation is only a matter of individual responsibility and ability, and
not a matter of overcoming or changing deep-seated structural barriers that maintain
villagers’ relative economic and social disadvantages compared to urbanites, or, for
that matter, gender norms. Experienced migrants thus may reinforce dominant
discourse of rural-urban difference and hierarchy that blame rural workers’ low
quality and essential characteristics for their own exploitation, and which deflect
criticism of state policy or employer practices that structurally impede rural upward
mobility. Moreover, by perceiving migration in terms of a movement from the
tradition-bound, timeless space of the rural to the dynamic, modem space of the city,
rural migrant women themselves reproduce the discourse of rural-urban difference
that structures a rural-urban dichotomy.
Migration does not affect all individuals uniformly, neither is it an entirely positive
experience. Rural migrant women often complain of feeling lonely, due not only to
homesickness but also their general exclusion from urban society, which also makes
them feel hurt, rejected, and insecure. This feeling that migration entails among rural
1 A7
migrant women may be described as “nonbelonging” (Parrenas 2001 a,b). Rural
1 6 2 In describing the psychological toll of transnational migration on Filipina domestic workers in
Europe and North America, Parrefias (2001a: 197) explains: “Despite its different sources,
nonbelonging is a shared localized dislocation for these two groups of female migrant workers. It is a
discomfort that constantly affects their behavior, attitudes, and feelings in the community.”
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migrant women’s sense of non-belonging is particularly intense because of their
liminal position in the life course. As young single women who, according to
convention, must marry, they cannot long avoid the weighty issue of marriage. As
Louise Beynon (2004) keenly observes, marriage is a vexing issue for them because
the choice of marriage partner is also a decision about one’s future, which is in turn
determined by “place.” Exposure to the city and urban lifestyles raises young rural
women’s expectations about the future. Marrying a peasant farmer and settling down
in the “backwards” countryside no longer appeals to them. Finding an urban
marriage partner signifies upward mobility, but, without the legal right of residence
signified by local urban hukou and due to urban prejudice against them, such
marriages are not common and do not necessarily guarantee future happiness.
The reality of young rural women’s lives is that the combination of rural patriarchy,
the urban labor market, and the household registration system thwart their aspirations
for a better future, causing them great consternation and even despair. Zhou Lili’s
lament to me one day before I left Beijing voices the feelings of many of her peers:
“I thought I could belong here in the city, but really I feel like I don’t belong
anywhere.”
In short, rural migrant women may be empowered by the maturity and confidence
they gain during their migration and work experience, but frustrated expectations for
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their futures temper their sense of permanent achievement and success. Indeed,
circumstances leave them little choice but to embrace an identity that is always
liminal and become “floaters,” as moniker liudong renkou (floating population)
implies.
Remittances: Material and Social Capital
Prior to the Spring Festival of 2000,1 accompanied the Zhou sisters to the post
office, where they paid about 1/5 of a monthly salary, about 100 yuan, to send two
pillowcases full of clothing and shoes purchased in Beijing during the past year back
to their family as New Year’s gifts. Both sisters remitted about l A of their annual
income to their parents, mainly to pay for their mothers’ medical expenses and to pay
off the family’s debts. Recently their earnings, and those of their older brother who
had found work in a factory in the southern SEZ, were used to send their youngest
brother to driver’s education school, where he was learning how to drive a taxi.
Moreover, Zhou Lili continued to send her parents money even after her marriage, a
practice uncommon in patrilineal Chinese society.
Like other migrant women who reside longterm in Beijing, Zhou Lili makes annual
pilgrimages to the countryside and greets new arrivals to Beijing from her
hometown, thus keeping ties to home and showing her respect and affection toward
her parents, who indeed must interact with and rely on fellow villagers on a daily
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basis. Yet neither can she deny the pride and pleasure of being held in her fellow
villager’s esteem. Ultimately, such a feeling of respect --denied most rural migrant
women in the city—is worth the (literal) price to be paid. In Zhou’s case, she passes
several sleepless nights in advance of each return trip home, planning carefully how
much gift money she will bestow on each relative’s household (through the young
children). She took pains to balance villagers’ expectations based on their
imagination of her wealth, and her own limited means to indulge them.
I can’t afford to give much money, because I barely make a living myself. Yet if
I don’t give them enough, they will say bad things like I am stingy or that I am a
failure. But if I give too much, I will go broke, and they still won’t be satisfied.
It’s really frustrating. That’s why I didn’t want to go back home; that’s why my
sister and brother don’t go home every year. If it weren’t for my parents, I
wouldn’t give those relatives anything!
The classic scholarship on the international division of labor divided the world into
consumers in the first world and producers in the developing world. But
globalization has been shown to make consumers out of producers in the developing
world too. Rural migrants are increasingly recognized as pioneers who bring material
wealth and modem technology, skills, and knowledge, including knowledge of how
to consume, back to the countryside. Such patterns of remittance further construct
and strengthen “traditional” reciprocal social networks {guanxi). However, the
allocation of migrant remittances and other resources back to the village is a
gendered process, and in rural Chinese families, young boys’ education and training
may bethe favored investment of their migrant sisters’ remittances. Nonetheless,
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young women do gain socially from the public acknowledgement of their earning
power that a return visit, in which they “perform modernity,” entails (Mills 1999).
Becoming Cosmopolitan: Shopping and Tourism
A report based on interviews with domestic workers in Beijing found exposure to
urban lifestyle taught young rural women standardized speech (putonghua), to speak
at lower decibels, to pay more attention to personal hygiene, and to generally accept
“urban values” (chengshi jumin de jiazhi guari) (Meng 1995: 256). Rural migrant
women generally do strive to adopt the speech, habits, and “look” associated with
urban and global consumer culture. Thus Zhou Lili was flattered when during a visit
to her natal village her cousin’s wife demanded: “Speak dialect (fiaxiang hud) when
you are at home!” The teasing comment revealed how excellent her standardized
spoken Chinese had become.
In order to appear less "rustic" (tu), rural migrant women upgrade wardrobes with
fashionable clothing and footwear, and purchase moisturizers and whitening creams
in the hopes of having softer, whiter skin. Many cut or style their hair within months
of arrival in Beijing, as long, straight hair is perceived as an identifiable marker of
the village girl. I recall spending an entire afternoon watching Zhang Xiaqing receive
a makeover from two of her Shandong peers. The friends, who sported short, stylish
haircuts, teased Zhang for her dark skin and long hair, calling her a "hick" (tu).
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Zhang took their teasing in stride, but over time she did begin to use whitening
cream, wear high heels, and dress more stylishly; I found her quite changed between
our last meeting in 2000 and our first meeting two years later during my follow-up
visit. Similarly, after Zhou Lina started a factory job in 2001 making almost double
what she had made as a chambermaid, she began to dress daringly in rather
revealing, stylish clothes. At our first reunion dinner in 2002 she wore high black
patent leather heels, tight black pants, a sleeveless white blouse, and carried a leather
purse. Her hair was swept up (i.e., an “updo”) and secured with a hairclip and she
wore lipstick and eyeliner. She too had changed much during the two years since
we’d last met.
Taking care of one’s appearance builds confidence and is also practical. By adopting
a sophisticated and sexier look, young migrant women may better blend into urban
society and thus avoid outright discrimination, and may also improve their chances
on the labor market. Yet, doing so enmeshes them further into the sexual politics of
the market, which values and exploits women’s qualities of the “ricebowl of youth,”
namely youthful femininity and sexuality (see discussion in chapter 2).
Clothes and accoutrements are also status symbols, although not all of my informants
equally valued such cultural capital. On an outing to the zoo with some of the hotel
janitors, I noticed Zhou Lili’s not so subtle showing off of her knowledge of western
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brand names, such as when she admired my Reebok brand sneakers. Perhaps I forced
her out of the limelight when I turned my attention to Jiang Linlin and expressed
admiration for her jeans jacket, which had a Betty Boop logo affixed to it. But Jiang
nonchalantly said she merely thought the jacket was pretty, and cared naught for the
logo that made it a status item. Li Mei happened to be with us. Compared with her
two colleagues, she was dressed more “traditionally” and conservatively, rather like
a child than a young woman. She expressed her disdain for indecent (meiyou guiju)
behaviors on display that day in the zoo/park; a man lying on a park bench with his
shoes off; a woman taking off her sweater while walking; women with exposed
shoulders. On another occasion she and Zhou Lili recited a host of rules guiding
young women’s behaviors in their respective villages (in Shandong and Shaanxi).
Taboos they mentioned included not sitting with legs spread wide apart and not
sitting on the bed (kang) with unmarried unrelated men. Clearly, young rural
women’s acceptance of whitening cosmetics and global fashion trends may
challenge more conservative rural social mores and the gender androgyny enforced
by the state in their parents’ youth.
Shopping with Zhou Lina one day at the Sino-French joint venture department store,
Carrefour, I saw just how much global advertising has saturated the local
environment. Zhou lingered over a Gilette woman’s shaver—she had earlier quizzed
me about American women’s habits regarding body hair—and Revlon hair dye, and
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finally purchased a discounted push-up bra. Later at my apartment, eating dinner, she
slipped on uncomfortable looking sandals that promised to lead to weight loss.
On another occasion, Zhou Lina solicited advice from an American friend about cell
phone costs. For young migrant women, expensive purchases like pagers (BP j i ) and
cell phones are both status objects representing new technology as well as practical
tools that facilitate communication with friends and family and alleviate young
women’s loneliness and isolation. Technological investments could also be tools of
subversion. Domestic worker Liu Fanmei used her beeper to keep contact with
fellow migrants and circumvent the strict rules of telephone use established by her
employer. Likewise, Zhou Lina wanted a cell phone so that friends could leave her
voice mail messages during her 10-hour workdays since the factory supervisor did
not allow employees to take incoming calls.
Not all purchases resonate with a desire for western or urban things, however. On
one shopping trip I took with Li Mei, two of her friends, former domestic workers
now working in sales (pao yewu), gleefully bought two live baby chicks to brighten
their shared room and to keep them company (for a short spell)! Others purchased
plants and wall decorations, or colorful bedspreads and tablecloths to brighten and
beautify their cramped and dreary living spaces.
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In their efforts to transform themselves from rural “hicks,” young rural women risk
being judged harshly by their parents, peers and co-villagers. That other villagers
may judge harshly young women who fritter away their money on clothes and
disposable consumer items for themselves is evident from migrant women’s
emphasis on their own frugality and contempt for migrant peers who focus only on
money. While families welcome the gifts that daughters bring home on visits,
conspicuous displays of consumption might lead to gossip about a daughter’s decline
in virtue. Hotel worker Zhou Lili complained about the dilemma while she packed
her bag in anticipation of a visit home:
If I dress too poorly, they will gossip that my life in Beijing is hard. But if I dress
to fashionably, they will be jealous and gossip about where my money comes
from!
Thus she was pleased upon her return to her North China village to be called tu
(rustic) by her peers, for this expressed the rekindling of their affection and approval
of her, even as they admired her new, expensive leather coat and high-heeled boots.
In addition to affording the pleasures of shopping in its many department stores,
Beijing also offered opportunities both for more simple pleasures as well as learning.
For example, Liu Fanmei used Beijing’s public spaces and free institutions to escape
the daily drudgery of domestic service employment:
Working for one year, sometimes I was in a daze (huanghu), feeling that every
day was the same, extremely dull. Look, there I was, a young woman, feeling I
was wasting my talent (qucai). Afterwards though, I gave myself a goal: in one
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year I would tour Beijing city, do things I wanted to do. Like, if I wanted to read
I would just go to the library.
Given Beijing’s complex urban infrastructure, navigating one's way around the
capital could be educational and confidence building. Two women from the Migrant
Women’s Club entertained me with stories of their humorous escapades getting lost
on bikes and buses in Beijing's ancient alleyways (hutong). One shared with me her
strategy for navigating the city: commit a few key routes to memory and never
deviate from them! As Liu Fanmei proudly asserted:
It may be true that I didn’t know anything about computers or that I didn’t know
everything about proper hygiene because our rural conditions aren’t as good as
urban ones, but look how I’ve learned my way around Beijing. I know it very
well. I can learn.
On the few days off during the year, almost every migrant worker I met eagerly
planned to explore Beijing's parks, temple fairs, or scenic and historic sites, often
taking advantage of the discounted entry fees at holidays. Touring the city, young
women could forget the stigma and oppressive conditions of their jobs, subvert the
restrictions on their movement in public spaces of Beijing, and proclaim their equal
right with Beijing citizens to enjoy public space. Liu Fanmei even made the
acquaintance of several Beijing elders, and from them learned how to participate in
authentic Beijing culture.
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Beijing is also an immigrant (yimiri) society, but among five people there will be
two or three old Beijingers (lao Beijingren). They told me where the tastiest
snacks were sold, and I wrote it down. One elderly Beijing man told me that
Beijing people like to drink a particular drink a certain way, so I went to the
Moslem Temple (qingzhensi) and bought myself a bowl of it, swished it around
in my mouth, and felt so happy.
Liu Fanmei was no stranger to public humiliation and discrimination. Once while
browsing in a bookstore, a clerk cornered her and demanded proof of identification,
as if implying that a migrant worker (apparently identifiable from her less
fashionable dress or from her accent) would not be buying books, only stealing them.
Visiting historic and scenic sites, talking to Beijing elders, and learning about the
capital's history legitimized her right to place in Beijing as a fellow citizen of the
nation, and somewhat compensated for those moments of exclusion. In fact, as the
nation's capital, Beijing had a unique ability to catalyze migrants' emotions, as Liu
Fanmei makes clear:
People ask me, why did I come to Beijing? I say, because there is no Tiananmen
Square in my hometown! It gave me a great impression in my youth. Beijing is
China's cultural center, it's political heart, so coming out is a way of experiencing
it (ganshou yixia) and gaining knowledge (changyixie zhishi). Because if you
don't come out of the village, you won't gain such an appreciation.
For most young migrants to Beijing, a trip to tour Tiananmen and perhaps a
photograph of the visit was mandatory. Mixing with Beijing families and foreign
sightseers, migrants too were transformed into worldly travelers. A memento from
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Beijing shown to villagers at home might present an image of a successful and
exciting life, despite the reality of one's laboring existence. In fact, to return home
without first visiting this most important cultural symbol was tantamount to
forfeiting face, a significant loss of opportunity to accrue cultural capital, as this
sister's letter home suggests:
Although working here is a bit tiring, it's still better than being at home, because
as long as you work, you'll be rewarded. ... Since we've been here we've not
even seen Tiananmen: if we went back now what would we have to say for
ourselves (Zhao 1996)?
While migrants are outsiders in the city, the knowledge they gain through first-hand
experience of that environment appears sophisticated to new migrants and villagers
back home, to whom they appear to be insiders to Beijing’s secrets. For instance,
upon returning home, Zhou Lili engaged in animated conversation with the village’s
most worldly members, mainly her father’s peers, in discussions of recent changes in
Beijing. Yet her conversation contrasted sharply with discussions I had overheard
between her and her spouse, a native Beijinger, whom she frequently relies on for
directions about how to get around Beijing. Such insider knowledge of the city is a
form of cultural capital. Thus when a high official in Zhou Lili’s county town
planned his first trip to Beijing, it was she who was called upon to meet him at the
bus station. She reported: “He couldn’t have figured out his way out of the station.
He’s nearly illiterate!”
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The consuming pleasures of shopping and tourism are a significant means for young
migrant women to partake of a modem, urban identity that is denied them in their
role as lowly service workers. Through clothes and gifts, photographs and souvenirs
that can be shared with fellow migrants and family and friends at home, they craft
images of themselves as discerning consumers and worldly travelers. Participating
in shopping or tourism alongside urban residents, young rural women likewise carve
out their rightful place in the urban environment and identify themselves as
consummate cosmopolitans, subverting widespread stereotypes about their
ignorance, backwardness, and poverty. However, the decision to gratify their own
desires through consumption often entails diverting the funds otherwise sent home to
help the family.
Developing Oneself: Investing in an Education
In retrospect, many migrant workers view their early job choices, especially service
work with its low wages and restrictive work conditions, critically. For example, a
year after quitting the hotel cleaning company, Zhou Lina judged that her former
boss “treated us [outsiders] as nothing” (meiyou shenmo daiyu). Former domestic
worker Li Shanshan describes how she began to think about jobs other than domestic
service:
When I came out I was “naive” (danchun). I didn't think much about how to
make a lot of money. For example, going to work in a restaurant washing dishes
and so on, that work can net more pay, but it's too unsafe (luari). ..So even when
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the salary was high I wasn't willing. I just stayed in their [her employer's] house.
I felt that I could be safe in their house.... [However,] each year I became more
and more mature, and then I decided to do business for myself; I didn't want to
work for others.
Li Shanshan equated her former naivety with concern for safety and moral propriety
rather than attention to her financial benefits. Time spent in the urban environment,
however, changes a young rural women's mindset about earning money, and
significantly loosens her conservative attitude toward risk-taking and social
conventions. Over time, some women might even exploit their primary asset, their
“ricebowl of youth,” to pursue lucrative careers even in less “respectable”
occupations such as in the entertainment sector.
During my visit to Beijing in 2002, the Zhou sisters often discussed with me their
friend Li Mei, who was then working as a contract cleaner at a hotel where Zhou
Lina had recently worked and was living in a small rented room in an old-style house
(pingfang) on the outskirts of Beijing. The room, which I visited, was very small
(about 8 x 5 square feet) and damp; mildew was beginning to show on the white
washed concrete walls. Zhou Lina had lived with Li Mei for a time before finding
her own place, and complained that Li Mei’s room was so damp it had exacerbated
Zhou’s arthritis in her knee. The room was also dark: its one window was bricked off
and the only light came from a naked bulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling. Now,
Zhou Lina also had a rented room in a pingfang within walking distance of Li Mei’s
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place, and was trying to convince her friend to pool resources so they could each
save money and enjoy more space as well as each other’s company/6 3 (As it was the
two women often cooked dinner together in the evenings, using makeshift coal-
burning stoves located outside their rooms.) But Li Mei was impervious to the Zhou
sister’s suggestion, because her landlords, who occupied the main rooms in the
house, were friends of one of Li Mei’s relatives/6 4
The Zhou sisters were critical of Li Mei. Zhou Lili explained why: “She has no
survival skills and cares too much about face when she should be thinking about
saving money.” In short, Li Mei was caught in a web of reciprocal obligations
iguanxi). The Zhou sisters, by contrast, had learned to successfully balance concerns
about their reputations and obligations to kin with more selfish desires to increase
their earnings and live a bit better. By the time of my follow-up visit in 2002, Zhou
Lili was a married woman. Surprisingly, she continued to send money to her parents,
but doing so was understandably causing tension with her unemployed spouse. She
1 6 3 The young women rented from landlords, with Beijing hukou, who had been farmers well into the
1970s, when their village was incorporated into the city administrative zone. Indeed, many of the
other migrants living in this “migrant enclave” worked tending fields belonging to these landlords,
who in turn derived income from rental property. Affordable housing in enclaves such as this one
require very long public bus commutes— 1 hour each way for Li Mei—to downtown workplaces.
1 6 4 The landlords were former peasants who had tilled the village land. After decollectivization they
turned the land into more profitable use, replacing their mud-and-brick house (pingfang) with a
concrete-fortified 2-story structure, building additional rooms. The landlord’s two large rooms (a
living- and bedroom and a kitchen) were nicely furnished and had linoleum flooring. They charged Li
Mei 150 yuan!month plus utilities (i.e., water, electricity and coal). Li Mei’s neighbors, an older
couple from Anhui, enumerated for me the random fees (zafei) renters had to pay to the local village
committee, such as for migrant management and public hygiene.
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predicted that she would not be able to send money home much longer, because her
own (i.e., she and her husband) family needed it. Zhou Lina was no longer sending
money home, saying she needed to “save" her earnings. Fortunately, their brothers
were by then supporting their parents.
In order to gain skills necessary for upward job mobility, young women may shift
their attentions to improving their skills through extra-work activities, even while
remaining in menial service jobs. Beijing offers numerous opportunities to embark
on a formal course of study for a degree or earn a certificate in a particular technical
skill. As Gao Yamei remarked: “Beijing offers educational opportunities that I can't
find at home.” Like most young rural women, Gao Yamei did not have a specific
course of study in mind when she arrived in Beijing. But after watching a television
report about a young Chinese medical doctor who established medical clinics in poor
areas, she quickly decided to learn Chinese medicine, inspired to do the same in her
hometown. Young women like Gao Yamei who failed to complete nine years of
compulsory education and therefore lack a middle school diploma can nonetheless
become certified in a trade, such as Chinese traditional medicine. I met domestic
workers and hotel housekeepers learning hairdressing, cosmetology, typing,
tailoring, cake decorating, and tourism.
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However, balancing menial jobs with schooling is extremely challenging, and
investments in education do not always lead to more lucrative jobs. For example,
while working at a hotel, Zhou Lili invested 1000 yuan in a computer course, but
rarely could arrange her shifts so that she could find time to go to the school to
practice on the computer. Similarly, domestic worker Wang Rong invested in a word
processing course, borrowing her employer household’s computer to practice typing.
But when her charge, a young boy got in trouble for playing video games on the
computer when he was supposed to be studying, his parents confiscated the
computer, leaving Wang Rong without a practice keyboard. Cao Fang, on the other
hand, managed to save up enough of her salary (5000 yuan) over five years working
as a domestic worker to support herself for 6 months in Beijing, renting rooms from
friends, during which time she took classes to learn typing and computers. However,
in the first clerical job she landed, she was fired after just a week, and returned to
menial work, as a hotel janitor. Eventually she found a retail job as a supermarket
cashier, and later she became an accountant in a restaurant.
Young rural women with a middle school or higher level of education will set their
sights higher and aim to sit for the national high school equivalency exams, which
lead to a course of study resulting in the equivalent of either an associate college
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degree (dazhuan).1 6 5 However, although many rural migrant women attempt to earn
such degrees, few actually succeed at completing them.
Whatever the course of study chosen and the sacrifices it entails, most young women
find great value in acquiring new skills that they believe will be useful to apply in
their village or county. Many dream of setting up their own business, such as a
tailoring practice or beauty salon.1 6 6 In becoming students, migrants gain confidence
and pride and reverse the perception of themselves as mere menial service workers
with tenuous claims to urban residence and rights.
For example, Ye Yanling had once been stopped downtown by a patrolling Public
Security Bureau officer. The officer most likely was suspicious of Ye Yanling's
companion, her younger brother, because he was carrying a suitcase and looked the
part of a recently arrived migrant (which in fact he was). As a longer-term migrant,
Ye Yanling was required to have both a national identity card (shenfen zheng) and a
temporary residence card (zanzhu zheng), as well as a work permit (gongzuo zheng).
In fact, neither she nor her brother had the proper permits. Nevertheless, Yanling did
1 6 5 There are two paths to attaining a dazhuan degree in Beijing. The first involves studying for a
nation-wide test (chengren gaokao) of five subjects, which is considered quite difficult. But ultimately
that degree is less prestigious than a degree earned through 15-course of study at night school, whose
prerequisite was the easier test (gaodeng zixue gaokao), yet whose course o f study is obviously longer
and more arduous.
1 6 6 One day in the Migrant Women’s Club Office, the assistant lectured me on the importance of
hairdressing salons and other modem conveniences for the development of villages and towns, when i
questioned the purchasing power of rural potential customers.
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manage to talk their way out of a fine (or, worse, arrest), by claiming that she was a
legal temporary migrant and that her brother was only visiting on holiday. After this
brush with danger, though, she determined: “Next time, I will not say I am a migrant
working (dagong) in Beijing. I will say I am a college student.” College students in
Beijing's prestigious universities often have non-local registration; by identifying
with them, Ye Yanling revealed a confidence gleaned from her self-perceived rising
social status and knowledge of how to stand up to authority.
Parents too are more likely to support their daughter’s spending on education than on
fashionable clothes and cosmetics. Ironically, parents who might have cut short their
daughters' education in the past might now praise her new skills learned in Beijing.
Ye Yanling felt personal triumph that her newly earned degree compensated for
schooling that had been abruptly discontinued so that her younger brother could
afford to attend school. Recollecting her father's orders years later, she sighed with
regret: “Otherwise, I'd be in college now.” But since undertaking self-study for the
college degree, she felt some satisfaction in hearing villagers praise her and use her
successes as a model for village boys to emulate. Embarrassed, but with pride, she
recounted:
One of my father's veteran friends (zhanyou) compared his son to me, and
scolded his son in my father's presence, saying: “Why can’ t you go out to work
like Ye's daughter?”
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Investing earnings in technical training or higher education improves young
women’s self-esteem, and earns them “face” in the eyes of villagers and other
migrants. The state encourages rural migrants to learn skills in order to apply their
new knowledge to rural development back in the village (although the state does not
provide substantial financial support for this). The majority of young migrant women
who I met before 2001 and were still in Beijing upon my return in 2002 were those
who had persisted in their course of self-study. These high achievers I expect are
most likely to remain in the city, thereby challenging the image of young rural
women as merely low-wage, temporary laborers in the urban service sector.
From Menial to Pink Collar: Moving Up in the Job Hierarchy
Young rural migrant women have limited options for upward job mobility in the
urban labor market. Social discrimination against migrants compounded with
preferential regulations for urban workers, especially laid-off state-sector workers,
and rural migrant women’s relatively lower education levels, conspire against them.
Nonetheless, young migrant women make remarkable efforts to maximize their
wages and improve their economic and social status.
Rural workers can best hope to increase their wages and improve their working
conditions through lateral mobility, whether remaining in the same line of work but
switching employers, or moving among various service occupations. Thus the
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popular image of domestic workers is one that unflatteringly depicts their fickleness
for employers and high rate of turnover. Indeed, a primary strategy for “trading up”
employers is by sharing employer and job information with fellow villagers or other
migrant women workers. (Interestingly, to discourage such contacts among rural
migrants, government and private domestic service placement agencies usually
levied fines for switching employers, and otherwise discouraged excessive job
mobility.) Of course, simply by exchanging full-time domestic service for part-time,
live-out work, or for other menial jobs like hotel housekeeping, domestic workers
stood to gain greater control over their work conditions, if not actually increase their
earnings.
Rural migrant women also express interest in leaving menial jobs for more lucrative
or prestigious ones. As suggested in the previous section, some may set aside
concerns with reputation and sexual mores and take up jobs associated with money
and glamour, such as in the entertainment sector, thereby rebelling against norms of
sexuality (e.g., Zheng 2004). From her position as an English-language cassette
assembler in a private factory working 10-hour days, seven days a week, Zhou Lina
cast a critical eye on her previous jobs in hotel housekeeping. She said she was glad
to have quit “because it’s not for young people but for old women to do that cleaning
work.” Clearly Zhou Lina viewed factory work as more prestigious than hotel
housekeeping, which is associated with domestic roles and servitude. While her
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sister Zhou Lili agreed that factory work was better compensated, she herself was
glad not to be doing such “difficult” (xinku) work as her sister, and remarked that at
least, as a hotel cleaner, she could take a shower and have meals provided every day.
Of course, Zhou Lili was quite satisfied in her job as a full-time chambermaid at the
state-run guesthouse than as a contract employee of the janitorial company. Although
her job description remained ostensibly the same, belonging to an official work unit
provided a modicum of prestige. Similarly, former domestic worker Cao Fang made
clear to me that working behind the counter at a restaurant where she tabulated
customer bills and expedited orders distinguished her from a mere waitress.
Even those employed in menial work took pride in their exposure to new technology
or ideas through their jobs. Zhou Lina, for example, was excited to show me the
English labels that she applied to cassette tapes and introduce me to coworkers who,
as college graduates, could converse with me in English. Similarly, hotel
housekeeper Jiang Linlin recalled a former job that she had really liked, waitressing
in a coffee house that served mostly foreign student clientele on the campus of one of
Beijing’s elite universities. She worked at that job for more than two years because
the work was not difficult, the pay (700 ywaw/month) was relatively high, and she
had access to the university library. Most of all she liked the discipline of living and
working on campus, such as the nighttime “lights out” policy, which she said
improved her “quality” (suzhi)—here, discipline. She also said she learned from her
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coworkers how to dress better and look less “hick” (tu). However, she ultimately felt
forced to quit due to harassment by coworkers, especially those from Beijing, who
“talked about her behind her back” ( .zhazhen), and were otherwise “snobbish” (shili).
Although difficult to achieve, young rural women set their sights on moving out of
menial service work into semi-skilled jobs, such as hairdressing, cosmetology, cake
decorating, tourism, or tailoring, all of which require training or apprenticeship, and
which might lead to operating a small business or shop. Clerical work like
secretarial, typing, data entry, cashiering, and accounting, as well as jobs in sales or
public relations, also confer social status because they take place in office settings,
involve modem technology and require education or training in a skill rather than
just manual labor. Young rural women in such positions celebrate their upward
mobility. As Yu Jing wrote in a letter to the Migrant Women’s Club (reprinted in the
January 2000 Club newsletter):
Since being in Beijing, I have gradually learned the importance of having a
diploma, so I studied for a degree, and now I have found a job as a secretary,
which may not mean much to others, but to me it is a big step forward from
waitressing.
These “pink collar” jobs, so-called because they are feminized, as are those in the
entertainment sector, provide opportunities for individual women’s upward mobility
(Freeman 2000). But, they further validate the association among femininity, youth,
and sales and service jobs, reinforcing a sexual division of labor and dominant
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gender ideologies. The array of service jobs, from domestic service and hotel
housekeeping to sales and secretarial, are also status distinctions that create
hierarchies even among rural migrant women. Writing about a similar phenomenon
in industrializing Taiwan of the 1970s, Rita Gallin (1990: 182) argued: “Such
distinctions act to divide women by obfuscating their collective problems and
creating the perception that their problems are isolated and individual.”1 6 7
Although young rural women make only slight gains, if any, in economic mobility
and social status, the fact that they harbor such ambitions is significant. Setting goals
and striving to reach them, no matter how impossible, requires faith in one’s own
ability. Broadening horizons, however limited, in turn build self-confidence and self
esteem. Incremental as their actual achievements may be, migration and work
experiences expand young rural women’s imagined possibilities for their futures, and
raise their potential to meet fixture challenges, such as marriage.
1 6 7 Gallin observed the bifurcation of economic sectors into ‘modem’ and ‘traditional’ in 1970s
Taiwan, whereby the former refers to large enterprises that could best attract foreign investment (such
as located in Special Economic Zones) and produced for direct export or as subsidiaries of foreign
forms, and the latter to medium- and small-sized firms that produced for mass marketers, foreign
firms, or the domestic market, often by subcontracting work out. While both sectors predominantly
employed young, single women for manufacturing, these divisions of firm size and geographic
location, tended “to translate into status distinctions, so that jobs in the ‘modem’ sector are described
as ‘high status’ while jobs in the ‘traditional’ sector are characterized as Tow status’” (Gallin 1990:
183).
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Marriage and the Future
In many rural villages in post-Mao China, women married young, in their late teens
or early twenties, and bore a child within the first two years of marriage (see Davis
1 /is
and Harrell 1993). Migration, however, generally resulted in later age at marriage,
and could even be a conscious strategy to postpone marriage, about which young
women felt ambivalent (see chapter 3), to avoid or terminate an unwanted
engagement, or to springboard into a higher economic and social status through
making a better match (i.e., hypergamy). Migration thus provides young rural
women a certain degree of control over their future. However, such independence in
mate selection and planning for the future was not without its emotional,
psychological, and material costs.
Young rural migrant women who went out to work distinguished themselves from
peers who had married earlier or who remained in the village to passively await an
early marriage. They also pitied those who, after failing to secure steady employment
in the city, returned to the village to settle down to a rural life (recall the story of
Zhang Xiaqing’s cousins from chapter 3). However, most of my informants said that
they had no thoughts as to marriage or their future when they first migrated out of
1 6 8 Chan et al. (1992) explain that wealth changed marriage patterns in Chen Village (see discussion in
chapter 3 of this thesis), with marriages taking place in the 1990s at lower than the legal limits. They
explain that historically, it was the privilege of wealthiest families to arrange early marriages for their
sons as a sign of prosperity that the groom did not need to wait many years to afford the brideprice
(now, the money to build a new home for the future couple).
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their villages. Nonetheless, as each young woman approached or passed the official
marriage age (20), she began to feel pressure not to postpone marriage too long. As
Ye Yanling quipped,
At 20, you can find many handsome young men with favorable economic
conditions. But at age 22, you will find only good-looking men who are poor.
After 24, you will find only ugly, poor men!
Age itself was therefore a natural pressure upon young women to get married. Yet I
was never surprised to meet single migrant women approaching or even surpassing
age 30.
One reason young migrant women postpone marriage and marry later than their non
migrant peers is that they desire to continue to earn wages and work, and marriage
usually meant giving up or losing their jobs. After she became engaged at age 20 to a
fellow villager enlisted in the army, domestic worker Li Shanshan’s employer
expressed concern that she would soon quit their employ to follow her fiance to his
next post. Li coyly reassured them: “I can't get married until I'm 25. I'm too young.”
She then delayed her marriage for three years, during which time she kept her job in
Beijing. Although Li really did think her rural peers were settling down at too early
an age, her decision about when to hold a wedding was clearly also a response to her
employer’s threat that once married, she would be terminated. As I explained in
chapter 2, migrant workers have few labor guarantees, despite the existence of a
Labor Law; enterprises and employers suffer no repercussions when they let workers
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go at will. Of course, neither did Li Shanshan herself expect to continue working
after marriage, when she would return to the village to care for her in-laws and raise
children. (I met only one domestic worker who continued in her job after marriage.
She was able to negotiate a part-time situation with her employer, so she could spend
nights with her husband, himself an itinerant trader, in their rented rooms on the city
outskirts.) As I have pointed out before, both neoliberal market practices and rural
patriarchal norms reinforce rural women’s status as only temporary workers.
Another factor in young rural migrant women’s later marriage is their raised
expectations for their futures that result from time spent in the city. These include
their desire for upward social mobility, attaining the trappings of modernity
associated with urban middle class lifestyles, and their embrace of modem ideas of
love and romance. Although the majority of unmarried rural migrant women
ultimately returned to the countryside to settle down with a rural peasant, all aspired
to marry someone who could help them achieve their social and economic
aspirations. None desired a life of hardship associated with farming.
A “traditional” match usually entailed being formally introduced to someone from
one’s own village or county who would meet with parental approval. But I more
often heard my informants speak of finding a “bosom friend” (zhiji), forging a
romantic attachment of their own accord. Such a friend was someone who also had
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migration experience, and thus shared their worldview and harbored similar
ambitions. The ideal partner would have some savings, and, perhaps most
importantly, a marketable skill or technical training that would place them out of the
“traditional” agricultural economy and lead to the couple’s upward social mobility.
Such a friend would most likely be another migrant met while in the city, such as a
migrant co-worker, and less often an urban bachelor, as I will explain shortly. Cao
Fang, for example, met her husband, a restaurant cook, when she was sent to
purchase take-out fare for the family who employed her as a domestic worker. After
repeated encounters over a year, they decided to get married. They not only had
migration experience in common; he was also from the same province (Hebei),
though not from the same county.
Time spent in the city changed young women’s visions of the ideal mate and
provided the possibility of meeting someone else. As a result, it was not uncommon
for young women to refuse parental requests to return home, for returning home
implied being reading to be introduced to local bachelors, most often those contacted
through the family’s extensive social network. In 2002,1 invited Zhou Lina to return
to her home with her sister and me, but she refused on the grounds that doing so
would give her parents and kin the opportunity to put pressure on her to accept an
introduction with intent toward engagement. Migration and work thus became an
excuse to delay marriage not only so as to have more time to earn money and
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experience city life, but also to negotiate a better marriage than might otherwise be
possible.
Young women who migrated out of the village already engaged might find
themselves in a position like that of Xiazi, the protagonist in Li Hong’s 1997
documentary Out o f Phoenix Bridge {Peking Blues). After working for a while as a
domestic worker in Beijing, Xiazi decides to break off her engagement to a man
from her village. But because a go-between (marriage broker) had officially
negotiated the match and because an engagement gift (i.e., bridewealth, cailf) had
already been received, and spent, by Xiazi’s parents, Xiazi’s decision humiliated and
angered her parents, causing Xiazi great anxiety. Pan Fang, a domestic worker I met
in Beijing, likewise wanted to break off her engagement to a young man from her
village because he had not seen or experienced life in Beijing as she had, and thus
she felt he could not share her values (jiazhiguan). Her migrant friends advised her
merely to avoid returning to her hometown for a few years, until the affianced party
lost all hope of ever consummating the engagement, as they anticipated would occur.
Such stalling techniques were condoned because they could save the "face" of all
parties involved.
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How to properly terminate a formal engagement in the context of rural social
protocol was debated one day in June 2000 at the Migrant Women’s Club.1 6 9 The
discussion centered on a recent story in the China Women's News about a young
migrant woman from Anhui who gave in to parental pressure to return home, after
which she reluctantly went through with an unwanted village wedding ceremony that
culminated in the forced consummation of the marriage after several days during
which she successfully fended off her new husband’s advances. The new bride then
accused her spouse of rape, and the case went to court. The case was decided in the
woman's favor because the wedding ceremony had taken place before the couple had
registered the marriage and secured the official marriage permit, rendering the
1 1 0
marriage illegal. Since many rural couples fail to register their marriages or
register only after the customary wedding ceremony by which the local community
recognizes a marriage, this case struck a chord among the 20 or so migrant women
participating in the discussion. The majority of them accepted the principle that
marriages must be legally registered. Yet they also condemned the extreme tactics of
the young woman—charging the man with rape and proceeding to court, and
expressed pity for the jilted lover and his family as well as the woman’s parents, who
1 6 9 This particular debate was organized and moderated by Rural Women Knowing All magazine staff.
Its purpose was clearly to educate rural women about official marriage regulations. The results of the
discussion were later written up in the magazine (see “Xinniang,..”).
1 7 0 Although the court case as portrayed in national press was meant to educate rural citizens about
their rights and responsibilities to officially register marriages, the case was won solely because the
couple could not prove they were legally married; were they to be officially married, ironically, the
case may have been decided otherwise, for China lacked a marital rape law in 2000.
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had actually assisted in the rape. The consensus was that, had the woman simply
stayed away from the village, the crisis would surely have been avoided and the
engagement broken off without injury to the various parties involved. Club members
favored a compromise solution that took into consideration local customs and
reciprocal social networks and not just state policy.
When rural migrant women did pursue romantic attachments of their own accord,
such as with fellow migrants or even urbanites, their parents only reluctantly
approved of their choices. Although parental control of a son or daughters’ mate
selection has on the whole declined since the 1960s, most couples considering
engagement do seek parental approval (Yan 2003: 61-63). Engagements negotiated
without parental input not only challenged traditional parental authority in such
matters but also threatened the generational contract that entrusted grown children
with the care of their aged parents. In particular, matches made outside village- and
kin-based social networks could result in a daughter’s relocation far from her natal
home, even to a distant province, making her less able to minister personally to her
aging parents. (As I explained in chapter 3, married rural daughters are an important
source of physical care and emotional support to their own parents, as well as to their
in-laws.) Parents also disapproved out of concern for their daughter’s well-being,
particularly if the marriage would take her far from the safety of natal kin support
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networks. Yet most young couples that I encountered in Beijing were eventually able
171
to reassure the bride’s parents and gain their approval.
Pursuing liaisons beyond the usual boundaries established by geography1 7 2 and
village- and kin-based social networks, and without formal rituals of engagement,
posed dangers as young rural women themselves recognized. For example, Henan
native Jiang Linlin had a boyfriend who had been her middle school classmate. She
was optimistic that she could convince her parents of her boyfriend’s merits as a
future spouse, especially now that he was attending high school and had a good
chance of being assigned a government (cadre) position, which would result in an
urban hukou. But gradually I learned that Jiang herself had some concerns about her
boyfriend’s commitment. Since she had been in Beijing, working first as a domestic
worker and later as a hotel chambermaid, he had not kept in good touch with her,
causing her to worry that perhaps he had found someone else.
1 7 1 Yan (2003) ties the growth in “youth dominated” mate choices (including those freely made as
well as made via introduction) to growing autonomy and individual freedom of youth. He also notes
that in the village where his fieldwork occurred, 30% of free-choice love matches were made while
young villagers worked outside the village, where they had greater social space for mixed-sex
interaction (Ibid: 56). Parental authority over marriage has waned with the changing practices of post-
marital residence, as couples live separately from parents, and shifts in the practice of bridewealth.
The growing trend since the 1980s is for monetary gifts from the groom’s family be given directly to
the bride, for the couple’s own use, rather than to the bride’s parents (Yan 2003: 150-155).
1 7 2 The general rule of thumb for rural marriages historically was that a girl should remain within 10
li, about 3 km., of her natal village. Under collectivization, intra-village, intra-brigade marriages
became a common phenomenon.
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Li Mei suffered heartbreak most keenly. She had left Hebei at age 18, first to work in
a factory in Tianjin, and later to work in the same 4-star hotel that had formerly
employed the Zhou sisters through the janitorial service. But after working at the
hotel for just three months, Liu quit and found work at another hotel. Liu said she
left because she wanted to “make friends,” and had felt excluded among coworkers
who were mostly all from Chengde. At her new workplace she did make a “friend,” a
former soldier from Henan who worked in the hotel as a security guard while
undertaking self-study for a college degree. Li Mei heard from other coworkers that
he was a nice guy, and she thought that as a former soldier he would have “good
quality” (suzhi hao). She fell in love with him only to find out later that he was
carrying on with someone else. Li Mei was so distraught that she returned home to
her family and, feeling that “life is not worth living” (kanpo hongchen), she
attempted suicide by slitting her wrists. It was her second suicide attempt.1 7 3 Looking
back on the failed romance, she admitted that she might have misunderstood the
man’s intentions toward her. Nonetheless, she is sure that she will not trust a soldier
again. “I won’t love anyone but my parents,” she vowed. “I don’t believe in
[romantic] love” (Wo dui aiqing dandan).
1 7 3 The first attempt stemmed from failure to continue her studies after middle school. See nl9,
chapter 3.
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Given this background, it is no wonder that Li Mei holds contradictory ideas about
marriage. One day she told me that she wanted to go home to her village to marry,
for the reason that she didn’t care about wealth: “If you have no ability to make
money, there’s no point in desiring it, because it’s beyond your reach.” Another day,
however, she complained of the “traditional” (chuantong) marriage customs in her
village. For example, she explained, if she were to find a boyfriend from Beijing (or
another city), villagers would envy and praise her upward social mobility. But if she
were to choose a partner from outside her county (such as a fellow migrant like her
ex-boyfriend), someone who was not properly introduced to her, villagers would be
critical. They would gossip that she had needed to elope, to disguise immoral
behavior (i.e., premarital, pre-engagement sex),1 7 4 insulting her by saying “You’ve
run off with somebody!” (Ni gen ren pao le). Although I never thought to ask Li
whether her family and villagers had been apprised of her thwarted romance, such
public scrutiny and judgment of one’s affairs and misdeeds is a risk young women
may bear if they transgress norms of dating and mate-seeking. Contemptuous of
“gossipy and critical” (fengyang fengyu) villagers, Li Mei hoped “to marry far, far
from away” from her village.
1 7 4 As fieldwork-based research by Yan (2003: 65-72) and Friedman (2000) confirm, premarital sex
and cohabitation are increasingly common in rural China, but are generally confined to engaged
couples, in a context where engagement, involving exchange of money and gifts, is a binding social
contract. See also Zheng et al. 2001.
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Li Mei’s mother had chastised her daughter indirectly about the incident with the
Henan man. “She told me to ‘open my eyes’ (dakai yanjing) and not take marriage
lightly,” Li Mei relayed. During their argument over the matter, Li Mei had apprised
her mother that she did not care for the practice of exchanging bridewealth (caili).1 7 5
In justification of her view, Li Mei told of how a young man from their village,
under pressure to raise requisite funds to hold his wedding—40,000 yuan to build a
house and 10,000 yuan for the betrothal gift (i.e., bridewealth)—committed suicide.
Her mother, however, told her that not to accept bridewealth was “stupid” (sha), and
defended the exchange of engagement gifts as a tradition. Through such
confrontations, Li Mei tested her mother’s authority over her future, and began to
explore her own, albeit confused and contradictory, desires for that future.
Most radically, Li Mei stated her desire not to marry at all, but instead “become a
[Buddhist] nun” (chujia). In some areas of southern China before 1949, including
Hong Kong, unmarried women, most often of rural and working-class origins, did
have the option to take a vow of chastity and live their lives as Buddhist nuns. These
women were known as “sworn sisters,” and have received the attention of western
feminist scholars who interpreted their behavior as a form of “marriage resistance”
1 7 5 In China, Yan (1996: 177) explains, bridewealth should not be considered money used to purchase
a bride, though it may be referred to as such. Following Jack Goody, Yunxiang Yan translates caili as
“converted bridewealth.” In post-Mao China, bridewealth is increasingly presented in the form of
cash to the bride, who uses it to furnish the couple’s future residence, and not to her parents to dispose
of as they see fit.
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(Topley 1975; see also Sankar 1984; Stockard 1989). Li Mei once said that she had
even received her mother’s permission to become a nun. Yet, on another occasion, Li
Mei said she would not become a nun until her family no longer had the need for her
earnings. Meanwhile, Li Mei dutifully handed over most of her earnings to her
mother, who in turn allocated some for her future dowry, in expectation of a proper
marriage. I am not sure whether Li Mei had a realistic chance to ever become a nun,
but however impossible, the dream of escaping marriage provided hope that may
have helped her to deal with some of the depression and anxiety that stemmed from
her situation.
After returning to Beijing for a second time, Li Mei continued to feel despondent,
and complained often of having “no will to live” (meiyou jingshen huozhe).
Nonetheless, she reassured me (in 2002), she would not attempt suicide again,
because of the shame it would bring upon her family. But she also confessed that she
had recently walked straight into oncoming traffic on a busy Beijing street, with no
thought at all. Thankfully she came away unscathed.
Even the successful negotiation of marriage to a fellow migrant, including attaining
parental assent, does not guarantee a young rural woman’s future happiness.
Although fellow migrants likely shared the ambition of increasing income by
continuing to work outside the village, practical obstacles made long term settlement
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in the city difficult for rural couples. (I should note also that even returned migrant
women who married back in the village might also find themselves returning to the
city as half of a working couple.) First, many of the jobs open to younger women
workers were often closed to married women. Only one of my informants, Xie
Aimin, continued to work for the same employer as a live-in domestic worker
following her marriage. Monday-Friday she resided with them, and on weekends she
joined her husband, a trader, in a rented flat on Beijing’s outskirts. However, her
husband objected to the arrangement. Other women switched to part-time domestic
service after marriage, or helped out their husbands in retail and trade.
Secondly, since marriage soon leads to childbirth, the issue of children's care and
education must be resolved. Without the local urban hukou, migrant children had
limited options for education. Until the late 1990s, they were barred from entering
urban schools, until the State Council directed urban schools to open their doors to
all kids. But schools continued the illicit practice of charging incoming students
(migrants and locals alike) “introduction” fees (jieshou fei) that especially
discouraged the children of low-wage labor migrants. As a result, most migrant
parents had little choice but to leave their school-age children in the countryside to
be tended by grandparents or other kin. Yet this solution did nothing to ease young
mothers’ concern for their children’s education; influenced by urban ideas of
parenting, young rural mothers frequently complained that the grandparents were
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spoiling the kids and not supervising their academic studies. New mother Cao Fang,
working part-time tabulating bills at a small restaurant, had many new ideas about
childrearing. She did not want to leave her infant with her in-laws (in her husband’s
village). Instead she paid for him to attend a Beijing nursery school for 10 hours
every weekday. The cost was high, but she said she felt it was important that every
child “bond with his mother.” Such an opinion reflects a very altered idea of
childrearing than that of previous generations of rural mothers.
Alternately, migrant offspring could enroll in the make-shift schools established by
entrepreneurial migrants in the big cities beginning in the late 1980s. Officially the
government does not acknowledge the schools as legitimate, but generally they are
tolerated as they meet a growing demand. Such schools provide migrant children
with a basic elementary education; the first middle school for migrant children was
established in Beijing in the late 1990s. The teachers at such schools were
themselves migrants, although in Beijing some non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), with Ford Foundation funding, set up a program to encourage Beijing
college students and (retired) teachers to volunteer at the larger schools. The teachers
and administrators of these schools, and the scholars who have studied them, allege
that curriculum in these schools is better than in the schools at home. Yet such
schools are unstable, and face imminent danger of being forced to move without
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285
compensation, particularly when the municipal government repossesses the land to
offer for development projects.
Li Shanshan continued to live in Beijing after her marriage to a fellow migrant from
her home village, although she quit her domestic service job. In a rented building on
the outer third ring road where many Henan migrants occupied old-style Beijing
farmhouses, her husband and a fellow migrant (also from Henan province) operated
a school catering to the offspring of the Henan migrants who resided in the enclave.
Li Shanshan brought her mother out from the countryside to provide childcare for the
couple’s two children, and she helped her husband at the school. Asked about her
family's future in 2002, Li Shanshan said only:
If there is no change [of politics] in Beijing, maybe we'll just stay here, and make
do (couhe). If there is a change, we'll have to go home. Return to our roots
(luohuigen). Houses are expensive here. At home we can spend less and build a
two-room home. It would be a relief (tashi). I'm 29 now!
Clearly, Li Shanshan felt that her life in Beijing was uncertain. As she approached
30, she hoped to return her family to the village and build a new house, but as yet the
couple had failed to save enough money.
A 2001 survey by Li Tao, editor of Rural Women Knowing All magazine, concluded
that making an urban match was low on the list of the Club’s unmarried women
members’ priorities (Li 2001). But my own research suggests that such a survey
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most likely registers respondents’ pragmatic assessment of the low likelihood of
making such a match, rather than their unrealistic hope that they might do so. For
example, none of the domestic workers whose employers offered to introduce them
to urban bachelors turned down such an opportunity. Domestic worker Wang Rong
once showed me a picture of her second eldest sister (lao er) who had married a
farmer with a Beijing residence permit. This sister had a son, a nice house on
Beijing’s outskirts, and ample property, and the husband had off-farm work
opportunities too. Wang Rong felt this sister was much better off than their eldest
sister, who had married a co-villager and was stuck in their impoverished hometown
farming the family plot (i.e., uxorilocal marriage). Wang Rong clearly envied her
second eldest sister’s marriage, and stated that she too hoped to marry a Beijing
resident. Recently she had consented to her employer's offer to introduce her to
potential matches.1 7 6
One obstacle for rural women seeking urban spouses is the difficulty of transferring
rural to urban hukou and the practice, long upheld by policy, of awarding offspring
the same hukou as their mothers, not fathers. A member of the Migrant Women’s
Club who left rural Jiangsu in 1982 and married into a Beijing family shared her
trials and tribulations of seeking an urban hukou in an interview with Migrant
Women magazine (Li Tao 2000a: 9):
1 7 6 See Fan and Huang (1998) and Tan and Short (2004) for discussion o f marriage migration.
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I worked as a domestic worker in Beijing for 8 years, when I fell in love with a
Beijing guy. Beside my happiness I felt great pain, because I did not have an
urban hukou so what would my future child’s life be like? Would I send him/her
back to the countryside? Having heard that it was easy to transfer hukou in South
China, I went to Shenzhen. After being on the road 17 days, I was left with just
20 cents in my pocket, when I finally found a job in a company. I worked
tirelessly hoping that one day I could transfer my hukou. As it turned out, there
were two paths available for hukou transfer in Shenzhen. One was to apply
through the Ministry of Labor, but that option was only for Guangdong residents;
the other way was to go through the Personnel Bureau, but it was only for party
cadres. I wasn’t qualified for either. Someone advised me that I first try to buy a
hukou for some place in Guangdong province. So I bought a hukou for a small
town located in the Guangdong hinterlands, I don’t know exactly where. For that
I paid 13,000 yuan, making my family just about bankrupt. Two years later, I
spent 10,000 more for the transfer to Shenzhen hukou. At that time I’d already
been away from home 12 years, and moreover I was pregnant, and my health was
weak. So I returned to Beijing. But the neighborhood committee told me they
needed a birth quota, or they’d have to fine me. I anxiously telephoned
Shenzhen, but there they told me I had to be at least 6 months pregnant before
they could issue a quota, and then I was only at five months. I was so anxious
and scared; I miscarried.”
This migrant woman spent much time and money, and experienced much heartbreak,
in search of that illusive document that she felt would stabilize her marriage and her
child’s future. Yet as o f 2002 she still did not have the local Beijing hukou.1 7 7
1 7 7 Wang Lifang relayed a story of her co-villager who married a Beijing guy, and then divorced him
so he could be awarded custody of their only child, in hopes that the child would gain the father’s
hukou. But the law further stipulated that one party had to remarry before the child of the divorced
couple could change his hukou, so she then married someone else, only to later divorce him and
reunite with her original husband after their son had at long last been awarded a Beijing hukou (Li
Tao 2001: 11). Similarly, Xie Lihua (1995b) tells the story of a rural migrant woman who lost custody
rights of her child when she and her Beijing husband divorced; the reason given by the court for the
decision was that this way their child could have an urban hukou and the better lifestyle it would
entail. An article in Rural Women Knowing All links the failure to secure urban hukou to a young rural
woman’s suicide attempt (Song 1999).
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Marriages between rural women and urban men share certain general characteristics.
Women tend to come from poorer households and are much younger than their
spouses. Their husbands are often older than most urban men at time of marriage,
and may also be disabled, unemployed, or without a complete set of parents, factors
that decrease their value in the urban marriage market. Tian Weiwei married an
older, unemployed (laid-off) Beijing man who shared a cramped, old-style three-
room brick house (pingfang) with his parents located off an alleyway in the heart of
the city. Fortunately, her first child was the family’s only grandson, whose birth won
her instant favor in the eyes of her in-laws, supporting research showing that rural
women married into urban households fare better when they bear male children and
do so early in their marriage (Tan and Short 2004; Hoy 1999). Tian stated candidly:
“Having a son, I have something to rely on (jituo).”
However, the superior attitude of urbanites, or internalized inferiority of rural
married-in brides, made marriages like Tian’s very stressful. I noticed that when the
entire family got together, Tian’s brother- and sister-in-law clearly treated her
differently, even making disparaging remarks about “outsiders” (waidi reri), such as
that they cause traffic problems or are taking jobs away from urban workers, in her
presence. Later the sister-in-law complained to me that the elderly grandparents were
paying for their grandson to attend a prestigious local kindergarten, showing
favoritism they had not shown to her and the eldest son’s child, their granddaughter.
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For her part, Tian was most helpful in the kitchen when I joined their family meals,
clearing the dishes and helping her mother-in-law to cook, in contrast to her sister-in-
law. Tian’s mother-in-law praised Tian, but clearly viewed her as a rural daughter-
in-law when she said: “Beijing women are no good. They want everything, and they
aren't very traditional.” Only by living up to stereotypes of rural femininity as docile
and hardworking and loyal could Tian gain acceptance into her husband's household.
When we parted ways back in spring of 2000, she was worried about enrolling her
son into the neighborhood school without incurring non-local hukou student charges.
In 2001, Zhou Lili married her former boss, an unemployed urban bachelor 16 years
her senior (she was 20, he was 36) with only highschool education. After marriage
she moved into the family home, a 3-bedroom apartment in a central location in
Beijing, with his widowed mother and his divorced sister and her son. Despite her
husband’s seniority in the family as the only son, Zhou was often at the mercy of her
mean spirited sister-in-law, who once beat Zhou with a hairbrush during a minor
dispute. Another time, the sister-in-law called her brother’s marriage “a sham,”
leading an angry Zhou to order her husband, who normally stayed out of the
women’s fights, to frame their marriage certificate and hang it over their bedroom
wall. Two years into her marriage and pregnant, Zhou and her husband moved out of
the family house.
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When I visited in 2002, having missed their wedding, Zhou Lili was excited to show
me her stylish wedding portrait album.1 7 8 Yet she confided that she sometimes
considered ending the marriage, despite caring for her husband, and was stopped
only by her pride when she considered how villagers back home would ridicule her.
Zhou and her husband had traveled together to her natal home to hold a small
ceremony shortly after holding their larger ceremony in Beijing. To inquisitive
friends and co-villagers, Zhou told lies about her husband’s employment status and
age, in order to avoid their opprobrium. Nor had she or her parents let their relatives
or neighbors know that no bridewealth had been offered. “We didn’t ask for one,”
her mother said. Yet she allowed villagers to believe that the groom’s family, being
from Beijing, was rich and therefore generous with the betrothal and marital gifts.
Even the trousseau money (mei dongxi qian; see Yan 2003:152) that Zhou received
directly from her mother-in-law for the purchase of a new outfit to wear on her
• 170
wedding day was less than she expected. She pointed out that her mother-in-law
had pocketed many “red envelopes” containing cash gifts presented by guests who
attended the wedding banquet in Beijing, and none was passed on to the couple.
Zhou Lili’s pursuit of upward mobility through marriage to an urbanite meant that
1 7 8 An uncommon practice in the village due to prohibitive costs, the wedding photo album had
become so popular in Beijing that even middle-aged couples I knew, married under the austere Maoist
regime, were acquiring them. Wedding photo studies rent out outfits for the groom and bride (e.g.,
tuxes and top hats, white bridal gowns, and 1920s-style cheongsams) and have on staff hairstylists and
make-up artists. The studio transforms the couple into veritable movie stars for each shoot, at a
starting price (circa 2002) of about 2000 yuan for a series of 5 different poses.
1 7 9 Zhou used the trousseau money to purchase a pair of name-brand high-heeled leather boots and a
padded silk jacket from a reputable Wangfujing shop, and was quite pleased with these items.
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she circumvented rural marital conventions like marital gift exchange, and this left
her, and her parents, without resources to make claims, including for her well-being
and fair treatment, on her husband’s family.
On the other hand, despite Zhou Lili’s mixed success at finding happiness, her sister
Zhou Lina also aspired to an urban match, and had even allowed her new brother-in-
law to introduce her to one of his bachelor friends. Zhou Lina’s conditions for her
ideal, urban mate were only that he be “good looking” (bu nankari) and not too old.
Young rural women’s later marriages and tendency to delay returning to the village
in order to continue to work and possibly to pursue romance away from the village
are phenomena that have received the attention of scholars and policy makers in
China concerned with the risks they pose to young women and, more often, to
society. Chinese Academy of Social Science researcher Tan Shen (2000) is
sympathetic to the potential personal psychological as well as social consequences of
rural women being aged out of the marriage market (see also Pun 2002). In addition,
rural women working away from home may be perceived as a problem for public
health, not to mention a threat to public morality. First, they are associated with
increasing rates of premarital sex (Zheng et al. 2001).1 8 0 The spread of STDs and
1 8 0 However, this survey of rural migrant women in five large cities found that the majority of rural
migrant women who admitted to having premarital sex did so only with their intended future spouse,
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unplanned pregnancies among migrants pose challenges for urban China where
healthcare is not universalized and is rarely provided to migrant workers by their
employers. The potential harm to young rural women extends beyond the matter of
physical health to generally emotional and social well-being. Unwed mothers are
rare in both urban and rural China where they may face social ostracism.
At the 1999 Conference on Rural Migrant Women’s Rights and Interests, Wang
Lifeng pointed to marriage as the number one problem facing her migrant peers.
Indeed, she voiced her fear that many of her migrant girlfriends would never marry,
ending up dejected and socially scorned “old maids” (lao guniang).
For 17 years I have lived among working sisters (dagongmei). At first I
encouraged my co-villagers to join me in the city, but in recent years I haven’t
wanted them to come out. When I go home (to the village), people beg me “take
my daughter out with you” or “take my sister,” but I haven’t been willing to.
Why not? Because I’ve observed my fellow working sisters and I feel conflicted.
Is there a future to be found by going out? Over the many years, 20,000 of us
have come out (from Piaoyang county, Jiangsu province), but only two of us
have managed to stay ... It is through marriage that we stay and not because we
went into business or by some other means. ... But choosing to stay through the
marriage route has its problems. ... So I can only conclude that being a
dagongmei is like a good dream turned nightmare.... I was among the first
cohort of domestic workers who went out, and many of them are still “floating”
(piaobo) around in Shenzhen, (although they are) over 30 years old. In the end
they’ll have nothing: no home, no business, no sons, no daughters. What will
their lives be like in a few more years? ... You figure, in the past, aging
unmarried women in the city would still have employment, a place to live, and
they’d have social security when they were old, everything. ... I don’t think in
another ten years they’ll all have settled down or have a place to go. Thus, I
continuing the trend in such behavior among rural youth generally (Zheng et al. 2001 and see n 178
above). However, the survey also reported a low awareness of contraceptives among such women.
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again conclude that going out to work is a good dream that will turn into a
nightmare....
Migration has a great impact on rural migrant women’s views and behaviors in
regard to courtship and marriage. It allows them to assert a degree of control over the
timing of their marriage and choice of marriage partner, to pursue a better match than
otherwise possible, and perhaps, for those who can remain in the city after marriage,
to experience a seamless transition from their lives as working women to married
women. However, pursuing romance away from the village is risky. Moreover,
maintaining employment through pregnancy and raising a family in the city are
difficult for those who lack permanent hukou status. Finally, their opportunities to
marry into urban households are limited and rarely lead to marital bliss. Even as
most unmarried migrant women aspire to an ideal marriage, a majority ultimately
return to the village to settle down.
So long as they remain in the city, unmarried rural migrant women optimistically
focus on their dreams for a brighter future. Most put thoughts of marriage
temporarily out of their minds, and live in the present, “going with the flow,” in one
informant’s words (xunqi zirari). Yet the inevitability of marriage, which in turn
entails motherhood, generally signals the end of their migration and work episode,
and thus looms like a black cloud on the horizon.
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Modernity’s Ambivalences
Rapid social changes in a globalizing China presented rural migrant women with
new possibilities for the future, but always within the confines of the policies and
politics of the hukou system and the two-tiered labor market, in collusion with
dominant gender ideologies that reinforce the identities of dutiful daughter and
temporary worker. My informant Li Mei most poignantly articulated and perhaps
embodied this contradiction of modernity.
Li Mei most certainly suffered from depression. But obvious cultural and social
factors contributed to her despondency. These specifically included her failure to
pursue further education or move up in the job hierarchy and her jilted romance.
More broadly, these issues point to insecurity about the future. Sometimes she was
upbeat and hopeful, and would make plans for her future, such as studying to
become a nurse (so she could comfort the sick) or learning English or Japanese, and
be enthusiastic about “helping to develop China.” Yet other times told me she “ had
no place in this world” because she was “too honest” (laoshi). As Tamara Jacka
(1998) observes, the “honesty” of young rural woman may be interpreted as naivete
as well as integrity. Once, lonely and hurt by urban co-workers who called her an
“outsider” (waidiren) behind her back, Li Mei surmised: “In an ideal society,
everyone would be equal, like they were under socialism [i.e., under Mao].” Yet in
the next breath, she reconsidered: “Society must be socially stratified (bu pingdeng),
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295
like feudal society [i.e., pre-Liberation China] and not as under communism
(gongchandang zhuyi), or life would be boring and pointless (mei yisi).” She
elaborated that society required internal friction to stimulate “differences of opinion”
(pinglun zhiferi) that would create a more interesting society. Then she gave the
example of her family as a typically “feudal” one that, I presumed, met the
requirements of “internal friction”:
At home, no one can be seated at the dinner table until my grandfather has sat
down and no one dares to pick up their chopsticks until he has raised his rice
bowl to his lips.
Uncannily, in her own muddled thought process, Li Mei had located a source of her
own confusion. In China’s new, competitive, status- and money-driven society, the
place of the rural woman—or, put another way, what it means to be a rural woman
and how a rural woman should behave—was unclear. Li Mei questioned whether
rural women were better off in the post-Mao period than in the high tide of
socialism, or even whether late socialism could be distinguished from feudalism. She
chafed against her elder’s authority and indirectly challenged rural patriarchy by
pursuing romance at her workplace. Yet even as she dreamed of escaping an
ordinary rural marriage, she also found some solace and meaning in her identity as a
dutiful daughter, looking to home as a refuge from the confusion of the social
exclusion and heartbreak encountered in the city.
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Fortunately I did not encounter any other informants who were as depressed as Li
Mei was. Yet many young rural women shared her pessimism about the future. One
conversation with Liu Fanmei stands out in my memory. After telling me about an
unfortunate incident when she felt she had suffered discrimination as a migrant
outsider, the usually sunny young woman forcefully decried the hukou system: “It’s
like an iron cage!” Liu Fanmei’s outburst is a reminder that the hukou system, and
the rural-urban divide it maintains, is a real constraint on rural migrants’ agency,
including their ability to make free choices about marriage and the future.
How to achieve one’s own desire for a role in modernity within the constraints to
exercising agency imposed by rural patriarchy, the state, and global capitalism was
truly challenging for young rural women negotiating identity under late socialism.
Those whose lives and dreams I have profiled suggest that there is an array of likely
responses to these challenges. Those who are optimistic in outlook by nature, aided
by solid educational background like Ye Yanling, Liu Fanmei, and Zhang Xiaqing,
or simply tough and tenacious like the Zhou sisters, appear most able to
accommodate to the city. In various ways, they work “within the system,”
performing deference to urban superiors while they carefully plot out their own
upward mobility strategies. Those like Li Mei and perhaps Jiang Linlin, who are of
more sensitive natures, may prefer to return to the relative safety of home, though
they may not adjust back to village life easily. (As I have not been able to maintain
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contact with these two, I cannot say what they have done or will do.) Finally, in the
next chapter I turn to rural migrant women who are vocalizing their discontent with
the status quo of the hukou system and two-tiered urban labor market and others
who, through the Migrant Women’s Club of Beijing, are organizing to demand their
equal rights to urban citizenship.
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CHAPTER 6
THE MIGRANT WOMEN’S CLUB AND DAGONGMEI CITIZENSHIP
Introduction: Citizenship in a Socialist Transformation
“Greetings to our honorable teachers and guests, sisters, everyone! Today we
working sisters from far and wide have come together at the Migrant Women’s
Club, and I feel fortunate. I would like first to thank Teacher Wen for giving me
this opportunity to speak. I am an ordinary migrant worker from Zhangjiakou,
Hebei, who joined the ranks of working sisters to become independent (zili). For
two years I longed for a place that could help me move forward in life (jinbu),
but I searched in vain. Then, by chance, I heard about the Migrant Women’s
Club. I was so excited that I went straight there and met Teacher Wen and
Teacher Miao, and joined the Club at once. I believe the Club is a home for all of
us working outside; it is a warm bed, sustenance and warmth. Here we have
caring teachers whom we highly respect; we receive warmth; we have
opportunities to learn; and there is someone to support us when we are wronged
and to praise our achievements. All this makes us migrant workers feel that we
have a spiritual resting place (jingshen jituo). I hope more working sisters and
brothers will join our home. As migrant women, we must realize that we have
dignity, and develop our self-respect, self-strengthening, self-reliance, and self-
confidence. We must not allow ourselves to be bullied by others and we must
have the power to make our own choices. Everyone is equal under the law. So
when our rights (renshen quanli) are violated, we must bravely stand up for
ourselves and let the law be our weapon against those bullies. As migrant
workers, no matter what kind of work we do, we should be seen and treated as
equals. Let everyone know that we are the equal citizens of a socialist country
who enjoy the protection of the law and have the same rights and duties as
everyone. Above all, we women must not be bound by our families or be bullied
by men. We must each of us bravely stand up and realize our worth, and become
the masters of our nation (guojia de zhureri)\m
1 8 1 From a speech at the Celebration of the Sixth Anniversary of the Migrant Women’s Club and the
Founding of the Legal Aid Group {Dagongmei zhi jia chengli liuzhounian j i weiquan xiaozu chengli
yishi). Beijing, April 7,2002; see April 7,2002 transcript.
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In the contemporary context of the globalization of capitalist economic structures
and transnational flows of communications, finances, commodities, people, and
ideas, cities— especially “global cities”—have been shown to remain important
spaces for the development of new forms of citizenship. However, as Ferguson and
Gupta (2002) observe, in a transnational world in which scales of govemmentality
transcend sovereign nation-states, new understandings of the public sphere and
citizenship may be required. They note, for example, that neoliberal governments in
the west have responded to the challenges of globalization in part by pulling back
18 1 )
from the liberal paradigm of citizenship (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). In the post-
Mao era of “reform and opening” (gaige kaifang), China likewise is engaged with
processes of globalization and this in turn has implications for citizenship as well as
for civil society. For example, the Chinese state evidences a tendency similar to
neoliberal regimes with respect to de-centralization and scaling back of welfare as it
1 8 2 The origins of citizenship in the West were in the Greek city-state {polls) and medieval cities
wherein emerged a public sphere, and incubated in the Institutional organizations of civil society (for
example, the voluntary associations observed by de Tocqueville in the U.S.) (Shafir 1998). The liberal
notion of citizenship as resulting from self-conscious agents forging community around a shared
identity that transcends particularistic loyalties, and engaging in rational and moral deliberation over
the common good has been criticized from a variety of perspectives (Ibid.). T.H. Marshall’s (1964)
classic critique made the case that social rights are necessary components of citizenship along with
civil (juridical-legal) and political (decision-making and franchise) rights. Feminist scholars,
moreover, have been critical of the liberal paradigm of citizenship because it has depended upon and
reproduced hierarchical relations and ideologies that perpetuate inequalities enshrined in binaries of
male/female, public/private, particular/universal, and emotion/reason, thereby justifying and
maintaining the exclusion of women from participation in the polity as full and equal citizens to
privileged classes of white men (Lister 1997). Similarly, liberal notion citizenship as it has developed
in the context of the U.S. has been criticized for its collusion with racism and ethnic exclusion (Lowe
1996). Yet the fundamental idea of citizenship, whether understood as “the right to have rights” or as
a phenomenon of people connecting and sharing responsibility for a common good, has great
resonance and appeal.
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deepens economic restracturing. This in turn has altered the relationship between
society and the state and created room for the emergence of numerous new social
formations in civil society that have great significance for the re-constitution of
citizenship.
Socialist China bequeaths to the present era a legacy of dual citizenship, whereby
urban workers were largely better off than rural cooperative members because the
state rather than the collective shouldered responsibility for their cradle-to-grave
welfare. In addition, despite political rhetoric touting the achievement of gender
equality, socialism has left a legacy of gender inequality that also has implications
for citizenship. In the recent decades of economic restructuring, the massive
migration of rural peasants to cities like Beijing in search of higher wages and better
life runs up against the dual citizenship that was established under socialism and is
reproduced through the discriminatory practices by the labor market and urban
society. At the same time, reports of sexual violence against rural migrant women
call attention to their vulnerability as women in a patriarchal gender system. In
response to such phenomenon, concerned citizens in China are wrestling with the
idea of citizenship and formulating more inclusive versions and practices of
citizenship. In this chapter I will investigate citizenship in contemporary China by
focusing on the potential for rural migrant women to forge a collective identity as
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“working sisters” {dagongmei) and voice collective demands for economic, social
and political justice.
1 81
My point of inquiry is the Migrant Women’s Club of Beijing {dagongmei zhi jia),
a new institution of civil society. The Club brings together a diverse group of
Chinese citizens consisting mainly of urban and middle aged women organizers and
staff on the one hand and young, rural members on the other, who are united by their
shared gender and cultural (national) identity around a common commitment to
address the causes and consequences of the exclusion of migrant women workers
from full economic, social, and civil rights of citizenship, in the urban economy,
society, and legal system. Richard Madsen (1993) advises scholars studying “civil
society” in China to “get inside” organizations and take look at not only the
“quantity of their material resources but the quality of the moral commitments that
gave them their vision and their strength” in order to assess whether such
organizations will lead to the creation of “publics” and ultimately a more polyphonic
(democratic) public sphere. I draw upon my participant observation to “get inside”
the Club, while also conducting analysis of relevant publications produced by the
Club’s parent organization, the Center for Cultural Development of Rural Women
(formerly RWKA magazine collective), and the related organization Rural Women
1 8 3 Literally it is translated as the Home for Working Sisters. I use the English translation supplied by
the organization itself.
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Knowing All magazine. I will consider what sorts of moral commitments, shared
identities, and instituted processes of citizenship are being developed therein.
As the Chinese term (/7a) meaning “home” or “family” indicates, the Club aims to be
a “home away from home” for rural migrant women working in Beijing (Li Tao
1996; Xie 1996). The Club’s organizers, staff, and members alike invoke the cultural
metaphor of the extended family to describe the social relationships forged within
and through the Club. For example, the Club’s founder, Xie Lihua, often refers to
herself as the Club’s “mother” and takes a maternal role toward its members, whom
she may refer to as “girls” or “children.” Likewise, Club members generally address
one another as “sister” (jiemei) and their seniors on staff and among organizers with
the respectful title of “teacher.” But they may also use the more endearing “auntie”
or “elder sister” to address staff with whom they feel intimate. My participant
observation suggests that Club members expect and desire a personal, familial
relationship with the staff and organizers and with one another. One Club member
interviewed by the China Daily is quoted as saying of the Club: “We are like a
family bonded by love rather than ties of blood” (Ou 1996).
Similarly, women’s and feminist organizations in the West are frequently organized
around the metaphor of kinship or friendship. Such a mode of organization
challenges a masculine bias that associates citizenship and politics with the public
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realm, and insists to the contrary that the domestic realm of family and emotional
intimacy is as much a site of politics (i.e., “the personal is political”) and that women
can be political agents through their familial and domestic roles (Jones 1998).
Moreover, as the seventies phrase “sisterhood is powerful” suggests, the bonds of
social solidarity rooted in intimate relations (among women) are stronger than those
uniting citizens and tend to exact deeper loyalties and firmer commitments (Jones
1998). Indeed, the appeal to family and hearth can be an effective basis for making
feminist claims on the state (Jones 1998). On the other hand, at the Migrant
Women’s Club as elsewhere, such “women-friendly” forms of citizenship often
mask differences of power among women (who in fact are not actual kin), and
impede the development of individual autonomy and freely chosen voluntarism that
are qualities generally held dear by feminists (Jones 1998).
Based on my research findings, I argue that the Club importantly provides services to
rural migrant women that are in keeping with its objectives. It imparts to migrant
women a sense of themselves as deserving citizens who have Constitutional and
legal rights and duties and equips them with practical knowledge of how to exercise
their rights and duties even in the face of obstacles posed by their exclusion from full
membership in urban citizenship. In addition, the Club transmits this message both to
the broader public and to policy makers in order to influence public opinion and
affect policy in ways that are beneficial to migrant women. More importantly, the
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Club-its physical space, activities, and publications—symbolizes and materializes a
new social space in which rural migrant women reconstitute their identity from that
of powerless outsiders (waidiren) who do not belong in urban society to empowered
members who do belong to a community that is both real and imagined. This social
space is inseparable from the environment of the city, for it is migrant women’s
common experience of dislocation through migration from rural society as well as
exclusion from full membership in the urban community that forges their shared
identity. Finally, as participation in the Club strengthens members’ sense of
collective identity and awareness of citizenship, they demand a greater voice in their
own organization. Incidentally, they draw upon the metaphor of family to exact a
moral accountability from Club organizers, society, and even the state. Thus, this
“woman-friendly” (Jones 1998) community is not antithetical to citizenship.
Ultimately, the Club positively affects the exercise of rural migrant women’s agency
184
as citizens.
1 8 4 In general in contemporary China, political rights of citizens are not directly addressed by the new
social organizations because of the unique negotiated relationship of these organizations to the state.
Direct challenges to the political authority or legitimacy of the Chinese Communist party usually
results in the organization’s disbandment and even imprisonment of members. However, citizens’
awareness of the concept of political rights, if not actual demand for such rights, is explored in this
essay.
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Gender. Hukou. and Exclusion from Urban Citizenship
The experience of rural women working in Beijing is one of “nonbelonging” (see
nl65) in relation to the urban host society due to general isolation from urbanites and
to the hurt, rejection, and insecurity felt and experienced as a result of the prejudice
and discrimination exhibited toward them. The most obvious factor reinforcing a
sense of nonbelonging is rural migrants’ exclusion from formal legal urban
citizenship imposed by their lack of an urban hukou. The hukou is the material and
symbolic manifestation of a host of inequalities affecting rural migrants’ self-esteem
and security in the city. Migrants most often feel inferior due to their frequently
negative experiences of employment. They not only routinely earn low wages and
endure poor working conditions, but may also face outright discrimination in the
form of illegal practices such as irregular payment or unauthorized withholding of
wages and harmful working conditions, which together affront their sense of dignity.
Even if bosses are not themselves urbanites, the fact that such employment
discrimination occurs in the context of migration reinforces an association between
the city and exploitation of rural workers. In addition, as non-local hukou holders,
migrants rarely receive employment benefits such as health insurance or medical
care reimbursement even as they disproportionately suffer work-related injuries.1 8 5
1 8 5 Zhou Lili was lucky that when she needed her appendix out her sister was in Beijing with her.
Zhou Lili was told to wait in the emergency room until she could come up with 2500 yuan for the
operation, which amounted to a year’s wages at the sewing sweatshop where she was employed.
While her sister waited in great pain, Zhou Lina hurriedly sought out their boss, but he would not give
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Moreover, migrants have limited recourse when their labor rights are violated. They
are often unaware of the legal ramifications of the Labor Law that in theory protects
all laborers, and, moreover, awareness does not guarantee fair resolution of
discrimination claims. The law is weakened by the daunting complexity and
imperfections of the legal process, the expense of hiring lawyers, the outright
prejudice of law enforcement against outsiders, and the lack of independent
adjudication bodies or labor unions. Therefore, migrants typically rely on kin and co
villagers to help them out in times of trouble.
Women migrant workers suffer the additional discrimination of sexual harassment or
gender violence both in the workplace and in their dealings with law enforcement.
For example, a survey conducted with members of the Migrant Women’s Club found
that as many as 50% of working sisters had experienced some form of harassment,
but few had taken legal action in response.1 8 6
A lawyer for China Women’s News, Chen Benjian, encountered first-hand some of
the obstacles impeding migrants from seeking justice through the criminal justice
them an advance. In a panic she telephoned everyone she knew in Beijing, and ran about town
gathering funds. Finally she had enough to entice the doctors to begin surgery. Any delay may have
been fatal for her sister.
1 8 6 According to Chen Benjian, a lawyer affiliated with China Women’ s News, in her April 7, 2002
speech at the Celebration of the Sixth Anniversary of the Migrant Women’s Club (see April 7, 2002
transcript).
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system when she intervened to help a young rural (female) domestic worker, Xiao Li
(a pseudonym), seek justice after being repeatedly raped by a man to whose
household she had been dispatched by a placement agency to see about a job.1 8 7
During this process [of aiding the victim to seek justice], I experienced the
prejudice against migrant women, such as when visiting the service management
office of the neighborhood where the employer’s building was located. Inside,
their office had only a chair, so Xiao Li offered me the chair [to be polite] and
she sat on the cot. When the office worker arrived, he rudely told Xiao Li to “Get
off of there!” and insisted I sit on the cot. Similarly, when we went to the
lawyer’s office, I learned they were also concerned with rank (tuiwei), telling her
to wait in the doorway. At the Public Security Bureau they asked her, “Where are
you from?” By asking this they mean where outside of Beijing are you from?
This kind of discrimination is deep-seated and appears everywhere. Each time we
exited from the police investigators’ or other law-enforcement (sefa) bureaus,
Xiao Li would be heartbroken and in tears, because she experienced such
heartless treatment. This situation is a double blow for victims. Moreover, what’s
different about this case from others is that this involves gender [sex]. Xiao Li
has suffered two kinds of hurt, because of course all women suffer from [the
stigma of] rape and after sexual violence has been done to them, they suffer
moral ostracism/pressure during the legal process (su gong). For example, [she is
1 8 7 Xiao Li (the pseudonym given by the media) was referred by a Beijing placement agency to a
household that had requested to hire a domestic worker. Her would-be single male employer raped her
repeatedly. Less than 48 hours after her arrival at the job, Xiao Li jumped out of a 2d story window.
She ended up in the hospital where the news media caught wind of her story. China Women’ s News
picked up her story and followed it through her recovery. Xiao Li received visits in the hospital from
the Club’s Legal Aid Group corps of volunteers, who also made donation to her. She did press
charges, and the police did take on (If) her criminal case, but there was not enough evidence to prove
the rape. Xiao Li’s true identity was well-known among Club members, and ultimately the media
attention and public exposure of her victimization proved too difficult for her. A Club staff person
told me Xiao Li had moved to another city because of the humiliation and stigmatization (chiru) she
felt, which is common among rape victims in China (as elsewhere). At a gender consciousness-raising
workshop at the Club on May 19,2002, Professor Rong Weiyi posed the question “Is committing
suicide after being raped [due to shame] a sign of a woman’s low awareness of the law?” Participants
in the workshop agreed that it was a sign of lack of legal awareness, but added that it was also a sign
of a lack of faith in the enforcement of the law. One participant said, “The legal organs may not
necessarily represent the victim” (falii bumen weibi hui ti shouhaizhe shuohua) and others noted that
migrants might not get equal treatment if the case occurs in the city, because the law is not applied
equally (falii huanjing bu gongping) to all, and/or a migrant is likely too poor to hire a lawyer.
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asked] “Is what you are saying based on fact or are you making a false
accusation?”1 8 8
The prejudice of many urbanites against rural migrants results in all-too-frequent
unpleasant interactions in public space that further compound migrants’ feelings of
hurt and rejection. Most migrant women I knew during my research were keenly
aware of their identity in the eyes of urbanites as outsiders (waidiren). Li Mei told
me she felt that way not only because of her low-wage work and lack of education,
but from police who routinely patrol her residential area to inspect temporary
residence permits, and when on the bus she overheard children poking fun at “dirty
and black migrant outsiders” seen from the bus window. Others complained of
harassment like being accused of boarding a bus without buying a ticket or with a
fake monthly pass, hassled on the street for not having proper permits, suspected of
shoplifting, etc.
Moreover, because they are excluded or separated from the urban community in their
workplace, living space, and even public space, migrants have few opportunities to
forge strong friendships with urbanites. Long work hours and long commutes from
residence to workplace, and restricted means of consumption (compounded by need
or desire to remit money home) curtails migrants’ leisure time and activities, further
limiting social interaction outside of the migrant sphere. Finally, for young rural
1 8 8 From Chen Benjiang’s April 7,2002 speech; see transcript.
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migrant women, this feeling of nonbelonging is intensified by and inseparable lfom
their anxiety about marriage and the future.
The pervasive discrimination against migrants and denial of their civil (legal) and
social (employment) rights combined with anxiety about the future exacts an
emotional and psychological toll that rural migrant women often articulate as feeling
insecure or “unsafe.” Zhang Xiaqing expresses this passionately:
You asked me what is the biggest hurt that I have suffered in my life. I think it’s
the same for all of us migrants (dagong qunti). It’s that we can’t find, we don’t
have, a place where we could feel trust (bei ren xinying de yige difang) where
[we] could relieve our bitterness and difficulties (sheshi ni de tongku, kuwei)....
Here we are, wandering around outside our villages (liulang zai waibian)... .1
think all of us outsiders feel this way. The biggest hurt is not that we’re not
adequately compensated [for our labor], it’s that we don’t get respect (zunzhong).
When [my current boss] doesn’t compensate me for my labor, there’s nowhere I
can go to complain. Sure, I can go on TV or call a hotline, but who is really
going to help? I don’t have a sense of security (anquan gan) outside. I don’t feel
any sense of peace... The feeling I have in Beijing is one like walking around in
the cold ... I just don’t have a place to belong to (zhao bu dao xinli de qituo).”
Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (2001 a,b) found that the shared feeling of non-belonging did
not automatically foster solidarity among transnational Filipina domestic workers.
Similarly, young rural migrant women arrive in Beijing knowing only a handful of
co-villagers or relatives, and may not easily meet or become friendly with others.
This is especially the case for those engaged in live-in domestic work, as it offers
little time or space for socialization. Some migrant women are hesitant to tmst in
acquaintances with whom they share neither the bonds of kinship nor native place.
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Most are simply unskilled at forming such friendships. Yet numerous young migrant
women I spoke with during my fieldwork period spoke of a general desire to be
surrounded by people they could trust—including employers. The significance of
organizations like the Migrant Women’s Club, which I introduce in the next section,
is that it brings migrant women together and provides a physical and social space for
them to find friends who share their experiences and accord a feeling of peace and
safety. In fact, the number one reason given by newcomers to the Club at one
meeting I attended was “feeling lonely” (fieldnotes, March 19, 2000).
New Social Space (Women Organizing Women)
Since China’s market reforms were enacted during the 1980s, citizens’ private time
and space has greatly increased and a plethora of new social organizations have
emerged. These formations that engage an active citizenry contradict scholars’
arguments that Chinese are (as a culture or due to history) passive rather than active
citizens.1 8 9 They are “new” in that they are not synonymous with the large mass
organizations that were created by the party-state after 1949 that were alleged to
represent the interests of all “the people” and thereby obviate the need for alternative
organizations. For example, the Women’s Federation was to represent women’s
interests, the Federation of Trade Unions to represent the interest of workers, and the
1 8 9 For example, Li and Wu (1999: 165) state: “We [Chinese] like to think that the citizen and
government are in mutual dependence; many think of the government as their father and themselves
as the government’s sons or daughters.” See also Yu 2002: 291.
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China Youth League to represent the interests of youth and children. In the past
decade the state has encouraged the formation of new social organizations, in large
part to share the burden of providing for social welfare, but it has also tried to limit
and control organizations through complex registration procedures and restrictive
regulations (Saich 2000).1 9 0 Moreover, while many of China’s new social
organizations adopt the label “NGOs,” few are wholly independent of the state, and
thus do not conform to the definition of civil society developed in the western
context. In western scholarship, by definition the “3d sector” or civil society is “a set
of institutions that are neither state nor society,” which should have the following
qualities: they are clearly organizations, private entities, nonprofit in distribution,
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self-governing, and voluntary. While in actual practice China’s new social
organizations can and do skirt the state’s regulations and controls, it is also important
to note that many of them choose to negotiate with the Chinese state in such a way
that benefits the organizations’ goals, members’ interests, and gives the organization
a role in policy making (Saich 2000; Hsiung et al. 2001).
1 9 0 According to 1986 regulations, new organizations are required to find a sponsor among already
existing organizations and to register with the local department of civil affairs. In addition, no
organization can represent the same interests or have the same purpose as another organization.
Together these stipulations appear to restrict or discourage organizations from making lateral linkages
and vertical ties (Saich 2000).
1 9 1 According to Dr. Lester Solomon in a talk at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center in October
2003.
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In their discussion of modem Africa, the Comaroffs (1999: 8) note that while the
multiple and competing meanings of the term “civil society” would seem to render
the concept analytically useless, “the key to its promise—its power as a sign that is
good to think and feel with as it is to act upon—lies in its very promiscuity, its
polyvalence and protean incoherence.” They advocate viewing civil society,
including how it has “fused understandings of moral being, citizenship, community,
and polity,” through an “anthropological optic” that considers the concept in
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particular historical and cultural imaginaries (Ibid). Similarly, Chris Hann (1996:
21-23) argues that anthropology, particularly ethnographic research on non-Western
civil society, can help foster a “more inclusive usage of civil society, in which it is
not defined negatively, in opposition to the state, but positively in the context of the
ideas and practices through which cooperation and trust are established in social
life.” I follow this advice by setting aside western-derived assumptions in
approaching the investigation of civil society and citizenship in China.
1 9 2 That is, “how the Idea [civil society] has manifested itself in colonial and postcolonial visions of
history and modernity; how it folds into local conceptions of the emerging global order; how it has
fused understandings of moral being, citizenship, community, and polity in a world in which
liberalizing forces, both political and economic, bear an uneven relationship to formal authority and
everyday life; how it resonates with identities, desires, and fantasy futures fed, among other things, by
media images of an increasingly transnational scale; in whose dreams it is an alibi, in whose
interests—or disinterest—it is invoked” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999: 8).
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I Q - l
Margaret Somers (1993) defines citizenship as a set of “instituted processes” m
which civil society plays a central role in developing citizenship practices and
political identities. She further argues that scholars must consider “actors’ places in
their relational settings, or what Bourdieu (1977) would call a ‘habitus,’” rather than
assuming citizenship to result from a mere categorical classification or identity (e.g.,
“working class” or “women”) (Somers 1994: 632). Somers’ attention to the
formation of citizenship identity is particularly instructive in considering how those
who are excluded from the full formal or substantive rights of citizenship might
otherwise craft a sense of community identification and belonging (Parrenas
2001 a,b). I now take a closer look at the Migrant Women’s Club and the collective
identities and citizenship practices that are forged therein among its rural migrant
women members.
Background to the Migrant Women’s Club1 9 4
The Migrant Women’s Club of Beijing grew out of Rural Women Knowing All
(RWKA) collective, which produced China’s first publication aimed at rural women,
1 9 3 Historically in the west these were “created by the activities of peoples in particular situations who
interacted with institutions, ideals, and rules of legal power and governmental participation that could
not remain attached irrevocably to any class or institution’' (1993: 611; my italics to demonstrate
where Somers departs from T.H. Marshall’s interpretation of citizenship as developing in linear
temporal stages according to class formations), and further, “popular citizenship rights have only
emerged historically in the participatory spaces o f public spheres in tandem with ‘relationally-sturdy’
civil societies” (1993: 589).
1 9 4 For this section I have drawn upon a variety of sources including my fieldwork notes and also
informal conversations with Xie Lihua or other RWKA personnel, brochures and websites
disseminated by RWKA collective, and Deng 2000 and Milwertz 2000b.
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RWKA magazine. RWKA was initiated in 1993 by Xie Lihua, a journalist and editor
with the All China Women’s Federations’ flagship daily paper, China Women’ s
News.1 9 5 Xie has since served as editor-in-chief of RWKA, a subsidiary of China
Women’ s News, while continuing her positions as deputy editor-in-chief of China
Women’ s News. RWKA magazine began with a small staff and start-up money and
office space from China Women’ s News, but really took off after receiving a seed
grant from the U.S.-based nonprofit Ford Foundation. After two decades of operation
its circulation surpassed 200,000 copies.
RWKA magazine aims to provide information to meet rural women’s needs and
promote rural women’s development. Its editors feel compelled to “speak on behalf
of rural women” whose voices have been silent and whose concerns have yet to be
sufficiently addressed by either officials or society in general, or even by the
Women’s Federation or feminists. They believe that rural women’s issues require
the particular attention of the Chinese women’s movement because “the differences
between rural and urban areas are even greater than those between men and women”
(fieldnotes on Xie Lihua’s presentation to the East meets West Feminist Translation
1 9 5 China Women’ s News has been operating since 1984 and carries the mantle o f the earlier Women’s
Federation publication Women of China that was forced to close during the Cultural Revolution. The
idea for a rural-oriented magazine came from Guang Tao, a Women’s Federation cadre and member
of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference, to augment the “two
studies, two competitions” campaign aimed at rural women. Xie volunteered to take on the challenge
of spearheading the magazine (Deng 2000).
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Group [DongxifangXiangyuXiaozu] November 22, 1997; Bezlova 1998). RWKA
magazine solicits articles and letters written by rural women themselves, and also
runs regular columns addressing concerns and disseminating knowledge relevant to
rural women, including women’s health and psychology, marriage and family
concerns, agriculture and technology, education, women’s legal rights (e.g.,
inheritance of land), and special topics such as suicide.1 9 6
Soon after it began publication, the magazine began receiving numerous requests for
guidance from rural women seeking to leave the village and submissions from those
already outside the village.1 9 7 RWKA editors were even approached in person by
individual rural women who had made their way to Beijing seeking shelter and
work1 9 8 or refuge from abusive husbands.1 9 9 The letters and visits were indicative of
the tens of thousands of rural migrant women who had migrated to Beijing since the
1980s. To address this new phenomenon, in early 1995 RWKA magazine ran a series
that posed the questions “Why go to the city” (women wei shenmo j'incheng)? “What
to do after arriving in the city” (jincheng hou gan shenmo)? and “What will the
future be like” (jinhou de lu ruhe zonfl In 1996 the magazine ran a regular column
1 9 6 The magazine also solicits its readers’ feedback through annual reader surveys administered by
local Women’s Federation branches (Deng 2000: 229).
1 9 7 For example, Wang Haiying’s (1994) report of her experiences as a domestic worker in Beijing.
1 9 8 For example, see the letter written by Ming Yue (1997) to RWKA about two young women lfom
Hefei, Anhui province, who traveled to Beijing and went directly to RWKA magazine’s office to seek
help.
1 9 9 An example is of Chen Cundi who is featured in brochures and on the websites (also discussed in
Milwertz 2000b; fieldnotes November 22, 1997).
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“Out to work” (chumen zaiwai) in which rural women shared their migration and
work stories.2 0 0 Finally, in 1996 the collective founded the Migrant Women’s Club
(dagongmei zhi jia) and extended an invitation to rural migrant women in Beijing to
become “the masters of their new home” (dagongmei chengwei zhenzheng de
zhureri) (Xie 1996; Zhi dagongmeimen 1996).
The achievements and success of the RWKA collective over the past decade can be
attributed to the enthusiasm and dedication of Xie Lihua and her key collaborator
901
Wu Qing, who is advisor to the magazine. Their joint efforts have earned them
both domestic and international acclaim and honors. These two women share with
many other activists in China the conviction that close collaboration with the state
can be beneficial to society, and their organization reflects this. Importantly, Xie’s
position at China Women’ s News has enabled the organization to avail itself of the
Women’s Federation extensive nation-wide network of cadres as well as its national
media to further the goals of the RWKA collective. For example, Women’s
Federation cadres at the county, township, and village levels help promote the
2 0 0 During 1996-1998 RWKA magazine added another feature, the “Migrant Women’s Club” and in
1999 Dr. Tamara Jacka of Australia sponsored a competition “My Life as a Migrant Worker” (wo de
dagong shengya); several of the prize-winning essays appear in Gaetano and Jacka 2004.
2 0 1 Wu Qing helped secure start-up funds for the press from the Ford Foundation (Deng 2000: 223)
and has been in other ways invaluable to the organization’s growth. She brings to the organization her
experience in academia (she is a professor at Beijing Foreign Languages University), in politics (as an
elected deputy to the Beijing People’s Congress), and in international development, for example, as a
vice-president of the Women’s World Summit Foundation. In addition, she descends from an eminent
revolutionary family, as her late mother was the 1920s May Fourth feminist author Bing Xin (who
bequeathed to the magazine a donation used to establish a micro-credit fund for rural women).
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magazine and boost circulation, encouraged by competitions and prizes, and are also
a source of articles and letters for the publication. Similarly, local Women’s
Federation branches help connect the RWKA collective to local government agencies
and enterprises that are recruited to participate in or sponsor projects beneficial to
rural women in their localities, such as micro-credit loan schemes, agricultural
training classes, or rural-urban migration and employment opportunities. In return,
RWKA collective has been inviting local Women’s Federation cadres to Beijing for
training courses at the Practical Skills Training Center for Rural Women (located in
Beijing’s suburbs) that was established in 1998, sometimes waiving tuition for them.
The lawyers affiliated with the national Women’s Federation (located in Beijing)
have occasionally provided legal aid and intervention on behalf of individual rural
migrant women at the request of RWKA collective (e.g., the case of Xiao Li was
taken on by lawyer Chen, who is quoted above).2 0 2 Given its ability to network with
the Women’s Federation leadership in person and through the Women’s Federation’s
press, RWKA collective has the potential to impact policy making at the top levels of
party leadership and make the Women’s Federation more accountable to rural
women (Saich 2000; conversation with Xie Lihua and Li Tao on May 15, 2002).2 0 3
2 0 2 This example reinforces Margaret Woo’s (2002) observation that the Women’s Federation is likely
to take an increasingly active role in providing legal aid for women in the near future.
2 0 3 For sure, due to RWKA's editors persistence, China Women’ s News itself has been forced to
broaden its coverage of rural issues.
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That civil society organizations like the RWKA collective have flourished in the
period of transition to a market economy is a result not only of the state’s increasing
tolerance (and encouragement) of such groups and the efforts of these pioneer
activists, but also of China’s opening up to international and intergovernmental
agencies. For a start, like the many other organizations oriented toward Chinese
women that came into being in the 1990s, the Club came into existence in the
context of the 1995 NGO forum that accompanied the United Nations Fourth World
Conference on Women. That global event inspired urban intellectual women to
organize among themselves to form associations that could meet women’s diverse
needs, and importantly put them in touch with international organizers and donors
who could provide financial support.2 0 4 As an entity several levels removed from the
official publication China Women’ s News, RWKA collective has been able to seek
funding from international NGOs such as the Ford Foundation and Oxfam Hong
Kong, as well as a variety of other international and domestic sources—individuals,
private enterprises, government agencies, and NGOs.
The influence of large intergovernmental agencies is evident in the organization’s
recent restructuring and in its long-range goals of promoting transparency,
2 0 4 Gao Xiaoxian and other women activists argue that women’s groups in particular were able to
flourish because in the eyes of the patriarchal state, women’s groups are considered apolitical and
innocuous (author’s fieldnotes from the Conference on China’s NGOs held at Tsinghua University,
May 15,2002).
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autonomy, and member participation.2 0 5 NGO consultants advised the RWKA
collective that RWKA magazine, which had grown quite profitable during the first
decade of publication, should separate from the collective’s not-for-profit (NPO)
offshoots such as the Club, and become a for-profit enterprise. Thus, in 2001 a
Cultural Development Center for Rural Women (hereafter, the Center) was
established and formally registered as a NPO with the Beijing Industrial and
Commercial Bureau,2 0 6 with Xie Lihua as its Secretary General and Li Tao as
Deputy Secretary-General. The Center is an umbrella organization that includes the
Club, the Practical Skills Training Center, a Development Projects Center, and a new
publication, Migrant Women magazine {dagongmei zazhi). The magazine Migrant
Women debuted in 2001 and was published sporadically through 2002, and began
regular, monthly publication in the spring of 2003. The new magazine’s purpose,
according to its first managing editor and former editor of RWKA magazine Li Tao,
is to work in tandem with the Club (interview with Li Tao April 4, 2002).
2 0 5 According to their website (on December 5,2003) and an email I received from the Center on
April 8, 2003. These goals for developing civil society in China are also expressed on the Ford
Foundation’s Beijing Office website on that date and were expressed to me in a conversation with
Ford Foundation Officer Sarah Cook on May 24, 2002. She described the then-status of the Migrant
Women’s Club as being normal for an organization in transition from a “first-generation” to a
“second-generation” NGO.
2 0 6 The Civil Administration Bureau in fact refused its registration as an NGO, probably because it
replicated other existing organizations or competed directly with the Women’s Federation. Such
forms of alternate registration are not uncommon, as Saich (2000) observes.
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According to the RWKA website (www.nongjianii.org.cn), in 2003 a Rural Women
Administration Committee was established, with Wu Qing as its director, to oversee
and develop strategic planning for both R WKA magazine, its collective, and the
Center. The other members of the Administration Committee include Xie Lihua, the
Center’s deputy secretary general, the Center’s financial director, and the director of
RWKA magazine. The Administration Committee’s members are expected to serve
only for a period of three years.
This complicated summary indicates that the Club must be considered within a
complex web that connects several bodies and especially in close relationship with
Migrant Women magazine.
Moral Commitments of the Organizers
In a speech to commemorate the Club’s sixth anniversary (April 7, 2002), Xie Lihua
explained her motivation for dedicating her career to the cause of rural women’s
development. She said her inspiration came from the ideals of socialism that she
learned in her youth, as well as in her maternal instincts for love and charity (aixin).
She recounted her memory of moving to Beijing from rural Shandong as an
elementary school student and studying alongside Beijing children, noting that she
never was shown prejudice or felt excluded. To the contrary, she and her peers were
united under the banner o f socialism, then in its heyday, whose tenets she recalled in
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a popular ditty: “Socialism is good, we are all brothers and sisters, under glorious
socialism the people’s status is high” (April 7, 2002 transcript).
Yet after the start of reform, Xie Lihua realized that socialism had also divided rural
and urban society by its dual-tier employment and residence scheme, such that rural
migrants in the city were vulnerable to exploitation and feelings of exclusion.
Moreover, as the mother of a daughter, she felt maternal affection toward the
numerous young rural women she had come to know through R WKA magazine and
the Club as well as those who had worked in her own household as domestic
workers. Just as she had made a home for her daughter, so too she hoped to provide
these women with a home and family in the form of the Migrant Women’s Club.
Finally, she conveyed her optimism that over the course of China’s modernization
and through the efforts of such organizations as RWKA magazine and the Club,
persistent social inequalities (between rural and urban areas; between men and
women) would disappear. She emphasized that so long as everyone approached
social problems in the spirit of socialist unity and with compassion, society would
become “more civilized, more robust, and more advanced.”
In the speech, the ideal of national unity under the socialist banner of equality was
juxtaposed against the reality of gender and rural-urban inequality, and a unique
cultural solution was offered to smooth over these contradictions. Xie Lihua’s appeal
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to maternal affection invites comparison to the “ethic of care” approach to
governance advocated by cultural feminists in the west (e.g., Sara Ruddick). But
whereas cultural feminism emerges from a western tradition of liberal humanism,
maternal feminism (if we call it that) in China likely draws upon a distinctly
Confucian humanism that informs a unique conception of civil society.2 0 7 According
to this perception, the nation-state is like a large family characterized by mutual
obligations and duties of rulers and citizens (i.e., non-oppositional) (see nl92). I
suggest that Xie Lihua’s anniversary speech communicates a unique understanding
of citizenship, which I will call “moral citizenship,” that draws upon historical and
cultural understandings of gender and kinship. This is one version of “citizenship”
that is circulated (and contested) through the Club.
In the next two sections I look at how these principles of citizenship play out in the
Club’s mission, structure and activities. In the concluding section I will reflect upon
the meaning of citizenship as it is developing “on the ground” within and through the
Club.
2 0 7 1 am wary of exaggerating the East/West binary, and am aware that western ideas of citizenship,
with perhaps the exception of current neoliberalism as practiced in the US, do not simply view
citizens and states in opposition; an example of a less antagonistic model is the current European
welfare democracy (see Davidson 1999).
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The Club’s Mission2 0 8
The Club was founded on the expectation that young rural women go to Beijing not
only “seeking money” but also “to experience the world” and “to develop
themselves,” and that most, being single, will return to the countryside to marry and
settle down following a period of work in the city. This understanding reflects a tacit
awareness of the centrality of marriage in rural Chinese culture and the reality of the
hukou system that prevents most peasants from changing registration and settling
permanently in Beijing. Such an understanding also echoed the dominant attitude
that shaped official policy during most of the 1990s of neither prohibiting nor
encouraging urbanization via migration, but rather regulating it. However, since
around 2000, the Club (and, later, the Center) has increasingly acknowledged a
growing trend —migrants intermarrying and staying on in Beijing, or settling in
smaller cities or towns. The Club has adjusted its focus to reflect this.2 0 9 The
language used in the Center’s brochures and on its website, produced in 2001 and
2002, reflects this shifting attitude by referring to rural migrant women as
“urbanizing women.” This significant change has implications for collective
2 ° 8 j j j j s d i s c u s s i o n of the Club’s mission draws upon various sources, including author’s fieldwork
and Li Tao 1996,1999; Milwertz 2000b; Nongjianu baishitongzazhi she 1999; Xie 1995a,b; Xie
2000; RWKA brochures and website (www.nongjianli.org.cn).
2 0 9 For example, in a 1995 article in RWKA magazine Xie Lihua emphasizes that “closing the rural-
urban gap doesn’t have to entail leaving the village” whereas in a 2000 article she tells prospective
migrants that the “city isn’t that far away,” that “urbanization and modernization are linked,” and
suggests migrants settle in small cities and towns rather than return to the villages. I believe Xie
Lihua’s earlier discouragement of migration (see Jacka 1999) was a result of her sympathy for the
great obstacles that the first wave of migrants had to overcome to survive in the city.
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organizing and the formation of new coalitions of women—-around issues of urban
location and poverty, rather than only migrant status. Likewise, in recent years the
state too has become much more tolerant of urbanization through migration, in large
part due to the influence of social advocates for migrants’ rights like those involved
in the Club.
Therefore, the Club’s goals are oriented both toward women’s lives in the city and
their futures, whether returning to the countryside or settling more permanently in an
urban area. The Club aims to help rural migrant women adjust to the urban
environment, overcoming their feelings of loneliness, inferiority, or insecurity as
well as learning their way around the city, improving their working and living
conditions, maintaining good health, developing their own skills and talents, and
recognizing and protecting their legal rights in the workplace and at home. In this
manner, the Club provides guidance in order that rural migrant women can become
“a strong force for urban development” and thus contribute to urban society and the
economy. In addition, the Club offers them practical knowledge that can prepare
them for the future, from advising them on how to acquire new skills or further their
education to addressing issues of love, sex, and marriage. In so doing, the Club seeks
to motivate young rural women to “develop their careers back home,” and thereby
plays a role in rural social and economic development as well. Thus the Club’s
mission is aligned closely with the national economic agenda.
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In an exchange with international feminist scholars and activists, Xie Lihua
emphasized the Club’s mission of raising rural women’s “quality” (suzhi) (see Jacka
2000). She elaborated that the Club’s central accomplishment has been to impart
self-confidence in rural women, thereby contributing to their improved “quality.” In
her words:
When they first join our Migrant Women’s Club and whenever they make a
public speech, they dare not raise their head. It is extremely difficult for us to get
someone to speak. When they are on the speech platform, their hands shake and
their legs tremble. But in our three years of running the Club, we keep telling
them they’re no less capable than other people. .. .Migrant workers have low self
esteem, they encounter a lot of discrimination, and the lack of confidence is
indeed their main problem. Now our main goal is to tell them, ‘You’re really
great already, you’ve achieved much more than your counterparts in the cities.
You came to the city, faced a world of strangers, and on your own strength
you’ve stood on your own feet, and made money that you send back home to
improve the livelihood of your family. Some of you even support your brothers
to go to school.’ I think their contributions to family and society are higher than
those of urban women of their generation. We as organizers must first of all
remember that those migrant women workers have enormous potential, but that
they have not been motivated, and they are still suppressed by society” (Hsiung
etal. 2001: 186-187).
As the anthropologist Ellen R. Judd (2002: 24) has observed, whereas during the
Mao era the Women’s Federation’s primary mission was to correct women’s
political outlook and motivate women to participate in production alongside men, the
Women’s Federation in the era of market-socialism promotes “four selves”~self
respect (zizun), self confidence (zixin), self-reliance (zilf), and self-strengthening
(ziqiang)—key qualities that women need, along with skills and education, to
compete with men for jobs and promotions. The use of “quality” discourse by the
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Women’s Federation is thus a pragmatic response to the challenges posed by the
market economy, including sexist labor practices, as well as the loss of state jobs for
(urban) women and the concomitant erosion of the special benefits those jobs
guaranteed them. Likewise, the Club’s commitment to raising women’s “quality,” a
goal explicitly stated in the Club’s literature, reflects organizers’ accommodation to
the state’s market-socialism and keen awareness that a patriarchal system creates an
increasingly competitive employment environment for women. Later I demonstrate
that members, too, have adopted the discourse of quality and development.
In her discussion of the Club’s early years of operation, Cecelia Milwertz (2000)
argues that the organization’s pragmatic focus on equipping migrant women to
compete in the existing social order does not necessarily preclude it from
strategically challenging gender inequality in society. Applying an analytic
framework used by feminist scholars of development, Milwertz concludes that while
the Club mainly represents its member’s “practical gender interests,” helping women
to better cope within the existing gender system, it also “imposes” on its members, to
a certain degree, the “strategic gender interests” of its urban organizers, which could
potentially result in a more fundamental challenge to the existing gender system. I
agree with Milwertz that the Club is empowering for young rural women. In
particular, I argue that the Club helps expose rural women to a horizon of
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possibilities for the future, raising their expectations, and resulting in their
increasingly vocal demands for civil and social rights.
Membership and Structure
The Club is open to any rural woman in Beijing over 16 with a minimum of middle
school education and having a government issued identity card; these requirements
would ensure that the Club would not violate standards established by both Ministry
of Labor and Public Security Bureaus regarding employment and migration. The
application procedure consists of filling out a form that records a member’s name,
education and work background, contact information in Beijing and in the
countryside, and submitting a photograph and the membership fee (3 yuan in 1993,
up to 20 yuan in 2002). In addition, members should show that they have a
temporary residence permit for Beijing or a work permit {"Zhi dagongmei” 1996;
Club membership form).
The Club’s first 200 members were recruited in one go by soliciting (via letters) area
hospitals and factories that employed rural women and to several employment
agencies that place migrants in domestic service (Milwertz 2000b; conversation May
1999 with Miao Min). By 2000, the Club had grown to over 500 members (interview
April 4,2002 with Li Tao). However, included in this count are members who no
longer reside in Beijing, having already returned to their homes in the countryside.
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As Jacka and Gaetano (2004) have discussed elsewhere, rural migrant women’s lives
in the cities are inherently unstable. Li Tao (interview April 4, 2002) has observed
that the Club can hardly expect to retain a steady membership pool given the logic of
temporary migration. The Club has made some efforts to recruit new members, such
as by visiting the workplaces of migrants, by advertising in RWKA magazine and in
• » • • • 210
Beijing’s newspapers, and by maintaining connections with employment agencies
that specialize in placing migrants in jobs like domestic service, or even with county-
level labor bureau representatives (Li Tao interivew April 4,2002). Yet the Club’s
finite resources in terms of personnel, meeting space capacity, and finances are
insufficient to the task of expanding membership (see Center brochure regarding the
organization’s financial struggles; conversations with Xie Lihua in 2000, 2002).
The Club staff holds regular office hours Monday through Friday and members may
call or drop by during that time. The Club regularly plans and holds a social or
educational activity twice monthly on Sundays. In addition, the Club usually puts on
parties to celebrate the major holidays. This activity schedule accommodates the
schedules of the original Club membership—domestic workers and hospital nurse’s
helpers who generally are allotted two Sundays off each month, in accordance with
2 1 0 According to one Club member, relations between the Club and the March 8 Domestic Service
Placement Agency run by the Beijing Women’s Federation turned sour when the latter complained
that the Club hurt their business. The agency complained that Club members placed in domestic
service exchanged information about salaries and employers with one another, resulting in demands
for higher wages and higher turnover.
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regulations adopted by the Women’s Federation-run employment agencies and in
accordance with Ministry of Labor standards. Although the Club is oriented toward
migrant women, male migrants are invited to the bi-monthly activities, and some
have become quite active participants in Club activities. (I have also encountered
some young Beijing women attending meetings.) Based on my own and others’
observations, attendance at the bi-monthly activities ranges from 10-30 people,
including first-time visitors to the Club.
A survey of 196 members conducted in 1996 reports that the average age of the
members was 21in a range from 16-36, about 85% had completed middle school
(ichuzhong), and most were employed in unskilled jobs in the service sector, at least
2/3 as domestic workers or janitors (Li Tao 1996,1999). According to the 2000
survey administered by Tamara Jacka in conjunction with the RWKA collective, with
about % of the Club’s 400 members responding, 73% were in the 18-24 age range;
81% were single; almost half (44%) had completed middle school {chuzhong) and
over V a of them (28%) had completed high school. The members are basically
representative of young, unmarried female migrants (see Jacka and Gaetano 2004).
Lacking the means to provide a full range of services to its members, the Club’s
purpose is rather to disseminate information and direct members toward additional
resources. Therefore, increasingly the Club figures within the broader Center as an
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extension of and complement to Migrant Women magazine (interview with Li Tao
April 4,2002). As its first editor pointed out in an interview, the magazine has the
potential to reach migrant workers beyond just Club members (or participants in
Club activities), so in the long run the concentration of resources on the magazine
may do more than the Club to serve migrant (women) workers in the capita (Ibid.).
The organizational structure of the Club reflects the close personal involvement of its
founder in particular and the RWKA collective more generally. The Center’s
planning board has oversight of the Club and Xie Lihua herself has either personally
selected or otherwise approved Club staff, consisting of paid employees and
volunteer consultants. In addition, although the recent reorganization of the RWKA
collective indicates that RWKA magazine’s finances are to be separate from those of
the Center, in 2002 several Club staff members were on the payroll of RWKA
magazine (that is, of China Women’ s News). Another important feature of the Club is
the distinction between the Club staff and members. Most of the Club staff persons
are older than and more highly educated than most Club members, and most hold
Beijing household registration, with the exception of some of the reporters for
Migrant Women magazine and its first editor Li Tao. As registered residents of
Beijing and, with a few exceptions, as employees of the state (e.g., party cadres
affiliated with China Women’ s News), most of the staff have local housing and enjoy
some employment benefits, which further distinguishes them from Club members.
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As Milwertz observed, although the Club was not originally designed to ensure the
participation of its members in the process of decision-making, it nonetheless made
strides in that direction from the start by incorporating one member representative
(i.e., a rural migrant woman) into its staff as an intern. Beginning in 1996, a young
migrant woman from Shandong who previously had worked as a domestic worker
provided assistance to both RWKA magazine and the Club. During 1999-2000, the
responsibilities for planning the bi-monthly Club activities and overseeing the day-
to-day operations of the Club were entrusted to another Club member, a former
domestic worker from Jiangsu who had since married and settled in Beijing. By 2002
a number of opportunities existed for rural migrant women to get involved in the
organization as volunteers either with the Club or with Migrant Women magazine, as
I explain further in the next section. In addition, the organizers periodically made
efforts to identify Club members’ needs and receive feedback on the Club’s services
by soliciting members’ input on the membership application, via a suggestion box,
through survey-taking, and during an end-of-year meeting.
Hiring members on to the staff reflects Club organizers’ awareness that members
will feel most at ease among others who share their experiences and that a shared
identity is the most effective basis for generating a mutually trustworthy relationship
between members and staff. Tellingly, Li Tao emphasized to me that his similarities
with Club members—both his rural background and non-local hukou—help him to
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understand migrants’ worldview and empathize with their plight, and thus better
qualify him as the liaison between the parent organization and the Club. As yet,
however, rural women on staff have held only support positions and have not been
substantially incorporated into the Club’s decision-making bodies. Perhaps this
factors into the Club’s high turnover of staff drawn from Club membership.
The Club’s organizers are committed both to improving the relationships between
staff and members in the short-term and, in the long-term, to transforming the
organization into one that is self-governed by migrant women (interview with Xie
Lihua and Li Tao May 19, 2002). These changes would help fulfill the organization’s
mission to empower migrant women and are also encouraged by their international
supporters like the Ford Foundation, which has a mission to develop China’s civil
society (interview with Sarah Cook on May 24,2002). In fact the first step toward
achieving these goals for the Club’s future is underway with the restructuring of the
RWKA collective and establishment of the Center.
Such a long-term plan is ambitious because it diverges from the bureaucratic style of
mass organizations. Indeed, Xie’s familiarity with the hierarchical structure and
highly instituted leadership training programs of the Women’s Federation probably
explains her strong opinion about the importance of capable leadership. In various
conversations with me, both she and Li Tao emphasized the need to devote more
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resources to training migrant women to assume leadership roles and further develop
the organization. Elsewhere (Hsiung et al. 2001: 186-87) Xie addressed this issue
more fully:
I think training is what the women need. The Migrant Women’s Club is still
growing, and embarking on work that has never been taken up by other people
before. There is a growing desire to make the Club a home o f migrant women
workers themselves. From management to sharing of information to allocation of
resources, we want more participation of women workers. I told them we’re only
doing backup service, and that they are the ones who should run the show. We’re
just building the stage for them. They should learn to take more responsibility in
running the organization. We should train them to produce leaders or organizers.
One staff intern told me that she found it difficult to balance such expectations of
leadership with her role among peers who addressed her as “Elder Sister.” Although
she shared the aspirations of the Club’s organizers to “make the Club a success and
generate an independent source of funding,” she felt she could not do so without
being perceived by other members to be socially distant. Nor, she confided, did she
want to become a leader (lingdao) in the style of Women’s Federation cadres. Thus
she always corrected member who addressed her as “Teacher” or otherwise tried to
place her in a superior position. Rather than lead, she hoped to continue her intimate
(qinqie) relationship with her “sisters” as their trusted friend, because she felt
capable of providing them comfort and advice and was gratified by such a role.
Moreover, she said she preferred “working on behalf of migrant women” to the task
of lecturing recently arrived rural women enrolled at the Practical Skills Training
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Center on how to succeed in domestic service (interview with Wang Lifang, March
24,2000). Indeed, when she left her staff position at the Club, numerous members
lamented her absence; one member said her sense of the Club as a home had
“evaporated.”
Clearly, the Club’s further stability and sustainability (e.g., building a core of
committed members and attracting new ones) requires a compromise model of
management that can effectively lead the Club into the future without jeopardizing
its central function—serving as a “home away from home” where migrant women
receive sympathy and support. This must be accomplished without alienating
members from one another or creating hierarchies among those serving (leaders) and
those served. Bureaucratic leadership, considered modern, is not necessarily suited to
an organization that conceives of itself as a moral community bound by more
intimate bonds of sisterhood and family. Moreover, as Kathleen Jones (1998)
cautions, the ideal of sisterhood overlooks inequalities among women. Feminist (or
women’s) organizations in which organizers and members hail from two different
populations can still share a moral commitment or rally around one axis of common
identity to effectively achieve the goal of social change (Milwertz 2000b). However,
power differentials between organizers and members need to be acknowledged up
front. Some RWKA organizers and Club staff have yet to address their own
complicity in the economic and social hierarchy, particularly as many of them or
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their households are also employers, hiring migrant workers to provide domestic
service, for example.
In this section I have suggested that some degree of social distance exists, and is
recognized to exist, between organizers/staff and intems/members because of the
legacy of the urban-rural divide. Organizers are taking measures to address it and
develop a more participatory organization. Next I explore the significance of the
Migrant Women’s Club to its members as a social space for forging a shared identity
and an imagined community that are the prerequisite for constituting citizenship
awareness and citizenship practice.
The Place and Space of the “Home”
The Migrant Women’s Club is a home in two senses: as a physical place or “club
house” and a social space where rural migrant women can casually interact and feel
“at home.” In this section I describe the setting of the Club and present an
ethnographic study of some everyday and special activities centered on the Club. I
attempt to pursue what Somers (1994: 632) refers to as the narrative construction of
identity taking place in and through the social space of the Club. “Actors’ places in
the multiple (often competing) symbolic and material narratives” have implications
for their identity as citizens (Ibid.).
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From 1996-2001, the Club occupied three rooms on an upper floor of a nondescript
building tucked away in an alley (hutong) in Beijing’s old city center, a few bus
stops away from bustling Wangfujing Street. The smaller room contained two desks,
a few storage cabinets, and a phone, and functioned as the office, while two larger
rooms served as the meeting room and, when needed, a classroom. When I visited in
2000, the meeting room had a small cabinet filled with donated books and
magazines, several computers (also donated) that members could practice typing on,
and a television with equipment for Karaoke (i.e., microphone and VCD player). In
this first location, the Club had geographic independence from the R WKA magazine
offices. The integration of its office and activity spaces gave an aura of informality to
the Club. In 1999-2000,1 would often stop by the Club mid-week to find a few
members engaged in lively conversation or a staff intern busily dispensing
information about the Club or advising a member on the phone.
In early 2002 the Club relocated to a small courtyard-style residence (siheyuan), also
located in an older, more distant part of the city (near the famous Lama Temple). The
new structure housed a small courtyard surrounded on three sides by a half-dozen
small rooms. The rooms housed the offices of the Club, Migrant Women magazine,
and the Development Project Center, reflecting the umbrella organization’s
restructuring. (There was also a groundskeeper’s quarters.) The Club’s activity and
office space were no longer separate. One small room contained the office
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equipment: three desks, a computer and telephones; an adjoining small sitting room
functioned as the Club’s library. As neither the office nor library could accommodate
many persons, the Sunday events I attended were all held in the open-air courtyard.
If a physical place can be said to structure social space, then the clear demarcation
between office and activity areas in the Club’s new location had the effect of
formalizing the interactions between members and staff in a way that the more
integrated spatial arrangement of the previous location did not. During my visits to
the Club’s new location on days on which no activities were planned, I did encounter
one Club staff member engaged in consultation with a new member, but I did not
observe as many casual encounters as I had in 1999 and 2000. Another explanation
for this change was the absence of any intern (i.e, Club member) on the staff in the
spring of 2002.
In June 20021 invited hotel cleaners Zhou Lili and Li Mei to a Sunday activity (two
law school students lecturing on Constitutional rights and the Labor Law) that was
held in the Club’s courtyard. Zhou complained to me later that it was uncomfortable
to sit on hard chairs on a cool, overcast, and breezy day without being offered any
refreshments, and listen to a pedantic lecture. She expressed disappointment in the
setting, which she called a “dilapidated building” (polan pingfang). The courtyard
structure probably dated to the Qing or Ming dynasty, but to her it symbolized
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backwardness and held little appeal. (Some Club members appear to share her view.
At the Club’s 6th anniversary event, a member expressed her heartfelt wish to “build
a big building \yi zuo dalou] for my working sisters and brothers” [April 7, 2002
transcript].) As a contrast, Zhou told me of the recent productivity rally the hotel put
on for its employees that she had attended. The event was held in a new high-rise and
she was rewarded for her attendance with food and drink and a door prize. Using the
expression “time is money,” she reminded me that Club members must perceive their
participation as sufficient to make up for the outlay of time that might otherwise
have been more profitably spent.
A Space of Belonging: A Shared Identity?
When several newcomers joined a Sunday meeting in March 2000,1 learned of two
things that draw migrant women to the Club. Almost all of those present (including
existing members) voiced a desire for practical knowledge on subjects such as the
city, urban lifestyles, and job opportunities, and expressed eagerness to learn new
skills and thereby raise their quality.2 1 1 Yet most also articulated a need to “feel at
home,” to dispel feelings of loneliness or isolation, and to make new friends. Thus
Club-goers, like most of their migrant peers, long to assuage feelings of
2 1 1 “Raising quality” was the primary desire identified by Club organizers based on their survey of the
first 200 members (Li Tao 1999).
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nonbelonging in the urban milieu and “find tranquility” (xinli pingheng) at least
momentarily by being among peers and equals.
The Club promotes face-to-face encounters that construct a collective identity based
on the common experience of being a migrant woman and migrant worker, including
dislocation of leaving home and exclusion from full membership in urban society.
Before most meetings, each person present will introduce herself, providing a name,
home province, and duration of time spent out of the village. Many use the
opportunity to “speak bitterness” about their migration experience—that is, to tell of
their suffering, usually concluding on a positive note that emphasizes one’s ability to
survive and the knowledge gained. Listening to such introductions, Club
participants can mutually identify with the common themes of feeling lonely, inferior
and naive, humiliated and angered, hopeless about the present and anxious about the
future, etc. Hearing each other’s stories, migrant women learn that their individual
experience is not entirely unique and feel less alone. Even informally, Club attendees
routinely ask people they meet for the first time at the Club, “How long have you
been out?” and “Where is your hometown?” or “What do you do for work?”
The shared identity of rural migrant women involved with the Club can also be
reinforced in opposition to visits by “others,” people whom they perceive as
2 1 2 For examples see the translated stories in Gaetano and Jacka (2004) and analysis by Jacka (2004).
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different, including a foreigner like myself, as well as Chinese journalists or
academics. I felt this keenly at a meeting in early 2000 (January 23), when several
members emphasized their commitment to raising their own quality in order to
“make China strong.” Their patriotic comments were made in the context of a heated
condemnation of the recent US bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade possibly
inspired by the simultaneous presence at the Club of two American researchers
(including myself) and an American journalist. (Of course they took pains to tell me
after the meeting that any anti-American sentiment expressed was not directed at me
personally.) One member suggested that experts should be excluded from the Club’s
meetings while another expressed disinterest in hearing yet another presentation by
an “expert” (i.e., an academic) because even practical advice about how to use the
law was too far removed from the reality of her own life. I heard similar complaints
in the spring of 2000 when I began to administer a (voluntary) survey of the Club’s
members designed by Tamara Jacka jointly with RWKA magazine. At the Club’s
office (April 29, 2000), one member groaned upon seeing the survey form and said
bluntly: “We’re sick of filling out survey forms. It doesn’t change our social
circumstances or help us in any way. We desperately need society to change.” (Some
respondents expressed similar pleas for more fundamental help on the survey form
itself.) Their fatigue and frustration are justified given that the Club is the object of
numerous studies by those interested in women’s and migrant’s rights as well as in
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China’s new social organizations. By vocalizing their objection to being made the
object of research, these Club members again share a common experience.
A unified identity was also reinforced when members perceived there to be blatant
prejudice among some staff and organizers against migrant workers and felt
disrespected. In one outing in which I participated (April 9,2000), Club members
traveled at their own expense to the Practical Skills Training School and voluntarily
cleaned out the dormitory. Yet only Li Tao, myself, and a Taiwanese researcher were
verbally acknowledged by the school’s staff; even the migrant women who were
Club interns at the time were not personally thanked for organizing the trip and
laboring for the school, several members noted afterward.
Some members have criticized the internal structure and procedures of the
organization for creating hierarchies of difference. In a meeting in which members
were asked to share with organizers their assessment of the Club, one member said
“the Club is not like a family” and suggested that there should not be an officiator at
the Club meetings and that members should speak out more rather than wait to be
called upon (by the officiator) (meeting notes, March 19,2000). Members
complained about communication between Club staff and members, claiming that
staff persons were not thorough about publicizing and broadcasting upcoming Club
events, even when members called in to the office to inquire (meeting notes from
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January 23,2000 and March 19, 2000). Another indirectly suggested that the Club
practice transparency in its accounting, demanding to know the details of the
available funds and budget, in particular regard to her unfulfilled request that the
Club subscribe to newspapers and expand its library (meeting notes, March 19,
2000). (In response to this latter request, Li Tao countered that the Club’s honor
system of checking out books had resulted in a rapid depletion of the donated
materials.)
However, even common experiences of non-belonging are not always enough to
foster a shared identity among Club members and participants. For example, at one
meeting a Club member complained about the behavior and appearance of some
newly arrived migrants she had observed on a city bus earlier in the day, whom she
alleged evinced “low quality” (meeting notes, January 23, 2000). Her comments
brought vehement objection from other members who complained that Beijing
residents likewise often display “low quality” by spitting on streets. However, this
member was far from alone in holding a rather disdainful opinion of more recent
migrants, as I discovered during a Club meeting in 2002 (April 21). On the way to
the meeting, just outside the courtyard gate, I encountered two regularly attending
members whom I had known from past years. Both had moved out of domestic
service into sales jobs and looked “urbanized”: they wore makeup, were dressed
stylishly, and had fashionable and expensive accessories from their handbags to their
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cell phones. I was attending the meeting with two guests, Zhou Lili and Li Mei, who
were dressed comparatively simply, reflecting their occupational status as low-paid
janitors. The two regulars greeted me warmly, but barely acknowledged my
companions, even after I introduced them. Later in the day, after the meeting was
adjourned, I accompanied Zhou and Li to the nearby subway station. While I was
ordering snacks from a street vendor, I observed the two others walk by my
companions without so much as a glance; my companions were keenly aware of the
slight. Zhou told me later that she felt “uncomfortable” (huhaoyisi) at the Club, not
being dressed as prettily as others in attendance. Clearly the older members had
contributed to her lower self-esteem. Li was more distressed, and later delivered to
me her written comment, which read: “I enjoyed the lecture and learned much about
the law, but I was not warmly welcomed to the Club. I feel that migrant workers are
divided internally by social status (deng/i fenbie).”
The Club is a space where a collective identity is temporarily forged through shared
narratives that stress the common experience, emotions, and moral character of rural
migrant women. This identity is reinforced in opposition to those who compound
their suffering by displays of disrespect: not listening to them or not acknowledging
their subjectivity. The frustration borne of nonbelonging that is felt by rural migrant
women is often projected onto the Club, as well as directed at urban society,
employers, or the government. Those migrants who have been in the city for an
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' J l ' l
extended period, like most Club members are most likely to perceive a gap
between their expectations and reality. These tensions frequently erupt in the space
of the Club, which encourages migrants to speak out, voice their opinions, and
articulate their needs. Although members often disagree and argue about the causes
and consequences of nonbelonging, airing their grievances together builds solidarity.
Moreover, participating in the Club emboldens rural migrant women to formulate
their thoughts about social change and assert themselves as citizens. Club
membership turnover is high— whether due to cyclical migration, marriage, or
disillusionment with the Club—but some members do stay active in the Club for
several months or even a few years. Their input is integral to designing a Club that
meets members’ expectations of “home.”2 1 4
Instituting Processes of Citizenship Formation
The Club started as primarily a social and educational service organization, with the
primary goals mentioned above of providing young rural women far from home with
a place where they could feel welcome, make friends, and have fun, and also
improve their quality by acquiring knowledge that would help them adjust to the
urban workplace and society and shore up their self-confidence. Social activities
2 1 3 Members average about 3 years in the city, according to the 1996 survey (Li Tao 1999).
2 1 4 Sarah Cook (interview May 24,2002) suggested that the Club need not depend upon a stable
membership but could develop a structure that would adjust to the rhythms of migration, continually
incorporating new members.
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organized by the Club have included parties to celebrate national holidays,
sightseeing trips, films, Karaoke competitions, and, in 1997, a mass wedding.
Educational activities include presentations by experts on topics relevant to migrant
women’s lives, such as on reproductive and mental health, love and marriage, gender
and inequality, and the law and legal system. The Club has also held seminars to
address migrant women’s concerns with career development, such as by contracting
with teachers to run skill-building workshops, including instruction in English,
typing, housekeeping, and computer use. Exceptional migrant women have been
invited to the Club to give motivational talks and share their secrets of business or
academic success.
Over time, the Club has become a firm advocate for migrants’ social, economic,
civil, and gender rights, taking on tasks such as exposing in the media illegal
practices that disadvantage or harm migrants, and intervening in select cases to help
migrant women whose rights have been violated pursue justice through the court
system. The shift in the Club’s orientation can be attributed to several factors. First,
organizers have learned more about migrants’ needs as a result of increased
interaction with members, including through the feedback mechanism discussed
above, as well as through the media, which since the late 1990s has paid more
attention to the plight of migrant workers. Urban feminists involved with the
organization may become increasingly politicized around issues of gender and class
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as a result. For example, lawyer Chen Benjian’s experience of helping rape victim
Xiao Li, discussed above, provided first-hand knowledge of the class bias and
sexism pervading the legal process. Addressing these biases could benefit all
citizens.
Secondly, since 2000 the State Council has shifted position on migration by
emphasizing the positive rather than negative contribution of migrants to economic
development, and thereby condoned a more open debate on migration.2 1 5 The Club
had already utilized the media to reach a broader public and turn public opinion, and
that of policy makers, to a more favorable view of migrant workers. The debut of
Migrant Woman magazine in 2001 promised to enhance the capacity of the Club to
advocate publicly and audibly on behalf of the rights and interests of all migrant
women and migrant workers.
The magazine content (about 60% according to Li Tao, interview April 4, 2002) is
the work of a paid staff of journalists, whose investigative style of journalism
involves unmasking situations of exploitation or abuse of migrant workers based on
interviews with migrant workers, employers, officials and other relevant parties in
order to lay bare the facts and apportion blame. The magazine has been particularly
2 1 5 See, for example, “State Council to issue decree.” Globalization is a factor here as well; the shift in
view has much to do with China’s successful Olympic bid and the need for labor that preparation for
that event in 2008 generates.
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critical of migration policy and the household registration system and has not been
afraid to criticize the government administrative organs that fail to uphold their duty
to enforce the Labor Law by carrying out legal proceedings to protect migrant
'y \ f\
workers’ rights. The magazine’s low retail price (grants largely subsidize the
publication’s costs) makes it affordable even to low-wage migrant workers. In
addition, Migrant Women magazine’s staff together with volunteer Club members
promoted the magazine by distributing free copies at migrant worksites. As of 2002,
the magazine hoped to further expand its circulation.
In his explication of modem nation-state building, Benedict Anderson (1983)
showed the print media to be critical to formation of an “imagined community.”
Likewise, we can expect that the magazine Migrant Women will reach migrant
workers beyond the boundaries of the Club and become a significant force in forging
a collective citizenship identity and citizenship practices among rural migrant
women.
2 1 6 The magazine is less aggressive in pursuing gender equality; for example, each of the first few
editions of the magazine continue the theme of RWKA magazine that domestic service is not a
debased occupation, but do not address the gender division of labor that keeps women in this low-
wage job while migrant men access more highly paid construction jobs. Nor are the root causes of
gender violence explored; instead the magazine opts to disseminate practical advice for women on
how to avoid situations that might make them vulnerable to gender violence.
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Concomitant with these developments, the Center (i.e., RWKA magazine collective)
has been able to harness the momentum generated by the proliferation of new social
organizations and sources of international support. International organizations in
particular have encouraged the organization to network with similar domestic and
foreign organizations in order to foster the exchange of ideas and strategies for
shaping policy and otherwise advocating in the interest of women migrants. In 1999,
members of the Club and Center organizers and staff traveled to Shenzhen and Hong
Kong as part of an exchange. The Center has also hosted visiting delegations of
migrant labor and women’s organization members from other Asian nations. The
Center has also sponsored two conferences (in 1999 and 2001) that brought together
activists, academics, government officials and policy makers, the media, and migrant
women (represented by several Club members) around the issue of “The Protection
of Migrant Women’s Legal Rights and Interests” (see Jacka 2000 for a report on the
1999 conference).
In 2001 the Club determined that it should establish a Legal Aid Group to provide
legal advice and information to migrants in order to combat the extensive abuses of
migrant workers’ rights and interests reported by media and alleged by Club
members.2 1 7 A grant from the Ford Foundation and support from Oxfam Hong Kong
helped the Center realize its goal. By networking with university law departments
2 1 7 On violations of migrants’ rights, see Li Tao 1996, 1999; Tang Can 1998; Zhou Litai 1999.
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and legal-oriented NGOS, the Center recruited a large corps of volunteer lawyers and
law students to provide consultation by phone or in person in response to questions
posed by migrants using the Legal Aid Hotline established by the Club. In addition,
Club members organized a corps of volunteers who could be mobilized to minister
directly to individual migrants, it has raised donations to establish an emergency loan
fund for migrants in need, and it has published a “Manual for Migrant Women to
Protect their Rights.” As then-editor of Migrant Woman magazine Li Tao explained
to me in 2002 (April 24), the purpose of the Legal Aid Group was not to intervene on
behalf of every migrant involved in a labor or civil dispute but rather to collect data
on the broad trends in rights violations in order to best educate migrants, using the
media, on how to use the law to protect their rights, to publicize egregious violations
of rights in order to engage popular opinion, and ultimately to influence policy
making and spur legal reform. Thus Li Tao reflects the broadened perspective of the
Center’s organizers regarding the organization’s mission and goals.
Former domestic worker Wang Li was clearly the unofficial spokesperson for the
Legal Aid Group in its first few months. A sobering photograph on the cover of its
promotional brochure depicts Wang Li displaying graphic photos of the dark bruises
she suffered on her legs, shoulders and buttocks at the hands of her abusive
employer. By publicizing her experience in the media and by taking on her
employers in court, Wang Li has become a model for the Club and an inspiration to
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350
other members. (Her story is an interesting counterpoint to that of Xiao Li discussed
above.) I did not interview Wang Li, so instead I recount her story drawing upon an
address she delivered at the 6th anniversary celebration of the Club (April 7,2002
^ij j
transcript) and from her interview with Migrant Women magazine (Li Tao 2000b).
Wang Li was just 15 years old and motherless when she left her rural Shanxi village
to work for an elderly woman in Taiyuan as a domestic worker with the goal of
supporting herself so as to ease her father’s burden (of supporting two sons in
addition to Wang Li). In December 2000, she was called to Beijing to work for the
woman’s daughter, Li Mu, to care for her newborn and a 3-year old girl. In Beijing,
Wang Li endured several months of psychological and physical abuse by Li Mu
before being rescued by her uncle. As Wang Li explained, at first she accepted the
abuse and humiliation as part and parcel of being an outsider working in the city. As
the abuse grew more severe, such that she was covered in bruises, Wang Li longed to
escape, but did not have the means or ability to do so. She had received none of her
monthly salary of 150 yuan, and was broke. She didn’t dare call home or the police,
because her employer had clearly warned her that she would be found out if she did
so and further threatened to make trouble for Wang Li’s poor father back home. She
sought out neighbors and strangers for help by scribbling her request for aid on
2181 chose not to interview Wang Li when her friends, who were sheltering her and her brother,
conveyed her wish not to be contacted further by media following her speech on television at the
Club’s 6* anniversary event.
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pieces of paper that she then tossed out of the window, hoping someone would get
the message. A few neighbors were aware of what was going on and desired to help,
but were too fearful to get involved because, as one put it in an interview with
Migrant Woman magazine, “once Wang Li’s gone, we’ll still be living next door to
her employers, so we have to be discreet if we help her, and think of our own
safety.” One night, after being knocked into unconsciousness when Li Mu’s husband
joined his wife in giving her a beating, Wang Li overcame her fears and helplessness
and managed to place a call to her uncle in her county town. Two days later he
arrived and, after a long argument with the employers, won back some of Wang Li’s
salary. The two then went to the residential Public Security Bureau to file a
complaint, but they were told that neighborly disagreements were a civil matter not
"J IQ
covered by criminal law and therefore not a police concern. Her uncle urged her to
return home, saying: “How can you win a lawsuit against a Beijinger? You have
nothing to eat, no place to live, and Beijing is so expensive, and you already have a
lot of debt.”
Wang Li went home, but soon returned to Beijing with one of her brothers, an
educated former army soldier, and with his help and her father’s blessing began to
seek justice. Her brother located a lawyer willing to take the case on commission,
2 1 9 Domestic service in many countries, including the U.K., is not clearly defined as a labor relation
and hence falls outside the protection of labor laws, and this is also the case in China.
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352
and worked with the media and the Club to help generate attention and sympathy for
the case. At the Legal Aid Group’s inauguration (April 7, 2002; see transcript),
Wang Li again told her story to a rapt audience that included television media, and
explained how she went about bringing suit:
The [residential neighborhood’s] Public Security Bureau wouldn’t help, saying
this was a matter of neighborhood argument [i.e., it wasn’t a criminal matter that
would justify their investigating] and therefore not their jurisdiction [rather of
arbitration committee in neighborhood or labor office]. Later I took media
reports back to the Public Security Bureau, and they exclaimed, "Aiya, it’s in the
press!’ Then they began working on the case! They called in the neighbors to the
police station and began to take statements [i.e., evidence]. Ultimately they
detained the employer for 15 days, and the case went to court. This took about a
year’s time. Finally the decision was handed down that the employers must pay
the salary and compensation for emotional damage of 6000 yuan. But when we
went through the administrative office to collect from the employer, we found
they’d already gone overseas, and had sold their house. So getting the money is a
problem.
After learning about Wang Li’s case and those of some other victimized migrant
women, the Club intervened to offer valuable resources, particularly legal assistance.
More importantly to the victims, the Club provided a community of concerned and
caring peers, who expressed their sympathy in person and by donating their hard-
earned wages. As Wang Li said, “whenever there was trouble I would find my sisters
at the Club to talk.” By reaching out to migrant women in need, the Club community
will likely grow and become increasingly self-supporting and self-sustaining. Wang
Li suggests as much in her speech when she expressed her gratitude toward the Club
and offered her own help to other migrant women:
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No matter what, even owing so much debt, justice was ultimately done. In
Beijing there are good people and there is the Club. When the Club gave me aid
and then went back home, my relatives were puzzled that strangers would give
me money, and couldn’t believe it. Although I’ve had a lot of experience, and
now know much about the law, I’m still a member of the Club. If any sisters
suffer similar infringement of their rights, come see me. Tell me your troubles for
I can help.”
I recount Wang Li’s story in such detail for what it shows about the struggles of rural
migrant women, especially those in domestic service and the effectiveness of the
Center’s the organizers and Club members. Most importantly, Wang Li’s story
indicates the potential for participation in the Club to foster and solidify a shared
identity among migrant women workers and create a community who join in
solidarity with a fellow member in need to share in a common struggle.
Prospects for Daeonsmei Citizenship
Margaret Somers (1993: 589) states, “recognizable popular citizenship rights have
only emerged historically in the participatory spaces of public spheres in tandem
with ‘relationally-sturdy’ civil societies.” The Beijing Migrant Women’s Club is a
space wherein an imagined community of mral migrant women takes shape and
wherein practices of citizenship are developed. Rural migrant women who
participate in the Club or engage with its literature share common feelings of
dislocation and exclusion that are expressed in their individual narratives.
Collectively they can locate the source of nonbelonging in their positions as both
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labor migrants and as unmarried rural women. In the Club space, rural migrant
women exercise their agency as active citizens, in particular by making demands of
“their” organization. In so doing they express a desire to personalize the Club and
make it their “home.” If such demands are met, their stake in the collectivity will be
greatly strengthened. Despite its unstable membership and internal discord, the Club
symbolizes a possibility for collective organizing and hence contributes to the
expansion of China’s civil society.
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CONCLUSION
EVALUATING LATE SOCIALIST MODERNITY FROM THE
PERSPECTIVE OF RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRANT WOMEN
This dissertation has argued that gender is a fundamental category shaping migration
patterns and young rural women ’s experiences of migration and work. Gender also
figures in the women’s interpretation of their experiences. As I have demonstrated,
the migration of rural women to urban areas in contemporary China is a gendered
process that is shaped by rural patriarchy and the patriarchal state in articulation with
global capital.
Situating the internal migration of young rural women in China within broader
global processes, my dissertation fills a critical void in the literature. Previous
studies of gender and migration in China focused on rural migrant women assembly
line workers in industries financed by foreign capital, such as the workers in
Shenzhen, whose connection to global capital is obvious (Lee 1998; Pun 1999). Yet
rural migrant women in urban domestic service and hotel housekeeping should also
be considered in relation to the global economy (Sassen 2003). By providing services
to households of China’s middle-class professionals and bureaucrats, these workers
indirectly subsidize the costs of reproducing the local labor force, in turn relieving
the state of an onerous welfare burden and freeing up funds to invest in other sectors
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of the national economy. In this way they contribute to the growth of the nation’s
GNP. I have tried to make visible their hidden contributions to the national and
global political economy.
The global economy’s demand for a youthful workforce is satiated in part by young
rural migrant women, who are already marginalized in the household and family and
therefore particularly eager and available for migration. At the level of the
household, gender ideologies and kinship and marriage practices shape gender
identity in ways that emphasize the moral obligations of daughters to their families
expressed largely through the idiom of affection (ganqing) and through reciprocal
relations (guanxi). Good daughters migrate to relieve their parents of an extra child
to support, send money home to augment the household economy, take pains to
preserve their family’s good reputation, and eventually marry near home. Indeed,
fulfilling these social prescriptions of gender is a source of meaning and pride for
rural migrant women.
These gender norms and ideologies shore up state constructions of gender that
emphasize women’s feminine identities and domestic roles as “virtuous wives and
good mothers,” including their new role as consumers in the market economy, in
relation to civic duty and service to the nation. In this context, rural migrant women
are perceived as but temporary workers who will ultimately return to the countryside,
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marry, and take up their domestic roles as a means to contribute to national
development through the formation of stable families. Such ideology is backed up in
practice by the hukou system and the discriminatory labor policies and practices as
well as the social hierarchy that it informs. Clearly, rural migrant women embody
the ambivalence of the state’s gender discourse, as they must simultaneously
embrace “modernity” (i.e., production and consumption) and embody “tradition”
(i.e., marriage, family, and domestic roles).
Given the above constraints, one would not expect migration to have a positive
influence on young rural women in contemporary China. Certainly, due to the
inequities of the hukou system and the discrimination institutionalized through it,
which in turn reinforce their economic and social inferiority relative to urbanites,
they suffer exploitation and hardship in the two-tier labor market and in urban
society. They have little recourse to protest their treatment in the context of an
underdeveloped, biased legal structure and closed political system (e.g., no right to
strike or freely organize into unions). Moreover, their aspirations for a better future
prove difficult to achieve even through traditional pathways like hypergamy. A
majority return home with ambivalent feelings about their experiences.
However, I hope I have shown that reliance on ethnographic description that gives
voice to rural migrant women as agents can reveal the more complex relationship
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between gender, power, and identity in the context of rural-to-urban migration of
women in late socialist China. Such a description reveals that rural migrant women
are not powerless victims manipulated by powerful ideologies of gender and rural-
urban difference promulgated by and enshrined in institutions of rural, state, and
capitalist patriarchy. Importantly, migration, wage work, and exposure to urban life
present opportunities for young rural women to gain new knowledge and skills. Their
agency lies in their efforts to seek to acquire new competencies.2 2 0 Significantly,
such a focus also expands the field of knowledge about these topics and corrects
misunderstandings about rural migrant women.
Unlike the “Women in Development” literature, I tried to resist framing this study
within a teleology of modernity that would view young rural women’s incorporation
into global capitalism through migration and wage labor as a foretold progression
from “tradition” to “modernity,” familial “duty” to individual “desire,” oppression
(by rural patriarchy) to liberation (e.g., by economic empowerment or participation
in consumption), or vice-versa. Moreover, I have rejected universal or monolithic
definitions of “tradition” and “modernity” and “duty” and “desire.” Rather, I have
sought to situate these binary terms in their proper historical and cultural context of
late socialist modernity mapped, respectively, onto the geographic spaces of rural
and urban China and mediated by the bodies of young rural women who traverse
2 2 0 Thanks to Janet Hoskins for helping me tease out the concept of agency here.
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these spatial and symbolic boundaries. Finally, I note the dialectical character of
rural migrant women’s performance of their “modem” identity vis a vis village
elders and their non-migrant peers, even as they appear “backwards” in the eyes of
urbanites. That young rural migrant women may be so perceived reinforces the point
that such concepts as “backwardness” are cultural constructions whose meanings are
determined in the eye of the beholder.
Most importantly, I have tried to understand how these ideological categories „
resonate with young rural women themselves, as well as how as social actors they
influence discourse. Although young rural women do understand themselves in
reference to the ideological categories of late socialist modernity, and the gender and
place-based identities constructed through them, as agents they construct their own
identities by imputing new meanings to these old categories.
“Tradition,” associated with peasants and rural lifestyles, is especially devalued in
the discourse of late socialist modernity. Rural women are motivated to journey to
the city where they hope to remake themselves as “modem” because they recognize
the gap in material, social and cultural capital between the village and the city,
themselves and urbanites.
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Yet, performing gender identity as a “dutiful daughter” at the workplace can be a
means by which young rural women adapt to the unfamiliar workplace and its
“rational” social relations, and make it less strange and dehumanizing. It is also a
strategy applied to achieve longterm goals and fulfill desires, such as for higher
wages and better working conditions. The bonds of affection and reciprocity that
guide and determine their familial duty provide support and security to young rural
women negotiating authority in the workplace and urban social milieu.
Moreover, young rural women empower themselves to subvert a dominant image
like that of the docile worker or uncivilized (low-quality) rural peasant by holding
others to such “traditional” standards of behavior, as in the example of Zhang
Xiaqing standing up to her employer discussed in the introduction. The appeal to
“traditional” values associated with Confucian humanism (or Maoist socialism) is a
powerful tool with which young rural migrant women subvert authority of employers
and urbanites, and it resonates with the idea of a moral economy or peasant
resistance as discussed by James C. Scott (1985).
The highly sexualized imagery of young women promoted through global
advertising reflects the very real dangers that the urban marketplace poses to rural
migrant women as vulnerable outsiders in urban areas, but also presents a sexualized
identity that challenges both rural and state patriarchal gender constructions. While
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such an identity can be empowering (e.g., the study of bar-hostesses by Tiantian
Zhang [2004]), my informants tried to avoid being associated with the image of the
“fallen rural woman”—the escort or prostitute. Rather, accommodating employers’
stereotypes of docile and diligent workers in exchange for employer’s paternal care
allowed rural migrant women to feel “safe” in the city and avoid malicious gossip
back home. Although in so doing they may have become more susceptible to
unscrupulous employers they mistakenly thought trustworthy.
In these examples, “traditional” gender roles and identities are arguably both
empowering and disempowering, in that they both enable and constrain young rural
women’s agency. Paradoxically, young rural women identify as dutiful daughters
even as in practice they expand the parameters of this role. We see this in their
decision to migrate, to pursue self-development through study or otherwise reinvest
their earnings, and especially when they embrace global ideals of love and romance
to find bosom friends and pursue nontraditional marriages. Over time, young rural
women’s participation in migration and work is changing local ideas of a daughter’s
worth, as parents express pride in a daughter’s abilities to remit money or move up
the social ladder through education, employment and, especially, marriage.
This was really driven home to me during an encounter with Zhang Xiaqing’s
mother. One afternoon while I was visiting in Zhang’s village, her mother opened
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up a trunk and pulled out a woven and dyed piece of cloth, which she later presented
as a gift to me. As we admired its faded color and intricately dyed pattern, Zhang’s
mother told the moving story of how, as an unmarried young woman in her natal
village, she spent nights weaving and dying this cloth, until the day of her wedding,
when she used it to bundle together her simple dowry—a spare outfit and a few
jewels only—that she carried on her back to her husband’s house. Although I did not
ask Zhang or her mother why she gave me this cloth, I think it symbolized her
recognition that her daughter would have a vastly different future than that implied
by the heirloom cloth. Indeed, Zhang’s mother herself may have yearned to venture
far beyond the boundaries of village and county town, and with her gift not only
expressed her approval of her daughter’s life path but her own vicarious desires?
One reason rural migrant women identify with “traditional” gender roles and
identities is because the legacy of the hukou system and pervasive discrimination
against rural migrants in the larger cities make it difficult for young rural women to
challenge their position as “temporary” women workers and otherwise subvert the
official construction of womanhood that, in collusion with rural patriarchy,
encourages rural women to make rural marriages and settle in the countryside.
Nonetheless, I have presented evidence of young rural migrant women successfully
delaying marriage by staying on in the capitol, embracing their liminal social status,
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persevering in the pursuit of a better life despite daunting obstacles, and moving up
the urban social and economic ladders.
Most promising for rural migrant women is the expansion of non-state space for
collective organizing. Despite the limitations of the Migrant Women’s Club,
including its complex relationship with the state and the asymmetrical relations
between its urban founders/staff and its rural members, it is an important
organization if only because it brings diverse rural women together and provides
space for them to forge a shared identity for the purpose of addressing particular
causes. Former staff member Wang Lifang, in her presentation at the 1999
conference, articulates this clearly when she states that recognizing the importance of
rural migrant women to China’s development and to all rural women’s development
has changed her attitude about migration:
[Migration] is not really as bad as I say; there’s room for optimism. So many
people are concerned for us. I heard [a panelist] speak about urbanization. He
said that the US took 300 years to urbanize, Canada took 100 years, but China is
urbanizing in just 20 years! That means we’re the first generation and the second
generation [of migrants to the city]. Although we are paying a high price, if we
are contributing to China’s urbanization for the benefit of the next generation, or
the generation after that, then we must pay it. Even if we don’t see the fruits of
our sacrifice, so long as our offspring will have equality, a status, then it’s worth
it. So, after thinking this over some, I have hope.
Moreover, recently I watched the TV program “Holding up Half the Sky” (bang
bantian),2 2 1 the segment called “twentieth-century women’s history.” After I
2 2 1 The title of this television program about women in China references a Maoist slogan touting
gender equality.
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saw it I thought that twentieth-century women’s history from the May Fourth
movement onward has all been an urban women’s history; there is no history of
rural women. So I think, maybe the twenty-first century has been the beginning
of rural women’s history. So, we must move forward. If I can help raise
awareness among rural women, it’s worth the price.
I also read a book, by an [Chinese] Academy of Social Sciences scholar, who
wrote that in the early 1980s it was the domestic workers who paved the path for
other migrants. I went out to work as a domestic worker in the early 1980s, so I
was a path-breaker! That is to say, I was the path-breaker for China’s
urbanization! I will continue to forge this path!
Designated “peasants” at birth in the policies and discourse of socialist modernity
that has long privileged the cities and its residents, rural migrant women are
perceived to “lack” qualities required to participate in late socialist modernity (Yan
2003). In comparing their own lives to real and imagined (e.g., from T.V.) others
who appear better off, rural youth desire goods and lifestyles associated with cities to
fill this emptiness (Pun 2003). But turning away from the degraded identity of the
peasant is only half the story, in my opinion, because rural migrant women also
move toward goals. Unmarried young women who depart the village aspire to
change fate, hoping to avoid the hardship and disappointment they see in the faces of
their married female kin and friends. They also aspire to see the world, gain new
knowledge, and perhaps complete their schooling.
In her memoir depicting her mother’s middle-class aspirations symbolized by a new
coat, Carolyn Steedman (1986) reasons that desire, specifically the yearning for
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material goods, is rooted in a prior sense of loss or deprivation and implies a
conviction that a wrong or injustice has been done. She suggests that desire should
be seen as a political emotion that can inspire acts to right past wrongs, rather than
merely fill a void or meet a need.
As the story of the heirloom cloth suggests, young rural women’s migration can be
interpreted as a political act that subtly critiques the gendered experiences of earlier
generations of rural women who had no such opportunity. From my research, I have
also found that the process of (re)-making identity through migration and work is
meaningful and empowering for young rural women, on a personal level and, at least
potentially, politically. Not only do they remake ideas of daughters’ worth by
continuing to value, and even strengthen, “traditional” ties to family and kin through
migration, they also make themselves into urbanizing cosmopolitans, as reflected in
the eyes of peers back home. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the dearth of
respect and justice accorded rural women in the urban economy and society can lead
to a desire for fairness and equality. This desire in turn may motivate political action.
I have already discussed the activism of rural migrant women like Wang Lifang
affiliated with the Migrant Women’s Club. Another of my informants, Zhang
Xiaqing, was not directly involved in the Club, but did contribute articles to its
publications. She also wrote articles for a short-lived weekly paper that targeted a
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migrant audience (including college-educated migrants), The Migrant Worker
(Dagongzhe). Zhang applied her skills as a writer to the task of critiquing late
socialist modernity, words that had the potential to politicize readers.
I met up with Zhang Xiaqing in Beijing 2002, after a hiatus of two years. By then she
had taught at several schools for migrant children and even tried to establish a school
of her own. I asked her to reflect upon her experiences.
Since I came out of the village to Beijing, since I’ve been living here several
years, economically I haven’t improved much, yet I still feel that this has been a
good experience (you shouhuo). I used to think ... [sigh] ... Beijing offered so
many opportunities. I could freely [work], that we would all be equal, that my
labor would be equal to everyone else’s labor. But later I discovered, to the
contrary, it wasn’t anything like what I imagined. This realization was the
biggest blow and most bitter and painful realization. I thought, given that they2 2 2
were superior to m e ,... I thought that their character (renping) and their quality
(suzhi) would match their academic credentials. But in fact, although their
academic credentials were high, their characters ... and their moral development
(xiuyang) are not necessarily high. This [discovery] was a really big blow to me.
I feel this especially since I’ve been involved with [migrant elementary] schools.
[Recently] I met with some students’ fathers (jiazhang)—migrant workers who
live at the very lowest rungs of Beijing society. I felt that they have great trust in
me. They are very good people. I remember when I needed to recruit [former]
students to help advertise my new school. I went back to visit some parents [of
former students] and they recognized me and praised me as a teacher.... So they
entrusted their children to me and I brought the children to ..., very far away.
Those children lived with me in the school to help me advertise it. I was so
moved. They helped me. I told their parents, “You can entrust your child to my
care, and I will take care of your child.” They said, “You are Teacher Zhang.”
They trusted me. So I was really moved. Later, because the school was not a
success, I felt very upset.
2 2 2 That is, her educated boss and coworkers.
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Although her reflection conveys her pain and disappointment, Zhang in fact had
turned a painful truth into a weapon of protest. She became an advocate for migrant
children’s education in part as a reaction to her own sense of being marginalized and
looked down upon by urban society. Here she expresses her empathy for her rural
students:
As kids, their psychology isn’t the same as Beijing kids. They will feel inferior.
... I have the same feelings. Even at age 60 I won’t forget how at age 26 I worked
as a migrant laborer in Beijing, so far away [from home]. It’s a psychological
blow. It’s my life’s greatest hurt.
Zhang felt compelled to treat her students and their parents respectfully and fairly
because she had been treated so unfairly by her boss(es). Thus she was extremely
upset when her new school closed due to low enrollment and other difficulties.
Nonetheless, she refused to quit Beijing just yet: “Why do I stay here? Because I still
have a “won’t-give-up-attitude” (bufuqi de ganjue). They say, ‘You can’t reside
here,’ so I insist on living here. It’s like that.”
Ending on this note, I convey optimism about the potential for rural migrant women
to challenge powerful ideologies and practices of rural patriarchy and a patriarchal
state engaged with global capitalism. But I also offer a caveat. The state also
promotes a critique of global capitalism and western modernity that appeals to ethics,
particularly of a uniquely Asian, Confucian humanist bent, to further legitimate its
authority in a transition to “Asian capitalism.” In such critique, moreover, the figure
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of the rural woman, the emblem of essential Chinese “traditional” identity, is
prominent as the embodiment of “an ethics of material urbanization” (Yan 1999:
270). Of course, this only reaffirms the theory that power is “contingent,” and that
resistance in one arena may entail accommodation in another. Nevertheless, I hope I
have made clear the potency of young rural migrant women’s agency as they learn
through their experiences of migration and work how to develop specific strategies
to improve their work conditions, acquire further education and skills, make
nontraditional marriages, and assert their rights as citizens. They move, if only
incrementally, toward their dreams as active participants in a modernizing world.
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REFERENCES
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Dagongmei weiquan shouce (A manual for the protection of the rights of migrant
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Rural Women and Migrant Women’s Club. 2002.
Dagongmei zhi jia (Migrant Women’s Club). 2002.
Dagongmei zhi jia weiquan xiaozu (The Migrant Women’s Club Legal Aid Group).
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Nongiianu wenhua fazhan zhongxin (The Cultural Development Center for Rural
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Romance). 2000. Rural Women Knowing All Magazine Project Group.
Guizhou Remnin Chuban She (Guizhou People’s Press).
“Zhuji de shouzhang ‘baomu cun’” (Zhuji's senior officials’ ‘maid village’). Beijing
Ribao (Beijing Daily). 19 July 1998.
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Asset Metadata

Creator Gaetano, Arianne M. (author)

Core Title Off the farm: rural Chinese women's experiences of labor mobility and modernity in post-Mao China (1984-2002)

School Graduate School

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Anthropology

Degree Conferral Date 2005-05

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag anthropology, cultural,history, Asia, Australia and Oceania,OAI-PMH Harvest,women's studies

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-379452

Unique identifier UC11340063

Identifier 3180451.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-379452 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3180451.pdf

Dmrecord 379452

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Gaetano, Arianne M.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA