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Bridging Divides and Breaking Homes: Young Women's Lifecycle Labour Mobility as a Family Managerial Strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2010

Shannon May
Shannon May
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article highlights the case of a rural north-east Chinese village where youth labour mobility is a marriage strategy deployed by parents and engaged in by young people given constraints on education and income in the countryside. While some rural mothers and their daughters do make the fairytale of “marrying-up” into an urban household come true, for most rural young women migrants the self-oriented consumption that they are encouraged to pursue free of rural domestic responsibilities sets them up for heartbreak when they are brought back for a rural marriage. As long as rural households are left to rely on the “insurance” of land and a younger generation to work it and provide labour of domestic subsistence, they will pull sons (and wives for them) back to the countryside, and try to marry daughters to urban households to expand their network of security. This new twist on an old managerial strategy sets up a tragic conflict: young men are encouraged to return to the countryside, while young women are pushed to provide a “uniting bridge” into the city and, when they fail, are brought back to the countryside for marriage. If the experiences of families in Huangbaiyu village are not an anomaly but signal a broader trend, a generation of returnee young women who are frustrated and angry in rural marriages and abandon their husbands and parents-in-law will dramatically influence the future of China's development.

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 204 , December 2010 , pp. 899 - 920
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2010

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References

1 Herd, Richard, Koen, Vincent and Reutersward, Anders, “China's labour market in transition: job creation, migration and regulation,” OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 749 (2010), p. 5, doi: 10.1787/5kmlh5010gg7-enGoogle Scholar.

2 Scott Rozelle et al. found 51% of all migrants within China in 1995 to be between 16 and 25 and unmarried; Deborah Solinger reported that in 1994 74% of all migrants in Dongguan, Guangzhou were between 16 and 25. Rozelle, et al. , “Leaving China's farms: survey results of new paths and remaining hurdles to rural migration,” The China Quarterly, No. 158 (1999), p. 378CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Solinger, Deborah, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and the Logic of the Market (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 21Google Scholar.

3 This article is based on primary data collected from July 2005 to October 2006, February to March 2007 and August 2009 in Huangbaiyu village, Liaoning province, its surrounding township and villages, and selected other villages in north-east Liaoning. I conducted longitudinal interviews with both sexes of nine young couples, five of whom became subjects at the onset of their courtship, three of which I was able to follow continuously through marriage. During 2005–06, these nine marriages represent 82% of all marriages in the village. Another four couples had been married for less than ten years at inclusion. I also extensively and repeatedly interviewed seven mothers who were also mothers-in-law about their plans for their own children and management of daughters-in-law, as well as their own marriage history; six of these seven were mothers/mothers-in-law to one or more of the included young couples. In the case of Jiao and Mingliang, interviews were conducted with many family members of multiple generations in both the bride and bridegroom's families, in both natal villages. Village-level data are taken from a randomized 10% social and economic household survey stratified by hamlet conducted in August–October 2006. School-level data were acquired from school records and interviews with staff at the village primary school, township middle school, district secondary school, and with the district superintendent.

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5 Huangbaiyu village is located administratively within Sishanling Manchurian township, Nanfen district, Benxi prefecture. Benxi prefecture has four districts and two autonomous Manchu counties. Benxi city encompasses small sections of three districts: Xihu, Pingshan and Mingshan. Benxi is one of 14 prefecture-level cities in Liaoning province. Throughout this article the urban core (the municipality or metropolis) is called Benxi city. The entire area of the prefecture is referred to as Benxi prefecture.

6 This is in contrast to Murphy, Rachel's conclusion that village return is more difficult for men than women. See “Returning home with heavy hearts and empty pockets,” in How Migrant Labor is Changing China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 199–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 As Yan Yunxiang has written in regard to Heilongjiang, in rural Liaoning bridewealth is no longer a transfer of goods and capital from the groom's family to the bride's, but rather a transfer of wealth from the groom's parents’ generation to the bride, and the new nuclear family. Furniture and other goods are purchased from the bridewealth by the couple, and the remaining cash remains under the control of the bride to spend for the new family. See Yunxiang, Yan, The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (Stanford: CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp.176–209Google Scholar; Yunxiang, Yan, Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 149–57Google Scholar; Yunxiang, Yan, “The individual and transformation of bridewealth in rural north China,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 11 (2005), pp. 637–58Google Scholar.

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10 Murphy, Migrant Labor.

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16 While Alan de Brauw and John Giles have found a significant opportunity cost of attending secondary school when compared to labour migration, what is happening in Huangbaiyu is more than the recognition of opportunity cost: poor primary education ensures that debates over opportunity cost are only relevant for 5% of the population that become eligible even to make the decision about attending secondary school or not. Brauw and Giles, “Migrant opportunity and the educational attainment of youth in rural China,” Discussion Paper No. 2326, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn (September 2006).

17 I taught English twice a week in the mornings to the third, fifth and sixth grade classes, and so was regularly at the school and often included in staff lunches. There was no fourth grade.

18 Cost reductions to the nine years of compulsory education did not arrive in Huangbaiyu until autumn 2006. At this time the primary school was closed and all children were boarded at a new township school. This will probably affect education, labour and marriage choices in the future.

19 People's Government, Sishanling Manchurian Township (Sishanling manzuxiang renmin zhengfu), Guanyu jianshe huangbaiyu xuexiao de kexing shouming (Feasibility Study of Building Huangbaiyu School), 14 April 2006.

20 1992 yuan:US$ exchange rate: 5.51:1; or $27.22/month.

21 2001 yuan:US$ exchange rate: 8.28:1; or $72.46/month.

22 1999 yuan:US$ exchange rate: 8.29:1; or $1,809.41.

23 2000 yuan:US$ exchange rate: 8.29:1; or $5,066.34.

24 October 2005 yuan:US$ exchange rate: 8.08:1; or $4,455.45. See Liu, Xin, In One's Own Shadow: an Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-reform Rural China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 62–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of the four main stages of what he calls the “marriage process” as they occur in rural Shaanxi: tanhua (to talk), kanwu (to look at rooms), dinghun (to be engaged), and guoshi (to celebrate the wedding). While these stages occur somewhat differently in Huangbaiyu, the general structure and order is the same.

25 2004–August 2007 yuan:US% exchange rate average: 7.92:1; or $4,229.80. For discussion of the development of bridewealth in a northern village that is similar to practices in Huangbaiyu, see Yan Yunxiang, Private Life, particularly pp. 150–56. Bridewealth in Huangbaiyu in the 2000s was similar to Yan's Xiajia in that the payment of the bridewealth included both what Yan calls “converted bridewealth” and “converted endowment” paid directly in cash to the bride, in the presence of her kin. In Xiajia, the average bridewealth in 1995–99 was 28,500 yuan (pp. 151, Table 6.1). By 2003 this had risen to 60,000 yuan. See Yan Yunxiang, “The individual and transformation of bridewealth,” p. 642.

26 In Huangbaiyu, bridewealth does not include the cost of house remodelling or providing a kang and stove for the new nuclear family. It is only inclusive of the cash payment to the bride, which indirectly returns to the new couple.

27 See May, Shannon, “A US-Sino sustainability sham,” Far Eastern Economic Review (April 2007), pp.57–60Google Scholar; May, Shannon, “Ecological modernism and the making of a new working class: living in a ‘cradle-to-cradle’ master plan,” in Parr, Adrian and Zaretsky, Michael (eds.), New Directions in Sustainable Design (New York: Routledge, 2010)Google Scholar.

28 Village endogamy has been noted by Yan Yunxiang in Hebei, Shandong and Heilongjiang in Private Life, pp. 37, 246 n.9. It was found to be common, and in some places dominant, during the collective era in Guandong by Parish, William and Whyte, Martin, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp.170–72Google Scholar; and Chan, Anita, Madsen, Richard and Unger, Jonathan, Chen Village Under Mao and Deng (Berkeley: University of Calfornia Press, 1992), p.191Google Scholar. In contrast, Liu found that village endogamy was rare in his work in rural Shaanxi during the collective era, but rose to 25% of marriages under Reform; see In One's Own Shadow, pp. 51–57.

29 While technically endogamy (intravillage marriage) such marriages in Huangbaiyu were rarely same-surname.

30 Despite two marriages and five children, the patriarch had no sons and so the family pursued marriage of its daughters into one locale. Eventually, three of four would be married into Huangbaiyu.

31 I first heard this term after being invited to a family meeting at Fuxiang's house. Other than myself, only men were invited, and they were all of the same familial generation according to hierarchy, although their ages spanned from 44 to 73. When I asked Fuxiang who these people were, he said “These are my lianqiao.” Unfamiliar with the term, even after several of the marriage links were pointed out, I again asked what it meant by character. “It's united (lian) like the United Nations. But we work better. We get things done.” Most laughed; the oldest and former Party secretary announced that we were not gathered to talk politics but solve a family crisis. The standard kinship term for this relationship is lianjin. Whether or not this family was mistakenly using a homonym or using a close synonym only for this joke is unclear; nothing in the village was ever written. Regardless, both characters of lian convey connection, inclusion and co-operation. I never once heard the term lianjin used; lianqiao is the local term.

32 For a thorough generalist history of the hukou, see Cheng, Tiejun and Selden, Mark, “The origins and social consequences of China's hukou system,” The China Quarterly, No. 139 (1994), pp. 644–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a detailed history of how the hukou turned “peasants into subjects” through bureaucratic structures, particularly its effect on income and labour markets, see Solinger, Contesting Citizenship, esp. pp. 27–148.

33 For an extensive detailing of situations of rural gift giving similar to those in Huangbaiyu, and its importance in the local economy, see Yan Yunxiang, The Flow of Gifts, pp. 41–97.

34 Cerebral haemorrhages were the leading cause of death in villagers over 60, according to the village doctor's records, 2001–07.

35 This strategy does not work for rural sons, as described by Mother-of-Shuang: “A girl that is cute enough can marry a city boy. They are looking for cute ones. What city girl is going to marry a country boy? What can he offer? Land? Worthless. Job? It's never secure. He gets nothing. You can't marry without a house. The boy can't provide the city house, but a girl can marry into one.”

36 Rachel Murphy noted similar modes of dress and attitudes amongst young women returning to villages from urban labour, both symbolic of a process she follows local officials in calling “agricultural de-skilling.” See Murphy, Migrant Labor, p. 199.

37 She first chosen the name Wanda, after the film A Fish Called Wanda (1988), but the name became Ruvemda over time in the mouths of her friends as her Chinese name, Ruhua, and desired English name, Wanda, were combined.

38 While in most cases I would translate nongmin as either farmer or countryfolk depending on the speaker's context, when Ruvemda uses this term she intends to invoke the condescension and denigration that is most parallel to the English translation peasant. Through her time in the city and hours of media immersion, she's fully accepted the ideology of nongmin as backward and stupid. See Cohen, Myron, “Cultural and political inventions in modern China: the case of the Chinese ‘peasant’,” in Kinship, Contract, Community, and State (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 60–76Google Scholar.

39 Both are local speciality foods: chazi is ground corn meal that is turned into sticky dough and then shot through the fist into boiling water to make very long noodles; doujiang is fermented bean paste, similar to Japanese miso.

40 Murphy, Migrant Labor, p. 200.

41 Rachel Murphy has written about the effect of labour migration on young women as improving their well-being, enabling them to gain a broader perspective to challenge traditional gender and family expectations. This is certainly the case with young women who have engaged in lifecycle labour mobility, and is attested to by the behaviour of Ruvemda, her husband's cousin's wife and Jiao, amongst other women in Huangbaiyu. Whether this “awakening” leads to greater distress or happiness merits further study. In Murphy's research, young women's labour migration puts greater burdens on the elder generation of women and, as noted here, requires specific strategies to be deployed by mothers-in-law to “break-in” these young women. See Murphy, “The impact of labor migration on the well-being and agency of rural Chinese women: cultural and economic contexts and the life course,” in Gaetano and Jacka, On the Move, pp. 243–78.

42 Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community, and State, p. 35. See also Smith, Arthur H., Village Life in China: a Study in Sociology (New York: F.H. Revell, 1899)Google Scholar. For a contemporary view on family managerialism, see Ong, Flexible Citizenship.