Table Of ContentCaring in
Times of Precarity
A Study of Single Women Doing
Creative Work in Shanghai
CHOW YIU FAI
PALGRAVE STUDIES
IN GLOBALIZATION
CULTURE & SOCIETY
Palgrave Studies in Globalization,
Culture and Society
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Centre for Globalisation Studies
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Centre for Globalisation Studies
University of Amsterdam
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Chow Yiu Fai
Caring in Times of
Precarity
A Study of Single Women
Doing Creative Work
in Shanghai
Chow Yiu Fai
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society
ISBN 978-3-319-76897-7 ISBN 978-3-319-76898-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76898-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954418
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A
cknowledgements
It just occurred to me that I should write my acknowledgements—now
that I am back in Shanghai to do fieldwork once again.
I am staying in the same neighbourhood, wandering through the same
streets and alleys, and going to the same noodle shops and cafés. Inertia,
insistence, intimacy. This is where I met all the women you will meet in
this book, where I listened to their stories, felt their trust, and was
enthralled by their struggles, pleasures, and above all, sheer accomplish-
ment of living their lives in this place, at this time. These memories and
impressions have morphed into a constant susurration as well as a resound-
ing reminder for me to write this book well. I hope I have done a good
job, at least good enough that I would dare to let them read it. I thank all
of you, who were willing to talk to me. I know it was not always easy; let
us continue trying to make it easier.
Without the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) proj-
ect “Creating the ‘new’ Asian woman: entanglements of urban space, cul-
tural encounters and gendered identities in Shanghai and Delhi
(SINGLE)”, this book would not exist at all. In 2013, the European
Commission funded the research proposal to investigate single women in
the two cities, and the principal investigators—Christiane Brosius, Melissa
Butcher, and Jeroen de Kloet—invited me to join their research team. I
thank these three PIs. And I also thank my fellow researchers, Laila Abu-
Er- Rub, Lucie Bernroider, Maddalena Chiellini, Penn Ip, and Pi Chenying,
for all the wonderful moments in Heidelberg, Delhi, Shanghai, and
Leiden. Remember the karaoke night? I thank Lena Scheen, who was not
in the team, but was one big reason why I was in the team. I will not
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
explain this beyond calling it serendipity. Through the HERA project, I
also had the pleasure to get to know the scholar Kinneret Lahad, whose
work on single women remains inspiring and empowering for me; the
curator and academic Wayne Modest, whose energy and engagement con-
tinually enlighten me; as well as artists Li Xiaofei and Guo Qingling, who
became one of my anchor points when I was in Shanghai, and my friends.
Talking about Shanghai, I would like to thank Afa, Ah Ching, Anna, Jude,
Melody, Tingyun, and many others, who made me feel less like a stranger.
This book project was my very first monograph. Monograph. How
daunting! Luckily, I was guided or cautioned—“What? You have not
started writing yet?”—by people who were more experienced than I, to
the extent that I knew, at the very least, I must reserve time to concentrate
on, very simply put, writing. I thank Hong Kong Baptist University for
granting me sabbatical leave. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues,
Iris Chao, Gladys Chong, John Nguyet Erni, Leung Pui Man, Lucetta
Kam, K.C. Lo, Eva Man, and Daisy Tam, as well as the supporting team
of the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing—Chester Chan,
Donald Chan, Bonnie Fung, Jacky Ho, and Fiona Lu—for indulging my
writing spree. I thank the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies
and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis—personified as Esther
Peeren, Patricia Pisters, and Jeroen de Kloet—for hosting me. That half a
year felt so insouciant and quiet.
I have just written the word monograph, which is usually understood as
a treatise on a single subject, authored by a single person. How I would
love to believe that this was entirely my own effort. Of course, it was not.
I thank all the scholars who, in their own ways, have been telling me
that I can do it. Ien Ang, Kees Brants, Rey Chow, Stephen Chu, Anthony
Fung, Joke Hermes, Koichi Iwabuchi, Giselinde Kuipers, Helen Hok-Sze
Leung, Song Hwee Lim, Tak-Wing Ngo, Tejaswini Niranjana, Leonie
Schmidt, Shu-mei Shih, and my dear PhD supervisor Liesbet van Zoonen,
who believed in my potential as an academic much earlier than I did
myself. I thank Zoénie Deng, Lin Jian, Tan Jia and Sonia Wong for sup-
porting me with literature alerts and other research help. I thank Wang
Rui and Yvette Wong, my two primary research assistants for offering me
concrete support throughout the entire book project. Both Virgos, even
born on the same day, they lived up to the expectations of being meticu-
lous and attentive to detail—I owe them for all the reminders of all the
details of my research. I meant to list out precisely what they did for me,
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
but then, I realized no long list of tasks would be better than a simple
cheer: my dear Rui and Yvette, long live our friendship!
I thank Vincent So for helping me with formatting and tidying up all
stylistically loose ends (it must have been nightmarish for you); Chen Min,
Roman Chen Ziqing, and Cai Qingyang for your great assistance during
fieldwork in Shanghai; and Zhang Qian, and all the transcribers. I thank
Patrick Jered for copyediting the entire book. It was not only a matter of
ensuring the linguistic quality, but much more importantly, of reassuring
me that someone like you would always be there. I thank the anonymous
reviewer(s), and the (former) editors at Palgrave: Lucy Batrouney, Heloise
Harding, and Martina O’Sullivan. I thank David Hesmondhalgh and Fran
Martin for gracing the back cover with your endorsements. For the front
cover, I thank Justin Wong for allowing me to use your artwork, and
Jeroen de Kloet for the photograph of this.
Right, finally, Jeroen. These days, you have been somewhat disturbed.
Just the other day, you sent a message to me: “I lost Ernie!” I could
already imagine the distress and anguish you were feeling. Indeed, you
were disturbed, quite seriously. The loss of an “object,” a “toy” that you
had been using as the centre point of your photographic project hit you
like the loss of a dear one. That kind of immediacy, sincerity, and I think,
humanity—it reminds me of a notion in Chinese 赤子之心: the heart of a
child (haha, I know you will call me Sinocentric for this). This heart keeps
on inspiring me. More than a decade ago, it inspired me to embark on an
academic life; during the research and writing of this book, it inspired me
through your conversations, your accommodations, and your distractions,
ultimately to let me continue believing in what I was doing, if only for the
pleasure. Thank you.
Chow Yiu Fai
This work was supported by the Humanities in the European Research
Area (HERA) under the funded-project “Creating the ‘New’ Asian
Woman: Entanglements of Urban Space, Cultural Encounters and
Gendered Identities in Shanghai and Delhi” (SINGLE Project Nr: 586,
2013–2016).
A n l
ote on AnguAge
All English translations are mine, unless otherwise stated. For citation of
Chinese personal names using English spelling, I have followed the
Chinese convention, that is, family name first. However, when the persons
involved preferred using an English first name, I have followed the English
convention, putting the family name last. For citation of other Chinese
proper names or titles, I have generally put their English equivalents in the
text, followed by pinyin (the standard Romanization of Chinese characters
adopted in mainland China) and Chinese characters in brackets. Chinese
characters printed in this book belong to the simplified version used in
mainland China, unless otherwise warranted, for instance, when the names
and titles concerned are from areas where the classical version of Chinese
characters remains preferred.
ix
c
ontents
1 Living on My Own, Creatively, Precariously 1
2 Living with Their Own Images 51
3 Living with a Generation—Qilinghou, Balinghou,
Jiulinghou 91
4 Balancing Work/Life? 119
5 To Love, to Live 151
6 Living with Us—The Case of Kunqu 189
7 Living with the City 219
8 Living with Themselves, Creating Themselves 253
9 Epilogue 287
xi
