Beyond Tears and Laughter

Table of Contents

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Introducing Migration, Gender and the Service Sector

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   A wave of suicides occurred in Foxconn factory plants across China in 2010, during which 14 workers aged 18–25 died (Lau, 2010). The Foxconn incidents drew my attention to rural migrant workers and motivated me to carry out research on migrant workers. On the theoretical level, I was interested in finding out everyday operation of gender and class. On the personal level, I intended to document experiences of the marginalised groups in Shanghai, the richest city in China.

3. Chapter 2. Gendered Subjectivities in a Patriarchal China

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   Two clusters of concepts are vital to this book. The first cluster consists of agency, subjectivity, coercion, coping and resistance; the second focuses on patriarchy, filial piety, masculinity and femininity. The aim of this chapter is to provide a theoretical framework based on these concepts, which will help to explain the overarching research questions. The conceptualised framework of agency, subjectivity and coercion is fundamental to the book as a whole. The discussion of patriarchy, femininity and masculinity also serves as a theoretical pillar for the empirical chapters, especially for intimate relations, discussed in Chap. 5.

4. Chapter 3. Working in a Gendered, Feminised and Hierarchical Workplace

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   In this chapter, I begin with the dining procedure in the restaurant. The reasons for why I put the dining procedure here are, first, to facilitate the explanation of different job positions in the public area of the restaurant. Second, to briefly explain at what stage each category of workers becomes involved in the dining procedure and how customers and workers interact. This information paves the way for a discussion of the conflict between female table servers and male pantry helpers in the subsequent section and also customer-worker relationships in the next chapter. Third, both the job responsibilities and the dining procedure may be somewhat different from other countries, making it necessary to contextualise the procedure for the reader who is not familiar with dining culture in China.

5. Chapter 4. The Short-Lived Jobs: From Beginning to End

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   In China, marketisation has produced inequality in wealth between rich and poor, urban and rural. A restaurant is a social setting that represents and reproduces the inequality. Restaurant jobs, used to be characterised as ‘iron bowl’, are no longer secure jobs. Restaurant workers, used to be taken by local Shanghaiese, have gradually been replaced by rural migrants. This chapter shows how this inequality affected restaurant workers’ individual lives and how they dealt with discrimination that occurred in the restaurant. Having addressed workers’ unpleasant living conditions and low perceptions on their job in the previous chapters, the reader may wonder why the workers were willing to work in the restaurant since they thought the job was undesirable. To answer this, it is necessary to interrogate why they decided to come to the restaurant in the first place. In this chapter, I consider restaurant workers’ lives in the restaurant from beginning to end—their reasons for taking up restaurant work despite the fact that they perceived it as a job on the lowest rung, discipline and punishment they first encountered after enrolment, worker-customer relationships they had to deal with and how and why they made up their minds to quit the job. I pay particular attention to the mechanisms of coping and resistance at work.

6. Chapter 5. Negotiating Intimacy: Obedience, Compromise and Resistance

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   Migration not only brings about changes to the migrants’ working lives, but also has a profound influence on their intimate relations with their partners and natal families. This chapter addresses the process of partner choosing and workers’ relationships with their natal families and partners. The primary reason to examine intimate relations is that family members, including partners, are considered the most treasured aspects of life by my informants, according to the survey I conducted in 2012. Migrant workers are enmeshed in a web of different social roles. According to my findings, the workers tended to consider themselves in relation to other members in their families rather than as individuals; these findings are similar to those of Lin (2013) in his study of male migrant workers in Guangdong province. The idea that they are working for the wellbeing of the family encourage them to accept the tedium of daily work in Shanghai. For many of them, work is a means to an end, and the end is the family. It is therefore crucial to examine the migrants’ interactions with partners and parents.

7. Chapter 6. Crafting a Modern Person via Consumption? Women and Men in Leisure Activities

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   At 10:30 p.m., after all the table servers finished work, we set off and walked all the way to Free Port Karaoke Bar to celebrate waiter Ah Kui’s birthday. Ah Kui suggested that we could go to Holiday (a pricier karaoke bar with better equipment) after payday on the 10th, with everyone contributing 50 yuan. Everyone agreed.

8. Chapter 7. Unpacking the Complexity of Gender, Class and Hukou

   Yang Shen

   Abstract

   I revisited Meteor in April 2018 while I was in the middle of preparing this manuscript. It has been seven years since I started the fieldwork at Meteor. Only six out of 120 workers that I knew who used to work in the public space of Meteor are still there. Although losing contact with most of the workers, I am able to trace the trajectory of some of them. Xiaoxiao, one of the few workers who remain at Meteor, has divorced her ‘irresponsible’ husband (as she commented in Chap. 5), and is starting a new relationship with a man who also dagong in Shanghai.

9. Backmatter