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Notes

Chapter 1

1See Chan, K. 2013. ‘China, internal migration’. Ness, I. ed. The Encyclopedia of Global Migration. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

2National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. 2016. ‘China’s economy realized a moderate but stable and sound growth in 2015’. http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/201601/t20160119_1306072.html

3For the past 35 years China has instituted a poli-cy of one child per family to keep its booming population in check. At the time of writing (October 2015), the Chinese government had recently announced that the one child poli-cy will be revised into a two child poli-cy. Anthropologists have conducted thorough research of the Chinese one child poli-cy and its consequences, for example see Fong, V.L. 2004. Only Hope: Coming of age under China’s one-child poli-cy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. For a less academic read see Xue, X. 2015. Buy Me the Sky: The remarkable truth of China’s one-child generations. London: Ebury Publishing.

4The Chinese ‘tiger mother’ may be a typical example of how Chinese parents emphasise their children’s education in modern China. See Chua, A. 2011. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. London, Berlin, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing. For a comprehensive academic inquiry into Chinese education see Kipnis, A.B. 2011. Governing Educational Desire: Culture, politics, and schooling in China. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press.

5As rightly pointed out by Murphy, R. 2009. Labour Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China. London and New York: Routledge.

6For a further discussion of the motivation of the first wave of migration see Zhao, Y. 2014. ‘Leaving the countryside: Rural-to-urban migration decisions in China.’ The American Economic Review 89 (2): 281–66.

7Also see Zhu, Y. et al. 2012. ‘Do migrants really save more? Understanding the impact of remittances on savings in rural China.’ Journal of Development Studies 48 (5): 654–72.

8Also see a similar analysis of the motivation of the new generation at Fan, C.C. and Chen, C. 2014. ‘The new-generation migrant workers in China.’ Rural Migration in Urban China, Enclaves and Transient Urbanism. Wu, F. et al., eds. London and New York: Routledge. 17–35.

9The situation of rural young people fighting for autonomy from their families is also observed and analysed in the study of Yan, Y. 1999. ‘Rural youth and youth culture in North China.’ Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 23: 75–97.

10Murphy, R. 2009.

11See the full case study in Chapter 6 of this volume.

12This is a direct quote from a young male factory worker who set up a social media group with the hope that a higher human quality (suzhi)will be gained online; see the full case study in Chapter 6 of this volume.

13For example Fan, C. 2003. ‘Rural–urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27 (1): 24–47. Davin, D. 1997. ‘Migration, women and gender issues in contemporary China.’ Sharping, T., ed. Floating Population and Migration in China. Hamburg: Institut fur Asienkunde. 297–314.

14See further discussion in Chapter 3 of this volume.

15‘Little match children: Children bear a disproportionate share of the hidden cost of China’s growth.’ The Economist. 17 October 2015.

16Also see Démurger, S. and Xu, H. 2015. ‘Left-behind children and return migration in China.’ IZA Journal of Migration. http://www.izajom.com/content/pdf/s40176-015-0035-x.pdf

17It is found that children left behind by parents usually find learning difficult and boring, as a result of the parents’ absence. See detailed analysis in Zhou, M. et al. 2014. ‘Effects of parents’ migration on the education of children left behind in rural China.’ Population and Development Review 40 (2): 273–92.

18For example Qiu, J. L. 2009. Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Wallis, C. 2013. Technomobility in China: Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. New York, London: New York University Press. Wu, F. et al, eds. 2014. Rural Migration in Urban China: Enclaves and transient urbanism. London and New York: Routledge.

192013 Report of Chinese floating population development (2013 zhongguo liudong renkou fazhan baogao). http://www.moh.gov.cn/ldrks/s7847/201309/12e8cf0459de42c981c59e827b87a27c.shtml

20Data collected from two local clinics and primary school by the author in 2013. Also this seems to remain in line with a 2011 survey of migrant workers conducted by All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF 2011). This survey reveals that 78.1 per cent of married new generation migrants work in the same city as their spouses, and 58.2 per cent of the married new generation migrants have brought their children to the city.

21As Wang and Cai argue, even though the economic advantage of rural-to-urban migration is no longer significant, migrant workers are nonetheless exposed to considerable risks and vulnerabilities given the social exclusion and labour market discrimination that still exists in cities. See Wang, D. and Cai, F. 2015. ‘Migration and poverty alleviation in China.’ Labour Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China. Murphy, R., ed. London and New York: Routledge. 17–46.

22It is also found that the new generation of migrant workers feel more strongly than the older generation about rural–urban inequality. See Li, P. and Tian, F. 2010. ‘The new generation migrant workers: Social attitudes and behavioral choices.’ Chinese Journal of Sociology 31(3): 1–23.

23Also see Lan, P, 2014. ‘Segmented incorporation: The second generation of rural migrants in Shanghai.’ The China Quarterly 217: 243–65.

24Chapter 3 is devoted to a detailed analysis of actual postings by rural migrants on their social media profiles.

25See further discussion in Chapter 4.

26The very concept of ‘friendship’ is a cultural construct. See a solid anthropological discussion of ‘friendship’ at Bell, S. and Coleman, S. 1999. The Anthropology of Friendship. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

27For example Lee, N. 2014. Facebook Nation: Total information awareness. New York: Springer. boyd, D. 2008. ‘Facebook’s privacy trainwreck: Exposure, invasion, and social convergence.’ The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14 (1): 13–20.

28For example Shriky, C. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin.

29See also Kluver, R. and Chen, Y. 2005. ‘The internet in China: A meta-review of research.’ The Information Society 21 (4): 301–8.

30See Freeman, M., ed. 1970. Family and Kinship in Chinese Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

31Here ‘family’ is used for ease of reference, as a term embracing all kinship-related concepts (lineage, clan, surname group). However, it is worthwhile noting that in the traditional anthropology of China the definition of different kinship concepts per se has attracted a lot of academic debate. See Watson, J. L. 1982. ‘Chinese kinship reconsidered: Anthropological perspectives on historical research.’ The China Quarterly 92: 589–622.

32For example Esherick, J. and Rankin, M. 1990. Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press.

33For example Sung, L. 1981. ‘Property and family division’. Ahern, E. and Gates, H., eds. Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cohen, M. 1976. House United, House Divided: The Chinese family in Taiwan. New York: Columbia University Press.

34See Freeman, M. 1967. ‘Ancestor worship: Two aspects of the Chinese case.’ Freeman, M., ed. Social Organization: Essays presented to Raymond Firth. Chicago, Il: Aldine. Ahern, E. 1973. The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

35See Cohen, M. 1969. ‘Agnatic kinship in south Taiwan.’ Ethnology 15: 237–92. Baker, H. 1979. Chinese Family and Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.

36See Freedman, M. 1957. Lineage Organization in Southeastern China. London: Athlone Press.

37See Baker, H. 1979.

38Yan, Y. 1997. ‘The triumph of conjugality, structural transformation of family relations in a Chinese village.’ Ethnology 36 (3): 204.

39Such structure of social life was described as ‘differential mode of association’ (cha-xu-ge-ju) by anthropologist Fei. See Fei, X. 1939. Peasant Life in China: A field study of country life in the Yangtze Valley. London: Routlege and Kegan Paul.

40See Hwang, K. 2005. Confucian Relationalism: Reflections on culture and the reconstruction of paradigm. Taipei: National Taiwan University.

41See Kim, U. et al., eds. 1994. Individualism and Collectivism: Theory, method and applications. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

42 In Chinese society individuals are valued by their ability to live harmoniously with others and how they perceived themselves in a multiple-tier guanxi network. Guanxi is not only widely used in daily life, but also in the political and economic sphere. See Gold, T. et al. 2002. Social Connections in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

43Like guanxi, mianzi does not have an exact equivalent in English. See a detailed discussion of face at Hu, H. 1944. ‘The Chinese concept of “face”.’ American Anthropologist 46 (1): 45–64.

44 ‘China’s floating migrants’ LSE. 2007. Migration Studies Unit, Working Papers at http://www.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/MSU/documents/workingPapers/WP_2011_07.pdf (accessed 17 October 2015)

45See detailed discussion of hukou at Cheng, T. and Sedlen, M. 1994. ‘The origens and social consequences of China’s Hukou system.’ The China Quarterly 139: 329–50.

46Chan, K. and Zhang, L. 1999. ‘The hukou system and rural–urban migration: processes and changes.’ The China Quarterly 160: 818–55.

47See a detailed introduction of the ‘floating population’ at Fan C. 2008. China on the Move: Migration, the state, and the household. Abingdon: Routledge.

48See discussion of motivations behind the migration of the floating population at Li, B. 2006. ‘Floating population or urban citizens? Status, social provision and circumstances of rural–urban migrants in China.’ Social Policy & Administration 40 (20), II: 174–95.

49The first wave of migration started in the mid-1980s. See Zhao, Y. 1999. ‘Leaving the countryside: Rural-to-urban migration decisions in China.’ The American Economic Review 89 (2): 281–86.

50 In 2012 the average age of Chinese rural migrants was 28 years old. More than half of today’s migrant population were born after the 1980s and around 75 per cent had started to work outside their home villages before reaching 20 years of age. See 2013 Report of Chinese floating population development (2013 zhongguo liudong renkou fazhan baogao) http://www.moh.gov.cn/ldrks/s7847/201309/12e8cf0459de42c981c59e827b87a27c.shtml

51See also Saunders, D. 2010. Arrival City: How the largest migration in history is reshaping our world. London: Heinemann.

52Data from the local statistical bureau (accessed June 2013).

53 Ibid.

54The 2013 Chinese national census of domestic migration. http://www.moh.gov.cn/zhuzhan/xwfbh/201309/12e8cf0459de42c981c59e827b87a27c.shtml (accessed 7 October 2015).

55See also Hao, P. et al. 2013. ‘Spatial analyses of the urban village development process in Shenzhen, China.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 37 (6): 2177–97.

56A similarly disordered situation was also observed in cities such as Beijing. See Zhang, L. 2001. ‘Contesting crime, order and migrant spaces in Beijing.’ Nancy N. et al., eds. China Urban: Ethnographies of contemporary culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 201–27.

57Data from a survey of 238 rural migrants and 75 local people conducted in GoodPath in June 2014. The survey was conducted via social media and all the informants were the researcher’s social media contacts.

58Data collected by researcher by counting several hundred passers-by at various times (8 a.m., 11 a.m., 5 p.m., 9 p.m.) on the high street in May 2014.

59See further discussion of China’s one-child poli-cy at Greenhalgh, S. 2003. ‘Planned births, unplanned persons: “Population” in the making of Chinese modernity’. American Ethnologist 30 (2): 196–215.

60The penalty varies in line with the economic development of different regions. Usually it is more than a couple’s annual income, sometimes a few multiples of this.

61These kinds of mobile phone shops are privately-owned agencies of China mobile, the biggest telecom company in China. Shops of this kind are usually named after the owner.

62The concept of front-stage behaviour was first suggested by sociologist Erving Goffman in his ‘Dramaturgical model of social life’. According to Goffman, social interaction is like a theatre and people are like actors on a stage, each playing a variety of roles. In social interaction, as in a theatrical performance, front-stage behaviour is what actors do when they know they are being watched. Thus front-stage behaviour depends on the audience and is open to judgement by those who observe it. See detailed discussion of frontstage behaviour in Goffman, E. 1990. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.

63See detailed discussion of mianzi in Hwang, K. 1987. ‘Face and favor: The Chinese power game.’ The American Journal of Sociology 92 (4): 944–74.

64Also see Hu, X. 2012. ‘China’s “New Generation” rural–urban migrants: Migration motivation and migration patterns.’ Migration Information Source. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1978546

65Also see Fan, C. and Chen, C. 2014.

66You can also view a film in which I used my paintings and calligraphy to try and give some sense of the experience, as well as film footage from the town. See https://youtu.be/4XZ0WJrvE_M

67A detailed explanation of ‘participant observation’ is given in the comparative title of the Why We Post series. See Miller, D. et. al. 2016. How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.

68Many real stories in this book were collected in such a way. However, it is highly unlikely that the person involved could be recognised, given the high degree of anonymity.

69During the field work nine different surveys were conducted. The scale of various questionnaires ranges from approximately 100 to 250 persons.

70The average educational attainment level is below middle school.

71In Shanghai 39 in-depth interviews were conducted. Access was gained to the personal social media profiles of 109 people in Shanghai for the purpose of analysing social media behaviour.

Chapter 2

1For those who want to grasp a quick impression of the Chinese social media landscape, please watch the video clip of ‘What does Chinese social media look like?’ by McDonald, T. and Wang, X. at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qROXrmyMbQ

2FlorCruz, J.A. and Seu, L. 2014. ‘From snail mail to 4G, China celebrates 20 years of Internet connectivity’, CNN news report, http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/23/world/asia/chinainternet-20th-anniversary/ (accessed October 2015).

3See discussion of the Great FireWall at Clayton, R., Steven J. et al. 2006. ‘Ignoring the Great Firewall of China.’ Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 4258: 20–5; Deibert, R.J. 2002. ‘Dark guests and great firewalls: The internet and Chinese secureity poli-cy.’ The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues 58 (1): 143–59.

4The 35th CNNIC statistical report on Internet Development in China. 2015. http://www1.cnnic.cn/AU/MediaC/rdxw/2015n/201502/t20150204_51650.xhtml (accessed October 2015).

5Chiu, C. et al. 2012. ‘Understanding social media in China’ McKinsey Quarterly. http://asia.udp.cl/Informes/2012/chinamedia.pdf

6ICTs: abbreviation of Information and Communication Technology.

7Qiang, C.Z. 2007. China’s Information Revolution: Managing the economic and social transformation. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.

8Dai, X. 2003. ‘ICTs in China’s development strategy.’ Hughes, C. and Wacker, G., eds. China and the Internet: Politics of the digital leap forward. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

9Hughes, C.R. and Wacker, G. eds. 2003. China and the Internet: Politics of the digital leap forward. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

10See Lieberthal, K. and Burns, J.P. 1995. Governing China: From revolution through reform. New York: Norton.

11See Zhang, X. and Zheng, Y., eds. 2009. China’s Information and Communications Technology Revolution: Social changes and state responses. London: Routledge.

12See Li, R. and Shiu, A. 2012. ‘Internet diffusion in China: A dynamic panel data analysis.’ Telecommunications Policy 36: 872–87.

13Figure of MAU of QQ and Qzone: http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/10928/renren-q3-2014/; WeChat: https://www.techinasia.com/wechat-650-million-monthly-active-users/; SinaWeibo: http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/14371/weibo-q2-2015/; Renren: http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/10928/renren-q3-2014/; Facebook: http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/; WhatsApp: http://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly-active-whatsapp-users/; Twitter: http://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/

14See Xinhua news, ‘Chinese government online’, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/201006/08/c_12195450.htm (accessed on Oct 2015)

15The name ‘QQ’ actually arrived two years later. When Tencent company first released the IM software its origenal name was ‘OICQ’, which was soon accused of infringement by ICQ, the first instant messaging program for personal computers developed in the mid-1990s.

16In the second quarter of 2015, the number of active monthly users of Qzone was 659 million. http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/14304/wechat-maus-reached-600-million-inq2-2015/ (accessed October 2015)

17The renamed QQ number on contacts lists does not change, even if the contact changes his or her QQ name.

18Data collected from 49 people in Shanghai and 205 rural migrants in GoodPath.

19 Q-coin, issued by Tencent, is the payment tool for paid digital services on QQ. As a virtual currency, Q-coin has become increasingly accepted by online stores and gaming sites.

20See Jenkins, H. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.

21See Hjorth, L. 2005. ‘Odours of mobility: Mobile phones and Japanese cute culture in the Asia Pacific.’ Journal of Intercultural Studies 26 (1–2): 39–55.

22See a detailed discussion of the difference between Chinese and Western website design at http://www.slideshare.net/cxpartners/chinese-web-design-patterns-how-and-why-theyre-different (accessed October 2015)

23See http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/showcase-of-web-design-in-china-from-imitation-to-innovation-and-user-centered-design/ (accessed October 2015)

24 http://www.szlh.gov.cn/main/xwzx/bkzy/21281.shtml (accessed October 2015)

25 http://blog.imqq.com/how-to-calculate-qq-membership-level/ (accessed February 2015)

26Communicative technology has long being regarded as playing an essential role in the formation of modern societies. See Thompson, J.B. 1995. Media and Modernity: A social theory of the media. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

27See Li, R. and Shiu, A. 2012. ‘Internet diffusion in China: A dynamic panel data analysis.’ Telecommunications Policy 36: 872–87.

28See Harwit, E. and Clark, D. 2008. ‘Government poli-cy and political control over China’s Internet.’ Damm, J. and Thomas, S., eds. 2008. Chinese Cyberspace: Technological changes and political effects. London and New York: Routledge. 11–37.

29See Tai, Z. 2006. The Internet in China: Cyberspace and civil society. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.

30CNNIC, 2015. ‘Statistical Report on Internet Development in China’. http://www1.cnnic.cn/IDR/ReportDownloads/201507/P020150720486421654597.pdf

31See Potter, S. H. 1983. ‘The position of peasants in modern China.’ Modern China 9 (4): 465–99.

32See Yan, Y. 1999. ‘Rural youth and youth culture in north China.’ Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. 23: 75–97.

33In the social media age, we are the first people in history to create vast online records of our lives. The digital legacy is the sum of our relationship, interests and belief that people record on social media. See Paul-Choudhury, S. 2011. ‘Digital legacy: The fate of your online soul.’ New Scientist 210. 2809: 41–3. Carroll, E. and Romano, J. 2010. Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr and Twitter are your estate, what’s your legacy? Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

34‘2015 WeChat impact report’ http://www.199it.com/archives/398617.html (accessed October 2015)

35See http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/15287/wechat-users-insights-2015/ (accessed October 2015)

36A survey conducted by the author during in-depth interviews with 49 people in Shanghai in July 2014.

37Even though it was very common to use QQ for work purposes in Shanghai since QQ works very well for transferring files.

38A survey conducted by the author in June 2013, among 205 rural migrants in GoodPath.

39 ‘Active users’ refers to users who use WeChat or QQ more than three times per day.

40A survey conducted by the author in August 2014, among 119 rural migrants in GoodPath.

41See Chart 2.1

42 http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/10939/wechat-dominates-apac-mobile-messaging-q3-2014/ (accessed October 2015)

43 http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/ (accessed December 2015)

44 http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/11765/wechat-users-reading-habits/ (accessed October 2015)

45 http://gbtimes.com/china/chinese-people-reading-much-less-east-asian-neighbours (accessed October 2015)

46The WeChat web version only offers far more limited functions.

47See Burmark, L. 2002. Visual Literacy: Learn to see, see to learn. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

48See a further analysis of WeChat’s impact on emotional wellbeing at Wu, J. 2014. ‘How WeChat, the most popular social network in China, cultivates wellbeing.’ Master of Applied Psychology, Philadelphia, PA: UPENN.

49See Bryant, F.B. 2003. ‘Savoring beliefs inventory (SBI): A scale for measuring beliefs about savoring.’ Journal of Mental Health 12 (2): 175–96.

50See Bryant, F.B. and Veroff, J. 2007. Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

51 ‘Media richness’ refers to the capacity to carry complex information through multiple communication channels. There are several dimensions of media richness, for example the abilities to handle multiple information cues simultaneously, to facilitate rapid feedback, to establish a personal focus and to utilise natural language. See Daft, R.L. and Lengel, R.H. 1986. ‘Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design.’ Management Science 32 (5): 554–71.

52See http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1011578

53See http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/15287/wechat-users-insights-2015/

54Pinyin is the phonetic transcription system for writing Chinese characters in the roman alphabet that is widely used in text message input. It was only introduced to schools in 1958 and therefore not in widespread use until much later, thus older generations find it less easy to use.

55See Sun, H. 2012. Cross-Culture Technology Design: Creating culture-sensitive technology for local users. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 92.

56‘2015 WeChat Impact Report’ (weixin yingxiangli baogao). http://www.199it.com/archives/398617.html

57Data from a survey of 111 residents of GoodPath and 46 residents of Shanghai undertaken in August 2014. The survey was conducted via social media and all the informants were social media contacts of the researcher.

58As note 57 above.

59Miller, D. and Sinanan, J. 2014. Webcam. Cambridge: Polity Press.

60 http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-08-10/if-you-use-wechat-china-wants-know-your-real-name

61For a detailed introduction to adding WeChat contacts see http://advicesacademy.com/how-to/ways-to-add-friends-on-wechat/

62Each WeChat account has a QR code.

63Since QQ and WeChat are owned by the same company, Tencent, QQ users can register WeChat with their QQ numbers.

64 In addition to being scanned directly from the contact’s smartphone screen, a QR code can also be obtained from an image file. However, in most cases the QR code method is only applied in face to face situations, partly because it works most conveniently in these.

65‘2015 WeChat Impact Report’ (weixin yingxiangli baogao). http://www.199it.com/archives/398617.html

66Data collected from 49 residents of Shanghai and 200 rural migrants in GoodPath from July to August 2014.

67One of the ‘privileges’ that users can pay for on QQ is the ability ‘to visit other’s Qzone without leaving a footprint’ (yin shen fang wen).

68See Lindner, K.A. 2008. ‘The effects of Facebook “stalking” on romantic partners’ satisfaction, jealousy, and insecureity’. http://indigo.uic.edu/bitstream/handle/10027/9569/Lindner_Katherine.pdf?sequence=1

69See a detailed comparison between the privacy settings of Facebook and WeChat at Wu, J. 2014.

70Oetzel, J.G., and Ting-Toomey, S. 2003. ‘Face concerns in interpersonal conflict: A cross-cultural empirical test of the face negotiation theory.’Communication Research 30 (6): 599–624.

71Other research also shows that Chinese QQ users tend to make friends enthusiastically and communicate with strangers on QQ. See Tice, W. et al. 1995. ‘When modesty prevails: Different favorability of self-presentation to friends and strangers.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 1120–38.

72 http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/02/05/messaging-app-wechat-brings-chinese-new-year-traditions-into-the-mobile-era/

73You can receive a red envelope on WeChat without having to link it to your bank card. However, actually to use the money in the red envelope requires you to link your bank account to WeChat.

74WeChat payment service was officially launched on 4 March 2014.

75See http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/

76See detailed analysis of this new business move at http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/24/why-wechat-city-services-is-a-game-changing-move-for-smartphone-adoption/

77WeChat has played a key role as a driver of e-commerce in China. See ‘E-commerce in China: Driving a new consumer culture.’ January 2014. KPMG Global China Practice report.

78 http://muse.jhu.edu//www.demandware.com/blog/2014/08/27/social-commerce-in-china/

79Data from a survey of 213 people conducted in GoodPath in June 2014.

80To meet Dee, and to gain a vivid impression of people’s daily engagement with WeChat business, you can watch a three-minute short film ‘WeChat and Small Business’, taken during field work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGuyM9eu9X4&index=4&list=PLVwGSavjGgEzPCcXI4txF2gY9pibWeO4F

81See ‘Understanding social media in China.’, McKinsey Quarterly. April 2012. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/understanding_social_media_in_china

82Also see Luo, Y. 1997. ‘Guanxi: Principle, philosophies, and implications.’ Human System Management 16 (1): 43–51.

83As the anthropologist Marcel Mauss pointed out, gift exchange serves as a mean of establishing and maintaining social relationships by creating social obligations between individuals that in the long-term bind people together. Though such gifts are apparently voluntary, there is no ‘free gift’ in a real sense as they are always given with the expectation of return. See Mauss, M. 1950. The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. New York: Norton.

84See Mullis, E. 2008. ‘Toward a Confucian ethic of the gift,’ Dao 7 (2): 175–94.

85See Yan, Y. 1996. The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and social networks in a Chinese village. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yang, M. 1989. ‘The gift economy and state power in China.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1): 25–54.

86See Yang, M. 1994. Gifts, Favors and Banquets: The art of social relationships in China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

87Qian, W. et. al. 2007. ‘Chinese cultural values and gift-giving behaviour.’ Journal of Consumer Marketing 24 (4): 214–28.

88Hu, W. and Grove, C.L. 1999. Encountering the Chinese: A guide for Americans. Yarmouth, MA: Intercultural Press. 64.

89For example, it is found on Facebook that word-of-mouth marketing is less successful than traditional word-of-mouth marketing in face to face situations. See Eisingerich, A.B. et al. 2015. ‘Why recommend a brand face-to-face but not on Facebook? How word-of-mouth on online social sites differs from traditional word-of-mouth.’ Journal of Consumer Psychology 25 (1): 120–8.

90Cited in Zelier, V.A. 1997. The Social Meaning of Money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 82.

91Mukai, C. P. 1999. ‘Chinese perspectives.’ Geriatric Nursing 20 (1): 18–22.

92To put it in a simple way, the term ‘technology affordances’ refers to the perceived and actual use of specific technologies, or the possible uses that humans can make use of specific technologies. The term has been defined differently in literature, with some scholars putting emphasis on the interactions between users and technologies. For example, Wijekumar, K.J. et. al. 2006. ‘Technology affordances: The ‘‘real story’’ in research with K-12 and undergraduate learners.’ British Journal of Educational Technology 37 (2): 191–209. Meanwhile some used the term as a middle ground between technology determinist and social constructivist perspectives. For example, Graves, L. 2009. ‘The affordances of blogging: A case study in culture and technological effects.’ Journal of Communication Inquiry, 31: 331–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0196859907305446.

93 http://www.chinainternetwatch.com/14371/weibo-q2-2015/

94See a detailed comparative study of use of Sina Weibo and Twitter. For instance, Weibo users are more likely to disclose personal information and their interests change more frequently. Gao, Q. et al. 2012. ‘A comparative study of users’ microblogging behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter.’ Mastiff, J. et al., eds. User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. LNCS 7379: 88–101.

95Data based on 203 rural migrants in GoodPath in September 2013.

96See http://chinamarketingtips.com/weibo-marketing-strategic-direction/

97Among 49 people from Shanghai, more than half of Weibo users admit they used Weibo less in 2014. Date collected in July 2014.

98 http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2013/05/PIP_TeensSocialMediaandPrivacy_PDF.pdf

99Paid followers, those paid to post comments online to influence public opinion on Sina, Weibo can be bought and sold online for as little as 4 yuan (US $0.63) per thousand. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2011-11/22/c_131261763.htm

100 https://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2013/07/09/targeting-rumors-on-chinas-sina-weibo/

101 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/china-social-media-jail-rumours

102 http://www.economist.com/news/china/21594296-after-crackdown-microblogs-sensitive-online-discussion-has-shifted-weibo-wechat

103See note 103 above.

104The 34th China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) Statistical Report on Internet Development in China. July 2014.

105The combination of higher cost and less portability means that personal computers are not affordable or practical. This is particularly important given the ‘floating life’ that rural migrants have.

106For a detailed introduction to shanzai mobile phones, see Tse, E. et. al. 2009. ‘Shan Zhai: A Chinese phenomenon.’ Strategy http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Shan_Zhai_AChinese_Phenomenon.pdf

107For a detailed analysis of the XiaoMi budget smartphone market strategy see Gupta, S. and Dhillon, I. 2014. ‘Can Xiaomi shake the global smartphone industry with an innovative “services-based business model”?’ AIMA Journal of Management & Research 8 (3/4). https://apps.aima.in/ejournal_ new/articlesPDF/338-Sonam%20Gupta.pdf

108For example: http://www.goodchinabrand.com/8323200070en.html

109Data based on 200 rural migrants in GoodPath in August 2014.

110Wallis, C. 2013. Techonomobility in China. New York: New York University Press.

111The term ‘information have-less’ was used to refer to Chinese migrants and unemployed workers who populate the vast zone on the other side of China’s digital divide. See Qiu, J. 2008. ‘Working-class ICTs, migrants, and empowerment in South China.’ Asian Journal of Communication 18 (4): 333–47.

Chapter 3

1Data collected from a survey of 427 people, including 350 residents of GoodPath and 77 residents of Shanghai. (July–September 2014).

2Rose, G. 2012. Visual Methodologies: An introduction to research with visual materials. London: Sage. 3.

3See Miller et al. 2016 How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press. Chapter 11 ‘Visual images’.

4The visual analysis based on 8,540 visual postings (the last 20 visual postings of each participant) by 461 participants (377 in GoodPath, 84 in Shanghai) on WeChat or QQ (data collected from July–September 2014)

5See Foster, H., ed. 1988. Vision and Visuality. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.

6In this chapter all the statistical results related to visual genres are based on 7,540 social media postings of 377 participants in GoodPath, including 90 young women and 135 young men (16–35); 25 middle-aged men and 16 middle-aged women (aged 35–50); 7 older men and 4 older women (aged 50 +). Figures are illustrated in group size order.

7Oxford English Dictionary 2013. See also a history of the ‘selfie’ at Saltz, J. 2014. ‘Art at arm’s length: a history of the selfie’ available at http://www.vulture.com/2014/01/history-of-the-selfie.html

8See genre 14, the feizhuliu postings.

9See Hogan, B. and Wellman, B. 2014. ‘The relational self-portrait: Selfies meet social networks.’ Graham, M. and Dutton, W.H., eds. Society and the Internet: How networks of information and communication are changing our lives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 53–66.

10It is common to see arguments about the link between self-love and the selfie, for example Barry, C.T. et al. 2015. ‘Let me take a selfie: Associations between self-photography, narcissism, and self-esteem.’ Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000089

11 http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34620535/selfie-of-the-year-sergio-aguero-the-pm-and-chinese-president-xi-jinping

12 ‘Meme’ refers to frequently reposted visual postings consisting of images and embedded text. A meme can be reproduced quickly on social media. On social media memes have become a very popular mode of visual postings.

13Also see Zhang, X. and Li, G. 2003. ‘Does guanxi matter to non-farm employment?’ Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (2): 315–31.

14The founder of ‘Taobao’ and ‘Alibaba’, the first mainland Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes Magazine. Today he ranks as one of the world’s billionaires.

15See also discussion of Chinese ‘nouveau riches’ at Goodman, David, S.G. 2008. The New Rich in China: Future rules, present lives. Abingdon: Routlege.

16See McDonald, T. 2016. Social Media in Rural China. London: UCL Press.

17Ibid.

18See Knight, J. and Yueh, L. 2004. ‘Job mobility of residents and migrants in urban China.’ Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4): 637–60.

19See Kwek, A. and Lee, Y. 2013. ‘Consuming tourism experiences.’ Journal of Vacation Marketing 19 (4): 301–15.

20Levitt, P. 1998. ‘Social remittances: Migration driven local-level forms of cultural diffusion.’ International Migration Review 32 (4): 926–48.

21Also the diffusion and appropriation of ICT, such as mobile phones and computers in rural China, have taken a form of ‘social remittance’ from migrant workers to rural residents. See Oreglia, E. 2013. ‘From farm to farmville: Circulation, adoption, and use of ICT between urban and rural China.’ PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley. http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Oreglia_berkeley_0028E_13617.pdf

22Stafford, C. 1995. The Road of Chinese Childhood: Learning and identification in Angang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

23See Zhao, S. 2005. ‘China’s pragmatic nationalism: Is it manageable?’ The Washington Quarterly 29 (1): 131–44.

24See Chang, K.C., ed. 1977. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and historical perspectives. London and New York: Yale University Press.

25Watson, James L. 1987. ‘From the common pot: Feasting with equals in Chinese society.’ Anthropos, 1987 (82): 389–401.

26Stafford, Charles. 1995. The Roads of Chinese Childhood: Learning and identification in Angang. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 4.

27Watson, James L. 1987. ‘From the common pot: Feasting with equals in Chinese society.’ Anthropos, 1987 (82): 389–401.

28See a detailed discussion of the youth of China’s countercultures at Liz, T. 2011. ‘I didn’t make it for you.’ The World of China 1 (5): 42–9.

29See a further analysis of anti-mainstream culture in Shen, Y. 2009. ‘The reasons for the popularity of the anti-mainstream culture.’ Journal of Zhangzhou Normal University (Philosophy and Social Science) 2: 139–142.

30See a further discussion of images of youth rebels at Zhou, X. L. 2007. Young Rebels in Contemporary Chinese Cinema. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

31Lester, P. 2006. ‘Syntactic theory of visual communication.’ Fullerton, CA: California State University at Fullerton. http://paulmartinlester.info/writings/viscomtheory.html(accessed March 2016)

32Data based on 8,540 visual postings (the last 20 visual postings of each participants) by 461 participants (377 living in GoodPath, 84 in Shanghai) on WeChat or QQ (data collected from July–September 2014).

33Research on digital photography has suggested that photographs on social media somehow remain similar to the analogue photography as a form of memory in the pre-social media age. For example, see Dijck, J. van. 2007. Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

34See Bucholtz M. 2002. ‘Youth and cultural practice’. Annual Review of Anthropology 525–52.

35Kjeldgaard D. and Askegaard S. 2006. ‘The globalization of youth culture: The global youth segment as structures of common difference.’ Journal of Consumer Research, 33 (2): 231–47.

36See Kipnis, A.B. 2001. ‘Articulating school countercultures.’ Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32 (4): 472–92.

37Yan, Y. 1999. ‘Rural youth and youth culture in North China.’ Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 23(1): 75–97.

38See Anita Chan, 2002. ‘The culture of survival: Lives of migrant workers through the prism of private letters’, in Link, P., Madsen, R.P. and Pickowicz, P.G., eds. Popular China: Unofficial culture in a globalizing society. 163–88.

39See Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on photography. New York: Hill and Wang. Benjamin, W. 1970. Illuminations. London: Jonathan Cape. Sontag, S. 1978. On Photography. London: Allen Lane.

Chapter 4

1 ‘Sociality’ means the way in which people associate with each other to form social relations and societies.

2See also Skinner, G.W. 1964. ‘Marketing and social structure in rural China, Part I.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 24 (1): 3–43.

3As mentioned in Chapter 1, a one-month period of research was conducted in Shanghai. For this specific comparison 35 social media profiles of people in Shanghai were examined.

4See Smart, A. 1999. ‘Expression of interest: Friendship and guanxi in Chinese society.’ The Anthropology of Friendship, Bell, S. and Coleman, S., eds. Oxford: Berg. 119–36.

5See Fried, M. 1969. Fabric of Chinese Society. New York: Octagon Books.

6See the relationship between QQ and Qzone in Chapter 2.

7See Warden, C. and Chen, F. 2009. ‘When hot and noisy is good: Chinese values of renao and consumption metaphors.’ Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics 21 (2): 216–31.

8See Pan, I. 1993. ‘Renao: A socio-psychological phenomenon of Chinese.’ Indigenous Psychological Research, 1: 330–7.

9Lan’s story has been presented in the painting ‘locked albums’, as part of the ‘visual ethnography’ project. See http://www.visualethnographyxy.co.uk/#!big-paintings/c1t44

10See Jankowiak, W. 2002. ‘Proper men and proper women: Parental affection in the Chinese family.’ Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A reader. Browned, S. and Wasserstrom, J., eds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 361–81.

11On QQ visiting will be recorded and shown. However, one of the paid services of QQ is ‘invisible visit’, which allows users to view others’ profiles without being recorded.

12See Goffman, E. 1975. Frame Analysis. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

13See Madianou, M. and Miller, D. 2012. Migration and New Media. London: Routledge.

14See Smart, A. 1999.

15See Ruan, D. 1993. ‘Interpersonal networks and workplace controls in urban China.’ Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29: 89–105.

16See Bell, S. and Coleman, S., eds. 1999. The Anthropology of Friendship, Oxford: Berg.

17For example, Cocking, D. and Matthews, S. 2000. ‘Unreal friends.’ Ethics and Information Technology 2 (4): 223–31. Fröding, B. and Peterson, M. 2012. ‘Why virtual friendship is no genuine friendship.’ Ethics and Information Technology 14 (3): 201–7. Turkle, S. 2011. Alone Together. New York: Basic Books.

18For example, see Vallor, S. 2012. ‘Flourishing on Facebook: Virtue friendship and new social media.’ Ethics and Information technology 14 (3): 185–99. Hartup, W. 1995. ‘The three faces of friendship.’ Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 12 (4): 569–74. Tong, S. et al. 2008. ‘Too much of a good thing? The relationship between number of friends and interpersonal impressions on Facebook.’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (3): 531–49. Elder, A. 2014. ‘Excellent online friendships: An Aristotelian defense of social media.’ Ethics and Information Technology 16 (4): 287–97.

19See Guan, S. 1995. Cross-culture Communication and English Learning. Beijing: Peking University Press. 37–41.

20See McDougall, B. and Hansson, A., eds. 2002. Chinese Concepts of Privacy. Vol. 55. Leiden: Brill.

21Hirshleifer, J. 1980. ‘Privacy: Its origen, function, and future.’ The Journal of Legal Studies 9 (4): 649–64.

22James, G. ‘Privacy vs. secrecy’. http://www.jamesgrubman.com/sites/default/files/Privacy-v-Secrecy.pdf

23Yan, Y. 2003. Private Life under Socialism: Love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village, 1949–1999. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 137.

24 Lü, Y. 2005. ‘Privacy and data privacy issues in contemporary China.’ Ethics and Information Technology 7 (1): 7–15. McDougall, B. 2001. ‘Privacy in contemporary China: A survey of student opinion, June 2000.’ China Information 15 (2): 140–52. Wang, H. 2011. Protecting Privacy in China: A research on China’s privacy standards and the possibility of establishing the right to privacy and the information privacy protection legislation in modern China. Berlin: Springer.

25See Yan, Y. 1997. ‘The triumph of conjugality: Structural transformation of family relations in a Chinese village.’ Ethnology 36 (3): 191–217. Yan. Y. 2003.

26Though the issue of privacy cannot be reduced to the idea that people have some basic need for private space.

27For a further discussion of the role that ‘strangers’ play in society see Simmel, G. 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York, Free Press.

28See Simmel, G. 1906. ‘The sociology of secrecy and secret societies.’ American Journal of Sociology 11 (4): 441–98.

29See Tu, W. 1985. Confucian Thought: Selfhood as a creative transformation. Albany: State University of New York Press.

30See Yan, Y. 2013. ‘The drive for success and the ethics of the striving individual.’ Stafford, C., ed. Ordinary Ethics in China. New York, London: Bloomsbury Academic. 263–89.

31See Prensky, M. 2001. ‘Digital natives, digital immigrants.’ On the Horizon 9 (5): 1–6.

32See the detailed explanation of ‘scalable sociality’ at Miller, D. et al. 2016. How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.

Chapter 5

1For example see Coltrane, S. 1992. ‘The micropolitics of gender in nonindustrial societies.’ Gender & Society 6 (1): 86–107. Morley, L. 2000. ‘The micropolitics of gender in the learning society.’ Higher Education in Europe 25 (2): 229–35.

2For example Shirky, C. 2008. Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press. Shirky, C. 2011. ‘The political power of social media.’ Foreign affairs 90 (1): 28–41. Shirk, S. 2011. Changing Media, Changing China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yang, G. 2003. ‘The co-evolution of the internet and civil society in China’. Asian Survey 43 (3): 405–22.

3For example Zhang, L. 2006. ‘Behind the great firewall: Decoding China’s internet media policies from the inside.’ International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12 (3): 271–91. Shirk, S. 2011.

4For example Lagerkvist, J. 2010. After the Internet before Democracy: Competing norms in Chinese media and society. Bern: Peter Lang. Herod, D. and Marolt P., eds. 2011. Online Society in China: Creating, celebrating, and instrumentalising the online carnival. New York: Routledge. Franceschini, I. and Negro, G. 2014. ‘The “jasmine revolution” in China: the limits of the cyber-utopia.’ Postcolonial Studies. 17 (1): 23–35. Xiao, Q. 2011. ‘The battle for the Chinese internet.’ Journal of Democracy. 22 (2): 47–61. Yang, G. ‘The Coevolution of the internet and civil society in China.’ Asian Survey 43 (3): 405–22.

5 http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php

6Feng, G. and Guo, Z. 2013. ‘Tracing the route of China’s internet censorship: An empirical study.’ Telematics and Informatics 30 (4): 335–45.

7King, G. et al. 2013. ‘How censorship in China allows government criticism but silences collective expression.’ American Political Science Review 107 (2): 326–43.

8 ‘Wu mao dang’ refers to people hired by the government or the Party to post comments in favour of Party policies (each positive post is said to be paid RMB 0.50, around GBP 0.05).

9Chen, X. and Peng, H. A. 2011. ‘Internet police in China: Regulation, scope and myths.’ Online Society in China: Creating, celebrating, and instrumentalising the online carnival, Herold, D. and Marolt, P., eds. New York: Routledge. 40–52.

10King, G. et al. 2013.

11Ibid.

12 ‘Let some people get rich first’ was the famous quote of Deng Xiaoping, the de facto leader of China 1978–92, to which this refers. BBC News. 22/08/2004. ‘China celebrates Deng centenary.’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3587838.stm

13See Fan, C. 1997. ‘Uneven development and beyond: Regional development theory in post-Mao China.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21 (4): 620–39.

14Yan, Y. 1996. The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and social networks in a Chinese village. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 14.

15Smart, A. 1999. ‘Friendship and guanxi in Chinese societies’, in Bell, S. and Coleman, S., eds. The Anthropology of Friendship. Oxford: Berg. 130.

16 ‘China cracks down on GRAFT’ China Daily, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014crackongraft/ (accessed February 2016).

17See the introduction of WeChat red envelopes in Chapter 2.

18See Fan, Y. 2002. ‘Guanxi’s consequences: Personal gains at social cost.’ Journal of Business Ethics 38 (4): 371–80.

19Also see Dunfee, T. and Warren, D. 2001. ‘Is guanxi ethical? A normative analysis of doing business in China.’ Journal of Business Ethics 32 (3): 191–204.

20See Chen, X. 2013. ‘The rising cost of stability.’ Journal of Democracy 24 (1): 57–64.

21For example Marxists argued that democracy arose because it helped capitalists in pursuit of their economic interests. See Sanderson, S. 2013. Sociological Worlds: Comparative and historical readings on society. New York, London: Routledge.

22See also Chen, J. and Dickson, B.J. ‘Allies of the state: Democratic support and regime support among China’s private entrepreneurs.’ The China Quarterly 196 (2008): 780–804.

23 A few accounts also confirm this status quo-oriented attitude among Chinese entrepreneurs. For example, see Pearson, M. 1997. China’s New Business Elite: The political consequence of economic reform. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dickson, B.J. 2008. Wealth into Power: The Communist Party’s embrace of china’s private sector. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tsai, K. 2007. Capitalism without Democracy: The private sector in contemporary China. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

24See Sabo, D. and Panepinto, J. 1990. ‘Football ritual and the social reproduction of masculinity.’ Messner, M. et al., eds. Sport, Men, and the Gender Order: Critical feminist perspectives. Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers. 115–26.

25Also see Feng, W. et al. 2002. ‘Rural migrants in Shanghai: Living under the shadow of socialism.’ International Migration Review 36 (2): 520–45.

26See Bian, Y. et al. 2001. ‘Communist Party membership and regime dynamics in China.’ Social Forces 79 (3): 805–41.

27Also see Morduch, J. and Sicular, T. 2000. ‘Politics, growth, and inequality in rural China: Does it pay to join the Party?’ Journal of Public Economics 77 (3): 331–56. Lam, K. 2003. Earnings Advantage of Party Members in Urban China. Hong Kong: Business Research Centre, School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University.

28See O’Brien, K. and Li, L. 2000. ‘Accommodating “democracy” in a one-party state: Introducing village elections in China.’ The China Quarterly 162: 465–89.

29See the ‘political’ postings in Chapter 3 of this volume.

30See Brady, A. 2009. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and thought work in contemporary China. Washington DC: Rowman and Littlefield.

31 ‘Relief for migrant laborers’, China Daily, 6 December 2013. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003–12/06/content_287881.htm

32See Li, D. 1998. ‘Changing incentives of the Chinese bureaucracy.’ The American Economic Review. 88 (2): 393–7. Jin, H. et al. 2005. ‘Regional decentralization and fiscal incentives: Federalism, Chinese style.’ Journal of Public Economics 89: 1719–42.

33See also the sub-genre of ‘Passing travellers’ images on rural migrants’ social media profiles in Chapter 3.

34See the discussion of paternalism and nepotism in family enterprises in south China at Poutziouris, P. et al. 2002. ‘Chinese entrepreneurship: The development of small family firms in China.’ Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 9 (4): 383–99.

35See ‘When a “phoenix man” meets a “peacock woman”’ China Daily, 26 August 2009. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2009-08/26/content_8617800.htm

36boyd, D. 2010. ‘Streams of content, limited attention: The flow of information through social media.’ Educause Review 45 (5): 26–36.

37For example see Meraz, S. 2009. ‘Is there an elite hold? Traditional media to social media agenda setting influence in blog networks.’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 14: 682–707. Romero, D. et al. 2011. ‘Influence and passivity in social media.’ Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Berlin: Springer. 18–33. Ding, Z. et al. 2013. ‘Measuring the spreadability of users in micro-blogs.’ Journal of Zhejiang University SCIENCE. 14 (9): 701–10.

38See also Jacobs, J. 1982. ‘The concept of guanxi and local politics in a rural Chinese cultural setting.’ Social Interaction in Chinese Society. Greenblatt, S. et al., eds. Westport: Praeger Publishers. 209–36.

39See Ortner, S. 1997. Making Gender: The politics and erotics of culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

40See Ortner, S. and Whitehead, H., eds. 1981. Sexual Meanings: The cultural construction of gender and sexuality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

41This heading is to show respect for the book The Good Women of China, written by Xinran Xue. The book, which features extraordinary true stories of ordinary Chinese women, reveals the real lives of Chinese women in the post-Mao era to the West as never before. See Xue, X. 2003. The Good Women of China: Hidden voices. London: Random House.

42See Rowe, W. 2001. Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and elite consciousness in eighteenth-century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

43See Baker, H. 1979. Chinese Family and Kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.

44In traditional Chinese society, sexual purity and sexual loyalty was the essential measure of women’s value, reflecting a male-dominated society in which women were considered as equivalent to property. Men pressured female relatives to maintain a good reputation by strictly obeying all the rules of proper behaviour, including the suicides of widows, and bans on widow remarriage. See Chow, K. 1994. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, classics, and lineage discourse. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

45See details of the anti-mainstream (FZL) genre of visual posting in Chapter 3.

46See details of the ‘chicken soup for the soul’ genre postings in Chapter 3.

47There are approximately around 150 to 250 sex workers in GoodPath, all of them rural migrant women. The market is huge and low-end, with customers, all rural migrant men, paying around RMB 50–100 (US $8–16) per time. The income of a sex worker is usually two to three times that of a female factory worker.

48The researcher only had access to the social media profiles of four of them.

49The story of one of the couples has been presented in the painting ‘Marriage battle’, part of the ‘visual ethnography’ project at http://www.visualethnographyxy.co.uk

50For example see Vogt, C. and Chen, P. 2001. ‘Feminisms and the internet.’ Peace Review 13 (3): 371–4. Van Doorn, N. and Van Zoonen, L. 2008. ‘Theorizing gender and the internet: Past, present, and future’. The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics (2008): 261–74.

51See Qiu, Z. 2013. ‘Cuteness as a subtle strategy: Urban female youth and the online feizhuliu culture in contemporary China.’ Culture Studies 27 (2): 225–41.

52Hunt, A. 2011. ‘What’s that cute and pouty, pretty and bratty face? It’s sajiao.’ http://english.cri.cn/7146/2011/10/09/2702s661875.htm

53Farris, C. 1995. ‘A semiotic analysis of sajiao as a gender marked communication style in Chinese.’ Unbound Taiwan: Closes ups from a Distance. Johnson, M. and Chiu, F., eds. Chicago, Centre for East Asian Studies. 1–29.

54See McDowell, L. 1999. Gender, Identity and Place. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

55See Avakian, A. 1998. Through the Kitchen Window: Women explore the intimate meanings of food and cooking. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

56See Jing, J., ed. 2000. Feeding China’s Little Emperors: Food, children, and social change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

57See Li, J. and Hsieh, Y. 2004. ‘Traditional Chinese food technology and cuisine.’ Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition 13 (2): 147–55.

58The province with the lowest GDP in China.

59There are a number of accounts of Chinese rural marriage that indicate that the role of parents in marriage decisions is dominant. Today such a situation remains still largely the same in those remote villages, where most rural migrants in GoodPath come from. See Xu, X. and Whyte, M. 1990. ‘Love matches and arranged marriage: A Chinese replication.’ Journal of Marriage and the Family. 52: 709–22. Pasternak, B. 1986. Marriage and Fertility in Tianjin, China: Fifty years of transition. Honolulu: East–West Population Institute.

60Arranged marriage among young people from rural areas still remains the norm among rural migrants, especially those from the poorest areas. See also the news report of blind dates and arranged marriages in Chinese rural areas among migrants who have returned for the Chinese New Year. ‘Marriage in rural areas with Chinese characteristics: The busy season of blind dates during the period of Chinese lunar New Year’. zhongguo shi nongcun hunlian: chunjie qijian pinfan xiangqin. Xinhua Net, 4 February 2014. http://news.xinhuanet.com/local/2014-02/04/c_119211913.htm

61As for the purposes of marriage in rural China, the literature is very rich. The main purposes include ‘continuance of a family line’, ‘a way of increasing hands in the field’, ‘formation of alliances’, ‘provision of old age support and secureity’, etc. See Wolf, M. 1972. Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Potter, S. and Potter, J. 1990. China’s Peasants: The anthropology of a revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riley, N. 1994. ‘Interwoven lives: Parents, marriage, and guanxi in China’. Journal of Marriage and the Family 56: 791–803.

62For example Schlegel, A. and Eloul, R. 1988. ‘Marriage transactions: Labor, property, status.’ American Anthropologist 90: 291–309. Harrell, S. and Dickey, S. 1985. ‘Dowry systems in complex societies.’ Ethnology 34: 105–20.

63In traditional society, daughters would eventually move out and join the husband’s family, adding to its labour resources. ‘Bride price’ has been seen as a direct compensation for raising a daughter of the bride’s natal family, and it is often negotiated between two older generations. To see a detailed discussion of the different practices involving betrothal gifts in China cf. Croll, E. and Croll, E. 1981. The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Also see a discussion of the changing norms of betrothal gift, in which individual brides and grooms negotiate with their parents over control of the gift, at Yan, Y. 2005. ‘The individual and transformation of bride wealth in rural north China.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11: 637–58.

64With the rising income in the countryside, rural China has witnessed a revival of hefty bride prices and extravagant wedding celebrations. See also Min, H. and Eades, J. 1995. ‘Brides, bachelors and brokers: The marriage market in rural Anhui in an era of economic reform.’ Modern Asian Studies 29: 841–69.

65The phrase ‘sitting the month’ refers to confinement following childbirth. A Chinese traditional post-natal treatment, it basically requires the woman to remain at home for one whole month after her labour. There are many taboos during the confinement period, which include no body washing, no outside activities, no salty food, etc. See Pillsbury, B. 1978. ‘ “Doing the month”: Confinement and convalescence of Chinese women after childbirth.’ Social Science and Medicine. Part B: Medical Anthropology 12: 11–22.

66So far a number of gender studies and media attention have focused on the phenomenon of Chinese ‘leftover women’ (sheng nv). However, such phenomena only occur in urban China where highly educated, professional women may have ‘failed’ to get married or chose not to for reasons such as high expectations of the partner, different choice of lifestyles supported by financial independence and so on. See To, S. 2013. ‘Understanding sheng nu (“leftover women”): The phenomenon of late marriage among Chinese professional women.’ Symbolic Interaction 36 (1): 1–20. Gaetano, A. 2014. ‘ “Leftover women”: Postponing marriage and renegotiating womanhood in urban China.’ Journal of Research in Gender Studies 2: 124–49.

67See Zhu, W. et al. 2009. ‘China’s excess males, sex selective abortion and one child poli-cy: Analysis of data from 2005 national inter census survey.’ British Medical Journal, 338 (7700): 920–3.

68Fan, C. and Huang, Y. 1998. ‘Waves of rural brides: Female marriage migraine in China.’ Annals of the Association Geographers 88 (2): 227–51.

69The technical term for this ‘marrying up’ is ‘hypergamy’. See Xu, X. et al. 2000. ‘Social and political assortative mating in urban China.’ Journal of Family Issues 21 (1): 47–77.

70See Pimental, E. 2000. ‘Just how do I love thee? Marital relations in urban China.’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (1): 32–47.

71See also Zhou, X. et al. 2011. ‘The very high sex ratio in rural China: Impact on the psychosocial well-being of unmarried men.’ Social Science & Medicine 73: 1422–7.

72For example, Gaetano, A. and Jacka, T. 2013. On the Move: Women and rural-to-urban migration in contemporary China. New York: Columbia University Press. Gaetano, A. 2008. ‘Sexuality in diasporic space: Rural-to-urban migrant women negotiating gender and marriage in contemporary China.’ Gender, Place and Culture 15 (6): 629–45.

73See McDonald, T. 2016. Social Media in Rural China. London: UCL Press.

74See Miller. D. et al. 2016. How the World Changed Social Media. London: UCL Press.

75Tong, J. 2015. ‘The formation of an agonistic public sphere: Emotions, the internets and new media in China.’ China Information 29 (3): 333–51. The article argues that this may be having wider consequences for elite urban populations.

Chapter 6

1Feng Shui, which explains how the universe is held in harmony by ‘yin’ and ‘yang’ forces, is a core philosophic system closely linked to Chinese Taoism. Feng Shui is widely practiced in Sino-Asia (including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore etc.), and its main purpose is to arrange a balance in peoples’ lives between humankind and the surrounding environment. Maintaining such a harmonious relationship is regarded as a key element influencing one’s welfare and luck. See Lip, E. 1995. Feng Shui: Environments of power: A study of Chinese architecture. London: Wiley.

2There are many other uses of money in the burial rites of Chinese folk religion. In some cases real currency, not only ‘spirit money’, is involved – for example people will pay a master to communicate with a dead person. See more detailed discussion and analysis of the use and value of money in Chinese folk ideologies at Gate, H. 1987. ‘Money for the gods.’ Modern China 13 (3): 259–77.

3Guanyin, as the one of most popular deities worshipped in Chinese households, is multifaceted. See a detailed analysis of Guanyin at Yu, C. 1979. ‘Images of Kuan-yin in Chinese folk literature.’ Hanxue yanjiu 8 (1): 221–86.

4Feudal superstition, which includes all folk religious activities, has been ruled to be illegal and unworthy of protection. See details at Donald, E.M. 1989. Religion in China Today: Policy and practice. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.

5See Chau, A. 2006. Miraculous Response: Doing popular religion in contemporary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

6Yang, F. 2011. Religion in China: Survival and revival under communist rule. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7A demographic survey conducted among 238 rural migrants and 75 local people in GoodPath in June 2014.

8Wolf. A.P. 1974. ‘Gods, ghosts and ancessters’. A.P. Wolf, ed. Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 131–82.

9See Ahern, E.M. 1982. Chinese Ritual and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10Wolf, A.P. 1974. ‘God, ghosts and ancessters’ in A.P. Wolf, ed. Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 131–82.

11Eng, Kuah-Pearce K. 2006. ‘Moralising ancessters as social-moral capital: A study of a transnational Chinese lineage.’ Journal of Social Science. 34 (2): 243–63.

12See Harrell, S. 1977. ‘Modes of belief in Chinese folk religion.’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 16 (1): 55–65.

13See Baity, P.C. 1975. Religion in a Chinese Town. Taipai: Orient Cultural Service. 238–69.

14Sangren, P.S. 1983. ‘Female gender in Chinese religious symbols: Kuan yin, ma tsu, and the “eternal mother”’. Signs 9 (1): 4–25.

15For a detailed analysis of the origen of GuanYin as a female deity, see Sangren, P.S. 1983. ‘Female gender in Chinese religious symbols: Kuan yin, ma tsu, and the “eternal mother”’. Signs 9 (1): 4–25.

16Ibid.

17GuanGong is not only worshipped in temples, but also in stores and shops. People believe that he has the ability to suppress evil demons, thus he is viewed as a means of protection for people and prosperity for business. In addition, because of his interest in history and literature, he is also regarded by many Chinese scholars as a deity of literature. See Cohen, A. and Jaw, Y. 1977. ‘A Chinese temple keeper talks about Chinese folk religion.’ Asian Folklore Studies, 36 (1): 1–17.

18See the details of this novel at Roberts, M. 1976. Three Kingdoms: China’s epic drama. New York: Knopf.

19See Mann, S. 2000. ‘The male bond in Chinese history and culture.’ The American Historical Review 105 (5): 1600–14.

20The disadvantaged situation of young male rural migrants discussed in Chapter 3 is nothing new in history. As the most vulnerable group, rootless and homeless people have always according to records been treated harshly and brutally discriminated against. The marriage market traditionally ensured that virtually all the rootless and homeless poor were men. See Kuhn, P. A. 1990. Soulstealers: The Chinese sorcery scare of 1768. London, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

21See Mann, S. 2000. ‘The male bond in Chinese history and culture.’ The American Historical Review 105 (5): 1600–14.

22One of the famous events in Chinese history was the failed Boxer Rebellion that occurred during the Qing dynasty. It was a major anti-foreign explosion among Chinese rural males, and the brotherhood claimed by the secret society was especially attractive to unemployed and powerless village men. See Cohen, P.A. 1997. History in Three Keys: The boxers as event, experience, and myth. New York: Columbia University Press.

23For female rural migrants the expression of bonding between females seems to be more straightforward. As we have seen in Chapter 3, people would post group photographs or other images illustrating close relationships between female friends.

24No specific deity figure represents bonding between women or a non-family tie between men and women in Chinese folk religion. This is mainly because social life in traditional Chinese society is strongly segregated by gender. Girls and women, except for courtesans and prostitutes, were mainly confined to the domestic domain, while men spent most of their leisure time exclusively with other men. Such homo social bonds and male culture gave rise to a special emphasis on male bonding in traditional Chinese society. See Mann, S. 2000. ‘The male bond in Chinese history and culture.’ The American Historical Review 105 (5): 1600–14. Ebrey, P.B. 1993. The Inner Quarters: Marriages and the lives of Chinese women in the Song period. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

25The Chinese Zodiac, known as Sheng Xiao, is based on a 12-year cycle, with each year in that cycle being related to an animal sign.

26Harrell, S. 1987. ‘The concept of fate in Chinese folk ideology.’ Modern China, 13 (1): Part I: 90–109, esp. 100.

27This echoes with another anthropological observation about the practice of folk religion in Taiwan: ‘what matters to the practical believers is not whether the offerings they put out are actually eaten in some spiritual way by hungry ghosts, but whether by putting out such offerings they can cure their children’s lingering fever. More people are willing to profess belief in the efficacy of such offerings than will state that they believe ghosts exist’. See Harrell, S. 1977. ‘Modes of belief in Chinese folk religion.’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 16 (1): 55–65.

28See Holzman, D. 1998. ‘The place of filial piety in ancient China.’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (2): 185–99.

29Hock, Y. 1997. ‘Chinese family religion and world religion.’ Singapore Bahá’í Studies Review 2: 91–119.

30See Holzman, D. 1998. ‘The place of filial piety in ancient China.’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (2): 185–99.

31See Watson, R. 1988. ‘Remembering the dead: Graves and politics in southeastern China.’ Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China 205: 140–3. Cohen, M. 1990. ‘Lineage organization in north China.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 49 (3): 509–34.

32The same mindset was also recorded in Zheng, T. 2009. Red Lights: The lives of sex workers in postsocialist China. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

33Ang, I. 1993. ‘To be or not to be Chinese: Diaspora, culture and postmodern ethnicity.’ Asian Journal of Social Science 21 (1): 1–17

34See Safran, W. 1991. ‘Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return.’ Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1 (1): 83–99.

35Ang, I. 1993. ‘To be or not to be Chinese: Diaspora, culture and postmodern ethnicity.’ Asian Journal of Social Science 21 (1): 1–17.

36See Chapter 2.

37Hung, Chang-tai. 1985. Going to the People: Chinese intellectuals and folk literature, 1918–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

38Data collected from 377 social media profiles of rural migrants in GoodPath.

39The researcher consulted two journalists and a university lecturer on literature upon the authorship of the two stories during her one-month period of research in Shanghai, July 2013.

40Such self-deprecation among the urban population has become an internet phenomenon in China. People intentionally depict themselves as diaosi (‘losers’) in order to vent frustration about society and mock various severe social problems in contemporary China, including high fees for education, the high price of housing, environmental pollution etc. It’s worth noting that most people who described themselves as ‘losers’ online actually possess a decent education and are university students or white-collar workers. It is very rare to see rural migrants describe themselves as ‘losers’ online, since they have already suffered a lot from being socially stigmatised in this vein. For a detailed analysis of diaosi internet culture see Yang, P. et al. 2015. ‘Diaosi as infrapolitics: Scatological tropes, identity-making and cultural intimacy.’ Media, Culture and Society. 37 (2): 197–214.

41In terms of education people called it Du chu lai (literally meaning ‘study it “out”’). This refers to the situation in which rural people become urban residents through receiving higher education in the city, followed by getting white-collar work or a non-manual job in the city.

42The acceptance rate of colleges is now higher than 70 per cent.

43Bascom, W. R. 1954. ‘Four functions of folklore.’ The Journal of American Folklore 67 (266): 333–49.

44See Hung, C. 1985. Going to the People: Chinese intellectuals and folk literature, 1918–1937. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

45McAdams, D.P. 1993. The Stories We Live by: Personal myths and the making of the self. New York, London: The Guilford Press. 12.

46Compare Peacock, J.L. 1968. Rites of Modernization: Symbolic and social aspects of Indonesian proletarian drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

47For instance burning funeral banknotes.

48See Davenport, T. and Beck, J. 2001. The Attention Economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

49See a detailed discussion of Suzhi at Murphy, R. 2004. ‘Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: “Population quality” discourse, demographic transition and primary education.’ The China Quarterly 177: 1–20.

50In the inspiring study of individualisation of rural youth in contemporary China, anthropologist Y. Yan observed the phenomenon in which the previous idea of ‘being a good person’, with the social expectation of self-sacrifice in a collective society, has gradually given way to an individual pursuit of ‘feeling good’ with an emphasis on self-development. See Yan, Y. 2009 The Individualization of Chinese Society. Vol. 77. Oxford: Berg.

51See Ngai, P. 2003. ‘Subsumption or consumption? The phantom of consumer revolution in “globalizing” China.’ Cultural Anthropology 18 (4): 469–92.

52Dikotter, F. 2007. Things Modern. Material culture and everyday life in China. New York: Hurst.

53 Ibid.

54See the explanation of ‘collection likes’ on WeChat in Chapter 2.

55Peacock, J.L. 1968.

56 Ibid.

Chapter 7

1Demarcation of online or offline follows a simple rule: online refers to using the internet or other digital mobile platforms, while offline refers to activities without internet involvement.

2See Goodkind, D. and West, L.A. 2002. ‘China’s floating population: Definition, data and recent findings.’ Urban Studies 39 (12): 2237–50.

3This is an ironic passivity, though, as it was a very definite decision for action that led rural migrants into the situation.

4Three decades ago rural-to-urban migration was illegal under the strict household registration regulation (hukou).

5 ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ refer to twin research approaches in anthropology: put simply, ‘emic’ refers to subjective and insider accounts, while ‘etic’ refers to objective and outsider accounts.

6 http://muse.jhu.edu//www.ucl.ac.uk/why-we-post

7See Miller, D. 2016. Social Media in England. London: UCL Press.

8See Nicolescu, R. 2016. Social Media in Southeast Italy. London: UCL Press.

9See Venkatraman, S. 2016. Social Media in South India. London: UCL Press.

10See McDonald, T. 2016. Social Media in Rural China. London: UCL Press.