Keywords

1 A Longer Transition to Adulthood in Post-collectivist China

The inter-cohort analyses of the stages of the transition to adulthood reveal the emergence of a new social time – higher education – in the life-course of young adults (Fig. 6.1). Urban youth study on average 3 years longer than their elders: the post-1980s finish their education on average around 21 years old, while the post-1950s finish it on average around 18 years old. At 22 years old, 80% of respondents born between 1950 and 1959 had finished their studies; whereas at the same age only 65% of urban respondents born between 1980 and 1985 have completed their schooling.

One should remember that most universities were closed during the cultural revolution (1966–1972). During this period many students and professors were sent-down to the countryside to either work on farms, monitor the borders, or teach (Bonnin, 2004). Among this birth cohort, urban young adults who were able to stay in the city were mainly assigned to a state or collective enterprise to work.

From 1972, universities gradually reopened their doors (Bernstein, 1977; Unger, 1982). The university entrance exam was reinstated in 1977. As part of the “four modernizations” championed by Deng **, schooling and diploma regained a foremost place. In 1986, the Party-State declared 9 years of primary and secondary education compulsory for all citizens. At the same time, numerous technical schools opened (Zhou et al., 1998). These changes were followed in 1999 by a policy in favor of the development of higher education (Li, Footnote 4 (CPCNews,

“I find it very strange not to want to start a family, because it’s a core that brings comfort. Getting married, having children, it’s something perfectly normal, a duty” (born in 1989, rural, Jilin hukou, Bachelor).

According to Qian, who grew up in a city in Jilin province, in northeast China, where he returned to work as a University professor once he obtained his PhD from Peking University:

The family, especially a harmonious family, gives a person dignity. [...] that’s why in China, marriage, is not just a matter of feeling, but also an existential issue for individuals. [...] A person who does not get married is single and childless. [...] Through marriage the family is formed. [...] Marriage is the first step to having a family. No registered marriage, no child in China. (Born in 1982, urban, Jilin hukou, PhD)

This normative approach to marriage and parenthood has diverse consequences for men and women I interviewed.

2.2 Being Good Wives and Good Mothers (**anqi Liangmu)

The themes of love and marriage are also at the heart of the TV series studied in the corpus. Cohabitation appears as a possible prerequisite before marriage, but the latter remains the final goal of the protagonists. The centrality of marriage shown in TV series could aim to respond to the continuous increase in the number of divorces, which doubled between 1985 and 1995, then tripled in 2005 (Kong, 2008).

The TV series examined convey an ideal of femininity which, unlike the portrayed ideal of masculinity, is less linked to women’s professional trajectories than to their family trajectories. In “Bei**g Youth” The dialogue below between Quanzheng and her friend, a psychologist, is revealing:

Quanzheng: “A woman who only has her career and no family (understood in the sense of having a husband and a child) is not a fulfilled woman.”Footnote 5

Her friend responds: “But a man who only has his career and no family is however highly desirable.”Footnote 6

Then, the latter continues: “According to custom, the expectations for men are professional success and it is expected that women be good wives and caring mothers. If, we, women, wish for professional success like men, we must make a double effort. We must juggle a career and take care of our family, otherwise we face social condemnation.”Footnote 7

Young women who wish to pursue a career are therefore subject to a double constraint and if they fail to juggle both, they expose themselves to social condemnation for having violated the norm of the good wife and devoted mother.

Television series convey another normative constraint addressed to young women: to get married before 28 years old. The term shengnü, which means “leftover women”, is used in Chinese to refer to young women who are not married after 27 years old. Since 2007 and the official use of this term by the All-China Women’s Federation and the Ministry of Education, Chinese media have also widely disseminated it through articles, surveys, cartoons, or editorials stigmatizing in particular young women who have completed higher education and who were still single after 27 years (Hong Fincher, 2014). The creation of this new social category by State structures can be interpreted as a desire of the latter to encourage marriages, birth rates and to maintain social peace. Indeed, “[t]he State Council [has named since 2007] the sex-ratio imbalance as one of the population pressures because it « causes a threat to social stability »“(Hong Fincher, 2014:28). The encouragement of marriage and reproduction of educated young women (through the stigmatization of those who are not married and who do not have children) is a means used by the government to increase the quality of the population. This goal is indeed one of the key objectives of the government. The latter has mandated, in this sense, the All-China Women’s Federation, propaganda services, the Public Security Bureau and civil affairs to help it implement the family planning policy (Hong Fincher, 2014:29).

The interviews reflect the tensions produced by the normative prescriptions that concern young people in relation to marriage. Young women face a double contradictory injunction. A discourse on the “quality of the population “, which emerged when they were still children, values independence, reflexivity and physical and intellectual performance. While in parallel, another discourse, also conveyed by the State and its institutions, values wives and mothers capable of taking care of their spouse and their children by ensuring the formation of harmonious families. For all the female respondents, marriage plays a central role in the meaning they give to the transition to adulthood, more important than the transition to employment. Concepts such as “stability” (wending), “guarantee” (baozhang) and “feeling of security” (anquangan) are frequently mentioned in the respondents’ discourses on marriage. Wei, who is a teacher in Bei**g and comes from Heilongjiang province, in northeast China, explains:

A cohabiting household cannot be considered a real family because the situation is not stable. [...] Such a situation would make me anxious because I have no guarantee. The government gives its approval for marriage, you receive a certificate, a marriage certificate. So, I consider marriage as legal (hefa) and cohabitation as illegal (fei hefa). If you cohabit, people might wonder: Why don’t you get married? Why do you cohabit? I think that marriage is the first step, then you can live with your spouse. Because in China if you don’t get married and you live in cohabitation, people will not only think that the couple has a problem, but that the whole family has a problem. Everyone will wonder: But why don’t they formalize their situation in front of the government by getting married? Living in cohabitation without getting married, it’s like a marriage, but with the bad sides only for a woman. You would have to do the housework, cook, without feeling secure. So why not get married? (Born in 1981, urban, Heilongjiang hukou, Master)

If the idealized conception of marriage refers to a stable union, which is meant to last a lifetime and legitimized by law, young women are down-to-earth. Like Suzhi, who raises her son alone and who works in a massage parlor in Bei**g, her words clarify those of Wei about the idea of guarantee/insurance that marriage provides:

Marriage is like life insurance for women. If a woman cohabits with her boyfriend in the long run, in case of separation she risks ending up without a house, without money and without work if she did not work. Not cohabiting is an argument to ensure that the relationship with the spouse ends with a marriage. (Born in 1978, rural, Hebei hukou, college)

Linguistic changes also reflect the weight of the injunction to marriage in the lives of young adults, and particularly young women. Sentences such as “I am part of the tribe of the unmarried” (wo shi bu hunzu) used by Shasha, or even that of “ leftover women” (shengnü) evokes a dichotomy between married and unmarried people that leaves little (or no) room for other ways of “making family”. Women who remain single beyond 27 years are stigmatized. Wei describes the situation in these terms:

Society tells us that if you are not married by 25–27 years old, there is something wrong with you. In China our traditional culture tells us that from 25–27 years old you should marry a man. And if you don’t do it others will think you are strange, or ugly, or that you have private things [...]. (Born in 1981, urban, Heilongjiang hukou, Master)

If the transition to adulthood is experienced as a journey that takes time, its duration is socially constrained, especially for young women, regardless of their social anchoring. This is illustrated by Wei’s path. She complains about the social pressure she feels because she is not yet married at over 30 years old (born in 1981, urban, Heilongjiang hukou, master’s degree). It is also exemplified by Suzhi’s life-course. She feels socially sanctioned because of her single mother status and because she gave birth to a child out of wedlock. The attitudes of other respondents illuminate the weight of these social injunctions on the shoulders of young women as well. To try to respect the social script, they accelerate the passage of role transitions characteristic of adulthood around the age of 27–28 years old.

According to Qian,

marriage is a prerequisite for obtaining a [adult] status within society. [...] a woman or a man who would remain single would have a somewhat vague social status, as the Chinese generally refer to the family status of people. If an individual does not get married, she or he could be socially discriminated against, and be perceived as an incomplete person in the sense that she would not have fulfilled her responsibilities. (Born in 1982, urban, Jilin hukou, PhD).

Getting married and having children are transitions intimately linked in the minds of young adults. The birth of children is indeed an integral part of the normative expectations surrounding marriage. Like most of the respondents, **aocui, a teacher in a private school in the Chinese capital, admits to never having asked herself the question of having or not having a child and even less of its birth outside the legitimate framework of marriage:

“To me it’s not a question, I first want to get married and then have a child” (born in 1986, rural, Heilongjiang, hukou, Bachelor).

For Han, it is clear that this is what motivates many young women:

In China many women are concerned about the issue of children. I think that many women only want to get married for this reason. [...] Really, it’s to have a child that they want to get married before 30 years old, because that’s when the body is in better condition to give birth to a child. (Born in 1989, rural, Jilin hukou, Bachelor)

Contrary to what has been observed in the United States, marriage and parenthood are not disconnected in the minds of young people in China (Furstenberg, 2010). These transitions confer new social roles and personal attributes to young adults.

2.3 “Housing [...] Is the Foundation of the Family”

“Financial autonomy” (duli shenghuo) from parents, is a central aspect in the respondents’ definitions of adulthood. According to Qian, being an adult means no longer depending on financial aid from parents to live (born in 1982, urban, Jilin hukou, PhD). This aspiration is more present in the discourse of male respondents. They feel an obligation, once adult, to be the main provider for their family. In this sense, financial autonomy from parents is less about proving their individualism than it is about them acting as breadwinners and no longer being a burden on their parents. It is about moving from a logic of assistance to a logic of reciprocity based on filial ties. Once schooling is finished, it is up to young people to support themselves financially, or even to help their parents financially. The respondents’ comments denote a deep structuring of trajectories by a strong valorization of employment, especially in male paths, with employment being the main vector of financial autonomy.

Financial autonomy is never mentioned as the only element marking the transition to adulthood. Having one’s own housing is another central element in the respondents’ discourse. Renting a home is not a satisfactory solution for the respondents. The comments of Qian and **aocui are emblematic. The respondents consider housing as a solid and stable foundation for starting a family:

There is no religion in China, but there is a belief: devotion to the family. Devotion is not for the Nation, for society or leaders. It is for the family. The family is the heart of the Nation. We all think that housing is not just a construction, a building, it is the foundation of the family [...] renting [a home] does not constitute this foundation. (Qian, born in 1982, urban, Jilin hukou, PhD)

Without a house, if marriage is still possible, it is however unthinkable to have a child. (**aocui, born in 1986, rural, Heilongjiang hukou, Bachelor).

If data suggest that young adults achieve residential autonomy early, becoming a homeowner is however not easy for them. Since the country’s opening-up to market economy and the privatization of housing, men remain the main providers of housing (Kane & Li, 2021). Access to property constitutes in the collective imagination an element of identification with the middle class (Zhang, 2008). Access to property, however, is not just a vector of social distinction. In a context where the State has largely withdrawn from its social and protective functions, property ownership is also seen as a form of economic security. This is one of the reasons why the purchase of a home plays such a central place in marriage negotiations. This subject came up nearly a hundred times in the interviews.

Although the article 3 of the Marriage law prohibits the transfer of money or gifts in connection with marriage, practices are moving away from this prohibition (Marriage Law, 1981). Even today, even if it is sanctioned by the Marriage law, the practice of the “bride price” persists both in rural and urban areas. Traditionally, once married most young women would go to live in their spouse’s family. The “bride price” was used to thank the parents of the bride for having raised her until her marriage and to compensate them for the loss of a resource (Croll, 1981; Yan, 2009). Since the 1990s in cities, the standard of private three-room apartments with “a room of one’s own” has replaced that of overcrowded apartments offered by work units (Davis, 2002). In recent decades, this new need for intimacy within the private sphere and the staggering rise in real estate prices make intergenerational cohabitation increasingly rare in urban areas.

While it is socially expected that men (or their families) provide housing at the time of marriage, the interviews revealed a more nuanced reality that depends on the financial situation of families. Very few young men were in the position of being able to offer housing to their fiancée. The interviews reveal several configurations: in the first, the spouse’s parents had already bought additional housing in anticipation of their son’s marriage, so that the young married couple could settle there. These are urban families from Bei**g and Shanghai. In the second configuration, the girl’s parents also acquired additional housing, which they transferred to their only daughter so that she can earn a rental income in case she does not live there. However, as in the first situation, her parents think it is the responsibility of their daughter’s husband and his family to provide housing for the couple. In the third configuration, which was the most common, the spouse’s parents finance part or all of the down payment necessary for the purchase of a house, and the spouses together repay the mortgage. I observed that in this situation young women usually use their dowry to invest in the purchase of the house. In the last configuration, called by the respondents “naked marriage” (luohun), they pool together their financial resources in order to be able to take out a mortgage and repay it. The future spouses can set up a common strategy and unite, as **aocui and her spouse did, to negotiate the highest possible “bride price”. This strategy aims to increase the amount of their savings and the part of the down payment they can invest in the property. **aocui thought that her in-laws would be able to finance the entire amount of the down payment for their mortgage. After the first discussions between her fiancé and his parents, it quickly became apparent that this would not be the case. They therefore decided that he would negotiate directly with his parents. **aocui believed it is important that her name appears on the deed of purchase of the property so that she is not harmed in the event of divorce. Since not only has she invested the money she received for the “bride price” as well as her savings in the apartment, but she is also repaying their mortgage at the same level as her spouse (**aocui, born in 1986, rural, Heilongjiang hukou, Bachelor).

This example shows that access to property is seen by the respondents as a marker of the transition to adulthood. For the male respondents, it is a central element of their identity, as it is a criterion by which men are judged. It embodies the autonomy and ability that men have to earn their living and to provide for their family (Kane & Li, 2021). However, as the interviews illustrate, the reality is more complex, as women also often play their part to enable the couple to become homeowners.

Housing also occupies a central place in each of the TV series analyzed. The choice to stage this private space is heavy with meaning. Until the 1990s, in an attempt to erase private spaces from social imagination, these spaces were not shown in TV series. The series “Yearnings” (kewang), first aired at the end of 1990, marks a turning point towards the individualization of housing. For the first time, the narrative is set in the family space and focuses on family life (Zhu, 2008:81).

In each of the TV dramas examined, housing plays a key symbolic role in young people’s transition to adulthood. It is depicted as a symbol of stability. In the TV drama “Ants’ Struggle”, the narrative revolves around the daily struggle of young adults from outside Bei**g (waidi ren) to make a place for themselves in the city. The staging of housing is used to show the ideal of material comfort and social status they hope to achieve through hard work. The first scene shows the dormitories in which the main characters live. Male characters live in a small room made up of several beds, without privacy, a bathroom and a communal kitchen. Women’s dormitories are separated from those of men. The second scene shows **aoyan, a young migrant. She comes from the countryside and left school after high school. She is portrayed as preparing an apartment she rented especially for the arrival of her boyfriend Hu Yifan’s mother. He, originally from a provincial city, has completed university studies in the capital. They both live in separate dormitories, in a residence located in the Tangjialing district. To convince her future mother-in-law to agree to her marrying Hu Yifan, **aoyan rented for the duration of her stay (one month) an apartment. The place, located in a freshly built residential complex inhabited mainly by middle-class families, has two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. This staging, orchestrated by **aoyan, aims to symbolize the stability of the young couple, as well as their social ascent through material comfort and social insertion in Bei**g.

The purchase of a home also constitutes an obstacle to the marriage of Tong Jiaqian and Liu Yiyang in the eyes of the young woman’s parents, in the series “Naked Wedding Era”. Liu Yiyang is thus led to prove, in a moving way, to Tong Jiaqian’s mother his willingness to work hard to provide a home for his fiancée:

I know that in your eyes I am not good enough for your daughter, you think that I have no money, no savings, that I am neither a homeowner nor a car owner. But the fact that I don’t have this now does not mean that I won’t have it later. You older people, you say that one can say how much one loves each other, but that does not allow one to survive [in other words, one cannot live on love and fresh water alone]. But ayi, I think that Jiaqian and I are capable of it. […] Once I graduated from University when I was looking for a job, I was determined to find a job that pays a lot, that allows me to buy a house, a car and that allows me to propose to Tong Jiaqian in grand style. But despite all my efforts, I cannot keep up with the speed of real estate inflation.Footnote 8

If his efforts are not enough to achieve this for the moment, he believes they will be in the future. That’s why once married the young couple plans to temporarily rent an apartment.Footnote 9 Moreover, as the tirade below suggests, the narrative places the responsibility for acquiring a home, which the couple would own, on the young man’s shoulders. Tong Jiaqian asks her fiancé who agrees:

This rental is only a transitional period. It is certain that you cannot let me live all my life in a rental, can you?Footnote 10

He also says he is ready to work hard to ensure the material comfort of the couple.Footnote 11 However, their mothers are opposed to the idea of a “naked marriage” and prefer instead multi-generational cohabitation. Again, in the TV drama “Rules before Divorce”, the renting of a home as proposed by the young married couple, Mingxuan and **nyao, is not feasible from the parents’ point of view. After a tough negotiation between the two families, it is decided that the young married couple will buy, with the help of their parents (especially those of Mingxuan, the husband), a new apartment in a residential compound.Footnote 12

In post-collectivist China, where 82.3% of the population owned their own home in 2007, the style of home purchased and inhabited became a vector of social distinction. The middle class turned away from socialist buildings. These three-storey buildings have basic equipment. They prefer to live in gated residential compound, which group several buildings over 30 floors high (Man, 2013; Tomba, 2013). These are the kinds of homes that are said in TV drama to typify “good taste”. The decoration of middle-class homes no longer reflects their allegiance to the Party-State, but the tastes, personalities, and lifestyles of their occupants.

The housing reform initiated by the State began in the early 1980s. The policy was then extended after 1988. In a first step (1980–1998),Footnote 13 the aim was to privatize public housing and housing belonging to work units. These homes were sold to employees at preferential rates.Footnote 14 As a result, the benefits enjoyed by some workers during the Maoist period have been perpetuated in post-collectivist China.Footnote 15 With the rise in property prices and the government interventionist policies,Footnote 16 these lucky workers were able to use cheaply bought homes to invest in new property in the 1990s. These years marked the beginning of the construction of commercial housing, in a new type of buildings: gated communities (shequ fengbi), which have become the new architectural standard (Tomba, 2013:187).

These changes in the housing policy have had the effect of creating a new segregation of residential spaces, which is illustrated in TV drama by opposing the two categories of housing. In the TV drama “The Era of Naked Marriage”, the different lifestyles are used to indicate a difference in social status between two families from Bei**g. Three generations of the Liu family live in a popular three-storey building. The flat they bought from the work unit is on the first floor. It consists of a kitchen, a living room in which the parents – who are workers – live, and two independent bedrooms – one is for their son and the other is for the paternal grandmother. The apartment is rudimentary. The kitchen and the pots seem to date from the Maoist era and the decoration is made from cheap objects. For their part, the Tong family lives in a two-generation (parents-child) apartment located on the upper floors of a recently built and secure residence. The apartment has a modern kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedrooms. The parents, who are civil servants, and their daughter have separate bedrooms. The decoration of their apartment is cosmopolitan. It recalls the interiors presented in IKEA store catalogs.

In the TV drama “Rules Before Divorce” the same opposition technique is used to stage the homes and implicitly signal the social status of their occupants: the Zhang family and the Li family. The Zhangs live in a popular three-storey building, an apartment bought from their work unit. The decoration of the apartment has been worked on by its occupants, but it reflects their modest financial means. Whereas the Li family live in a posh house located in an upscale suburb of the capital. The staging of the father’s professional success is reflected in the decoration of their interior with prestigious goods (solid wood traditional Chinese furniture, works of art, abundance of fruits and green plants, etc.) and the volume of spaces.

The presentation of the median and upper middle classes as homeowners of a home in new gated residential compounds or in a posh suburb is to be seen as part of the State discourse on the “quality” of the population and the construction of a society of “small prosperity” (xiaokang shehui). This latter concept refers to the Book of Rites, a classic text in which the concept first appears (Tomba, 2013). This historical reference places the project of societization proposed by the Party-State in a millennial historical continuity. By skillfully marrying socialism with classical thought, it manages to resolve the ideological conflict posed by the opening-up of the country to market economy without making a radical break with the past. The pursuit of private economic interests was recognized as legitimate and became the new standard. The rapid emergence of the consumer society not only increased individuals’ choices and material comfort, but by granting them greater autonomy to some extent, it also destroyed the State’s monopoly over individual lives and made citizens responsible for their own lives.

The places, the way they are decorated and the consumer practices that are highlighted by the mise en scène in television series are highly significant. Through these social practices and the appropriation of lifestyles associated with the middle classes, young adults seek to distance themselves from what they consider to be old-fashioned and to move closer to the feeling of belonging to the middle class. However, anyone familiar with Bei**g will realize that the homes portrayed in TV series are not always in line with social reality. There is a distortion aimed at valorizing housing associated with high social statuses. Yet, the people who live there do not always have a professional activity that would enable them to afford such luxury. The use of these representations contributes to valorizing the socioeconomic attributes of the middle class. Indeed, in 2002 during the People’s National Assembly, the Party-State called for an expansion of the proportion of the “middle income group” within the societyFootnote 17 (Li, 2013a, b:11). The middle class is seen by the Party-State as an asset and a political ally for the socioeconomic development and social cohesion of the country, offering hope of upward social mobility for the most disadvantaged fringe of the population, as well as a model level of “quality” to be reached.