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'My Generation Had It All Easy'
Accounts of Anxiety and Social Order in Post-Mao Nanjing
in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
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In urban China, young people are under increasing pressure to embody the ideal of a financially secure 'match'. At the same time, their parents define marriage as 'a family matter' and provide a large part of the starting fund for their children's new family. This situation often leads to inter-generational tensions, which can be fully appreciated only by looking back at the life experiences of the parents. Many members of this older generation were displaced to the countryside to 'learn from the peasant masses'. In their accounts of those times, marriage was a troubling issue as most of them did not want to marry villagers for fear of getting stuck in the countryside. The anxieties of the old and new generations seem to be underpinned by policies promoted by state and market respectively; however, informants point to the state as the main source of responsibility for both change and continuity.