Self-reliant masculinities

In this article, my approach acknowledges that Chinese masculinities, like Chinese femininities, are relationally constructed (Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002). In positioning these relational structures in the current socioeconomic framework, my research resonates with the work of Niko Besnier Daniel Guinness, Mark Hann, and Uroš Kovač (2018) who examine how gender responds to and is constructed through the self-enterprising ethos invoked by neoliberalism. Drawing on the research of Andrea Cornwall, Frank Karioris, and Nancy Lindisfarne (2016) amongst others, which conveys how young men in many societies have been most affected by the new labor conditions created by the neoliberal turn, Besnier and colleagues demonstrate that institutions of the neoliberal order are hegemonic in producing new masculinities; thus, they are not merely reproductions of old values and hegemonies but continuously constructed through the intersectionality of economic, political, and social structures.

As China's runaway economic growth has unfolded over the years, new masculinities have been shaped through the success stories of men who dominate middle- and upper-strata jobs that are both high skilled and highly valued (Dong 2019). They are portrayed as pioneering self-made individuals, or chenggong renshi, who have made it to the top from rural and working-class backgrounds, guided by a self-enterprising ethos—one demonstrating the innovativeness, individual drive, and adaptability required in order to compete in the capitalist market and progress into Chinese middle-class citizenship (Hanser 2002; Hoffman 2006; Ong and Zhang 2008). These personifications are not unique to China; indeed, they closely resemble those investigated by anthropologists working outside China on the neoliberal order (Gershon 2011, 2017) and capitalist austerity (Bear 2015). At the same time, they stand at a historical conjuncture that has resulted in the country's notable economic growth continues to sustain images promoting socialist collective interests through physically oriented masculine bodies laboring at frontline production jobs.

Although men continue to surge ahead of women among the country's richest citizens (Flannery et al. 2020), their wealth has not halted the general sense of “masculine crisis” that has been unfolding across Chinese society. As Chinese authorities roll out a number of initiatives to combat fears of a decline in manliness and physical strength, they advocate an archetype of masculinity in their efforts to restore a gender order that essentializes traditional binaries. In solely focusing on gender, educators, parents, government officials and experts who support social and political discourse on the nation's so-called masculinity deficit, ultimately overlook the sources of these anxieties. In a country faced with vast socioeconomic transformations, these conversations project anxiety that the social status of men is being devalued and made subservient to an increasingly “feminized” Chinese population. Consequently, in placing gender at the center of these debates, structural factors responsible for deepening inequalities across the population, such as class and place of origin, are neglected (J. Yang 2010).

Jaesok Kim's (2015) research on the masculinity crisis challenging unskilled male migrant workers in the urban factories of Shandong Province addresses the anxiety they feel. Reflecting trends across the country, it sheds light on the preference for a female workforce in China's industries. Faced with reversed gender hierarchies, male factory workers stand little chance of promotion or improving their lives and in effect feel they have been subordinated into an industrial underclass. In response to these constraints, Kim describes how men engage in “manly” practices and exhibitions of masculinity that reflect the working-class penetration of the wider socioeconomic background. Drawing on Paul Willis ([1977] 1981) and Sherry B. Ortner (1991), Kim describes how these performances lead to compliance with their working-class status. My findings on the manly practices that are displayed resonate with Kim's research but, rather than exploring the constraints that underclass men face, I show how they steer male rural returnees to improve their subject positions in the natal village both through forging and succeeding at self-reliant work.

Rural returnees in Meili

Since China's economic reform and integration into the global economy, people's associations with work and labor have been radically redefined. In the past three decades, citizens are no longer the recipients of state socialist welfare wherein fulfilling job assignments was a national duty and an expression of loyalty toward socialist nation-building. Instead, urban job seekers are responsible for their own choices and professional achievements. In the rural context, this responsibility was shifted onto the individual with the establishment of the household responsibility system. The promise of reaching a new era of rural prosperity and awakened peasant agency did not materialize, however, and urban views of China's rural citizens as backward and passive heightened. The countryside came to represent an increasing burden on the state, countered by efforts to modernize and raise the income of rural households through rural-to-urban migration on the understanding that the individuals undertaking it could realize their full potential (Day 2019; Murphy 2004; Yan 2003b).

While rural-to-urban migration has lifted vast populations out of poverty, the government remains burdened by the divisive development gulf between the nation's countryside and its cities. The Chinese state's strategy on rural development took a new turn in the first decade of the twenty-first century with the launch of numerous policies and campaigns aimed at assisting rural citizens to realize their full potential. These included the promotion of village modernization by building a “new socialist countryside,” a program developed by Hu Jintao's administration (2002–2012) in 2005 and later amended through the rural revitalization program under Xi Jinping's rule (2012–present). State-led rural campaigns strive to replace the ethos of a passive rural citizens dependent on government aid with that of an active, self-reliant subject empowered by consumer and entrepreneurial consciousness who can act on their own initiative to escape poverty into middle-class wealth (Bruckermann 2020; Day 2008; Yan 2003a).

Cultural heritage preservation presents the face of these pledges with the strategic aim of developing tourism and eradicating extreme poverty in efforts to build a moderately prosperous (xiaokang) society. The timeline, put in place by Jiang Zemin (1993–2002), recorded a 2020 national benchmark in preparation for 2021, when the Chinese Communist Party would be celebrating its centennial year.¹ Owing to Meili's well-preserved architectural exterior, the vernacular setting of the village has not gone unnoticed in the nation's heritage boom, and over the course of the past decade it has acquired acclaimed status: multiple elements of its cultural heritage have been recognized, nationally and transnationally, as merits to be protected. Similar campaigns are located across the province of Guizhou, which has one of the lowest GDP per capita among China's 34 provincial regions and where state-led development schemes are emblematic of broader discourses on development and modernization in the region since the early 2000s (Chio 2014; Oakes 2013).

The financial promise of national campaigns is welcome news for Meili's rural returnees who are faced with ever-decreasing opportunities for long-distance migration. Most households aspire to leverage these campaigns by running small enterprises targeting tourists, such as selling handicraft work, running a guesthouse (nongjiale), or participating in ethnic choir performances. But in a village of 308 registered households and 1,365 inhabitants, surrounded by paddy fields and mountains and isolated from neighboring villages and settlements, tourism development has been slow. Villagers have grown hesitant about trusting or relying on a regional tourism industry that does not measure up to the growth that it promises. Instead, opportunities are limited and competition among villagers is rife, leaving many young male returnees unable to fulfill the role of producer and reproducer of their family;² to get by, most residents engage in a “multiplicity of labor” that blurs the boundaries between work and how rural populations construct their lives (Mao 2021). Instead of targeting tourists, some households run family enterprises that sell services to the local community, including sewing and carpentry, working as a part-time teacher in the primary school, or running a small kiosk, breakfast rice-noodle stall, or butchery. Beyond these informal businesses, the timber industry also provides labor opportunities, as does temporary manual labor working for regional local construction projects and infrastructural renewal. Supplementing these multiple sources of income, many households receive money directly from the government as cadre members or through a government subsistence poverty allowance that covers subsidies on medical care, renovation of dilapidated buildings and education. As is typical of agrarian villages in the Guizhou region, all Meili households still depend on animal husbandry and a subsistence livelihood that incorporates the production of rice, vegetables, fruit, berries, and sometimes cotton and indigo for household consumption and petty cash. Land continues to hold value as life-long security and shapes expectations of self-reliant labor, to which I now turn with the narrative of Uncle Long.

“A regular peasant life”: Labor with conviction

I got to know Uncle Long through my close ties to his wife, Siwei, with whom I spent many mornings and afternoons doing embroidery or helping with house and gardening chores, followed by evenings with them both watching television after dinner over cups of rice wine. Their hospitality was generous, for which I was indebted, but what drew me to Uncle Long was his eagerness to take me to the paddy fields when I first arrived for my extended period of fieldwork at the beginning of the harvest season. This enthusiasm contrasted with the attitudes of most of the villagers who expressed shame about being seen inflicting hardship labor on the urban foreigner and required more time to adjust to the transformation from my role as a “guest” to a possible source of help with their multiple chores. Uncle Long's eagerness to put me to work portrayed his attitudes to labor and being a productive individual, a subject he often spoke about through the lens of his own life narrative. The pride he carried in being a tough laborer was visible in his mannerisms, everyday practice, bodily composure, and through the stories and self-reflections he told of a past in which agricultural production dominated all areas of life.

Uncle Long associated real labor with farming, and proudly strove to live what he called a “regular peasant life” (zhengshi de nongmin shenghuo). Born in 1973, in the final years of the Cultural Revolution, he had to depend on himself from a young age after the tragic loss of his parents. Coming from a small lineage, he had few kin who could support him, and he had no choice but to drop out of primary school to labor in the paddy fields, cultivate a garden, and raise livestock. He had fond memories of his early school years and remained saddened that it had been necessary to forgo an education in order to learn how to get by on his own. His adult life took a new turn when he and Siwei engaged in wage labor in the city. Unlike the majority of rural households who leave their children in the care of patrilateral grandparents, Uncle Long and Siwei took turns in commuting between city jobs and working their fields while raising their son and daughter in Meili.

With the savings they gathered over years of dagong labor making costume jewelry in factories and enduring the desert winters building railway tracks from Beijing to the Chinese- Mongolian border, in 2015 they were finally able to return to the village and rebuild their house as a remarkably spacious, three-story wooden guesthouse (nongjiale). This trajectory allowed Siwei and Uncle Long to uphold a positive, “self-reliant” image of themselves. This was further enhanced by the mockery that Uncle Long directed at the new class of urban knowledge workers and technocratic elite arriving in Meili to work on state-led development. These rotating groups were broadly composed of individuals highly educated in architecture, archaeology, urban planning and/or heritage studies who worked alongside the local government. Predominantly middle-class, Han Chinese urbanites, most of them have been conducting longitudinal research across the region and identify themselves as experts on Dong architecture and/or rural restoration. Their role as urban knowledge workers and technocratic elite in Meili's state-led heritage scheme aligns them with the state's telos of development.

Visits from architecture scholars working as private intermediaries and prefectural government officials affirm Meili's position as a nationally acclaimed heritage site. Furthermore, the reports compiled from these visits are important documents in budgeting plans that boost the professional status of the Cultural Bureau. Transforming the village into a site of scrutiny, each group of professionals produces a new survey and inventory that measures, calculates, and analyzes the way of life of the villagers and the vernacular setting of their homes. Creating a degree of leverage across vertical state power relations, the research and reports reflect national priorities of implementing technocratic planning into policymaking and strategies that help imagine the future of the Chinese countryside (Chio 2017). More generally, the documentation and field reports of the village space that are produced by visiting teams of researchers, scholars, and consultants function as interventions that seek to impose a particular order (Rautio 2021).

The work put into these reports is heavily bureaucratic and does not always inspire enthusiasm in those whose task it is to produce them. Speaking to prefectural government officials who are allocated to “poor villages” (pinkun cun) as part of the national rural revitalization scheme, I learned that countryside auditing rounds are mostly avoided by officials if possible. In fact, the task was regarded as so undesirable that officials have come up with strategies to deceive superiors about their visits, such as smearing mud on their shoes before returning to their government offices in the city or deliberately lounging in their beds to make it appear as if they have slept in them before rounds of auditing check-ups in the village.

Uncle Long lived close to key actors working alongside the government when they stayed at his guesthouse, and, observing the elements of fabrication in their work, he became increasingly skeptical. Coming at a time when top- down heritage schemes are increasingly dominating development initiatives and shaping villages into spaces governed by preservation discourse and protocols, the skepticism he expressed was framed by mockery. He contrasted his own labor with the screen-work of the urban technocrat to express apathy toward technocraticly driven developmentalist projects, claiming: “They think they are like professionals but all they do is look at maps and charts. One of them sleeps all day and the other chats to girls all night; they won't get anything done! Really, the problem is that they don't know how to get their hands dirty and do the work.” Uncle Long's mockery presents a widely shared skepticism about urban experts and the products of their labor that, from his point of view, yield few results. His comment also indicates he feels challenged by their expertise, they do not know to get their hands dirty—thus it is not real work of the laborious sort. As “Ye loves you” might claim, their work was not “labor with conviction” nor was it something that the villagers were unable to take care of themselves. Instead, the contrasts that Uncle Long makes between the governing technocrats who fabricate their expertise (“they think they are like professionals”) put them in a separate realm from the laborer (who “gets their hands dirty and does the work”). This binary resonates with James C. Scott's (1998) description of the limitations of developmentalist schemes that suppress knowledge, or metis, with technical knowledge, or techne. Aware of these disparaging binaries, Uncle Long mocks the screen-work of technocrats to boost the value he places on hard work in order to enhance his subordinate status in society.

“Eats well and does little”: Waiting for labor

Uncle Long did not only contrast his proud self-identity as a rural laborer with the screen- working technocrats in Meili but also with today's youth, including his eighteen-year-old son, Jinbo, for whom physical labor was not an aspiration. This disparity arose in conversation and often led to conflicts between the two. One afternoon as his parents and I were preparing to have dinner, Jinbo called from neighboring Yunnan Province asking his father for a sum of money after failing yet another driving test. Squatting on a low stool beside the close-to-ground-level dinner table, I listened as Uncle Long's normally calm temper turned to anger on the phone, and the call came to an erupt end. Forcefully throwing his phone onto the sofa, Uncle Long rejoined me at the dinner table and, after a brief moment of silence, downed a large gulp of rice wine. When his normal composure returned, he described the content of the call and the frustration and financial stress his son inflicts on him, telling me, “I am not going to pay my son's bills anymore. He can figure out his own way. Just let me live a ‘regular peasant life’ (zhengshi de nongmin shenghuo).”

Echoing the complaints and disparaging remarks directed at Meili's unemployed returnee youth by the older generation, Uncle Long described Jinbo as someone who “eats well and does little (haochi lanzuo)” around the home. These comments were also directed at Jinbo a couple of months after his return to Meli from Yunnan, when I too realized that he would regularly sleep into the afternoon to recover from his nights of light gambling and socializing with other rural returnees in his age group. The only exception was a short dagong opportunity working on the infrastructural renewal of another Dong village under the rural revitalization scheme in the neighboring county; however, after seven days of labor, Jinbo called his parents to complain about the heavy workload and plead for them to pick him up and bring him home. Jinbo was also financially reliant on his older sister, who worked in real estate in the county town and regularly sent him money to support his consumption habits.

Uncle Long often complained about Jinbo's inability to be self-reliant; furthermore, he contributed minimally in the household and was unable to work the fields without guidance from his parents. In Meili, where land as life security continues to hold value, this expression of scorn was not unique to the dynamics of Uncle Long's family; indeed, it was a sentiment shared by many of the older generation. After spending prolonged periods of their youth in urban environments, many young men are unable to take on the full responsibility for tilling the fields and transplanting the rice because they have been deskilled in agricultural labor. The harsh critique posed at them by the older generation speaks to the centrality that agricultural work plays in Meili where contradictory value systems often intersect in conflicting ways for rural citizens trying to satisfy familial expectations while navigating a contemporary labor market contingent on capitalist accumulation and profit. The laziness of young men becomes an easier target of criticism than the structural factors that place the countryside more broadly at a disadvantage.³

The alienation from agricultural labor felt by younger rural returnees like Jinbo leaves many in a state of temporal disruption. The sense of waiting they experience speaks to the inferiority of status attached to villages, in much the same way Jonathan Parry (2003) describes migrant steel workers in India who perceive their natal villages as “waiting rooms.” Waiting can be interpreted as a phase of liminality that helps us better understand the wider social context as a juncture in people's lives. Similar to the boredom and waiting that becomes the dreaded fate of unemployed men in Niger (Masquelier 2013) and Northern India (Jeffrey 2010), Meili rural returnees are faced with living in a state of limbo and temporal disruption. Waiting for an event that might never materialize or that has been too long in the coming, boredom becomes a response to immobility but also an expression of agentive potential. In recent years this sense of passively letting time pass has been discussed more broadly across China under the rubric of the term “lying flat” (tangping), which reveals the form of people's response to the overtime work culture (Santos et al. 2021) and their resistance to capitalist modes of labor (Gong and Liu 2021). While not neglecting the structural limitations of unemployment, idleness among male rural returnees is also a means of “lying flat” to counter manual jobs that mistreat and impose exploitative conditions on staff; it is also a response to the state development schemes they have observed unfold sequentially over the years. “Lying flat” defies the expectations of self-autonomy that rural revitalization schemes expect of rural Chinese citizens. Aware that the agentive potential that is required of them is not achievable without rural infrastructural support, doing nothing and waiting becomes an expression of solidarity that expresses deeper frustrations, anxieties, and insecurities about their inability to fulfill the roles in society that are expected of them.

I now turn to Jinlong, who replaced waiting with entrepreneurial livelihood strategies to refashion and distinguish himself from the inferior identities foisted on him in the urban context. In responding to the constraints of immobility, Jinlong chose a different path to that marked by Uncle Long's self-reliant labor. I have demonstrated that Uncle Long presented the differences between himself as a peasant and the technocrat as located in his ability to labor and his self-reliant, rural productivist ethos, juxtaposing the latter with the screen-work of technocrats who travel to rural ethnic China in state-led development schemes as ruling elites and yet show few results in the eyes of local inhabitants. Uncle Long expressed scorn for such behavior, which allowed him to reassert his male status in his achievement of living self- reliantly. Jinlong, on the other hand, heightened his masculinity by distinguishing himself from the labor of the peasantry. As a means of opposing the hard work and frugality in which Uncle Long took pride, Jinlong's masculinity drew on urban constructs of virility to hide the sense of waiting and boredom he faces. Attracted to the freedom and virility that an entrepreneurial livelihood promises, he transplanted these constructs into the rural setting to ease some of the tension of alienation generated by the growth of the capitalist market economy.

“He speaks spicy”: Entrepreneurial charisma

I came to regard 38-year-old Jinlong as the most resolute example in Meili of a rural returnee's struggles to prosper in the wake of post-Mao entrepreneurial promises. From living like a hermit collecting saplings from trees, to setting up a glove factory in coastal Guangdong with his wife, to returning to rural Guizhou and selling timber and endangered trees species—Jinlong has dipped his toes into a range of business initiatives. When I met him, he self-identified as “boss” (laoban) in a number of regional development schemes. In a way, Jinlong's boss-like persona resembled Uncle Long's depiction of the technocrats and academics who travel through Meili with their maps and charts without getting their hands dirty in their line of work, chatting to girls all night. I also interpreted his risk- taking business attempts as resembling the “bluffing” developed by urban male youth in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to forge a sense of selfhood that appears modern and wealthy (Newell 2012), and the economy of fraud, swindle, and deception in which marginalized youth engage to accumulate wealth in Cameroon (Ndijo 2008). In the context of rural returnees in Meili, fraud and bluffing allow men such as Jinlong to access entrepreneurial livelihoods and distinguish themselves from disparaging rural subjectivities when faced with immobility. Jinlong responded to these constraints by acquiring his own entrepreneurial livelihood strategies tempered by spicy language and an audacious outlook in order to forge a sense of male selfhood.

Spending time with Jinlong was like traversing a thin line between reality and fiction. He possessed a range of outspoken, boastful, and brash mannerisms that would put the humble conviction of “Ye loves you” to shame. Older female villagers advised me not to take Jinlong's vulgar stories at face value, saying, “He speaks spicy (ta shuohuo hen la).” Others bluntly warned, “Don't believe a single word that comes from his mouth.” Jinlong fancied himself a ladies’ man and flaunted this to the women around him. When I first started my fieldwork, I watched from afar as he had the flock of local women around him rolling on the floor laughing at his stories, which did not shy away from vulgar, promiscuous detail. As I started to get to know him better, he also shared these stories with me, many of which derived from his mobility away from Meili. “I've played with Miao girls,”⁴ he proudly asserted with a wide grin. He had the ability to spice up mundane events so that even trips to the doctor transformed themselves into something from an X-rated movie. At other times he liked to show his more emotional side and recollected stories of heartbreak, such as having to leave his first true love in Yunnan Province to fulfill the role of the filial son, marry a Dong woman from within Meili village and bear two sons.

The hypersexuality that Jinlong's stories displayed is not unique to him; rather, it mirrors wider trends, particularly from the beginning of the reform era when chivalry corresponded with affinity to a male collective and gender ideals. As free love and casual hook-ups are often associated with the urban environment, Jinlong's spicy stories, self-proclamations of sexual prowess, and declarations of past romances drew on these ideals and gave him the leverage to express a sense of male capability (nengli) that aligns with sexual potency and economic merit (Driessen and Sier 2019; Osburg 2016).

Many of Jinlong's business attempts were impeded by increasing competition as wealthier private investors from coastal cities forced him into a disadvantaged position. Only rarely, however, would Jinlong dismally confess to the hopelessness he experienced over his failure to turn his entrepreneurial endeavors into profit and the enormous debt he was collecting year after year. Yet, even though Jinlong's entrepreneurial initiatives were dwindling, he was unwilling to seek temporary migrant labor work and go dagong, which he told me would be demeaning. Anything was better than becoming subservient to manual work for wages, despite his plans driving him to the brink of immobility and waiting. He longed for the freedom and virility that an entrepreneurial livelihood would offer him, disguising his limitations with spicy stories and proclamations of sexual prowess and promiscuity.

Embedded in historical, political and social structures, Uncle Long draws on a sense of otherness to project his pride in the “regular peasant life” that he leads, contrasted with his distrust for the state-led development schemes and the regional tourism industry. Jinlong's self-presentation diverges with the productivist ethos of labor of Uncle Long who, despite his recent guesthouse venture, narrates his masculine self-reliant narrative through hard work, productivity and honest labor. On the other hand, Jinlong develops entrepreneurial livelihood strategies and cultivates charisma in response to the dreaded fate of immobility and waiting, which many rural returnees face. Both strategies are valid routes to conferring male status and self-reliance to improve their subject positions in the natal village. At the same time, given the ethos that rural, state-led campaigns impose on rural citizens, avoiding compliance with these demeaning perceptions, including acts of resistance inherent to waiting, carries the potential for setbacks, which was most prevalent in Jinlong's immense debt.

Poised on the margins of China's economic development, Jinlong faced precarity and continuous struggle to attain the livelihood he so desired, thus reflecting the experiences of many rural returnees across China. Like the waiting exemplified by Jinbo and his peers, “lying flat” can be interpreted as a response and even resistance to systemic hierarchal structures. In a society where self-reliance is a precondition of economic success, Jinlong countered feelings of boredom and failure by appearing audaciously groomed, implying a purchasing power that resembled that of a charismatic man of influence. Jinlong's trajectory sheds light on the opportunities that labor and consumption offer China's marginalized populations in their efforts to become cosmopolitan and modern subjects—to blend in by buying in, so to speak. Yet the overwhelming desire to spend money and consume is thwarted by the lack of consumer power of these peripheral populations, further isolating them in labor exploitation schemes where unequal social relations continue to be played out.

Conclusion: On self-reliant masculinities and rural returnees in ethnic China

Uncle Long and Jinlong's life choices and approaches to self-reliant masculinities reflect those of many male rural returnees of their respective age cohorts. Aware of the inferior connotations of rural citizens as burdens on the state—rather than compliantly accepting their burdens, as Kim's (2015) research argues of unskilled, working-class male migrants in the urban factories of Shandong Province—I have described how their projections of self-reliant masculinity become responses to and rejections of their insecurities. Whether adopting an entrepreneurial lifestyle or wholeheartedly living the “regular peasant life,” both provide an aura of self-reliant masculinity, even if only in appearance, that improves their subject positions at the local level and heightens a sense of collective pride in the village as a place in its own right.

The narratives of Jinlong and Uncle Long both exemplify the challenges that many of China's rural citizens face in accessing the market from afar, which are felt in gendered ways. In a country that has created a labor regime that has lifted vast rural populations out of poverty, the precarious work conditions imposed on working-class populations have also added to the sense of “masculine crisis” unfolding across the country. Driven by fears that there is a decline of manliness in the country's youth, the government-led unfolding of the “masculine crises” also recognizes these gendered challenges. In their attempts to address this crisis, a certain archetype of masculinity that essentializes traditional binaries is heightened, thereby neglecting or downplaying structural factors responsible for the deepening inequalities and felt anxieties that many men experience (Yang 2010). Rather than regurgitating the “masculine crisis” through a state narrative, this article probes those neglected structural factors to inform broader understandings of the ongoing insecurities that China's male villagers face upon returning to their natal homes. In portraying how rural returnees adopt self-reliant masculinities, the analysis in this article contributes to the work of Besnier and colleagues (2018) to describe how men respond to the self-enterprising ethos invoked by neoliberalism.

Recognizing how male rural returnees are harnessing self-reliant masculinities to reclaim status and heighten a sense of collective pride in and affiliation with their natal village in response to the wider socioeconomic conditions shaped by state interventions (or lack thereof) remains critical. With the increased costs of living and family reproduction in China's urban centers, families will be expected to be increasingly self-reliant. Meanwhile, the anxieties and insecurities that rural migrants face will only continue to grow and the future of maintaining self-reliant livelihoods for China's massive population of rural migrants and rural returnees remains uncertain. As the pace of out- migration in China slows, positioning the lives of rural returnees alongside historical-political national amendments to rural policy remains vital to moving beyond discussions of the so-called masculinity deficit to consider the wider socioeconomic conditions prompting anxiety and disappointment, especially for men.