Jizhu xiangchou: rural nostalgia and revitalization in Xi-era China

Thesis

This dissertation probes a critical “turning point” in mainland China’s development. This turning point is characterized by an observable shift in the state’s developmental priorities from the urban to the rural, and a noticeable shift in official and popular discourses surrounding the concept of ‘rurality.’ Specifically, under the Xi-administration, and especially as evidenced by the state’s Rural Revitalization Strategy, I argue that there is a renewed urgency and call to action for capital – human, financial, and cultural – to be redirected out of China’s swollen cities and (back) into its depleted countryside. Meanwhile, whereas the ‘backwards countryside’ has been viewed as the underdeveloped antithesis to the ‘modern city;’ now, it is the ‘rural idyll’ that is framed as the desired escape from the ‘urban disease.’ Following decades of urban-biased development, China is now confronting a series of anthropogenic ‘crises’ across not only its political-economic and sociocultural landscapes, but to borrow from Li Zhang’s Anxious China, there is also a rupture in people’s “inner landscapes.” Recent years have seen not only a top-down imperative to build-up rural industries, but, critically, I also observe an almost ‘nostalgic’ yearning across society to literally or figuratively ‘return’ to the countryside. Using the ancient village of Heyang, situated in Xinjian Township, Jinyun County, Zhejiang Province, this dissertation illustrates how intersecting at these nodes of political-economic necessity, ecological urgency, and sociocultural and psychological desires to “return” to the countryside is the mandarin Chinese concept of xiangchou 乡愁. In the spirit of Raymond Williams’ (1976) seminal work, Keywords, this dissertation works towards a (re)definition of xiangchou as a critical keyword within contemporary China during a pivotal developmental ‘turning point.’

Authors: Qian, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-zbdjobqzq
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: migration; nostalgia; rural development; cultural studies; contemporary China; urban-rural relations; rural revitalization; rural China; affect; ethnography; area studies; rural modernity
• Subjects: Case method; Anthropology; Rural-urban divide; Rural-urban relations; Rural development; Urban-rural migration; Rural elderly; Area studies