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RURAL ORIGINS, CITY LIVES: Class and Place in Contemporary China. By Roberta Zavoretti. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. xviii, 202pp. US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-295-99924-1.
In Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China, Roberta Zavoretti narrates fruit-business owner Zhang's family life, recounts interviews with bakery-owner Huang and his colleagues, and portrays the lives of tailors Xu Qing and Ding Li, and extends her discussions on how to understand nongmingong, or rural-to-urban migrants, in the context of Chinese urbanization and the country's market-oriented social transformation.
The term nongmingong refers not only to peasant workers in manufacturing industries, but includes those rural-to-urban migrants working in the service and commerce sectors. These nongmingong are not always employees; some are self-employed and have small household business, and some even recruit native laid-off workers into their work units. Neither are they always poor; some even have privately owned vehicles, though these vehicles are mostly used for business and production purposes and not consumption. Some nongmingong even purchase homes in their host cities. Therefore, the nongmingong are not a homogeneous group; they are diverse in terms of work patterns, incomes, family arrangements, attitudes towards marriage and childbirth, lifestyles, and urban identities.
That said, their inferior situation is obvious. Nongmingong leave rural areas to live in the city, some in city centers and mixed residences with native city residents, though their living conditions remain poor. Some nongmingong live in their workplaces, and some live in the basements of buildings. Their lifestyles often...