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Lifestyles signify who people are and who people want to be. They contain one's value orientation toward the world. The speeding urbanization over the globe has made the urban lifestyle mainstream, and so does it in China. The overwhelming range of options in cities represents a consumerist society, but meanwhile, there is an emergent underground alternative, especially from the younger generations who are pursuing a "more meaningful life." This paper does an ethnographic study on young Chinese urbanites' engagement in a village as an essential example of this trend. It argues that young people's choice for rural life is a reaction and a resistance to the social forces of consumerism and urbanization. By reflecting on the reimagination of modernity and life politics in the changing process, the research implies that accompanied by opportunities for social change, young people's promotion of rural lifestyles could be linked to the government's development agenda, and this might potentially cause new forms of inequalities in rural development. By drawing on practical experience, the paper brings narratives about young Chinese urbanites' life choices in rural places into the discussion of modernity and life politics, hopefully exemplifying a broader sociological contribution around the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gendered demands for productive and reproductive labor differently affect men's and women's decisions about not only whether to undertake off‐farm work, but where. With data from a survey of households in southwestern China, we examine the effects of individual, household, and community attributes on decisions to take local or distant off‐farm work. Men's and women's off‐farm work decisions respond differently to care and farmwork needs. For women, the primary trade‐off is between distant off‐farm work and none. For men, the primary trade‐off is between distant and local off‐farm work. Women in households with more working‐age members are more likely to take distant off‐farm work rather than stay on the farm. Increased education and household labor make men more likely to take distant relative to local off‐farm work. Household land holdings also have differing effects: for women, increased cropland area reduces odds of migration, while for men it increases odds of local relative to distant off‐farm work. By disaggregating off‐farm work location, we uncover gendered patterns that binary approaches to off‐farm work or migration obscure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research from various national contexts has shown that less privileged parents face various barriers when developing relationships with teachers compared to their more privileged counterparts. Chinese rural citizens have been disadvantaged within the hukou system, where existing studies have shown various and complex inequalities as regards rural parent–teacher relations. Such complexities, this article argues, might contribute to the ongoing discussions on the integration of Bourdieu's and Coleman's approaches to social capital. Informed by Bourdieu's three moments of field analysis, this study presents three core themes as regards Chinese rural parent–teacher relations: physical separation, social distance, and kinship sentiments. Through qualitatively exploring the life stories of a group of Chinese rural students before their entry to elite universities, this article bridges Bourdieu's social reproduction stance and Coleman's productive view in relation to social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]