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Stepping on Two Boats: Urban Strategies of Chinese Peasants and Their Children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Danyu Wang
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During the 1990s, over seventy per cent of the married men and adult children of Stone Mill village in northeastern China have been employed i n wage labor each year. Because a vast number of household laborers (i.e. husbands, sons, and daughters) have nonagricultural jobs outside the village, daily agricultural tasks are performed by married women and elderly men, who are fondly described by the villagers of Stone Mill as “Troop Number 3860” (3860 budut). The number 38 refers to International Women's Day, March 8, representing the women in the village's agricultural labor force, while the number 60 represents the minimum age of the elderly agricultural workers.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 45 , supplement S8: Household strategies for survival 1600–2000: fission, factions and cooperation , December 2000 , pp. 179 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 2000

References

1. The name of the village and names of the villagers appearing in this paper are all pseudonyms. Unless otherwise noted, the demographic data about Stone Mill is from my 1997 survey of 315 Stone Mill couples, with wives born after 1930.

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