LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

“Exquisite Poverty” and Identity Shifts from Rural to Urban: Lifestyle and Everyday Consumption of young people in Cosmopolitan China.

• In Event: No Longer Poor, Not Yet Middle Class: new consumer cultures of Asia and the Americas

Abstract

Against the backdrop of “the emergence of a discourse of consumer supremacy” (Choi & Li, 2020), young adults in China’s cosmopolitan cities are experiencing a new trend of living on the bare minimum of food and precarious work while showcasing selective exquisiteness in everyday cosmetics and digital accessories. This paper concentrates on such a lifestyle, locally called “exquisite poverty” (jingzhi qiong), treating it as a lens to explore Chinese young adults’ rural-to-urban identity changes and their attempt to construct a cosmopolitan lifestyle and a white-collar class ideology. The choice of “exquisite poverty” among young people, according to our qualitative research based on a group of 25 young people, is typically due to their unconscious financial planning and restricted money and resources. Meanwhile, social media (for example, WeChat) and consumerism easily persuade them to pick certain brands or digital items. Moreover, the paper echoes previous research suggesting that changes in consumer habits and activities are linked to their desire to reside in metropolitan areas (Yan, 2003). This paper constitutes a significant part of an ongoing transnational research project that seeks to understand the former urban poor through their consumption practices and changes.

Authors

• Yinghua Yu, Western Sydney University

• Zishan - Lai, National University of Singapore

• Tingting Liu, Jinan University