Page 171 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

158 SALLY SARGESON
colour and texture to that monochromatic representation, showing that middle-aged
mothers wielded considerable influence over their sons and, through them, over other
household members.
From the vantage point of an investigation into the factors that are propelling the ‘rural
housing boom’ in Zhejiang Province, however, I have found that women on the verge of
marriage are now in a strong bargaining position. They choose whom they will wed, and
in the process of making that choice they negotiate the physical conditions and household
forms in which they will live. Conversely, the mothers of marriageable sons might well
lose out in negotiations with prospective daughters-in-law over marital payments, post-
marital residence and household form. Admittedly, it is impossible to demonstrate the
extent to which young women directly influence the decisions taken by potential spouses
and their families with respect to housing. After all, the acquisition of a dwelling might
entail years of saving, complicated financial transactions, government authorisation and
commercial contracts. But there is no question that the popular belief that ‘no woman
would marry a man without a new house’ motivates many village families to build,
renovate, divide and rebuild.
This study found no evidence to support the hypothesis that the trend towards
devolving family wealth at marriage rather than after the death of the patriarch, and the
conversion of marital payments into the built form, is a response to rural industrialisation
and marketisation in China. On the contrary, it is apparent that village families do not
expect to protect and enhance their productive property through time by transforming it
into residential housing. The complex property rights regime in the countryside and
limited market demand for rural housing actually discourage investment in rural real
estate. In the one case-study village in which industry and commerce is highly developed
and housing is, indeed, a lucrative investment, newly-weds co-reside with parents and
wealth is inherited. Nor is there any reason to conclude that the construction of housing
for newly-weds is an outcome of efforts by patrilineal families to ensure continuation of
their house. Rather, all the evidence suggests that the changes in the methods of intra-
familial wealth transmission and the outlay of wealth on housing are related to young
women’s marital demands. And those demands, in turn, reflect women’s efforts to gain
some degree of autonomy and control in their own homes.
It is also clear that young women’s housing demands have consequences that extend well
beyond negotiations over marital payments and the building activity of individual families.
They are giving impetus to labour migration, the remittance of monies for residential
construction and, on occasion, villagers’ investment in urban real estate markets. Young
women’s preference for a home of their own is contributing to the growing incidence of
nuclear households and the creation of life-styles distinct to different generations within
villages. The material culture of villages is being transformed, as indigenous architectural
traditions are being superseded by designs and materials purchased from urban and
international firms. And commercially produced housing designs import new concepts of
privacy, leisure, conjugal intimacy and childhood into village life. Finally, in the process
of negotiating their post-marital life, young women are remaking themselves and their
families in the image of idealised ‘modern’ units of consumption and are re-engendering
the domestic realm.