Page 18 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

INTRODUCTION 5
Maids for non-cadre well-off households re-emerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the
changing conditions of the reform period. The return of the maid (commonly called
‘nanny’ or baomu) thus represents the reinvention of an ‘old’ domain of female
employment. Sun argues that the arrival of the maid as a new element in the urban
workforce ‘has dramatically altered the cultural landscape of Chinese cities’.
The arrival of maids in urban areas such as Beijing followed the usual pattern of
migration based on local connections. According to Sun, it was women from Wuwei
village in Anhui Province who were among the very earliest to migrate to other regions in
search of a better economic future. She notes that domestic service offers opportunities for
job mobility denied many rural women. Some use their earlier jobs in Beijing as a base
from which they step forth to other opportunities. For example, they may study part-
time, accumulate capital and then eventually start up their own enterprises. Others seek
out money-making opportunities in the city for their children and family members. In
providing employment opportunities for others in her own village, the maid thus
‘becomes a conduit between home and the city…an initiator and a vital link in the chain of
rural-urban migration’.
Once the maids have been in the city for a long time, it becomes harder to return to
rural life. Sun notes the ambivalence many feel for their native place. They experience
feelings of nostalgia but also revulsion at the ‘backward’ state of their home villages. She
describes this as part of the process whereby the rural woman becomes ‘modern’. In the
urban environment they become ‘civilised’; they learn about equality, privacy, freedom,
modern household technology and modern sanitation and practices. In this way the rural
maid becomes ‘the object of the modernizing process’.
During the reform period maids from a number of regions have competed for work in
the Beijing market. Beijing employers tend to categorise maids by place of origin, a
process Sun describes as a type of commercial ‘branding’. Provincial stereotypes play a
role in this competition: the Sichuan maid is perceived as better-looking than her Anhui
counterpart and more docile. The Wuwei maid has now come to be thought of as less
desirable because of her alleged tendency to congregate, relate gossip about her
employers and tutor novice maids on the tricks of the trade. The Chifeng maid, who came
from a poor region in Inner Mongolia, brought further competition. According to Sun,
the effect of the ‘branding’ of migrant maids in urban areas is to further confirm
stereotypes concerning social stratification between urban regions and provinces.
One of the most interesting changes in the later reform period is the arrival of the local
urban maid—that is, the Beijing maid. This is a much more recent phenomenon, forced
on some women due to the downsizing of state enterprises. Local maids are likely to be
older women ‘stood-down’ (xiagang) from state enterprises. As Sun notes, the trend of
local Beijingers to enter the despised occupation of maid ‘represents a fundamental shift in
people’s values regarding work, self-worth and money’. Local baomu cost more but they
have good ‘brand’ attractiveness. They are seen as possessing more local knowledge, as
more ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’ (they know how to programme a microwave) and are much
less likely to abscond with goods from the households of their employers.
The association between poverty, rural origin and criminality has spurred the Chinese
state to intervene in the originally casual and autonomous arrangements made between