Both Yuk-ling, a busy Hong Kong mother of two, and Chi-ying, a young single woman from a remote village in northern China, work in electronics factories owned by the same foreign corporation, manufacturing identical electronic components. After a decade of job growth and increasing foreign investment in Hong Kong and South China, both women are also participating in the spectacular economic transformation that has come to be called the South China miracle. Yet, as Ching Kwan Lee demonstrates in her unique and fascinating study of women workers on either side of the Chinese-Hong Kong border, the working lives and factory cultures of these women are vastly different. In this rich comparative ethnography, Lee describes how two radically different factory cultures have emerged from a period of profound economic change. In Hong Kong, "matron workers" remain in factories for decades. In Guangdong, a seemingly endless number of young "maiden workers" travel to the south from northern provinces, following the promise of higher wages. Whereas the women in Hong Kong participate in a management system characterized by "familial hegemony," the young women in Guangdong find an internal system of power based on regional politics and kin connections, or "localistic despotism." Having worked side-by-side with these women on the floors of both factories, Lee concludes that it is primarily the differences in the gender politics of the two labor markets that determine the culture of each factory. Posing an ambitious challenge to sociological theories that reduce labor politics to pure economics or state power structures, Lee argues that gender plays a crucial role in the cultures and management strategies of factories that rely heavily on women workers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1999. Both Yuk-ling, a busy Hong Kong mother of two, and Chi-ying, a young single woman from a remote village in northern China, work in electronics factories owned by the same foreign corporation, manufacturing identical electronic components. After a decade o

This book explores gender dynamics in the indigenous villages (also known as walled villages) in post-handover Hong Kong. It looks at how Hong Kong's reunification with China has impacted the walled villagers, in particular the women, and how the walled villages' current gender dynamics in return reflects the changes that have happened in Hong Kong after the reunification with China. It traces the historical development of the walled villages, outlines the nature of walled-village society, and explores the changes currently at work including the erosion of the rural/urban divide, the increasing participation of indigenous women in Hong Kong society more widely and the breakdown of traditional social norms, especially patriarchy.

Finalist for the 2014 ForeWord IndieFab Book of the Year Award in the Women's Studies Category Bronze Medalist, 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Women Issues Category Winnerof the 2015 Emily Toth Award presented by the Popular Culture Association & American Culture Association Warrior Women considers the significance of Chinese female action stars in martial arts films produced across a range of national and transnational contexts. Lisa Funnell examines the impact of the 1997 transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule on the representation of Chinese identities—Hong Kong Chinese, mainland Chinese, Chinese American, Chinese Canadian—in action films produced domestically in Hong Kong and, increasingly, in cooperation with mainland China and Hollywood. Hong Kong cinema has offered space for the development of transnational Chinese screen identities that challenge the racial stereotypes historically associated with the Asian female body in the West. The ethnic/national differentiation of transnational Chinese female stars—such as Pei Pei Cheng, Charlene Choi, Gong Li, Lucy Liu, Shu Qi, Michelle Yeoh, and Zhang Ziyi—is considered part of the ongoing negotiation of social, cultural, and geopolitical identities in the Chinese-speaking world.

"Creating Across Cultures is a collection of stories about visionary Asian women who have journeyed outside their comfort zones to expand their artistic horizons. It celebrates the achievements of sixteen women in the arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan-a region of diverse cultures, languages, and histories. Creating in a range of literary, visual, and performing arts, these women must often defy cultural and social expectations in order to heed their artistic drive. Their personal histories open windows onto the larger, historical trajectory of Greater China over three generations while their art work delves into social realities and challenges of the day. The stories are based on personal interviews and professional archives and written by a team of arts specialists, journalists, and academics who bring these accounts to light in English for the first time. Richly illustrated with images of artworks and performances as well as historical photographs, the collection reveals the vibrancy, relevance, and universality of the work of creative women in the region. In bringing these women's stories together in one book, editor Michelle Vosper illuminates the value of the exchange of arts and ideas across borders and cultures, while offering inspiring role models for women aspiring to careers in the arts."--Publisher's description.

The first of its kind in English, this collection explores twenty one well established and lesser known female filmmakers from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. Sixteen scholars illuminate these filmmakers' negotiations of local and global politics, cinematic representation, and issues of gender and sexuality, covering works from the 1920s to the present. Writing from the disciplines of Asian, women's, film, and auteur studies, contributors reclaim the work of Esther Eng, Tang Shu Shuen, Dong Kena, and Sylvia Chang, among others, who have transformed Chinese cinematic modernity. Chinese Women's Cinema is a unique, transcultural, interdisciplinary conversation on authorship, feminist cinema, transnational gender, and cinematic agency and representation. Lingzhen Wang's comprehensive introduction recounts the history and limitations of established feminist film theory, particularly its relationship with female cinematic authorship and agency. She also reviews critiques of classical feminist film theory, along with recent developments in feminist practice, altogether remapping feminist film discourse within transnational and interdisciplinary contexts. Wang's subsequent redefinition of women's cinema, and brief history of women's cinematic practices in modern China, encourage the reader to reposition gender and cinema within a transnational feminist configuration, such that power and knowledge are reexamined among and across cultures and nation-states.

This new volume of the "Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women" spans more than 2,000 years from antiquity to the early seventh century. It recovers the stories of more than 200 women, nearly all of them unknown in the West. The contributors have sifted carefully through the available sources, from the oracle bones to the earliest legends, from Liu Xiang's didactic Biographies to official and unofficial histories, for glimpses and insights into the lives of women. Empresses and consorts, nuns and shamans, women of notoriety or exemplary virtue, women of daring and women of artistic or scholarly accomplishment - all are to be found here. The editors have assembled the stories of women high born and low, representing the full range of female endeavor. The biographies are organized alphabetically within three historical groupings, to give some context to lives lived in changing circumstances over two millennia. A glossary, a chronology, and a finding list that identifies women of each period by background or field of endeavor are also provided.

Critiquing the fictive nature of socially accepted values about gender, the authors unravel the strategies adopted by writers and filmmakers in (de)constructing the gendered self in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.