1. Squatting on Top of the City
Shuang Lu 卢霜
Master Candidate 2013’ Anthropology
Department, Columbia University
—— Youth identity, ―Ant People‖,
and urban spaces in Shanghai
2. Education:
M.A., Sociocultural Anthropology,
Second year, Columbia University
B.A., International Education, Shanghai
International Studies University
Self-Introduction
Research Interest:
Subjectivity; Youth culture; College migration;
Space/Architecture/Identity; Embedded living space;
Cyberspace; Reality/Virtuality;
Shanghai/China
3. Metaphorical term to describe a group of college educated yet under-
employed migrant young workers.
In 2009, Lian surveyed a large group of college graduates living in Tang
Jia Ling – a village on the outskirt of Beijing - in his book Ant People: A
report of college graduate village. These people mostly have higher
education background; however, they are either unemployed/semi -
employed or employed in low wage jobs. He named this group of people
“Ant People” for their massiveness in number, limited living
space, disempowered situation and resilience in striving for
life in the city.
Who Are ―Ant People‖（蚁族）
4. The expansion of college enrollment since 1999. The number of college graduates
across China greatly expanded from 848,000 in 1999 to 6,500,000 in 2009
(Lu, 2010).
Increasing slim chance for rural and working class youth to get into top
universities in China. From 1978 to 2005, the percentage of students at Peking
University from rural areas dropped from approximately 30 to 10 percent.
Example 1. In Peking University, among students admitted in the last five years
who specialized in sports, 70 percent are from cities. None of the student who
specialized in arts is from a rural area.
Example 2. In 2010, Tsinghua University and Peking University admitted
students from Shaanxi Province through university-designed examinations. Nearly
all, 98.9 percent, were from the five top high schools in the provincial capital Xi’an.
Capitalist market yet to develop.
Shrinking middle class in global cities. Polarization of rich and poor.
The Formation of ―Ant People‖
5. ―Ant People‖ and Urban Spaces
Ant People became a popular term in the mass media for its vivid description
and sarcastic connotation
Tangjialing – is a rural village adjacent to the newly built Zhongguancun Science
and Technology Zone. On average they pay 377 RMB/month ($61) for a bed in
one of the modified houses that local rural residents lease out for extra income.
Average living space is less than 100 square-feet per person, and the houses
often lack security, heating, or sanitary bathrooms.
Dwelling Narrowness (woju 蜗居) Unable to afford a down payment for an
apartment in the city after ten years of marriage, a young couple still live in a
tiny garret (tingzijian 亭子间)squeezed among ―petty urbanites‖ (xiaoshimin 小
市民).
6. Job-hunting hostels are designed as temporary, safe, and cheap
accommodations for recent college graduates who seek jobs in an unfamiliar
city.
Their layouts resemble Chinese college dormitories. Multiple residents share a
room, though in job-hunting hostels there are usually more roommates sharing
a room (8-10) than in college dormitories (4-6 people). Residents of a floor, or
sometimes an entire hostel, share washrooms and other public facilities.
In 2006, the first job-hunting hostel – Zhida – opened up in Shanghai – the
economic center of China. Zhida Job-hunting Hostel was a huge business
success. It has now developed into a chain of hostels with thirteen branches in
Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and other cities. In Shanghai, over a hundred
hostels mushroomed, everywhere from downtown to the outskirts of the city.
Job-hunting hostels even became model businesses encouraged by the
government.
Marketing identity
---- Job-hunting Hostel
8. During my research, I explored some of its distinct features that makes these
spaces different and how they are closely associated with Ant People’s identities.
1) Job-hunting hostels gather college graduates together and provide them with
a relatively exclusive space to live with people with the same educational
background.
2) Job-hunting hostels are not only spaces for dwelling, they are also spaces
where college graduates can learn and develop.
3) The naming of job-hunting hostels transforms it into a better and different
space.
With Ant People lacking economic viability, the market has created job-hunting
hostels – an urban space that, in reality, is no different from others and made it
into an appropriate space for young people with higher education backgrounds.
The government has also taken action to support the business of job-hunting
hostels which to some extent reduces demand on existing housing in big cities, a
problem for which the government has been harshly criticized.
Marketing identity ---- Job-hunting Hostel
9. A three-story house on top of an ordinary office building in downtown
Shanghai, occupied by about a hundred young workers.
Most of the rooms are small black boxes without windows. A bed, desk, toilet,
and everything necessary for living are squeezed together in 70-80 square foot
cubes.
Designed by the owner and architect, the plan of the ―slum‖ has a touch of
romanticism. Standing on the terrace before the house, a million-dollar view
of Shanghai unfolds. Yet, the rooftop enclave is concealed from outsiders by a
huge neon advertisement overhead.
The residents in this community, and all young migrant workers striving in
cities, appear as figures standing on a romantic rooftop. They overlook the
modern, capitalist and desiring city, which seems at their fingertips yet far
away. In tactile daily life, they are enveloped within dismal realities. Their
actual excluded and unjustified position in this society is covered by the neon
billboard of cosmopolitanism, modernization, and a vital national economy.
A Rooftop Enclave – Slum or Utopia?
10. Images of Rooftop Enclave
Three-story house constructed with wood and glass
11. Images of Rooftop Enclave
The room I crouched in for two
months. 1100 RMB/month.
There is virtually only one bed in
the room. The wardrobe is above
my bed. And the desk is big
enough to fit a mug.
12. Images of Rooftop Enclave
Scattered washbowls
Deserted desks, chairs and
even toilet on the rooftop
13. Images of Rooftop Enclave
A notice on the corridor
wall, composed in
beautiful classical
Chinese, making a silence
statement of the good
education background of
the residents.
14. Images of Rooftop Enclave
There is a shoe rack outside of each room stuffed with stylish
pumps, boots, and etc. displaying the taste of their owner.
16. Images of Rooftop Enclave
There are public facilities such as
coin microwave, coin washing
machine, refrigerator, and a
shared kitchen.
17. The rooftop community is heavily
covered internet—— 12 Wi-Fi networks.
The residents in the rooftop community
each possess a laptop, spend
tremendous amount of time online and
have high demand for internet when
they search for accommodation. They
are basically living in the virtual world.
In the future study, we may broaden
our view and take this question to
cyberspace which is a more dynamic
space whose relationship with
governmentality, neoliberalism, and
youth identity is more ambiguous and
complicated.
Virtualized Space
20. Images of Rooftop Enclave
The rooftop enclave is
concealed from outsiders
by a huge neon
advertisement overhead.
21. Netherland Architecture
Institute worked with one
the biggest residence
developer in the world -
Vanke to create a project -
―Housing with a mission‖
to accommodate ―Ant
People‖.
Housing with a Mission
The housing is intended for a group of people in China that is often
overlooked: graduates with a low income, also known as 'ant tribe'. The
starters, who often live in poor conditions, are actually very important for
society because they constitute a large group of highly educated people who
are not afraid to speak up. China's future is in their hands. It's
crucial that this group stay in Beijing, which is why good housing is a high
priority for the Chinese government.
- ---Excerpted from an interview with one of the architects of this project
22. Youth Identity and Urban Spaces
1) The identity of Ant People is largely shaped by the power of capitalist
markets. Their exposure to capitalist markets makes their identity more
malleable. But youth can also adopt the power of consumption to fashion
their identity.
2) In spite of thirty years of neoliberal penetration, youth in contemporary
China are still perceived as national subjects by the public, and they
actively associate their own identity with nationality.
3) Ant People show us that Chinese youth should no longer be regarded
merely as products of nationalism or neoliberalism. Empowered by new
technologies, higher education and economic capacity, they can also
choose and fashion their own alternative identity.
This paper talks about a group college educated…who are called ant people. Ant people is a metaphorical name given by Lian Si, the first scholar who studied this population. In 2009…(read slides)
I think the audience are all quite familiar with rural-urban migration in China, so I will just briefly mention how this special group of migrants – college educated and underemployed youth are formed. The most direct contributing factor should be the huge expansion….during this expansion, not only the raw number of enrollment multiplied by eight times, scrutinizing the composition of students in top universities, we can see that the chance of rural and working class youth to get into top universities are getting more and more slim because of two policies: extra credits for merits of arts and sports; university-designed examination. These neoliberal policies which are aiming at improving the quality of college students increased the disparity of rural and urban education. The huge expansion of college enrollment created a large gap between the talents produced by national projects and the yet to develop capitalist market in China. Moreover, the shrinking middle class in global cities is a global phenomenon. SaskiaSassen in her survey “Global Cities” – polarizationBeijing, Shanghai…might also have been influenced by this shift. Caught in all these social changes, ant people’s identity become quite complicated. As college graduates, they still belong to the top 20% of their peers, however, their income can even be lower than blue collar workers. They have been transformed into city dwellers by “world-making” in college education, but they still lack legal and cultural citizenship in the cities. Caught in all these social discrepancies, how do they view themselves: as victims who are disempowered by the national and capital powers, or as individuals, who are to some extent empowered by the “floating” life situation and neoliberal self-enterprising?
In this paper I approached this question through the urban spaces they live. Ant people’s identity has always been associated with their living spaces. As I mentioned above, one of the reasons Lian named them ant people is their slum-like and gathering living form which resembles “ant hill”. In tangjialing, the college graduate village he surveyed, on average…In terms of the physical and legal characteristics of their settlements, Tangjialing’s Ant People undoubtedly live in urban slums. which depicts two sisters who graduated from a distinguished university yet struggle with life in the fictional city of Jiangzhou, a location that closely resembles present-day Shanghai. The elder sister married another young college-educated migrant worker. Unable to afford a down payment for an apartment in the city after ten years of marriage, they still live in a tiny garret squeezed among “petty urbanites” (Lu, 1999). Seeing the desperation of her sibling, the younger sister chooses to become the mistress of a rich man.In both situations, ant people are disempowered, again, by the urban spaces in cosmopolitans. In my paper, I will take you to two different urban spaces dwelled by ant people where I did my two months fieldwork at Shanghai, China last summer. I will explore how urban space fashionstheir identity, and how their identity in return shapes existing urban space and creates new urban space.
At the time Tangjialing was transformed into a migrant village, in Shanghai a new form of urban space, job-hunting hostels, emerged. Job-hunting hostels are designed as temporary, safe, and cheap accommodations for recent college graduates who seek jobs in an unfamiliar city. Their layouts resemble Chinese college dormitories.
A new and different urban space for a low-income population, job-hunting hostels soon caught the attention of the media. Overnight, there appeared countless news reports, magazine stories, and documentaries about this special space and its special residents – Ant People. I was also quite attracted by this space so I made it my first stop of my fieldwork. The situation of the job-hunting hostel is out of my expectation. The neighborhood outside of the hostel reminded me nothing of Shanghai – the most modern city in China. Along the narrow streets there were small greasy spoons featuring the cuisines of inland China, massage shops in which sexily-dressed ladies sit, and wandering young men smoking, chatting, and strangely staring at me. Inside the hostel, there are dripping sheets hanging over one’s head along the corridor, smelly washrooms, crowded and dirty rooms. Examining the living space around me, I saw little difference between it and other spaces for low-income population in Shanghai. I couldn’t help wonder how marketing had transformed it into a “new and different” space.
During the following days living in the hostel, I came to discover some of its distinct features. These features created by marketing tools are closely associated with the identity of Ant People. 1）Job-hunting hostels gather college graduates together and provide them with a relatively exclusive space to live with people with the same educational background. Most job-hunting hostels, like the original example Zhida Job-hunting Hostel, require residents to show their student IDs or graduate certificates when they check in. The job-hunting hostel in which I stayed happened to have less stringent access policies. They housed college graduates as well as migrant workers. Nonetheless, the administrators deliberately separated college graduates from other migrant workers by arranging them in different rooms. When I asked the administrator about the composition of the residents, he told me directly: “these rooms are occupied by da xue sheng (college graduates), and da gong de (migrant workers) stay in those rooms.” He also remarked that college graduates are of higher “quality” (suzhi).College graduates, though, do not necessarily have much advantage in the job market; still, they possess cultural capital and are seen as belonging to a higher social class than migrant workers. 2）Job-hunting hostels are not only spaces for dwelling, they are also spaces where college graduates can learn and develop. Inside Zhida Job-hunting hostels there are bulletin boards with newspaper clippings with updated employment information and a corner for residents to gather and practice English. The hostel administrators will help the young people revise résumés, help them with dressing before interviews, and provide consolation and encouragement to the new migrants. 3）The naming of job-hunting hostels transforms it into a better and different space. When I was talking with a professor who speaks both Chinese and English about job-hunting hostel, she commented that the Chinese name for job-hunting hostels, “qiuzhi lv she”, makes the space sounds much better than the English name. Her comment reminded me of the importance of naming in this space transformation process. Lv she (hostel/inn) connotes that the space is designed for temporary living such as travelling, an internship, or job-searching. Though some residents are unemployed or semi-employed and live there for months even years for its extremely low rent, the name lv she” (hostel/inn) distinguishes the job-hunting hostels from migrant villages, divided apartments, and living spaces often associated with migration and “floating” (piaobo). With Ant People lacking economic viability, the market has created job-hunting hostels – an urban space that, in reality, is no different from others and made it into an appropriate space for young people with higher education backgrounds. The government has also taken action to support the business of job-hunting hostels which to some extent reduces demand on existing housing in big cities, a problem for which the government has been harshly criticized. Marketing packaged job-hunting into a new space especially designed for college graduates, a space for learning and developing, and a space for transitional living. Such a space exactly meets the social expectations of college graduates. Despite their shrinking advantage in the job market, college graduates still enjoy the legacy of “proud children of the nation” and are seen as citizens of a higher social class. They are considered deserving a better space, different from spaces occupied by other migrants and the low-income population. By choosing this living space, Ant People are also voicing how their identity is different from other migrants.
These characteristics of Ant People also inspire architects and developers, who turn the embodied conflict of reality and vision into an icon, which in turn they transform into a money-making business. In the recent Shenzhen Architecture Biennial, the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) launched an international cooperative project – “Housing with a Mission” – aimed at providing better accommodations for Beijing’s Ant People. During an interview, the project’s architect noted: “The housing is intended for a group of people in China that is often overlooked: graduates with a low income, also known as ‘ant tribe.’ The starters, who often live in poor conditions, are actually very important for society because they constitute a large group of highly educated people who are not afraid to speak up. China's future is in their hands. It's crucial that this group stay in Beijing, which is why good housing (for this group) is a high priority for the Chinese government. There is also a lot of opportunity here for project developers and architects.” In this short comment, the architect related the identity of Ant People to nationalism, to the space they live in, and to the capitalist market. He pointed out the close connection between these elements, which make it necessary for us to analyzethe making of Ant People’s subjectivity in relationship to space, nationality, and neoliberalism.
From the new spaces associated with Ant People I presented above, we can conclude several important points about how Ant People are understood by others and how they identify themselves. First, the identity of Ant People is largely shaped by the power of capitalist markets. In this aspect, their identity differed a lot from their predecessors. Their exposure to capitalist markets makes their identity more malleable. However, consuming power is a two-way road. Youth can also adopt the power of consumption to fashion their identity. The owner of the rooftop community is a graphic designer who was also a young, poor migrant worker years ago. By renting this space with his capital and designing this special house, he brought young people an alternative way of living and also brought the city a new and heuristic space to imagine the future. Second, while we are focusing on the changes youth have undergone, we should also remember what has not changed throughout history. In spite of thirty years of neoliberal penetration, youth in contemporary China are still perceived as national subjects by the public, and they actively associate their own identity with nationality. In his media interview, the project architect remark about Ant People that “China’s future is in their hands.” In the writing on the wall, youth also expressed their sense of historical responsibility for the nation. Lastly, Ant People show us that Chinese youth should no longer be regarded merely as subjects of nationalism or neoliberalism. Empowered by new technologies, higher education and economic capacity, they can also choose and fashion their own alternative identity. AihwaOng and Li Zhang in the introduction to Privatizing China (2008) proposed that privatization in China is not only market activity but also a process that produces the private self. “Privatization produces free-floating values of self-interest and allows them to proliferate in daily life” (Ong and Zhang, 2008). The self-enterprising subject, argued Hayek and Milton Friedman, “begins by developing basic individual capacities to make autonomous decisions, to take initiative and risk, and otherwise to act on his or her own behalf to achieve optimal outcomes.” For this reason, the young workers’ motivations to migrate should be approached as an ethic of subject formation in a broader neoliberal discourse (Ong and Zhang, 2008).
