Abstract
Mother has been a restless but demanding presence in Yang’s life. When Yang longed for emotional intimacy, her mother was absent in the home, choosing to commute across the continent for work. Later Yang’s mother became obsessed with marrying her daughter to someone rich. After Yang converted to Christianity and later began a committed romantic relationship with a Christian young man from a less resourceful family background, and with Hepatitis B, she and her mother stood on two opposing ends of the value system. Years of parental pressure against her choice of marriage partner were a grueling trial. Later Yang’s own commitment to motherhood at the expense of her career became another triggering event to new conflict in the already estranged mother-daughter relationship.
(Narration by Yang, age thirty five, former auditor; stay-home mom)
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Notes
- 1.
Shantytowns in Shanghai are slum areas where low-income Shanghai households and rural migrant families tend to live. Real estate development projects often led to demolitions of these areas. See Max Margan, “Shanghai residents refuse to budge from their dilapidated homes,” Daily Mail and Reuters, May 5, 2016. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3574454/Guangfuli-residents-Shanghai-refuse-budge-dilapidated-homes.html
- 2.
See note 7 in Chap. 2.
- 3.
Due to China’s policy constraints against private religious institutions, most Christian schools operate in the gray area without legal status. A wave of mini-church schools among urban house churches began in around 2013.
- 4.
Peng Li and Shunfeng Song, “Why are housing prices so high in urban China?” Journal of China and Global Economics, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 2012) pp. 39–42. About the so-called mother-in-law demand, see April Rabkin, “Is China’s Real Estate Bubble about to Burst?” Architect Magazine, June 1, 2013. https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/is-chinas-real-estate-bubble-about-to-burst_o
- 5.
Shako Liu, “China’s Struggle with Hepatitis B Discrimination,” The Atlantic, December 3, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/12/chinas-struggle-with-hepatitis-b-discrimination/281994/ Bingfeng Han, “The Experience of Discrimination of Individuals Living with Chronic Hepatitis B in Four Provinces of China,” PLOS One, 2018; 13 (4): e0195455. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5896961/
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Ma, L. (2019). Estranged. In: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_11
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