Paper short abstract:

The paper explores projects of life building in urban China and consider concerns, ambitions and dilemmas of young girls pursuing professional realisation, love and motherhood and trying to balance family responsibilities and career development, come to term with inter-generational differences.

Paper long abstract:

Chinese young women and older generations seem to live in two different worlds. The social identity of their parents was mostly defined in political terms and their priorities and moral obligation delineated according to the relationship with the family and the Socialist party-State. My young informants on the contrary give priority to their own self-fulfilment and see the achievement of personal happiness as the most legitimate and meaningful goal of their lives. They describe their existences in terms of personal challenges, acquisition of new experiences, constant change, and consider themselves fully responsible of their futures. Older generations forcedly participated to a national project of Socialist development led by a paternalistic Party and put the emphasis on obedience to authority, economic security, dependency and continuity of the family, whereas my self-centred female subjects are not willing to fully sacrifice their personal advancement in name of the family, the Party, the Nation or whatever entity but themselves and prioritise the pursuing of happiness and the exploration of the "self" as the ultimate objective. This paper considers how these young women inhabiting a fast changing society imagine their future selves and life paths by articulating in unexpected ways personal desires, hopes and aspirations and the constraints informed by previous generations, by "traditional" gender regimes and forms of femininities.