Chapter 11: Agency as Seen Through the Life Story of a Chinese Peasant Woman

In the summer of 2007 I was at the stage of finalizing my study of Chinese women in Japan (Zhang, 2008). I was very much inspired by the poststructuralist and feminist poststructuralist theories of subjectivity, discourse, and power relations in my interpretations of young Chinese women’s study abroad experiences in Japan. Most of the women I encountered in Japan had prestigious family backgrounds and came to pursue a “better life” through further academic study. Poststructuralist theories helped me to see how these young intellectuals experienced various struggles in the process of social translocation (Anthias, 2002). Moved by these women’s stories, I was eager to learn stories of other Chinese women who lived in a different social environment in China—those who lived in the economically depressed countryside area and were still struggling with sustenance living, those who had limited education and social capital (Bourdieu, 1991). I was wondering what I could learn from their stories.