Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai [Paperback]

James Farrer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226238717 | ISBN-13: 978-0226238715 | Publication Date: May 29, 2002 | Edition: 1

From teen dating to public displays of affection, from the "fishing girls" and "big moneys" that wander discos in search of romance to the changing shape of sex in the Chinese city, this is a book like no other. James Farrer immerses himself in the vibrant nightlife of Shanghai, draws on individual and group interviews with Chinese youth, as well as recent changes in popular media, and considers how sexual culture has changed in China since its shift to a more market-based economy.

More and more men and women in China these days are having sex before marriage, creating a new youth sex culture based on romance, leisure, and free choice. The Chinese themselves describe these changes as an "opening up" in response to foreign influences and increased Westernization. Farrer explores these changes by tracing the basic elements in talk about sex and sexuality in Shanghai. He then shows how Chinese youth act out the sometimes-contradictory meanings of sex in the new market society. For Farrer, sexuality is a lens through which we can see how China imagines and understands itself in the wake of increased globalization. Through personal storytelling, neighborhood gossip, and games of seduction, young men and women in Shanghai balance pragmatism with romance, lust with love, and seriousness with play, collectively constructing and individually coping with a new culture based on market principles. With its provocative glimpse into the sex lives of young Chinese, then, Opening Up offers something even greater: a thoughtful consideration of China as it continues to develop into an economic superpower.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Opening Up conveys a panoramic, vivid, and fully convincing picture of the changing scene in China with remarkable assurance. James Farrer draws on extensive research and interviews with Chinese youth, revealing a rich and deep mastery of his subject. This is an extraordinary new book." - Ann Swidler, author of Talk of Love; "I can think of few books that offer such a layered appreciation for the textures of everyday life in urban China. Written in a hip and contemporary style, Opening Up is a pleasure to read." - Michael Dutton, author of Streetlife China

From the Inside Flap

From teen dating to public displays of affection, from the "fishing girls" and "big moneys" that wander discos in search of romance to the changing shape of sex in the Chinese city, this is a book like no other. James Farrer immerses himself in the vibrant nightlife of Shanghai, draws on individual and group interviews with Chinese youth, as well as recent changes in popular media, and considers how sexual culture has changed in China since its shift to a more market-based economy.

More and more men and women in China these days are having sex before marriage, creating a new youth sex culture based on romance, leisure, and free choice. The Chinese themselves describe these changes as an "opening up" in response to foreign influences and increased Westernization. Farrer explores these changes by tracing the basic elements in talk about sex and sexuality in Shanghai. He then shows how Chinese youth act out the sometimes-contradictory meanings of sex in the new market society. For Farrer, sexuality is a lens through which we can see how China imagines and understands itself in the wake of increased globalization. Through personal storytelling, neighborhood gossip, and games of seduction, young men and women in Shanghai balance pragmatism with romance, lust with love, and seriousness with play, collectively constructing and individually coping with a new culture based on market principles. With its provocative glimpse into the sex lives of young Chinese, then, Opening Up offers something even greater: a thoughtful consideration of China as it continues to develop into an economic superpower.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 394 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226238717
• ISBN-13: 978-0226238715
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sex in Shanghai, scholastically deconstructed, August 16, 2003

By 

Elisabeth W. Movius (Shanghai China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai (Paperback)

Anyone who has spent any time in Shanghai knows that it is a city dripping with sex, from its "Wh*re of the Orient" label filtered down to the frolicking bra ads in the subway, the come-hither looks of Maoming Lu bar girls, and the ubiquitous revealing, form-fitting fashions. Yet for all of Shanghai's sexuality, it is decidedly unsensual due to the determined twinge of commercial opportunity that sours every interaction.

In Shanghai, money is sexy and sex is financial, a phenomenon that dominates James Farrer's intriguingly accurate but densely academic study of the city's recent sexual revolution. The characters and scenarios presented in Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai will be entertainingly familiar to residents of Shanghai or any other major Chinese city. Observers who have paid more than passing attention to sex in the city will be gratified for this rigorous quantification of the subject, but they will also probably be frustrated at the dense and distracting academic dialectic attempts to fit Shanghai into some postmodern deconstructive box.

Farrer combs comprehensively through all strata of Shanghai society, from the "Low Corner" blue-collars and marginalized unemployed to the downtown "little white collars" to the middle-aged "old cabbage leaves." These different classes and generations are dissected along with their respective mating rituals and the venues in which they are executed. There is a heavier focus on young white collar women, understandable given the author's perspective as an American married to one of them and his readership's likely greater exposure to and interest (prurient or otherwise) that group.

Opening Up is a compelling read for its descriptions and dissections, presented in a fondly familiar tone, but its pace slows when it switches into dense, formal "sexuality studies" mode. The dense dialectical discourses of Foucault have little off-campus appeal. Farrer has an annoying fondness for the concept of irony, finding it improbably under every leaf and stone of Shanghai's sexual dialogue. He even describes the novel Shanghai Baby, straitforwardly self-important to the point of farce, as ironic, while the only thing ironic about it is the seriousness with which Western readers treat it.

As such, Opening Up is best read in piecemeal. Start with the last chapter, "Play: Dance and Sex," a hilarious catalogue of Shanghai's various night spots and their respective sexual mores. Then jump to chapter three, "Characters: Big and Small" for an itemization of archetypes and stereotypes, lest you confuse your "KTV misses," "fishing girls" and "golden birds". Chapters four to eight are loosely grouped case studies that make for good leisurely perusing, and the densely theoretical introduction and first two chapters require either skimming or intensive plowing.

With its detailed documentation of Shanghai's sexual and romantic practices, narratives, expectations and limitations, much of which holds true for the rest of urban China, Opening Up is an interesting read for anyone interested in modern China and an indispensable blueprint for foreigners wishing to date Chinese.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Theoretically Sophisticated Account of Social Change, June 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai (Paperback)

As an anthropologist of Asia, I found this book sensitively written with the sort of rich detail that only comes from years of systematic field work, in this case, exclusively in Shanghai. The data is exhaustive and the facts well documented. (Although the footnote style makes references excruciatingly difficult to follow).

The book is also a pleasure to read. Rather than the usual heavy-handed dose of cultural theory with thin ethnographic data, we plunge into an amusing and readable narrative that is a tour through contemporary Shanghai's cultural scene, into poor neighborhoods, flashy discotheques and even back in time to the early 1980s (though arguably not back far enough to when Shanghai was really interesting -- the 1930`s and 40`s)

As a scholar I also found the introduction to the book particularly helpful. It is employs an innovative take on Kenneth Burke`s theory of rhetoric to analyze how popular representations and practices of sexuality are transformed in a complex changing social and economic context of Shanghai.

Farrer is able to bring to life the dynamics and contradictions -- sexual, social and economic -- that these young people face. This is very unusual in academic writing of any kind. I was struck by the way that he saw narratives of sexual play as important devices in the marking out of new moral terrains as the once-secure Chinese political and social landscapes fade away. I also thought the use of rhetoric theory pointed to new and refreshing approaches to the question of agency within the sociology of culture: Farrer clearly shows the struggle that young people in China are facing and how they deploy in innovative ways cultural forms from a wide range of global contexts to bear upon the immediate situation. I personally would have liked to see some more historical tracing of some of these discourses, but that would have been another study.

Read the book itself to find out. It is facinating material and makes a theoretical contribution to the scholarly literature.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-researched and engaging, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai (Paperback)

I lived in Shanghai as a Chinese-speaking "expat" during most of the time Farrer conducted his research. This book accurately captures how the Chinese and westerners I knew talked about themselves and others during this period. He notably gives equal time to voices from the people of Shanghai that most foreigners never get to know, people who aren't represented in the glossy prosperity featured in international news magazines.

The academic jargon in the introductory chapter and interspersed throughout is distracting for readers unfamiliar with that literature, but in general Farrer wears his theory lightly, making it easy to understand or skip past.

Wei Hui's controversial novel Shanghai Baby should entertain those looking for a fictional treatment of many of the same issues.

Journalist Pam Yatsko's book New Shanghai also touches on these issues as well as the larger political, economic, and social trends over the same period.