International Handbook of Chinese Families

Transcription

1 International Handbook of Chinese Families

2

3 Chan Kwok-bun Editor International Handbook of Chinese Families Editorial Assistants Chan Wai-wan Dick Chong Tik-man Joyce Chan Wai-man

4 Editor Chan Kwok-bun Chan Institute of Social Studies (CISS) Hong Kong, China ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speci fi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on micro fi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied speci fi cally for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speci fi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (

5 Contents 1 Introduction: Hegemony, Universality and the Dialectics of Being Chinese and the Family... 1 Chan Kwok-bun and Chan Nin Part I: Mobility and Family 2 A Family Affair: Migration, Dispersal and the Emergent Identity of the Chinese Cosmopolitan Chan Kwok-bun 3 The Politics of Migrant Family Drama: Mainland Chinese Immigrants in Singapore Chan Kwok-bun and Seet Chia Sing 4 Reforming Family Among Remigrants: Hongkongers Come Home Nan M. Sussman 5 Social Networks and Family Relations in Return Migration Janet W. Salaff and Arent Greve 6 The Uncanny Feeling of Homely and Unhomely: Gender and Generation Politics in Return Migrant Families in Hong Kong Chan Wai-wan and Chan Kwok-bun 7 A Double-Edged Sword: Mobility and Entrepreneurship Chan Wai-wan 8 Family and Marriage: Constructing Chineseness Among Long-Established Australian-Born Chinese Lucille Ngan Lok-sun 9 Families in the Chinese Diaspora: Women s Experience in Transnational Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese Immigrant Families in Canada Guida C. Man v

6 vi Contents 10 Female University Students Dreaming of Becoming Housewives Joyce Chan Wai-man 11 Stepping Out, Stepping In Eva Yu Mui-ling 12 The Prejudicial Portrayal of Immigrant Families from Mainland China in Hong Kong Media Peggy Kung Cheuk-lam Part II: The Family Life Cycle 13 To Be or Not to Be: Chinese-Singaporean Women Deliberating on Voluntary Childlessness Amanda Ee Hui Li, Caroline Plüss, and Chan Kwok-bun 14 Fertility Transition and the Transformation of Working Class Family Life in Urban China in the 1960s Wang Danning 15 Sex Preference for Children and Chinese Fertility in America Zongli Tang 16 Social Stratification and Childrearing Values in Contemporary China Xiao Hong 17 Support and Care for Aging Chinese: A Comparison of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Taipei Daniel W.L. Lai Part III: Fathers, Mothers, Daughters, Sons 18 Intimacy and Its Denial: When Sons and Daughters Talk About Fatherhood, Marriage and Work Chan Kwok-bun 19 Father, Son, Wife, Husband: Philanthropy as Exchange and Balance Chan Kwok-bun 20 Children and Their Fathers in Singapore: A Generational Perspective Hing Ai Yun 21 Moving Fathers from the Sidelines : Contemporary Chinese Fathers in Canada and China Susan S. Chuang, Robert P. Moreno, and Yanjie Su 22 Listening to Fathers Wong Siu-sing

7 Contents vii 23 The Roles and Contributions of Fathers in Families with School-Age Children in Hong Kong Vicky C. Tam and Rebecca S. Lam 24 East and West: Exploration of the Father-Son Conflict in Chinese Culture from the Perspective of Family Triangulation in the West and the Classical Opera Stories of the East Simon T.M. Chan 25 Family Through the Eyes of the Youth Tess Tsang Mei-wah 26 Art and Heart Ada Lee Man-ching 27 Privacy in the Family Tse Pik-chu 28 Age and Gender Differences in Chinese-Filipino Parent-Adolescent Conflict, Family Cohesion and Autonomy Rosa C. Shao Part IV: Negotiation, Family Instability and Emerging Family Forms 29 Setting Out Conditions, Striking Bargains: Marriage-Stories and Career Development Among University-Educated Women in Hong Kong May Partridge 30 Financial Risk Tolerance of Chinese American Families Rui Yao 31 Gender Equality in the Family in Shanghai Tobey Yung Wai-ming 32 Economic Transition and the Potential Risks of Marital Instability in Contemporary Urban China Yan Yu 33 Empowered or Impoverished: Divorce and Its Effects on Urban Women in Contemporary China April Gu 34 Men Inside, Women Outside? Maurice Choi Kwok-to 35 Hong Kong Lesbian Partners in the Making of Their Own Families Day Wong

8 viii Contents Part V: Methodology and Policy 36 Immigrant Adaptation, Poverty and the Family: New Arrivals in Hong Kong from Mainland China Chan Kwok-bun 37 Researching Migrant Chinese Families in Hong Kong: Changing Perspectives and Methodologies Sam Wong 38 The One-Child Policy and Its Impact on Chinese Families Barbara H. Settles, Xuewen Sheng, Yuan Zang, and Jia Zhao 39 The Youth Problem Is Not a Youth Problem Chan Nin and Chan Kwok-bun 40 Conclusion: Meditations of Two Perpetual Outsiders on Chineseness and The Family Chan Nin and Chan Kwok-bun Index

9 About the Authors Chan Kwok-bun is Hong Kong Baptist University s first Chair Professor of Sociology; Founder and Chairman, Chan Institute of Social Studies (CISS) ( ci-ss.org ); Honorary Research Fellow, Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University; Distinguished Visiting Scholar, China Research Center, University of Technology, Sydney; and Adjunct Professor of Sociology, University of Macao. Between 2005 and 2013, Professor Chan published fifteen books in English and eight books in Chinese. His fifteen books in English include five by Routledge (London): Cultural Hybridity (2012), Hybrid Hong Kong (2012), Chinese Entertainment (2012), Chinese Identity, Ethnicity and Cosmopolitanism (2005) and Migration, Ethnic Relations and Chinese (2005); three by Brill Academic Publishers (Leiden): Confl ict and Innovation: Joint Ventures in China (2006), Work Stress and Coping among Professionals (2007), and East-West Identities: Globalization, Localization and Hybridization (2007); one by de Sitter Publications (Whitby): Hybridity: Promises and Limits (2011); and six by Springer: Mobile Chinese Entrepreneurs (2011) (with Chan Wai-wan), Living Intersections: Transnational Migrant Identifi cations in Asia (2102) (with Caroline Pluss), The Chinese Face in Australia: Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australian-born Chinese (2012) (with Lucille Ngan), Charismatic Leadership in Singapore: Three Extraordinary People (2011) (with Dayan Hava), Online Dating as Strategic Game (2013) (with Maurice Choi Kwok-to), and International Handbook of Chinese Families (2012). His eight books in Chinese include two by World Scientific (Singapore) and Bookoola-Sune Global (Hong Kong): 童畫, 童家, 童心 (Children s Art, Children s Hearts, Children s Homes) (2012) ( with Ada Lee Man-ching) and 移民與想象 : 新移民女大學生的女性角色憧憬 (Migration and Imagination) (2013) (with Joyce Chan Wai-man); five by 中華書局 Chung Hwa Book Company (Hong Kong): 中港徘徊 : 香港流動巡迴企業家的故事 (Shuttling between Hong Kong and China: Mobile Chinese Entrepreneurs) (2007) (with Chan Wai-wan), 貧窮與變遷 : 香港新移民家庭的生活故事 (Poverty and Change: Life Stories of New Immigrant Families in Hong Kong) (2011), 港國鏡 : 內地留學生看香港 (Hong Kong-China Lens: Mainland China Students in Hong Kong) (2010; 2011, second edition), 華商 : 族裔資源與商業謀略 (Chinese Merchants: ix

10 x About the Authors Ethnic Resources and Business Strategies) (2011), and 漂流 : 華人移民的身份混成與文化整合 (Drifting: Identity Hybridization and Cultural Integration) (2012); and one by 三聯書店 Joint Publishing (Hong Kong), 活在香港 : 在港內地專才與藝術文化工作者的移民經驗 (Living Together: Mainland China Professionals and Artistic and Cultural Workers in Hong Kong) (2012) (with Chan Wai-wan and Dick Chong Tik-man) Chan Nin studied English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Toronto and is presently an independent writer with special interest in the history of the libertarian Left, autonomous social movements in East Asia, psychoanalysis and the relationship between poetics, aesthetics and social revolution. His most recent contribution to the discourse (as they say in academic parlance) of social movement theory is an examination of the global Occupy movement and its impasses, written for a forthcoming collection of essays, Art and Spatial Resistance, by the international activist-researcher collective, Doxa. Simon Chan is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Work at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests are clinical and family therapy process, gender studies, men counseling and menism, and father-and-son con fl ict. In the recent years, his publications focus on indigenous Chinese studies about men-in-trauma, such as survivors of male childhood abuse, menin-grief, and divorced men. Joyce Chan Wai-man received her MPhil and Bachelor Degree (First Class Honours) in Sociology from Hong Kong Baptist University. Supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun, her masters thesis is titled Migration and Imagination: Female New Immigrant University Students Ideal Womanhood (in Chinese). It has been revised and will be published under the same title by World Scientific (Singapore) and Sune Global (Hong Kong). Her honours thesis was revised and published in Chan Kwok-bun, ed., Our Families, Our Homes (Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Company, 2008, pp ) (in Chinese). Her research interests include marriage and family, gender, work and family balance, and qualitative research methods. Chan Wai-wan is Director and Senior Researcher of Chan Institute of Social Studies (CISS). She has published two books: Shuttling between Hong Kong and Mainland China: A Study of Mobile Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs (in Chinese) by Chung Hwa Book Company (Hong Kong) in 2007 and Mobile Chinese Entrepreneurs by Springer (New York) in She also co-edited one book, City-State Lens: Hong Kong in the Eyes of Mainland China Students by Chung Hwa Book Company (Hong Kong) in 2010, and published about 20 book chapters and journal articles. She is presently fi nishing three books on mainland China professional immigrants, artist immigrants, and return migrants in Hong Kong. Her current research interests are families in Chinese societies, identities, migration, transnationalism, entrepreneurship, and economic sociology. Chan is now doing doctoral studies at the China Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

11 About the Authors xi Maurice Choi Kwok-to was Senior Research Assistant at The Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE), University of Hong Kong, and part-time lecturer in Sociology at The HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education. He received his PhD in Sociology from Hong Kong Baptist University. His doctoral thesis, titled Online Dating as A Strategic Game: Why and How Men in Hong Kong Use QQ to Chase Women in Mainland China was supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun co-authored with Professor Chan, it will be published under the same title by Springer (New York) in His research interests include gender studies, online dating, love and intimacy, new media, and methodology. He is now with The Open University of Hong Kong. Susan S. Chuang is Associate Professor at the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph. She received two Masters of Science (Elementary Education, Human Development), a doctorate in Human Development from University of Rochester, and post-doctoral training at the Institute of Health, U.S.A. Her research interests include parenting, fathering, culture, and immigration. She co-edited two books and two special issues on immigration for Sex Roles and Journal of Family Psychology. Amanda Ee Hui Li recently completed her BA (Honours) in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang Techno logical University, Singapore. Her chapter in this handbook is based on her Graduation Project An Insight into Voluntary Childlessness in Singapore, with Asstistant Professor Caroline Plüss as her supervisor. She is currently in the Marketing and Communications line at a global bank. Arent Greve is Professor in organization theory, Department of Strategy and Management, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen, Norway. His research interests include applying social network analysis and neo-institutional theory to studies in migration and labor markets, development of innovations, problem solving, and decision making. His recent publications include Social Networks and Creativity: Combining Expertise in Complex Innovations, Chapter 12 in Tudor Rickards, Mark A. Runco and Susan Moger (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Creativity, pp , London: Routledge; Salaff, Janet, Wong, Sui-lun, and Greve, Arent, Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, His web page contains a complete CV: April Gu conducted research on the fi nancial effects of divorce on women as a Fulbright Scholar in China from 2006 to She received her J.D. from the NYU School of Law in Hing Ai Yun is an independent researcher working on family and economic issues. Her work deals especially with how globalization and rapid economic transformations have impacted on and shaped the family unit. She can be contacted at Hingaiyun88@gmail.com.

12 xii About the Authors Peggy Kung Cheuk Lam graduated from the Hong Kong Baptist University with honours in sociology. Her chapter in this handbook is based on his honours thesis supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun. Daniel Lai is Professor and Associate Dean (Research & Partnerships) of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary. He is an internationally known expert on the relationship between culture, health, and well-being of the aging population and family caregiving. Lai has received over millions of research funding from prestigious granting agencies including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation. Lai was also the social policy and practice section editor of Canadian Journal on Aging. Rebecca S.Y. Lam is Principal Lecturer at Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, interested in parenting, child and adolescent development, and drug education. She has published in Journal of International Society for Teacher Education, Marriage and Family Review, Youth and Society, and Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health. Ada Lee Man Ching was the campaign manager of Legislator Ronny Tong Ka Wah (Civic Party) in the 2008 Legislative Council Election and Legislator Tanya Chan (Civic Party) in the 2010 Legislative Council By-election. Lee was the Hong Kong Island commander in 5-district Resignation, De-facto Referendum. She is now assistant to Legislator Tanya Chan. Lee was a news reporter in She won in 2006 China s intellectual Olympics Challenge Cup Award with her thesis Children s Drawings, Children s Hearts and Children s Families. She has published in 2012 with Chan Kwok-bun a book titled, Children s Art, Children s Hearts and Children s Families (in Chinese) with World Scientific and Bookoola-Sune Global. As a sociologist and political activist, Lee campaigns for a fairer and better society. Guida C. Man is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at York University. Her areas of specialization include immigration, transnational migration, Chinese diaspora, women s work, family, gender, and qualitative research methods. She has been involved in a number of research projects focusing on Chinese immigrant women in Canada and has published extensively on Chinese immigrant women in Canada. Currently, she is principal investigator of a research project funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant (SSHRC) to investigate the transnational migration trajectories of work and family of immigrant women professionals in Canada. Robert P. Moreno is Associate Professor and former chair of the Department of Child and Family, Syracuse University. He received his doctorate in Child and Adolescent Development from Stanford University. He is a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient. His

13 About the Authors xiii research includes familial and cultural in fl uences on children s learning and father involvement. Lucille Ngan Lok-sun is postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Sciences, Hong Kong Institute of Education. She received her doctorate degree in sociology from the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on migration, Chinese diaspora, transnationalism, ethnicity, life course, gender, family, and ethnic relations. Her recent publications include The Chinese Face in Australia: Multi-generational Ethnicity among Australianborn Chinese, with K. B. Chan (Springer, 2012); Decentered transnational linkages: Chinese Returned Migrants in Hong Kong, in Transnational Migration Identi fi cations in Asia: Living Intersections, edited by C. Pluss and K. B. Chan (Springer, 2011); Generational Identities Through Time: Memories and Homelands of the ABCs in At Home in the Chinese Diaspora: Memories, Identity and Belonging, edited by A. Davidson and K. E. Kuah- Pearce (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 74 93); Living In-between, Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies Journal (Vol. 2, No.1, 2008, ); and Methodo logical Issues in Studying the Identity of Long-Established ABCs, Migrations and Identities (Vol. 1, No. 2, 2008, ). May Partridge retired from post-secondary teaching and continues to analyze and write about her longitudinal research on university-educated women in Hong Kong and British Columbia. Recent work includes a book-length manuscript about university-educated women s career development in Hong Kong. A companion volume, about university-educated women s career development in Canada, is planned for completion in In addition, she is launching a blogsite which invites women to converse about their work and related issues, with the aim of developing group approaches to creating more rewarding work lives. Caroline Plüss is Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She specializes in researching Chinese families and families with origin in South Asia and other places in Hong Kong, within the areas of cultural change and ethnic community formation. She is currently researching the cultural identi fi cations of Chinese Singaporean repeat migrants and their ideals of the family. Janet W. Salaff, Professor emerita at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, received her Ph.D. in 1972 (UC Berkeley). Her research interests include Chinese family formation and especially the Chinese family economy, social structure, and social networks in Chinese migration. Her bestknown book is Working Daughters of Hong Kong (1981, Cambridge University Press). She had recently published Hong Kong Movers and Stayers (2010, University of Illinois Press) with S.L. Wong and A. Greve. Her web page contains many of her completed writings utoronto.ca/~salaff. Janet W. Salaff passed away in November, 2010.

14 xiv About the Authors Seet Chia Sing obtained her honours degree in sociology from the National University of Singapore in She lives in Singapore and now works as a survey statistician at the Singapore government s national statistics of fi ce. Her co-authored paper, titled Migrant family drama revisited: Mainland Chinese immigrants in Singapore, with Chan Kwok-bun, editor of this handbook, won the fi rst Michael Leifer Memorial Prize awarded by Singapore s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. A version of the paper appears as Chap. 3 in this handbook. Barbara H. Settles, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Delaware, specializes in intergenerational relationships and family life education. She received the NCFR Jan Trost Award for Outstanding Contributions to Comparative Family Studies and is a NCFR fellow. She is past president of the Committee on Family Research, International Sociological Association and the Groves Conference on Marriage and Family. Selected publications include Settles, B. H. (2004) USA Families, Handbook of World Families; Sheng, X., & Settles, B. H. (2006) Intergenerational relationships and elder care in China: A global perspective, Current Sociology; Settles, B. H., Zhao, J., Mancini, K. D., Rich, A., Pierre, S. & Odour, A. (2009) Grandparents caring for their grandchildren: Emerging roles and exchanges in global perspectives, Journal of Comparative Family Studies; and Zhao, J., Settles, B. H., Sheng, X. (2012) Work family con fl ict: Gender, equity, and workplace policies, Journal of Comparative Family Studies. Rosa Ching Shao, Field Education Directress and Licensed Counselor at the Biblical Seminary of the Philippines, completed Master of Education at the University of Cincinnati, OH, USA, and PhD in Clinical Psychology at the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. She has co-authored Ezra- Nehemiah Commentary with husband, Joseph Shao. Xuewen Sheng is former family sociologist of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China. He received his doctorate in human development and family studies at University of Delaware in 2005, and currently holds a position of senior education research analyst in Kansas State Department of Education. Sheng s research interests cover the areas of Chinese families and marriages, cross-cultural human development and family studies, aging and intergenerational relationships, gender issues, child development and education, research methodologies, and advanced statistics. His major publications include Chinese Families (2004), Women s Work in East and West: The Dual Burden of Employment and Family Life (1995), Over Time Dynamics of Monetary Intergenerational Exchanges (2009), and Intergenerational Relationships and Elderly Care in China: A Global Perspective (2006). Yanjie Su is Professor at the Department of Psychology, Peking University, China, and Director of the Biological Psychology Laboratory. Her research includes evolution and development, particularly the emergence and develop-

15 About the Authors xv ment of the theory of the mind. Her research has been published in Chinese and international journals, including Developmental Psychology, Sex Roles, and International Journal of Behavioral Development. Nan Sussman is Professor and former Chair, Psychology Department at The College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She holds an appointment on the doctoral faculty in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her research interests are in the intersection of psychology, cultural transitions, and identity. Current projects include work on immigrant return migration and identity in Asia and workplace issues among Chinese returnees. Another scholarly interest is in the effect of acculturation on health issues such as smoking and eating disorders. Sussman has been awarded two Senior Fulbright Fellowships. She has been elected to the Board of Directors of the International Academy for Intercultural Research where she is a Fellow. She is on the Editorial Board of the Intercultural Book Series, Shanghai International Studies University. She recently published: Return Migration and Identity: A Global Phenomenon, a Hong Kong Case (2010), Hong Kong University Press, and was nominated for the Asia Society Book Award. Vicky C. Tam is Professor at Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests include family and child development, gender issues, and qualitative methodology. She has published in Marriage and Family Review, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Children and Society, and International Journal of Psychology. Zongli Tang holds a master s degree in Economics from Wuhan University, China, a master s degree in Sociology from University of Regina, Canada, and a doctoral degree in Demography/Sociology from University of Alberta, Canada. Before joining the faculty at Auburn University at Montgomery, he was a Demographic Statistician at Massachusetts Institute for Social Economic Research, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he represented the state in the Federal State Cooperative Program for Population Estimates (FSCPE) and was one of the fi ve members of the steering committee of the FSCPE. Tang is currently Associate Professor of Sociology, Auburn University at Montgomery, and also guest professor at several universities in China. His research interests focus on population estimates, cultural demography, racial/ethnic studies (including ethnic cultures), political economy, immigrants and assimilation, statistical models, and quantitative analysis. He has published three books, edited one book, and published several book chapters, and a number of research papers in internationally and nationally recognized and peer-reviewed journals. He has made more than 30 presentations and lectures at national and international meetings. Tess Tsang Mei-wah graduated from the Department of Sociology, Hong Kong Baptist University. She is an art lover, thus her decision to collect visual data in her research. In her free time, she enjoys painting and watching movies. Her chapter in this handbook is based on her honours thesis supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun.

16 xvi About the Authors Tse Bik-chu is currently working in a non-governmental organization as Marketing Of fi cer; the working experience has equipped her with valuable knowledge in Internet marketing like online shop management and social media platform utilization to promote products and to communicate with customers effectively. The knowledge she has learnt in the university helps her job in applying research methods to evaluate customer satisfaction and to improve services provided. She has also taken part in sales and order administration by working in a jewelry trading company after graduation from Hong Kong Baptist University in Her horizons have expanded since there are opportunities to get involved in local and overseas jewelry trade shows. Recently, she has submerged herself in the Korean culture and started learning the language. Her chapter in this handbook is based on her awardwinning honours thesis supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun. Wang Danning received her Ph.D. from the City University of New York and now is teaching at the Anthropology Department, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include demographic changes, women and work, urban development, gender, and family life in China. Her current research explores the intergenerational transmission of family property among the working class families in urban China. Day Wong is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research interests are in gender issues, sexuality, and theories of Foucault and Habermas. She has published in journals Visual Anthropology, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Philosophy Today, and Violence against Women, and is the co-editor and contributor of Masculinities and Hong Kong Cinema (Hong Kong University Press, 2005). Sam Wong is Lecturer of Human Geography in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool. His research interests lie in politics of development, poverty, family, gender, and migration. His PhD dissertation on social capital and community participation of mainland Chinese migrants in Hong Kong was awarded the best dissertation by the International Institute for Asian Studies in His well-acclaimed sole-authored book, Exploring Unseen Social Capital in Community Participation, was published by the Amsterdam University Press in He is also a co-editor of Identity in Crossroad Civilisations (Amsterdam University Press, 2009). He has published in Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Asia Europe Journal, and Gender and Development. Wong Siu Sing graduated from Hong Kong Baptist University with fi rst-class honours in sociology. For years, she has been working as a journalist with local newspapers and magazines. Her chapter in this handbook is based on her award-winning honours thesis supervised by Professor Chan Kwok-bun.

17 About the Authors xvii Xiao Hong was Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA. She is now Associate Professor in the Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her primary areas of interest are in social strati fi cation, cultural values, families, and gender. She has published in Gender & Society, Journal of Human Values, Sociological Perspectives, and East-West Connections. Rui Yao is Assistant Professor in the Department of Personal Financial Planning at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her research focuses on household fi nancial risk tolerance, fi nancial ratios, portfolio allocation, debt management, retirement preparation, and household consumption patterns. Eva Yu Mui-ling stepped out from the Sociology department and stepped into Liberal Studies, now teaching with a sociological training, hoping for her students growth. Yan Yu is Associate Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University. Her research interests include gender and immigrant marriages/families. Her recent publications include Reconstruction of Gender in Marriage: Processes among Chinese Immigrant Wives. Journal of Comparative Family Studies. Vol. 42, No. 5. pp , Tobey Yung Wai-ming graduated from the Hong Kong Baptist University, obtaining her Bachelor of Social Science in China Studies-Sociology in 2004 and is now pursuing the Master of Christian Studies in Alliance Bible Seminary in Hong Kong. Now working in a charitable organization that serves the poor in China, which gives her an opportunity to learn about the struggles of poor families in China and their relationship to the economic development of Chinese society. Yuan Zang became a graduate student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Delaware, under the guidance of Barbara Settles. After receiving a degree in Psychology in China, Zang received a Master s degree in Jia Zhao is evaluation scientist with Nemours Health & Prevention Services and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Delaware. Zhao s major area of research interest is in parental and family impact on child development, exploring the positive parenting practices that foster healthy home environment and promote children s physical and mental health from a bio-psycho-social-cultural perspective..

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