ABSTRACT
Since China’s reform and opening-up, the status divide between urban employers and rural migrant maids has posed a problem for the image of a ‘harmonious society’. This chapter explores the imaginary solutions to this problem provided by contemporary literary and televisual works. The chapter argues that, unlike the critical representations of the intimacy of rural migrant maids in literary works, television dramas from the turn of the century have strived to bridge the status gap and build a happy life for rural maids by transforming the employment relationship with their male urban employers into a romantic one. Yet, textual analysis suggests that no matter how the televisual discourse evolves, cross-class romance and marriage are merely an unstable floating bridge to happiness for rural maids and cannot really solve the mutual discontent between maids and their urban employers.
