ABSTRACT
Like many of her mobile compatriots, Ai lives in a different province to her mother and father, and relies upon her mobile phone to maintain contact. Typical of her generation of students, (those born after 1980, or the ba ling hou), Ai has grown up immersed in digital technologies both inside and outside of the classroom. Also typical of her ‘one child per family’ generation, Ai is transferring her new media skills to her parents, so that they might keep in constant contact despite geographic distance. Casual, social games like Happy Farm suit this purpose, but Ai could never have predicted that her mother would become such a keen player. In its heyday around 2009 Happy Farm captured tens of millions of players in Shanghai alone, though by late 2010 many younger people in particular had moved on to other games. But not Ai's mother. At least once a day Ai would receive an instant message from her mother on the free mobile internet service, QQ, requesting her to come to the fields (of Happy Farm). If Ai was very busy with work she would suggest another time, but given that she was adept at moving between the various applications, windows and platforms at university, she would often play with her mum on the fields of Happy Farm, and joke about stealing each other's vegetables. For Ai, these fleeting moments of play with her mother helped alleviate her longing to see her parents.
