ABSTRACT
When I started studying domestic workers early in the new millennium, I came across references to a “Professor Tian” in my conversations with many urban employers of maids. It turned out that this well-known professor was a fictitious character in a television drama. The series, titled Tian Jiaoshou Jiade Ershiba ge Baomu (Professor Tian and His Twenty-Eight Maids), first screened nationally at the beginning of 1999, and ran for 22 episodes. Some of my interviewees commented that they were all too familiar with the predicaments Professor Tian faced in dealing with maids with “low suzhi” (personal quality). They would then regale me with jokes and anecdotes about their own experiences of dealing with inadequate or problematic maids-experiences that bore striking resemblances to Professor Tian’s.
