ABSTRACT
I returned to China to conduct my fieldwork in March 2003 and stayed until May 2003. I collected life histories from redundant women workers in Nanjing to explore the social and historical factors that had shaped their lives. I also interviewed some of their daughters about the impact of their mother’s changed circumstances on their own life and aspirations. My decision to include daughters came from reading Song’s (1995) study of two generations of women in the Chinese restaurant business in London, in which she mentioned how daughters gained empowerment from their mothers’ experiences. I recalled that none of my female friends was keen on repeating the life track their mothers had followed so I decided to incorporate the daughters’ vantage point. The process of my fieldwork was complicated by cultural specificities such as how to approach interviewees, a lack of familiarity with qualitative research among the Chinese and the intrusion of the national matchmaking culture in relations with interviewees. My stay was cut short by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic, which made my fieldwork an eventful experience.
