By Tianlei (Ruby) Qiu, Class of 2024
“刚需” (gāng xū) is a Chinese term often used in the context of the housing market, referring to people who have an immediate, essential, and inflexible need for housing. How would such an inflexible need influence China’s housing market? What are the underlying causes for this inflexible demand? In what ways could anthropologists discover and understand those needs? Shedding light on China’s giant real estate economy and the anxious generations behind, Prof. Mengqi Wang, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University, has recently been quoted in For Single Women in China, Owning a Home Is a New Form of Resistance on New York Times and has been working on her project Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China’s Housing Market. With her expertise in home ownership and property relations as well as her genuine passion for inquiring the fundamentals of human beings, Dr. Wang delves deep into understanding the unique needs of various segments within the housing market, including the gangxu population. We had the privilege to talk to Prof. Wang, learning her understanding of “anthropology,” her research progress, past fieldwork experiences, and her warm suggestions for the future generation.
Hi Dr. Wang, thanks for talking to us. We learned that you are an “economic anthropologist”, and your research delves into the intricate relationship between home ownership, property relations, and state power in post-socialist China. For those who don’t understand, could you briefly explain what economic anthropologists do? And could you elaborate on a specific example where you have observed these elements intersecting in unexpected or intriguing ways?
Definitely. From my understanding and my endeavor, anthropologists use qualitative research methods, such as fieldwork and interviews to investigate society. We care about multiple aspects of society, like social system, culture system, political or economic institutions, rituals, religions and everything. Even though we all know that statistical numbers matter for obvious reasons, it is still crucial to gain in-depth knowledge of patterns of behaviors. We conduct long-term, small scale, and in-depth study for small communities. As an economic anthropologist, my study is not limited to the economic system given that everything is connected. Taking the real-estate market as an example, the economy is not only about market transactions, it also matters with regard to marriage, gender values, kinship, societal values, how people pull resources and build relationships, etc.
Thank you so much. We have learned that your recent project is named “Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China’s Housing Market”. The title of your project, “Anxious Homes,” is intriguing. Could you provide a glimpse into what this term signifies in the context of China’s housing market? What prompted you to explore this concept? What were your fieldwork experiences?
Sure. I did my fieldwork in Nanjing, China. What we have noticed is that something unique in China is that some housing developments are named as “inflexible demand development” (gangxu pan). This is something we do not find in other countries but is prevalent in China. Therefore, part of my research question for this project is: why is there an inflexible demand in China and what can it tell us about the ways in which housing is provisioned in China? For my research, I interviewed realtors, developers, and the people who came to buy houses. Those buyers had a lot in common, most of them were young migrants with stable jobs in the city, and they felt they were entitled to a home in Nanjing. They wanted to start a family and they worked very hard on buying a home. Most of the buyers were men who intended to buy a home to attract a wife in the marriage market.
That is very interesting! Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned that you work with a real estate agency in Nanjing, China. How do you know the agency? Is it through personal connection or through establishing your own connection? How was the process of building connection and relationship with someone you do not know if you want to do fieldworks or observations?
That is an interesting question. I was very lucky that my mentor introduced me to Professor Fan Ke in Nanjing University, who then introduced me to the owner of a real estate agency. It was a relatively small agency and people there were friendly and welcoming. I was also very lucky that the owner of the agency is a woman, who essentially became my key informant and also a gatekeeper for my access to the local community. That being said, it was still very difficult, at the beginning, to blend in in a new community. People were confused about why you were there and it was not easy to explain your research project to someone outside of academia (perhaps more difficult than explaining it to your phd advisor). I have no suggestions on this but to stay put. Just keep on showing up and eventually, I’d say maybe 3 months later, people would start to accept you and be comfortable around you. They would open their lives to you and you could start to understand them better.
Thank you! Do you have any specific suggestions for students aiming to study cultures and movements, global China studies, urban studies and cultural anthropology? What is something you think they should know about those topics?
I think not only students aiming to study cultures and movements or cultural anthropology, but every student at DKU should take advantage of the course requirement and take at least one anthropology course for the sake of looking at the world through the eyes of others. There are two benefits of this. The first is that students could know more about the differences among cultures and be more respectful towards certain things. Anthropology means taking different perspectives and not judging what others see. There are various theories or tools to help you when you want to make a judgment. A term we usually use is “cultural relativism,” suggesting that no culture is superior or inferior to another. And we should try to view a person’s beliefs, values and practices in the context of that person’s own culture. The second benefit is that learning about the diversity of cultural beliefs and practices does help us make moral decisions. This is not about knowledge, but rather about our connection to this world. We can seek answers to questions such as how to live an ethical life by working with different people, embracing differences, and living with differences. Anthropology is the philosophy with the people in.
The last question is that do you have any current research going on at the moment that involves students? What roles do students play in your research? How do you and your colleagues in the CSCC cluster provide mentorship and guidance to students and embrace research pursuits?
I don’t have any active project that involves students, since I’m mostly working on the writing part of the book. I do have two student mentees who are conducting research on their own. One is doing fieldwork in the fish market and another in real estate companies. I look forward to conducting fieldwork, perhaps with students, on new projects once I’m done with my book. I think the CSCC and DKU in general provide really good opportunities for both faculty and students to conduct field-based research. The prospect of going out and doing fieldwork in communities beyond DKU is exciting. I look forward to seeing more students getting immersed in field research through those opportunities.
