AcknowledgementsThe research for th

Acknowledgements
The research for this project was made possible by generous financial support
from the Fulbright IIE, the Social Science Research Council’s International
Dissertation Research Fellowship program, and a pre-dissertation fellowship
from the National Science Foundation. Portions of this article were presented
at the second ‘Putting Pierre Bourdieu to Work’ working conference held at UC
___________

Berkeley in May 2005. This article has been shaped by the ideas and input of
many people, but special thanks go to Teresa Sharpe, Chris Niedt, Tom Gold,
Michael Burawoy, and Kevin O’Brien.
Notes
1 Borrowing Ching Kwan Lee’s (2002) formulation, I understand contem-
porary China to be ‘postsocialist’ largely in that the planned economy no
longer plays a central role in production or consumption. China is also
postsocialist in the sense that the present is understood in relation to, and
generally as a rejection of, the socialist past (Rofel, 1999; Zhang, 2000).
2 For one report on
Meihua K
, see for example, ‘How did the fake medicine
“Meihua K” enter the marketplace?’ (
Jiayao ‘meihua K’ shi ruhe liuru
shichang de
?),
Xinhua Net
, Changsha, 2 April 2002 [http://202.84.17.73.
7777], accessed 13 May 2003; on the Nanjing mooncakes, ‘Nanjing
Guanshengyuan will be broken up: “Old filling mooncakes” incident
threatens company leadership’ (
Nanjing Guanshengyuan yao bei jisan: jiu
xian yuebing shijian weixie gongsi lingdao anquan
),
Harbin Life Daily
(
Shenghuo Bao
), 20 October 2001, p. 11.
3 My answer to the customer’s query was borrowed from my co-workers,
who used this appellation – ‘factory-direct sales’ – as a way to allay
customer concerns about merchandise quality. But the term was also tech-
nically correct, since the manufacturer supplied merchandise directly to the
sales area. Pricing and discounting, however, remained under store control.
4 The ISO, or International Organization for Standardization, issues
standards – usually technical or technological – to ensure compatibility and
quality levels for technology, products, and services across countries. China
is a member nation of the ISO, and Chinese companies with products or
services meeting ISO standards like to advertise this fact, especially given
widespread quality problems. There were even department stores in Harbin
that had received an ISO 9000, a standard for quality business management,
especially with regards to customer satisfaction. The application of ISO
standards to Chinese managerial and service performance seems to support
Ann Anagnost’s (1997: 77) claim that ‘the speculative gaze of foreign
capital’ gets translated into modern notions of ‘civility’ and culture in China.
5 Ellen Hertz (2001: 279) gives a contrasting example of a man who claimed
he never paid ‘market price’ for anything, instead relying upon personal
connections to secure discounts and lower prices. Hertz argues that this
represents the assertion of face – of individual identity – in a seemingly
anonymous market context. It could be argued, then, that sales clerks at
Harbin No. X were indeed asserting a kind of equality of ‘the masses’ that
was an ideal, if often unrealized, of China’s socialist economy.
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6 I do not want to oversimplify: at times, coping with customer distrust
involved trying to conceal Harbin No. X’s differences from other retailers.
This was often the case with customer expectations for discounts. Here,
sales clerks would usually try to face down customer demands by insisting
that the merchandise was ‘already discounted’. For example, when a girl
asked Big Sister Zhao if there was a discount on a coat she had selected,
Zhao launched into a detailed explanation about how Ice Day was ‘a new
brand this year’ (
jinnian chuang pai
) and so the price was already set at 15
percent off. In a typical solidarity move, Zhao added that if she lowered
the price, ‘Auntie will have to take 10 yuan out of my own pocket, and I
only earn 400 yuan a month!’
7‘
Zhiqing
’, or ‘educated youths’, are also known as the ‘Cultural Revolution
generation’ and were the cohort who came of age during the Cultural
Revolution (1966–76). This group was sent as youths to the countryside
for re-education during the latter years of the Cultural Revolution. I should
note that the
zhiqing
nostalgia Yang describes locates positive themes such
as human connection in rural, not urban, life.
8 Rofel (1999) argues that the construction of modernity in China is in part
dependent upon the construction of the country’s Cultural Revolution
generation as ‘abjected figures’: ‘One proves oneself a modern subject in
the post-Mao era by expunging what the Cultural Revolution generation
has come to represent’ (p. 190). On other examples of nostalgia as a kind
of resistance or expression of unease in contemporary China, see Barmé
(1999); Dai (1997) and O’Brien and Li (1999); on Shanghai nostalgia in
support of reforms, see Lu (2002).
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