As unprecedented waves of young, rural women journey to cities in China, not only to work, but also to “see the world”and gain some autonomy, they regularly face significant institutional obstacles as well as deep-seated anti-rural prejudices. Based on immersive fieldwork, Cara Wallis provides an intimate portrait of the social, cultural, and economic implications of mobile communication for a group of young women engaged in unskilled service work in Beijing, where they live and work for indefinite periods of time. While simultaneously situating her work within the fields of feminist studies, technology studies, and communication theory, Wallis explores the way in which the cell phone has been integrated into the transforming social structures and practices of contemporary China, and the ways in which mobile technology enables rural young women—a population that has been traditionally marginalized and deemed as “backward” and “other”—to participate in and create culture, allowing them to perform a modern, rural-urban identity. In this theoretically rich and empirically grounded analysis,Wallis provides original insight into the co-construction of technology and subjectivity as well as the multiple forces that shape contemporary China.

當打工妹滿懷憧憬地來到城市以後，她們常常面對的是︰日復一日的超時加班，頭班病和工傷的威脅，拖欠工資和人身侮辱，還要面對城市的冷漠與歧視。然而，她們不知道該如何維護自己的合法權益，即使抗爭，往往也難以取得全面勝利。 可她們為什麼還不斷地涌向城市？為什麼進城了，又回鄉，回鄉了，又進城？進城務工僅僅是為了增加一點收入，或是開開眼界？ 有一點可以肯定，那就是城市的繁榮離不開打工妹辛勤的汗水，因此，就不該讓她們再付出辛酸的淚水﹗