Dancing for Their Lives

The Pursuit of Meaningful Aging in Urban China

By Claudia Huang

SERIES: Global Perspectives on Aging

Rutgers University Press

Dancing for Their Lives explores the vibrant world of retired Chinese women known as "dancing grannies” who seek fulfillment and companionship amidst societal upheaval. These women, part of China’s “lost generation,” gather in parks and public squares to reclaim their lives through dance in the wake of Chinese economic and cultural transformations. The book challenges prevailing narratives of aging societies, portraying old age as a site of social innovation rather than decline. Based on ethnographic research conducted in Chengdu, China, Dancing for Their Lives reveals how retirees learn to navigate shifting social norms and values while actively creating new models for growing older. The book’s insights resonate beyond Chinese society, offering lessons on resilience and the pursuit of meaning in any aging population. Dancing for Their Lives underscores the human capacity to craft purposeful lives amid uncertainty, transcending geographical boundaries to illuminate the universal quest for fulfillment in later years.

Dancing for Their Lives is a vivid and enchantingly resonant ethnography of how older women in Western China create purposeful aging through collective performance and engagement. A fascinating story of social and cultural production in today’s China. A real achievement, not just for China studies but for global aging as well! Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology and director of the Social Technology for Global Ag

Dancing for Their Lives is a gracefully written ethnography that is as readable as it is illuminating. Looking well beyond the spectacle of dancing dama with their colorful costumes and props, Huang strikes a skillful balance between examining the phenomenon’s conditions of possibility and attending to what is most at stake for her interlocuters, exemplifying anthropological holism at its best. Teresa Kuan, author of Love's Uncertainty: The Politics and Ethics of Child Rearing in Contemporary China

CLAUDIA HUANG is an assistant professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach.

Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Age of Uncertainty
1 Dancing for their Lives
2 Dama Mania
3 Families under (Peer) Pressure
4 Play a Day, Count a Day
5 The Flavor of Living
Conclusion
References
Index

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