Plaza dance and damas' everyday lives in urban China: grandmotherhood, social networks and ageing bodies

Plaza dance (guangchangwu), a mixture of dance and gymnastics, has become one of the most popular leisure activities in China among middle-aged and older women (known as damas). It usually takes place in open and public areas (e.g. plazas and parks) in the cities, and it is promoted under China’s state policies and (partly) supported by local governments. As China’s population is greying rapidly, with longer life expectancy and improved living standards, groups of plaza dancers have become rather dominant in public space. Limited research has been done on these damas’ dancing experiences and everyday stories through their own narratives. This thesis aims to investigate Chinese dancing damas’ daily lives from a feminist perspective. I draw upon data from my ethnographic fieldwork in the city of Nanjing in 2016. I undertook three months of participant observation in three different plaza dance groups, staying with each group for one month. During my participant observation, I conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with plaza dancers, most of whom were older women born in the 1950s and 1960s. They have experienced the Maoist movement, the economic reform, and a series of dynamic sociocultural changes. From an analysis of my fieldnotes and interview data, I present various aspects of damas’ life stories: diversified living arrangements, grandmotherhood, social needs, and embodied practices in Maoist and post-Maoist China. By critically investigating their varied individual later lives in relation to the wider sociocultural context, I argue that urban Chinese damas are living and struggling among sets of complex norms and values in this transforming era. While their agency and power in their personal, family and social lives have been recognised, their experiences are not uniform. Many damas (especially older women with lower socioeconomic status) are still constrained by the continuing gender politics and age hierarchy in contemporary society.