The Art of Getting By

About the Book

The Art of Getting By:Wisdom and Resilience from China's Migrant Women presents a "vagrant anthropology" immersing readers in the lives of marginalized migrant women, primarily sex workers in Guangzhou's chengzhongcun (urban village) falang (hair salon brothels). Author Kevin D. Ming employs "storying" and "companionable methods" to foreground their experiences of exploitation, precarity, and remarkable resilience.

Ming challenges conventional academic approaches, advocating for "radical attention" and "shared struggle" with those often ignored or stereotyped. He critiques "comfortably concerned" academics and NGOs, asserting that the miscreants, the marginalized, and the misused offer profound insights into declining lifeworlds.

The narratives, drawn from two decades of fieldwork, delve into kinship obligations, individual dreams, the politics of space, and everyday tactics for survival. The book is a meditation on collaborative knowledge production, focusing on the "bodily work of personhood" and the enduring power of friendship, solidarity, and "radical love" in a world of increasing unlivability. It's a call to hear anew the stories of ordinary people surviving extraordinary times.

Introduction

The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China's Migrant Women invites readers into the disappearing alleyways and vibrant communities of southern China's urban villages, offering an intimate look at the lives of poor migrant women navigating worlds of exposure and exploitation. Through what Kevin David Ming calls a "vagrant anthropology," this book chronicles two decades of walking, listening, and storying with women who work in the sexual labor industry, primarily in falang (hair salon brothels), but also beyond, in China, Malaysia, and Thailand.

This unique narrative gathers fragments of life—snatches of song, shared meals, daily gossip, and poignant personal histories—to illuminate the ingenuity, resilience, and complex desires of its subjects. We meet Wangjing, whose dreams of a modern kitchen reflect aspirations for respectability and security for her family. We learn from Qi Qi about the careful art of "fishing" for customers in upscale hotel bars, a delicate dance of observation and performance. Christine's story reveals a love for literature and a quiet determination to write her own future, even amidst challenging circumstances. These women, often dismissed or stereotyped, are shown to be adept at forming connections and finding temporary inhabitance in worlds designed for their estrangement.

Beyond individual portraits, the book uncovers the broader forces shaping these lives: the relentless pace of urban development that obliterates communities, the "cannibalizing capitalist present" that scavenges on networks of care, and the enduring weight of filial obligations. It challenges conventional notions of hope, offering instead a vision of "present hope"—an energetic continuance born from struggle and the indeterminacy of an uncertain future.

The Art of Getting By is a meditation on attention and responsibility, a social history woven with true fables. It questions how we hear the stories of those on the margins, urging us to move beyond preconceived notions and listen anew to the wisdom of survival. This is not a search for grand solutions or meaning in suffering, but an honest sharing of extraordinary lives, demonstrating how shared life is made legible in materially and historically constituted ways, and how reciprocity and connection are forged in the necessities of daily existence.