Market Economy Lives, Socialist Death: Contemporary Commemorations in Urban China

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in funeral parlors in Shanghai in 2010 and 2011, this article finds that regardless of how they lived, urban Chinese in Shanghai today are mainly commemorated in "memorial meetings". By analyzing what memorial meetings are through examining the modernist emotional expression and bodily movements as well as socialist narratives in these rituals, this article shows that memorial meetings transform dead bodies into proper persons-socialist citizen subjects-posthumously. This is possible because of the rehabilitating power that this ritual acquired during the Cultural Revolution. However, the Chinese government has been discouraging people from having memorial meetings since the beginning of its economic reforms. Consequently, performing memorial meetings in this contemporary context creates a moment of disjuncture by providing people with a chance to reflect on what being a citizen in China means today. Such dissonance allows people to momentarily recognize alternatives to their market-driven daily life.