Idyll or nightmare: what does rurality mean for farmers in a Chinese village undergoing commercialization?

Amid arguments over the recurrence or deconstruction of rural life- prompted by cultural reconstruction of rurality- the increasing complexity of rural life can be variously traced to economic, social, and political transformations common to all corners of the world. With primary reference to archives and in-depth interviews, this study aims to describe the experience with, negotiation of, and reproduction of rurality among farmers of a thousand-year-old village on the east coast of mainland China. In doing so, it reveals rurality as a Western concept used to clarify the fate of rural communities in a transitional economy. Indeed, market-oriented reform seems to have changed farmers' conceptualization of rurality, with their references to the good old days serving as a complaint about their economically and politically inferior status. Certainly, rural tourism development is an idyllic prospect for urbanite, but it is becoming a nightmare for indigenous farmers as the cultural colonization embodied in the commercialization of rurality threatens to join industrialization and urbanization in encroaching on rural communities in a transitional economy.