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Lifestyles signify who people are and who people want to be. They contain one's value orientation toward the world. The speeding urbanization over the globe has made the urban lifestyle mainstream, and so does it in China. The overwhelming range of options in cities represents a consumerist society, but meanwhile, there is an emergent underground alternative, especially from the younger generations who are pursuing a "more meaningful life." This paper does an ethnographic study on young Chinese urbanites' engagement in a village as an essential example of this trend. It argues that young people's choice for rural life is a reaction and a resistance to the social forces of consumerism and urbanization. By reflecting on the reimagination of modernity and life politics in the changing process, the research implies that accompanied by opportunities for social change, young people's promotion of rural lifestyles could be linked to the government's development agenda, and this might potentially cause new forms of inequalities in rural development. By drawing on practical experience, the paper brings narratives about young Chinese urbanites' life choices in rural places into the discussion of modernity and life politics, hopefully exemplifying a broader sociological contribution around the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many stroke survivors' quality of life is impaired. Few studies of factors influencing their quality of life have been based on the factors tested by the short form 36 instrument. This study did so with 308 physically disabled stroke survivors in rural China. Principal components analysis was applied to refine the dimension structure of the short form 36 assessment, followed by backward multiple linear regression analysis to determine the independent factors influencing quality of life. The structure revealed differed from the generic structure in showing that the mental health and vitality dimensions are not unidimensional. Subjects who reported access to the outdoors as convenient demonstrated better quality of life in all dimensions. Those who exercised regularly achieved better social functioning and negative mental health scores. Other factors influencing a better quality of life in terms of physical functioning were younger age and not being married. Being older and better educated predicted better role-emotion scores. Being female correlated with better social functioning scores, while men scored better on bodily pain. Being less educated predicted higher negative mental health, while being less disabled predicted better physical and social functioning. The results suggest that the SF-36's dimension structure should be re-evaluated before using it to assess stroke survivors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of rural land on the life satisfaction of rural-farming women with a modified institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework as the theoretical framework. The research sample is composed of data acquired from surveys of thirty-six randomly selected villages in three provinces in China. The main findings include that the quality of the cultivated land, embodied in the cultivated land location and the land cultivation facilities, has an impact on the life satisfaction of rural-farming women; agreeable living conditions can improve the life satisfaction of rural-farming women; and the well-being status of rural-farming women also has an impact on their life satisfaction, but there are differences in this impact. The objective factors, such as household cash and savings, farming income, and farming time, also have inconsistent effects on the life satisfaction of rural-farming women. This study bridges the gap and explains the land-related factors, which have an impact on rural women farmers, and brings attention to this group of people who are easily overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pastoral areas are the key difficulty in China's pursuit of common prosperity and a key region for China to build the northern ecological safety barrier and to realize the Two Centenary Goals. It is of great significance to scientifically evaluate the quality of rural life (QRL), measure the relative poverty level (RPL), and identify the relatively poor areas, making it possible to dock poverty elimination with rural revitalization. Based on the socio-economic data of 18 pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia, this paper draws on spatial layout theory to evaluate QRL and measures RPL by the natural breakpoint method and then identifies the relatively poor areas in Inner Mongolia. The results show that (1) the QRLs of pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia were unbalanced and highly polarized. The mean score of QRLs was 0.2598. Eleven (61.11%) of the counties/banners had a QRL smaller than the mean score. On the spatial layout of QRLs, the western areas were stronger than the central areas. High QRL counties/banners are mainly concentrated in the western region. In the central region, the QRLs were very fragmented, falling onto all five levels. (2) The pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia differed significantly in RPL. The mean score of RPL stood at 0.3788. Nine counties/banners (50%) had an RPL greater than the mean. Contrary to the spatial layout features of QRLs, the central pastoral areas in Inner Mongolia had stronger RPLs than the eastern ones. High RPL counties/banners are mostly clustered in the central region. The spatial layout of RPLs is relatively reasonable in the central region: the RPLs decreased gradually from Dorbod Banner. (3) Nearly 45% of the pastoral areas in central and western Inner Mongolia face serious relative poverty and a high risk of returning to poverty. Eight counties/banners (45%) were identified as high composite relative poverty areas. From spatial layout, the composite relatively poor counties/banners clustered clearly, mainly in the western region. Finally, this paper establishes a warning mechanism against large-scale returning to poverty, aiming to lower composite RPL. The research results provide empirical reference and implementation path for consolidating the results of poverty eradication and facilitating rural revitalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural settlements are the carrier of farmers' life and rural industries. This paper introduces symbiosis theory to construct an analytical framework for the symbiosis between production land and living land in rural settlements, taking three villages in Shanxi, China as examples (secondary industry-led: Tian Village, tourism-led: Shuiyukou Village, multi-industry integration: Jiling Village). The results show that: (1) From 2010 to 2020, the compatibility and coupling coordination degree between production land and living land in Tian Village increased; the compatibility degree between production land and living land in Shuiyukou Village decreased slightly, and the coupling coordination increased significantly. In Jiling Village, the compatibility between production land and living land decreased, and the coupling coordination showed an increasing trend. (2) From 2010 to 2020, the degree of symbiosis between production land and living land in the three Villages both showed an increasing trend, and the growth of symbiosis degree was mainly caused by the growth of coupling coordination. (3) In 2010–2015 and 2015–2020, the symbiotic growth between production land and living land in Tian Village was driven by farmers' demand and social economy, respectively. The dominant driving factor for Shuiyukou Village in these two periods was resource endowment. Jiling Village was driven by social economy and regional policies, respectively. This work can provide scientific support for the practical adjustment of land use structure and the reconstruction of rural settlements in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to examine how rural everyday life has changed in the Chinese context in response to the process of urbanisation. Drawing on a mobilities perspective, changes in everyday life are represented by spatial mobilities and the impacts of social mobilities on them are assessed at a household level. Employing rural survey data for 2007 and 2017 conducted in Jianghan Plain, China, results reveal that everyday life in central rural China has undergone an uneven development and is significantly impacted by social mobilities. As one of the main agricultural production regions in China, the livelihood strategies in the study area have been shifting from full-time farming to part-time farming and non-farm. The effects of the process of social mobilities on working, consuming and leisure mobilities are also unevenly distributed. Our findings suggest that the perspective of everyday life deserves further investigation for its important role in exploring the human–land relationship in a rural context. And the mobilities paradigm can provide an alternative insight into rural restructuring and its social effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has a lengthy and glorious history spanning thousands of years. Traditional dwellings represent distinct regional cultural origins, and different forms of housing constructions have arisen as a result. However, traditional dwellings preserve area culture and specific life memories as a fundamental component of rural life. From the perspective of conventional dwellings, this paper takes the representative Manchu folk houses in Northeast China as an example. It discusses the architectural structure, appearance style, and overall style of Manchu folk dwellings and the cultural dimension of architecture and its distinctive value under the impact of regional culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the regional fiction of early twentieth century China in order to understand how such texts presented the object world of rural life. In doing so it addresses a gap in the historiography of material culture in modern China, which has emphasized urban commodity regimes and has paid far less attention to the ways in which pre-existing object practices endured into the time of the modern Republic. Building off of the methodological insights of scholars such as Bill Brownand Janet Poole regarding the contribution that literary study can make to historical understandings of material cultures, this paper argues that the regional texts of Lu Xun, Xu Qinwen, Ye Shengtao, and Yu Dafu were bewitched by overlapping life worlds: one represented by the secular rationalism of the text's narrators, and the other represented by the animistic practices of the rural others they encounter, which was expressed through objects such as joss sticks, temple doorsills, and ancestral alters. These literary works reflected upon how objects were used to make meaning in ways that were not reducible to urban commodity fetishism or remnant "superstition." As presented in these works, spiritual objects remain powerfully active parts of the affective worlds of rural people, collapsing binary distinctions between living language and inanimate matter, the human and the ghostly, the past and the present. For the narrators of these texts, these object practices invoke a complicated mixture of modernizing critique and empathetic recognition. As such, these texts allow readers to witness the early expressions of a complex dialectic of rejection and recognition/accommodation that has marked the attitude modernizing states in China have taken in relation to animistic material cultures over the past century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solid fuels usage may have a negative impact on people's living environment, worsen indoor air quality, thus affect people's health status. Using CFPS panel data from 2010 to 2018, this paper studies the impact of solid fuels usage on life satisfaction of rural residents in China. Through two-stage least squares regression and other methods, we find that the use of solid fuels is negatively correlated with life satisfaction of rural residents. When rural residents use solid fuels for cooking, their life satisfaction will be reduced by around 0.082–0.138 units. Through grouping regression, we found that the negative impact of the use of solid fuels on the life satisfaction of rural residents increases with the increase of the individual's age. Through further mechanism analysis, we found that the negative impact of the use of solid fuels on the life satisfaction may be due to that the use of solid fuels will reduce the probability of individuals being in a healthy state, thus leading to a reduction in labor supply and a decline in income levels. • This paper investigates how solid fuels use affects life satisfaction. • This paper finds that the use of solid fuels is negatively correlated with life satisfaction of rural residents. • This paper enriches the research on the influencing factors of life satisfaction. • This paper provides new insights on understanding residents' life satisfaction. • This paper aids the implementation of the government energy subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The service industry is a major pillar of China's urban economy. Rural migrant workers form the backbone workforce in China's urban service sector. Despite much attention to the work and life of rural migrants in Chinese cities, urban employers' regulation and rural migrants' performance of emotional labour in the service sector remain understudied. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews over eight years, we examine how urban employer and rural migrant workers relationally navigate intersecting emotional and migration regimes to contest, (re)produce and (re)configure rural migrants' power and status in the urban space. We develop the conceptualization of 'translocal emotional reflexivity' to elucidate multiplicated emotional regimes and subjectivities between places of origin and arrival, as well as how emotional reflexivity is mobilized to regulate, navigate and negotiate conflictual translocal emotional subjectivities. We discuss the 'institutionalized individualization' of emotional labour – a process in which an employer systematically engineers a sense of emotional agency for workers to re-imagine, re-appropriate and individualize their emotional performance to serve institutional aims – as a distinctive feature of how the regulation and performance of emotional labour has evolved over the past decade in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging travel to higher-order centers is important for enhancing the quality of life of rural residents and promoting rural development. Although the literature shows that the built environment influences travel behavior, few studies have explored the relationship between the built environment and the frequency of travel to higher-order centers, particularly in rural contexts. Even less attention has been given to the synergetic effects that occur across built environment elements and county heterogeneity. Using data from 659 respondents in three Chinese counties collected between 2019 and 2020, we applied multilevel ordered logistic models to explore the associations between the rural built environment and travel frequency to higher-order centers (including townships, counties, and city centers). The results show that rural residents' travel frequency to higher-order centers decreases with increasing distance from such centers. The relationships between built environment elements and travel frequency to higher-order centers differ according to the level of such centers. Moreover, built environment elements exert synergetic impacts on travel frequency to higher-order centers. The association of the built environment with travel frequency to higher-order centers is moderated by the developmental levels of counties. These findings suggest that interventions in the rural built environment are important for ensuring the enhancement of rural resident travel behavior and access to better services, which, in turn, benefits rural revitalization. • We explored the association of built environment with higher-order centers travel in the rural context. • A higher land use diversity promotes a greater frequency of travel to townships. • Shorter distances to transit and county centers encourage more trips to county centers. • Higher highway and city center accessibility encourages more city center trips. • Built environment elements exert synergistic effects on travel to higher-order centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The quality of exports is an important indicator of the economic development of a country. It is, therefore, important to understand its determinants. Existing literature reveals a number of determinants such as the position of a country, the distance to the trading partner, the size of the firm and the productivity or the quality of inputs. In this study, the author proposes a new determinant, namely ethnic diversity. Design/methodology/approach: In the first stage of this research, the author estimates the quality of exports following Berry (1994) approach. The author also addresses the endogeneity problem as suggested by Khandelwal (2010). The author's measure of ethnic diversity follows Easterly and Levine (1997). In the second stage, the author regresses the estimated quality on the measure of ethnic diversity, interacted by the degree of differentiation of the goods. Findings: First, the author finds that ethnic diversity in general reduces the quality of exports. Second, the author finds that the impact varies with the degree of differentiation. In particular, while ethnic diversity decreases the quality of differentiated goods, it increases the quality of homogeneous goods. Research limitations/implications: Because of data limitations, the research cannot investigate the impact of migration. Practical implications: The findings of this paper show how one can improve the quality of products based on the characteristics of the population and of the products. Originality/value: In the last decade, there has been growing attention paid to the impact of ethnic diversity on economic performance. As industrial powerhouses such as China continue to urbanize, stitching together once-disparate ethnic groups, the role ethnic diversity plays in the economic life of a country must be examined from a variety of angles. This paper is the first to investigate the specific impact of that diversity on product quality and on how diversity interacts with the characteristics of products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the way PRC historians use analytical categories by looking at the emergence of a divide between production and the social reproduction of labor (all the work that goes into producing and raising laborers) that transformed and structured rural everyday life during the Mao period. Everyday life is historical, produced in different ways under different material conditions, structured and shaped by social forms in motion. Thus, it is not an analytical frame through which historians can view the real content of the Mao period underneath the thin veneer of Maoist high politics and its categories. This article therefore argues that everyday life, far from a sphere resisting the impositions and dictates of the state, is fully implicated in the political-economic structuring of society. This is a call to not simply replace an earlier social science focus on the political economy of the PRC with a bottom-up or empirical view of everyday life, recognizing that everyday life is already a structured terrain. Rather than bringing in social science analytical categories from the outside or searching for an empirical real view from below, we need to investigate the emergence of categories and social forms from the real material limits and tendencies of a rapidly changing PRC society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the short version six-item Quality of Life Scale (QOLS-6) and the consistency of subject-proxy data in a case-control psychological autopsy study on elderly suicide in rural China. Methods: A two-stage stratified cluster sampling method was used to select research sites. We used self-administered questionnaires to collect proxy-based information from informants and subject-based information from living comparisons. Results: A total of 242 pairs of suicide cases and living comparisons were selected in our research. Subject-proxy consistency for QOLS-6 was good (Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.688) in living controls. Good internal consistency of QOLS-6 was validated by Cronbach’s α being greater than 0.6 among suicide cases and living comparisons. The mean scores of quality of life were lower among suicide cases than living controls. Quality of life was negatively correlated with depression, loneliness, hopelessness, impulsiveness and stressful life events, while it was positively correlated with activities of daily living and family function. Conclusions: QOLS-6 has good reliability and validity, which can be used for assessing quality of life among Chinese rural older adults. It is shorter and easier than any other scale for measuring quality of life and can be used as a screening tool in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural-urban migrants (mingongs) provide crucial labor for China's economic growth and global supply chains. Today, second generation mingongs who have spent most of their lives in cities have grown up. However, we know little about if their experiences with technologies are similar to their "urban-native" peers. This study reports on a qualitative study in a community in Beijing. We found a new type of "rurality": second generation mingongs' experiences with technologies differed from their urban-native peers in nearly every aspect, but exhibited similarities with their peers in rural areas. Taking nostalgia and memory as theoretical lenses, we demonstrate that such a "rurality" could be a coping mechanism for mingongs' identity struggles. Our work contributed to HCI and CSCW literature by identifying the existence of a new type of "rurality." That is, although residing in the city for nearly almost all of their lives, these second generation mingongs experiences greatly differed from their urban-native peers while exhibiting certain similarities with people living in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Several studies have found that poor sleep quality appeared to be negatively associated with quality of life in older adults, but the mechanism underlying this association remained unclear. In this study, we aimed to examine whether mental health mediated the association between sleep quality and quality of life among rural elderly and to explore the moderated role of physical activity between mental health and quality of life.Methods: Data were extracted from the baseline survey of rural elderly household health services in Shandong province, in which 3,243 older adults aged 60 years and above were included. The moderated mediation models were examined using SPSS PROCESS Version 3.4 software, in which the mediation variable was mental health, and the moderation variable was physical activity.Results: We found that mental health partially mediated the effect of sleep quality on quality of life [indirect effect = -0.158, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = -0.185, -0.133], with the mediating effect accounting for 51% of the total effect. The indirect effect was moderated by physical activity (β = 0.056, p < 0.001), and a greater effect was observed among older adults with lower level of physical activity.Limitations: We included two mediators in one model, and interpretation of the observed associative direction was limited.Conclusions: Physical activity moderated the indirect effect of mental health on association between sleep quality and quality of life. Encouraging the rural elderly to increase physical activity appropriately might improve the quality of life for the elderly with poor sleep quality and mental health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydro-morphological processes (HMP, any natural phenomenon contained within the spectrum defined between debris flows and flash floods) pose a relevant threat to infrastructure, urban and rural settlements and to lives in general. This has been widely observed in recent years and will likely become worse as climate change will influence the spatio-temporal pattern of precipitation events. The modelling of where HMP-driven hazards may occur can help define the appropriate course of actions before and during a crisis, reducing the potential losses that HMPs cause in their wake. However, the probabilistic information on locations prone to experience a given hazard is not sufficient to depict the risk our society may incur. To cover this aspect, modeling the loss information could open up to better territorial management strategies. In this work, we made use of the HMP catalogue of China from 1985 to 2015. Specifically, we implemented the Light Gradient Boosting (LGB) classifier to model the impact level that locations across China have suffered from HMPs over the thirty-year record. We obtained six impact levels as a combination of financial and life losses, whose classes we used as separate target variables for our LGB. In doing so, we estimated spatial probabilities of certain HMP impact, something that has yet to be tested in the natural hazard community, especially over such a large spatial domain. The results we obtained are encouraging, with each of the six impact categories being separately classified with excellent to outstanding performance (the worst case corresponds to a mean AUC = 0.862, whereas the best case corresponds to a mean AUC of 0.915). The good predictive performance our model produced suggest that the cartographic output could be useful to inform authorities of locations prone to human and infrastructural losses of specific magnitudes. • We implement a predictive model of locations that have experienced various levels of financial and human losses. • This is different from common data-driven models that only looks at natural hazard occurrence locations. • The model covers the whole Chinese territory, partitioned into catchments. • This approach is a step towards an integrated risk assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural distributed photovoltaic (PV) is conducive to low-carbon development of China. Nevertheless, the development is hampered by multiple barriers and therefore lags behind expectations. Some studies have been devoted to this, but there are still problems including incomplete identification of obstacles and non-objective analysis methods. Thus, this paper is dedicated to establishing a complete and objective research framework to effectively identify obstacles and promote high level development of rural distributed PV. Firstly, a two-stage process is adopted to extract obstacles from the entire life cycle of rural distributed PV, and 10 obstacles are identified. Then the K-means clustering algorithm are introduced to improve the DEMATEL-ISM method for threshold determination and barrier analysis. Interactions between obstacles are divided into three levels and a network hierarchy that reflects these interactions is created. The results show that imperfect policies and regulations, diminished subsidy, high initial investment and aging equipment and poor quality are critical barriers, and corresponding suggestions on the collaboration between enterprises and the government are put forward. This paper comprehensively studies the obstacles to the development of rural distributed PV by objective methods and proposes suggestions for improvement, which is beneficial to the development of rural distributed PV in China. • A comprehensive barrier system of rural distributed PV projects is established. • K-means clustering algorithm is introduced to improve DEMATEL-ISM method. • The mechanism of barriers affecting the rural distributed PV are determined. • A series of recommendations for rural distributed PV are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Energy upgrade is promoted by interprovincial coordinating of economy and resource. • Energy upgrade is determined by change of farmers' preference for low-quality energy. • Energy upgrade can be promoted together in agriculture and rural life. Rural energy upgrade in developing countries is an essential part of the world climate mitigation work. To systematically promote rural energy upgrade, we took the case of China and used a spatiotemporal model to investigate the spatiotemporal characteristics of energy ladders in agriculture and rural life of developing countries. The proportion of clean energy consumption in agriculture showed an interprovincial competition effect, whereas the proportion of oil consumption in rural life showed a demonstration effect. Severe reliance on coal hinders energy upgrade. Urbanisation has improved the clean level of energy use in agriculture but does not significantly affect the in rural life. Technological progress has increased the proportion of clean energy consumption but has little impact on the proportion of oil and gas consumption. The abundance of coal resources has prompted the massive use of coal and coal-fired power. Energy-use habit promotes the use of all types of energy. Except for that of gas, the consumption of different types of energy in agriculture and rural life mutually promotes. In summary, the development of energy technologies should be established based on the regional resource endowment and economic development level. Also, subsidy principles for clean energy projects should be established based on the development level of the agriculture and residents' income. Rural energy upgrade is coordinated with urbanisation and the modernisation of the agriculture and rural life styles while paying attention to the mutual promotion between the agriculture and rural life. During the change of the energy-use habit under policy guidance, attention must be paid to interprovincial cooperation. Finally, a reasonable market mechanism should be established to promote energy upgrade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Examining the daily activity pattern of rural residents in consolidated and unconsolidated villages through mobile phone locational data. • Housing land consolidation results in longer distance to work (371 m in average), and shorter distance for nonwork activities (529 m in average). • Housing land consolidation do not necessarily harm the daily life of rural residents. Housing land consolidation and relocation has been widely implemented in rural China as a policy tool to reduce the area of built-up land, reclaim agricultural land, and redistribute the use of land. Despite of the large scale of implementation, the impact of this policy on the daily life of rural people is not sufficiently evaluated. Our work aims to fill in this gap by examining the daily activity pattern of rural residents in consolidated and unconsolidated villages through mobile phone locational data, using the Chengdu city-region as the case. One week's locational data from all phone users of China Unicom was used. We found that housing land consolidation do not necessarily harm the daily life of rural residents, which has been a main concern of many research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The relationship between urban and rural areas must be properly handled in regional development. • This paper analyzes the differences in urban and rural quality of life based on coordination and equalization. • Rural-urban integration includes the difference of rural-urban quality of life and the overall coordination of social factors. • This paper can provide reference for urban and rural coordinated development and rural revitalization. The relationship between urban and rural areas must be properly handled in regional development. With the implementation of rural revitalization strategy, China has entered a critical period of change of urban-rural relationship and rural development mode. Urban-rural integration is an urgent problem to be solved. Taking the 87 counties of Gansu Province as evaluation units, this paper constructed an index system of quality of urban and rural life involving economic, social and environmental aspects and established a model for evaluating quality of urban and rural life. Then, importance-performance analysis (IPA), information entropy, equalization index and model of urban-rural integration degree were used to analyze the spatial patterns of quality of urban and rural life as well as urban-rural integration degree. Results show: (1) Quality of urban and rural life presented consistent spatial patterns. Both presented significant spatial variation, positive spatial autocorrelation and relatively strong spatial agglomeration. (2) There was a close correlation between quality of urban and rural life. Evaluation units with high quality of urban life also showed high quality of rural life, and evaluation units with low quality of urban life also showed low quality of rural life, suggesting polarization effect. (3) The urban-rural integration in Gansu Province was mainly of medium or lower degree. Hexi Corridor region presented high degree of urban-rural integration, Longzhong region presented medium degree of urban-rural integration, Longdong region presented different degrees of urban-rural integration, and Longdongnan and Gannan regions presented medium or lower degree of urban-rural integration. In the background of rural revitalization and urban-rural integration, Gansu Province should establish or improve the institutional mechanism and policy system for urban-rural integration from the perspective of factor-industry-function. This can help solve the problems in urban-rural integration and promote the progression of urban-rural integration in Gansu Province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]