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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON
CHINESE POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Beyond Tears
and Laughter
Gender, Migration, and
the Service Sector in China

Yang Shen
New Perspectives on Chinese Politics and Society

Series Editor
Yang Zhong
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai, China
Rapid growth has posed new challenges for sustainable political and eco-
nomic development in China. This series is dedicated to the study of mod-
ern Chinese politics and society, drawing on case studies, field work,
surveys, and quantitative analysis. In addition to its empirical focus, this
series will endeavour to provide unique perspectives and insights by pub-
lishing research from scholars based in China and the region. Forthcoming
titles in this series will cover political culture, civil society, political econ-
omy and governance.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14734
 Yang Shen

Beyond Tears and

Laughter
Gender, Migration, and the Service Sector in China
Yang Shen
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Shanghai, China

New Perspectives on Chinese Politics and Society

ISBN 978-981-13-5816-6    ISBN 978-981-13-5817-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5817-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018968443

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Preface

I was born in Shanghai seven years after the establishment of the Reform
and Opening-up policy in China. In the year I was born, the country still
operated as a planned economy in which food was rationed and purchased
by food stamps. In the early 1990s, my parents started a small business. My
father resigned from his job at a state-owned enterprise (SOE), which was
an extraordinarily risky and unusual decision to make at that time because
SOE jobs were regarded as an ‘iron rice bowl’ (tie fanwan): a permanent job
with sufficient social benefits (Whyte, 2012). The reform of SOEs com-
menced in the mid-1990s and as a result, 28.18 million workers were laid
off from 1998 to 2003; by 2003, only 68.76 million workers remained
employed in SOEs (SCIO, 2004). Several years after my father’s resignation,
the factory where he had worked was closed down and all the workers were
laid off; by that time, my father had invested in the Chinese stock market
and become one of the most financially successful people from that factory.
My family benefitted from my father’s risky decision, and we have been
relatively well off ever since. Yet, I could not take my family’s wealth for
granted. Individuals’ life chances can take different turns during the dra-
matic social transformations in China. By contrast, many of my father’s
former colleagues lost their jobs during the massive layoffs, and they are
living rather difficult lives like millions of city dwellers.
I became aware of the rural-urban disparity thanks to a television docu-
mentary and through people I encountered in China. In 2007, I watched
‘The rich and the poor’, a documentary made by the Japanese media group
NHK. It displayed the drastic differences between the newly rich and
migrant workers in China. I was sentimental to see a middle-aged rich man

v
vi PREFACE

decorate his house like a palace, whereas a middle-aged male migrant

worker in Guangdong province searched for the cheapest toy for his child,
who still lived in a rural area, in the hope of taking the toy back to his vil-
lage during the Spring Festival.1 It echoed a case I came across around
11 pm on a midsummer night in 2010. Some women were waiting by the
roadside in an attempt to make a living by carrying passengers by scooter.
Planning to take the ‘scooter taxi’ home, I agreed upon a price with one of
these women. Before leaving, she spoke to a little girl, three or four years
old, who was sleeping on the cold concrete floor: ‘Mum has to leave for a
while. Please stay here and don’t move around.’ Her child was half awake
and remained lying on the floor. On the way to my home, the woman told
me that local Shanghainese children went to bed earlier, whereas her child
had to be there until late at night. She worked during the day in a super-
market and as a scooter driver during the night, and her husband worked
as a scooter driver full-time. She had to bring the child with her because
there was no one at home. I felt great compassion for them.
The interaction with my roommate Xiuxiu during my M.A. studies
from 2007 to 2010 reinforced my resolution to do something for deprived
people. She came from rural Shanxi province, where coalmine explosions
occurred frequently. During late-night chats, she told me a lot about her
hometown. Although coal mining is risky work, it is more profitable than
farming. As a result, many men choose to be miners. My roommate was
the first person in her village to complete a master’s programme. She
wanted to do something to help her fellow villagers, but as a migrant who
was new to Shanghai, her schedule was dominated by career development,
such as doing internships and searching for a job in order to find a footing
in this metropolis. This did not leave much time and energy for focusing
on the development of her village. She was the first person from rural areas
I have come to know, and meeting her made me realise how different life
trajectories could be. The encounter with Xiuxiu reinforced my belief that
those who do not need to worry about their own financial wellbeing are
more likely to have the ability to help others, so they should take more
social responsibility.
In the summer of 2008, motivated by Xiuxiu’s story, my friends and I
organised a volunteering group to help children in rural Guizhou province.

1
Spring Festival is the biggest celebration in China. It begins on January 1 of each year
according to the lunar calendar, which is different from the Gregorian calendar. The Chinese
New Year holiday usually lasts for one week. It is a festival in which families gather together,
so millions of migrant workers are on the move during this period.
 PREFACE vii

It was the first time I had visited rural China. Through teaching and home
interviewing, I gained a glimpse of life there. I was frustrated to witness
poverty there, but was unable to think of any solutions. During the global
economic recession in 2008, many rural workers went back to their villages,
so this gave me my first opportunity to talk to people who had experienced
migration. As a result, I observed that hukou can help explain the deprived
situation of rural migrants before pursuing my PhD studies.
In summer 2010, a friend and I made a documentary about an 82-year-­
old Shanghainese woman who collected used newspapers in order to sell
them to recyclers. She narrated her life experience of leaving Shanghai to
support the construction of inner China in the Mao era. Her hukou was
transferred from Shanghai to Sichuan province, and she was not able to
transfer it back to Shanghai even after she came back. At that time, living
in Shanghai without Shanghai hukou made it impossible for her to apply
for permission to use gas, a property ownership certificate and even a TV
licence. Seeing how obsessed she was with her hukou status, I came to
realise what it meant to more marginalised people.
After this, the suicides committed by migrant workers in Foxconn made
me decide to focus on migrants. I felt sad about the tragedy, but it also
made me feel that I had a duty to do something to change their situation.
I felt compassion for pupils who lack sufficient educational resources and
for people who are destitute because they were born in rural areas and live
a hard life. The compassion for the less fortunate was one of the motiva-
tions for me to carry out this research.
When I was writing about reflexivity, I recalled George Orwell, one of
my favourite writers, who worked as a casual worker in restaurants in Paris
and wrote a book called ‘Down and out in Paris and London’. His vivid
account of working in restaurants and experiencing poverty was a great
inspiration to me.
‘In the face of difficulties, people should maintain their own integrity.
In times of success, they should do favours to the world’, is a famous say-
ing by Mencius (372–289 BC). It is one of my favourite mottos, guiding
and reflecting my principles. Rural/urban disparity, persisting gender
inequality, the growing gap between rich and poor: China has many
­problems waiting to be solved. It is my hope to devote myself to making
China a better country.

Shanghai, China Yang Shen

viii PREFACE

References
SCIO. (2004, April). Zhongguo de jiuye zhuangkuang he zhengce [The current situ-
ation of the labour market and its related policies in China]. Retrieved June 10,
2014, from http://www.scio.gov.cn/zt2008/gxb2zn/06/200812/t249382.
htm
Whyte, M. K. (2012). China’s post-socialist inequality. Current History, 111(746),
229.
 Acknowledgements

The process of carrying out this research and writing this book for me has
been one of constant self-exploration. It has been an interactive process
that has reshaped my intellectual orientation and made me adapt my life-
style choices. It has been a project that has transcended the book-writing
itself, and may foster some life-long transformations.
I am greatly indebted to my previous teachers and colleagues at the
London School of Economics, especially Professor Diane Perrons. She
provided invaluable critical feedback at every stage in the writing of this
book. I am much indebted to Professor Rachel Murphy, Dr Hyun Shin,
Dr Ye Liu, Dr Ania Polemia, Professor Charles Stafford, Dr Hans
Steinmüller, Dr Bo Hu, Dr Yingqin Zheng for reading earlier drafts of the
book and to Dr Bingqin Li, Dr Kalpana Wilson and Dr Marsha Henry, Dr
Amanda Conroy, Dr Alessandro Ribu and Dr Nicole Shephard for reading
chapters at various stages. All of them provided invaluable comments.
Also, I indebted to my current colleagues at Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
especially Professor Yang Zhong, who encouraged me to keep on revising
the book during the time I was preoccupied with teaching, paper-writing
and extra-academic life. I am also grateful to Dr Yang Hu and anonymous
reviewers for providing constructive feedback for the book proposal. My
gratitude for my partner Dr Fan Yang is combined with a guilty sense of
indulging in romantic love. The emotional and intellectual support he has
provided is beyond my expectation. But without his company the book
could have been published significantly earlier.
Lastly, special thanks to all the fieldwork informants who shared their
bittersweet stories with me. Our encounters have enriched my life. I hope

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

that I have presented a responsible and faithful account of their lives, and
it is my humble hope that this work will help provide an impetus for social
change, to create a better society for all.
It is notable that part of Chap. 5 has been published in China Quarterly.
For more details, please see Shen, Y. (2016). Filial Daughters? Agency and
Subjectivity of Rural Migrant Women in Shanghai. The China Quarterly,
vol. 226, pp. 519–537.
 Contents

1 Introducing Migration, Gender and the Service Sector  1

2 Gendered Subjectivities in a Patriarchal China 29

3 Working in a Gendered, Feminised and Hierarchical

Workplace 47

4 The Short-Lived Jobs: From Beginning to End 73

5 Negotiating Intimacy: Obedience, Compromise and

Resistance 95

6 Crafting a Modern Person via Consumption? Women and

Men in Leisure Activities127

7 Unpacking the Complexity of Gender, Class and Hukou151


Appendix A: Doing Ethnographic Research from a Feminist
Perspective163

xi
xii Contents

Appendix B: List of Informants187

Bibliography193
 Abbreviations

AAA American Anthropological Association

ACFTU All-China Federation of Trade Unions
ACWF All-China Women’s Federation
GDP Gross domestic product
NBS National Bureau of Statistics of China
NGM New-generation rural migrant workers
NPC National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China
SBS Shanghai Bureau of Statistics
SCIO The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of
China
SOE State-owned enterprise
SRB Sex ratio at birth

xiii
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Map of Shanghai and Anhui 4

Fig. 1.2 Average annual income of employees in Shanghai: catering
average/Shanghai average (2000–2016) 15
Fig. 1.3 Interior decoration of the Meteor Restaurant 21
Fig. 1.4 Face-scanning 23
Fig. 1.5 Machine for face-scanning 24
Fig. 1.6 (a) Employer-provided dormitory. (b) Employer-provided
dormitory25
Fig. 3.1 Flow chart of the dining procedure 48
Fig. 3.2 Hierarchy in the public area of the Meteor Restaurant 49
Fig. 4.1 Service slogans at the Meteor Restaurant 78
Fig. 6.1 Magazine pages stuck on the wall 134
Fig. 6.2 A shizi xiu piece depicting ‘a harmonious family is the origin of
the prosperity of everything’ 137
Fig. 6.3 ‘Lucky Six Crocodile’ 140
Fig. 6.4 ‘Forest Ball’ 141
Fig. 6.5 ‘Fishing’ (a and b)141
Fig. 6.6 A slot machine decorated with different car brands 144

xv
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Work schedule for morning-shift table servers and pantry
helpers22
Table 3.1 Configuration of the public area of the restaurant 51
Table A.1 Timeline of the primary fieldwork stages 171

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introducing Migration, Gender

and the Service Sector

A wave of suicides occurred in Foxconn factory plants across China in

2010, during which 14 workers aged 18–25 died (Lau, 2010). The
Foxconn incidents drew my attention to rural migrant workers and moti-
vated me to carry out research on migrant workers. On the theoretical
level, I was interested in finding out everyday operation of gender and
class. On the personal level, I intended to document experiences of the
marginalised groups in Shanghai, the richest city in China.
In this book, rural migrant workers (sometimes abbreviated to migrant
workers) refer to those who hold rural hukou and do non-agricultural
entry-level work in places other than where their hukou is registered.
Hukou refers to the household registration system in China that catego-
rises citizens as either agricultural residents or non-agricultural residents.1
It requires every Chinese citizen to be recorded with the registration
authority at birth.
Prior scholarship has explored migrant women in manufacturing
such as Lee’s (1998) and Pun’s (2005) pioneering work on factory girls
in Guangdong province. In this book, I aim to develop a deeper under-
standing of rural migrant workers’ lives in the service sector. Despite

1
The reason why I did not put ‘the’ ahead of ‘hukou’ is that I treat it as a parallel concept
with race, gender and class. I understand that hukou is used in a specific context, but I intend
to ‘normalise’ or generalise the word by not putting ‘the’ before it.

© The Author(s) 2019 1

Y. Shen, Beyond Tears and Laughter, New Perspectives on Chinese
Politics and Society,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5817-3_1
2 Y. SHEN

the fact that 43.5 per cent of workers in China are now working in the
service sector (NBS, 2017a), their life experiences are under-represented.
I began to work as a waitress of a chain restaurant in Shanghai. I met
Yong and Fengyu as soon as I started my work. Yong was born in rural
Anhui province in 1985. After dropping out of junior high school, he
migrated to Shanghai, working as a pantry helper, delivering dishes from
kitchens to dining areas in the Meteor restaurant (pseudonym of the res-
taurant where I did fieldwork). When I first met him in 2012, he was
27 years old and was extremely eager to find a wife. Twenty-seven might
be an age still too young for a middle-class man in Shanghai to ever con-
sider marriage, whereas it becomes a disadvantage for rural men like Yong
to find a wife. For rural migrant men, age increase is not necessarily in
tandem with the growth of professional experiences and wealth; their
‘marriageability’ probably decreases with age. Each time Yong’s parents
met him, they nagged that he should get married as soon as possible,
which made him very anxious. He worked at Meteor in the hope of find-
ing a wife. Considering women are usually overrepresented in the service
sectors, he believed that his chance to find a waitress to be his wife was
relatively high. However, after more than five years of non-stop searching,
he was still not able to find a wife. To make things worse, waitresses exhib-
ited uncooperative attitudes towards him, which made his work difficult.
He thought about quitting the job many times but had no idea where
to go.
Fengyu was born in rural Anhui as well. She worked at Meteor for
two years before giving birth to a son. Not long after giving birth, she
resumed her job at Meteor in order to provide financial resources for her
family. She did not think it was a desirable job—a lot of unpleasant inci-
dents occurred when serving local customers. One day a male customer
showed superiority to her: ‘If we hadn’t come to this restaurant, you
would have been planting crops and pasturing cattle.’ She hit back, ‘If we
hadn’t come, you would have been eating shit!’
Fengyu, like many other waitresses—and even pantry helpers them-
selves—considered being a pantry helper as hopeless and unpromising.
According to Yong, Fengyu’s attitude towards male pantry helpers is
indifferent and hostile. Waitresses are supposed to be taking dishes from
pantry helpers and delivering them to customers as soon as they can. But
Yong told me that, sometimes, waitresses like Fengyu just ignored the
male pantry helpers. They had to stand holding dishes while the waitresses
chatted. The negative perceptions of the pantry helpers led to waitresses’
 INTRODUCING MIGRATION, GENDER AND THE SERVICE SECTOR 3

uncooperative behaviour at work. Waitresses’ discrimination rendered it

impossible for Yong to find a wife in the restaurant.

* * *

Fengyu and Yong dropped out of middle school and migrated from rural
Anhui Province to Shanghai, following their families. For the past 40 years,
numerous young migrant workers follow this trajectory. By the end of
2017, China had 171.85 million migrant workers holding rural hukou but
doing non-farm work outside their registered hometowns or home vil-
lages, accounting for 12.4 per cent of the whole population (NBS, 2018).
Migration results from various intertwined factors, including house-
hold registration system reform (Huang & Zhan, 2005; The State Council,
2014), income disparity between urban and rural areas, increased demand
for an expanded labour force in cities, rural land reclassification (Song,
2009; Su, 2007; Yang, 2006; Yang & Shi, 2006), and the changing aspira-
tions of peasants (Gaetano, 2004; Li, 2004; Yan, 2008). Among these
reasons, the income gap is a direct reason that stimulates their migration.
Take Shanghai and Anhui for example, the annual disposable income of
urban households in Shanghai (57,691.7 yuan) was the highest among all
the regions in 2016 (NBS, 2017b), 4.9 times the net income of rural
households (11,720.5 yuan) in Anhui province (NBS, 2017c). More than
50 per cent of the workers in the Meteor Restaurant came from Anhui
Province, particularly from rural Bengbu, Liu’an and Ma’anshan, as dem-
onstrated in Fig. 1.1. Shanghai is an attractive destination for Anhui rural
workers partly because of the availability of job opportunities and better
earning potentials and partly because of geographical proximity.
China’s strong economic growth over the last four decades has fol-
lowed a pro-urban developmental model in favour of metropolitans and
urban residents. The rapid growth would not have been possible without
high levels of internal migration from the relatively low-income rural
regions to the booming cities and industrial regions. Migrant workers
from rural areas make a vital contribution to China’s economic growth.
This growth has led to rising prosperity and declining poverty, but also to
rising social and spatial inequality. Rural migrants’ experiences in Shanghai
reflect the social and spatial inequality. The formation of a new urban
underclass is a consequence of the massive scale of migration. In this book,
I aim to illuminate how the shift in location has affected migrants’ lives in
4 Y. SHEN

Fig. 1.1 Map of Shanghai and Anhui. Source: Mr Wei Yuan made the map for
the book

the transformation of post-reform China. I address a part of the service

sector and highlight both women and men’s experiences in order to anal-
yse the significance of gender alongside social class and hukou status as
markers of social division in China. By studying restaurant workers in
Shanghai, the book aims to show how a group of people who have played
a major role in the transformation of China have experienced this transfor-
mation in their own ways.

Intersectionality of Gender, Class and Hukou

The book adopts an intersectional approach to examine social inequality.
Intersectionality emerged in the late 1980s in an attempt to address the
complexity of multiple forms of discrimination and social inequality (Cho,
Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013). Since then it has been adopted across disci-
plines and has also inspired social movements outside academia.
Intersectionality can refer to ‘the interaction between gender, race, and
other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institu-
tional arrangements, and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these
 INTRODUCING MIGRATION, GENDER AND THE SERVICE SECTOR 5

interactions in terms of power’ (Davis, 2008, p. 68). The question of

whether intersectionality is an epistemology, a theory or a methodology is
still controversial (ibid., p. 69). It may be more fruitful to address ‘what
intersectionality does rather than what intersectionality is’ (Cho et al.,
2013, p. 795). It provides a unique way to think about ‘the problem of
sameness and difference and its relation to power’ (ibid., p. 795).
According to McCall (2005), the categorisation of identities such as
gender, race and class is an inadequate but necessary approach to address
social inequality. It is inadequate in that categorisations simplify social
phenomena, and social inequality may be reinforced through the iteration
of identities/symbols in categories; but it is necessary because categories
are useful to identify social inequality and can be strategically used for
political purposes.
In this book, the intersectional approach assists me in three ways, which
serves as an epistemology and a methodology as well as a theory. First, it
serves to justify the shift from a focus on women to research on disadvan-
taged people, including disadvantaged men. Davis (2008) considered that
intersectionality is about the ‘the acknowledgement of differences among
women’ (p. 71). While Young (2011) argues that intersectionality needs
to include additional group representation—not only for women, but also
for members of other disadvantaged groups. Although it is important to
address the diversity of women, it would be remiss not to extend this
analysis to men.
Second, intersectionality helps me understand how multiple character-
istics such as gender, class, hukou, age and so on affect the production of
knowledge, which especially refers to the conversations between me and
my informants. The intersectionality of these specific characteristics is jux-
taposed with reflexivity and positionality, discussed later in Appendix A.
Third, intersectionality functions as a theoretical tool to analyse social
inequality based on gender, class and hukou. The book extends the dimen-
sions of intersectionality beyond the triad of gender, race and class by situ-
ating the discussion in the context of China and by including the category
of hukou. Hukou is a crucial component of intersectionality in this book
because it implicates the urban/rural binary which functions as a social
system and is deeply embedded in people’s mentality, impacting on social
status and wellbeing together with social class. Gender, class and hukou
intersect to explain social inequality in Chinese society. The following sec-
tions elaborate the intersecting categories of gender, class and hukou.
6 Y. SHEN

A Critique of Gendered Migration

and the Gendered Service Sector

As evidenced by the cases of Fengyu and Yong, their motivations to work

in the restaurant and their experiences at work are gendered. Migration is
gendered in nature; migrant women and men experience it in different
ways, although they face similar difficulties such as customers’ discrimina-
tory attitudes due to their subordinated situation.
Gendered experience of migration is a primary focus of this book.
Current literature is insufficient in three ways when considering gender,
migration and the service sector. First, despite the fact that there is a small
and growing body of qualitative research in Chinese and in English that
focuses on migration experiences and employment, workers’ experiences
in the manufacturing sector are more likely to be emphasised (Chan,
2002; Chan & Pun, 2010; Chang, 2008; Kim, 2015; Lee, 1998; Pun,
1999, 2005, 2012). Only a few have focused on migrant workers in the
service sector (Gaetano, 2004; He, 2007, 2008; Jacka, 2006; Yan, 2008).
The population of migrant workers in the service sector has been increas-
ing in China, with 42.9 per cent of migrant workers being engaged in the
service sector in 2014, compared to 33.3 per cent in 2009. By contrast,
the number of workers in manufacturing followed a downward trend,
from 39.1 per cent in 2009 to 31.3 per cent in 2014 (NBS, 2010, 2015).
The number of rural workers in the service sector is too significant to be
ignored.
Second, current qualitative research on service workers has a strong
focus on experience at work per se (Hanser, 2008; Lan, 2003; McDowell,
2009; Otis, 2011); and scholars argue that current studies on migrant
men focus on work life, whereas intimate life is missing (Choi & Peng,
2016). While I argue that work and intimate life are interrelated, for
example, the primary motivation for Yong to choose to work at the Meteor
Restaurant is to find a partner. The motivation is also shared by other male
workers. After working with them for a while, I found that family life is a
daily topic among the workers. I realised that their primary identities are
daughters, sons, mothers or fathers, which encourages me to record their
lives beyond work. In this book, I endeavour to provide a holistic approach
to examining three arenas of rural migrant workers’ lives: work, intimacy
and leisure.
Third, the epistemological understanding to view gender as relational is
overlooked in either migration studies or employment studies. Although
 INTRODUCING MIGRATION, GENDER AND THE SERVICE SECTOR 7

scholars called for a relational and contextualised understanding of gender

in migration studies a decade ago (Donato, Gabaccia, Holdaway,
Manalansan & Pessar, 2006), it is not uncommon to see that scholars
claim to focus on gendered migration and gender differences while in fact
they merely focus on either men or women.
For example, according to some qualitative literature on migration in
China, migration is gendered not only by motivations of migrants and by
the social networks they create in the arrival city, but also by the occupa-
tions they take up (Gaetano & Jacka, 2004; Jacka, 2006; Lee & Kleinman,
2003; Pun, 2005). In this literature, migrant women are considered to
have special obligations in the household, such as their roles as filial daugh-
ters and responsible wives. Interestingly, if the research on female and
male migrants is compared, these gendered experiences are sometimes not
gendered with regard to the responsibilities both male and female migrants
intend to escape or the filial obligations they have to adopt. For instance,
Lin (2013) claimed that sending remittances home (p. 62) and family
pressure to give birth to a son (p. 68) amounted to the ‘gendered familial
responsibility’ (p. 67) of his male informants. Jacka (2006) noted a filial
obligation to send remittances home among her female informants as well
(p. 179). Furthermore, Jacka argued that the motivations for migrating
were highly gendered. She pointed out that patriarchal relations and
women’s experiences in rural areas were unique motivations for women to
migrate and to choose to prolong their stay in cities (Jacka, 2006, pp. 7,
221). But again, Lin (2013) found that ‘for some men it was a path that
enabled them to escape traditional gender obligations and responsibilities’
(p. 48). This resembles Jacka’s findings on women.
Therefore, gendered differences in the motivation of migration are not
clearly established. I do not deny the existence of gendered motivations
for migration, but my critique focuses on the insufficient evidence of, and
therefore the unconvincing argument in favour of, gendered migration—
It is not sufficient to claim that migrants’ behaviour is gendered if only a
single gender is taken into account.
Apart from the tendency to focus on either women or men, current
literature on gender and migration has a strong focus on women. The
tendency is premised on the presumption that women are disadvantaged
in society, ignoring the fact that women and men can be disadvantaged in
different ways due to structural inequalities of gender and class, among
others. While it is important to focus on women’s experiences and the
production of a workplace of women, 55.7 per cent (83.7 million) of
8 Y. SHEN

cross-border immigrant workers are men (International Labour

Organization, 2015, p. xi); while in China, 68.7 per cent of the rural
migrant workers are men (NBS, 2018). However, migrant men’s subjec-
tive experiences are absent in current literature. It is not an issue reserved
for studies in China alone, and can be seen elsewhere (Choi & Peng,
2016).
Men’s studies have a strong focus on masculinity, which is also seen in
the studies on migrant men (Batnitzky, McDowell, & Dyer, 2009; Boehm,
2008; Cohen, 2006; Kilkey, Perrons, & Plomien, 2013; Osella & Osella,
2000). They argue that migrant men’s masculinity can be achieved
through migration, marriage, fatherhood and breadwinner status. In the
literature on Chinese male migrant workers their experiences are appall-
ingly under-addressed, with only a few exceptional cases (Choi & Peng,
2016; Kim, 2015; Lin, 2013; Tian & Deng, 2017). Even less literature
compares migrant women and men’s experiences (Du, 2017; Kim, 2015).
The service sector has been a major economic stimulus in advanced
economies. Scholars pay continuous attention to gender and the service
sector, with an emphasis on women as emotional and aesthetic labour
(Franzway, 2000; Hall, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Otis, 2008; Williams,
2003) and women’s sexualised and commodified bodies (Brownell, 2001;
McDowell, 2009; Schein, 2000; Zheng, 2006).
China’s prosperous service sector is in accordance with soaring eco-
nomic growth. Scholars have come to pay attention to workers in the
service industry in China (Hanser, 2008; Lan, 2003; Otis, 2011; Zheng,
2006). Otis (2011) argues that the creation of a service class fundamen-
tally transformed women’s lives. But the fact that women are overrepre-
sented in the service sector does not mean that men do not play an
important role. As shown in the conflicts between Yong and Fengyu,
women and men working together complicates gender and employment
relations. Gender dynamics at work are important venues to explore.
However, most qualitative literature on labour and employment which
claims to have a gender perspective usually only focuses on women.
An increasing number of scholars become focused on men in the ser-
vice sector. Scholars argue that working class men are disadvantaged at
entry-level service jobs that require obedience (Boehm, 2008; Bourgois,
2002; Leidner, 1993; McDowell, 2009; Nixon, 2009). Hegemonic mas-
culinities require a man to be assertive and confident (Leidner, 1993),
whereas the subordinated masculinity of male service workers is consti-
tuted with ‘humiliating interpersonal subordination’, a concept coined by
 INTRODUCING MIGRATION, GENDER AND THE SERVICE SECTOR 9

Bourgois (2002, p. 141) in which working-class men’s masculinity is

undermined in interpersonal communication.
Male- or female-centred studies are too limited to inform us about gen-
der dynamics and its relation to power relations. Still, key questions
remaining unanswered concern how female and male workers interact
with each other and experience life in different ways. Therefore, the first
overarching question of the book is: how were migrant workers’ life experiences
gendered? One of my aims is to examine the gendered experiences without
ignoring either gender. By focusing on gender differences among the res-
taurant workers with first-hand empirical materials, I aim to analyse the
significance of gender alongside social class and hukou status as markers of
social division in China, and to point out that the experiences of migrant
women and men differ in various ways.

Nongmingong: The Intersection Between Class

and Hukou

In the risk assessment form that I filled in before starting the fieldwork, I
envisioned potential sexual harassment that I may encounter in the restau-
rant—perpetrated by male customers—based on the literature which
highlighted the feminised uniforms female workers have to wear (Hall,
1993; Hochschild, 1983; McDowell, 2009; Pun, 2005) and sexual harass-
ment that customers imposed on them (Hughes & Tadic, 1998; Yagil,
2008). But contrary to my expectations, I did not experience customer-
initiated sexual harassment myself, nor observe it between female workers
and male clients. In the Meteor Restaurant, the waitresses’ uniform is a
loose black dress attached with an apron, suggesting more of servility than
femininity. Most of the time, customers did not even look at workers when
workers greeted them. Rather, workers encountered verbal discrimination
and physical abuse from customers from time to time. Working as a wait-
ress, I was once scolded by a middle-aged Shanghainese man, who called
me a ‘country bumpkin’ (xiang xia ren) when I served him food. The
socioeconomic status of most diners in the Meteor Restaurant is in sharp
contrast to that of the migrant workers. Class and hukou disparity between
customers and rural workers (nongmingong) are too significant, which
may prevent sexual harassment from occurring.
Nongmingong is a term that especially refers to rural migrant workers.
Nongmin literally means peasants, and gong refers to workers. The term nong-
mingong suggests the class and hukou identities of rural migrant workers.
Another random document with
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imagination; she gives way to her first emotions without reflection;
she is caught by things present, and the pleasure she is enjoying
always seems the highest. It has been remarked that she took
pleasure everywhere, not through that indolence of mind that
attaches us to the place where we are, to avoid the trouble of
changing, but by the vivacity of her character which gave her up
entirely to the pleasures of the moment. Paris does not charm her so
much as to prevent her liking the country, and no one of that age has
spoken about nature better than this woman of fashion who was so
much at ease in drawing-rooms, and seemed made for them. She
escapes to Livry the first fine day to enjoy “the triumph of May,” to
“the nightingale, the cuckoo, and the warbler that begin the spring in
the woods.” But Livry is still too fashionable, she must have a more
complete solitude, and she cheerfully retires under her great trees in
Brittany. This time her Paris friends think she will be wearied to
death, having no news to repeat or fine wits to converse with. But she
has taken some serious moral treatise by Nicole with her; she has
found among those neglected books whose last refuge, like that of old
furniture, is the country, some romance of her young days which she
reads again secretly, and in which she is astonished still to find
pleasure. She chats with her tenants, and just as Cicero preferred the
society of the country people to that of the provincial fashionables,
she likes better to talk with her gardener Pilois than with “several
who have preserved the title of esquire in the parliament of Rennes.”
She walks in her Mall, in those solitary alleys where the trees covered
with fine-sounding mottoes almost seem as though they were
speaking to each other; she finds, in fact, so much pleasure in her
desert that she cannot make up her mind to leave it; nevertheless no
woman likes Paris better. Once back there she surrenders herself
wholly to the pleasures of fashionable life. Her letters are full of it.
She takes impressions so readily that we might almost tell in
perusing them what books she has just been reading, at what
conversations she has been present, what drawing-rooms she has
just left. When she repeats so pleasantly to her daughter the gossip of
the court we perceive that she has just been conversing with the
graceful and witty Madame de Coulanges, who has repeated it to her.
When she speaks so touchingly of Turenne she has just left the Hôtel
de Bouillon, where the prince’s family are lamenting his broken
fortunes as well as his death. She lectures, she sermonizes herself
with Nicole, but not for long. Let her son come in and tell her some
of those gay adventures of which he has been the hero or the victim,
she recounts boldly the most risky tales on condition of saying a little
later, “Pardon us, Monsieur Nicole!” When she has been visiting La
Rochefoucauld everything turns to morality; she draws lessons from
everything, everywhere she sees some image of life and of the human
heart, even in the viper broth that they are going to give Madame de
la Fayette who is ill. Is not this viper, which though opened and
skinned still writhes, like our old passions? “What do we not do to
them? We treat them with insult, harshness, cruelty, disdain; we
wrangle, lament, and storm, and yet they move. We cannot overcome
them. We think, when we have plucked out their heart, that they are
done with and we shall hear no more of them. But no; they are
always alive, they are always moving.” This ease with which she
receives impressions, and which causes her to adopt so quickly the
sentiments of the people she visits, makes her also feel the shock of
the great events she looks on at. The style of her letters rises when
she narrates them, and, like Cicero, she becomes eloquent
unconsciously. Whatever admiration the greatness of the thoughts
and the liveliness of expression in that fine piece of Cicero upon
Caesar that I quoted just now may cause me, I am still more touched,
I admit, by the letter of Madame de Sévigné on the death of Louvois,
and I find more boldness and brilliancy in that terrible dialogue
which she imagines between the minister who demands pardon and
God who refuses it.
These are admirable qualities, but they bring with them certain
disadvantages. Such hasty impressions are often rather fleeting.
When people are carried away by a too vivid imagination, they do not
take time to reflect before speaking, and run the risk of often having
to change their opinion. Thus Madame de Sévigné has contradicted
herself more than once. But being only a woman of fashion, her
inconsistency has not much weight, and we do not look on it as a
crime. What does it matter to us that her opinions on Fléchier and
Mascaron have varied, that after having unreservedly admired the
Princesse de Clèves when she read it alone, she hastened to find a
thousand faults in it when her cousin Bussy condemned it? But
Cicero is a politician, and he is expected to be more serious. We
demand that his opinions should have more coherency; now, this is
precisely what the liveliness of his imagination least permits. He
never boasted of being consistent. When he judges events or men he
sometimes passes without scruple, in a few days, from one extreme
to the other. In a letter of the end of October Cato is called an
excellent friend (amicissimus), and the way in which he has acted is
declared to be satisfactory; at the beginning of November he is
accused of having been shamefully malevolent in the same affair,[25]
because Cicero seldom judges but by his impressions, and in a
mobile spirit like his, very different but equally vivid impressions
follow each other very quickly.
Another danger, and one still greater, of this excess of imagination
which cannot control itself is that it may give us the lowest and most
false opinion of those who yield to it. Perfect characters are only
found in novels. Good and evil are so intermingled in our nature that
the one is seldom found without the other. The strongest characters
have their weaknesses, and the finest actions do not spring only from
the most honourable motives. Our best affections are not entirely
exempt from selfishness; doubts and wrongful suspicions sometimes
trouble the firmest friendships, and it may happen at certain
moments that cupidity and jealousy, of which one is ashamed the
next day, flit rapidly through the mind of the most honourable
persons. The prudent and clever carefully conceal all those feelings
which cannot bear the light; those whose quick impressions carry
them away, like Cicero, speak out, and they are very much blamed.
The spoken or written word gives more strength and permanence to
these fugitive thoughts; they were only flashes; they are fixed and
accentuated by writing; they acquire a clearness, a relief and
importance that they had not in reality. Those momentary
weaknesses, those ridiculous suspicions which spring from wounded
self-esteem, those short bursts of anger, quieted as soon as reflected
on, those unjust thoughts that vexation produces, those ambitious
fits that reason hastens to disavow, never perish when once they
have been confided to a friend. One of these days a prying
commentator will study these too unreserved disclosures, and will
use them, to draw a portrait of the indiscrete person who made them,
to frighten posterity. He will prove by exact and irrefutable
quotations that he was a bad citizen and a bad friend, that he loved
neither his country nor his family, that he was jealous of honest
people, and that he betrayed all parties. It is not so, however, and a
wise man will not be deceived by the artifice of misleading
quotations. Such a man well knows that we must not take these
impetuous people literally or give too much credence to what they
say. We must save them from themselves, refuse to listen to them
when they are led astray by passion, and especially must we
distinguish their real and lasting feelings from all those
exaggerations which are merely passing. For these reasons every one
is not fitted to thoroughly understand these letters, every one cannot
read them as they should be read. I mistrust those learned men who,
without any acquaintance with men or experience of life, pretend to
judge Cicero from his correspondence. Most frequently they judge
him ill. They search for the expression of his thought in that
commonplace politeness which society demands, and which no more
binds those who use it than it deceives those who accept it. Those
concessions that must be made if we wish to live together they call
cowardly compromises. They see manifest contradictions in those
different shades a man gives to his opinions, according to the
persons he is talking with. They triumph over the imprudence of
certain admissions, or the fatuity of certain praises, because they do
not perceive the fine irony that tempers them. To appreciate all these
shades, to give things their real importance, to be a good judge of the
drift of those phrases which are said with half a smile, and do not
always mean what they seem to say, requires more acquaintance with
life than one usually gets in a German university. If I must say what I
think, I would rather trust a man of the world than a scholar in this
matter, for a delicate appreciation.
Cicero is not the only person whom this correspondence shows us.
It is full of curious details about all those who had friendly or
business relations with him. They were the most illustrious persons
of the time, and they played the chief parts in the revolution that put
an end to the Roman Republic. No one deserves to be studied more
than they. It must be remarked here, that one of Cicero’s failings has
greatly benefited posterity. If it were a question of some one else, of
Cato for instance, how many people’s letters would be missing in this
correspondence! The virtuous alone would find a place in it, and
Heaven knows their number was not then very great. But, happily,
Cicero was much more tractable, and did not bring Cato’s rigorous
scruples into the choice of his friends. A sort of good-nature made
him accessible to people of every opinion; his vanity made him seek
praise everywhere. He had dealings with all parties, a great fault in a
politician, for which the shrewd people of his time have bitterly
reproached him, but a fault that we profit by; hence it happens that
all parties are represented in his correspondence. This obliging
humour sometimes brought him into contact with people whose
opinions were the most opposite to his, and he found himself at
certain times in close relations with the worst citizens whom he has
at other times lashed with his invectives. Letters that he had received
from Antony, Dolabella, and Curio still remain, and these letters are
full of expressions of respect and friendship. If the correspondence
went further back we should probably have some of Catiline’s, and,
frankly, I regret the want of them; for if we wish to judge of the state
of a society as of the constitution of a man, it is not enough to
examine the sound parts, we must handle and probe to the bottom
the unsound parts. Thus, all the important men of that time,
whatever their conduct may have been, or to whatever party they
may have belonged, had dealings with Cicero. Memorials of all are
found in his correspondence. A few of their letters still exist, and we
have a large number of those that Cicero wrote to them. The private
details he gives us about them, what he tells us of their opinions,
their habits, and character, allows us to enter freely into their life.
Thanks to him, all those persons indistinctly depicted by history
resume their original appearance; he seems to bring them nearer to
us and to make us acquainted with them; and when we have read his
correspondence we can say that we have just visited the whole
Roman society of his time.
The end we have in view in this book is to study closely a few of
these personages, especially those who were most involved in the
great political events of that period. But before beginning this study
it is necessary to make a firm resolution not to bring to it
considerations which belong to our own time. It is too much the
custom now-a-days to seek arms for our present struggles in the
history of the past. Smart allusions and ingenious parallels are most
successful. Perhaps Roman antiquity is so much in fashion only
because it gives political parties a convenient and less dangerous
battle-field where, under ancient costumes, present-day passions
may struggle. If the names of Caesar, Pompey, Cato, and Brutus are
quoted on all occasions, these great men must not be too proud of
the honour. The curiosity they excite is not altogether disinterested,
and when they are spoken of it is almost always to point an epigram
or set off a flattery. I wish to avoid this mistake. These illustrious
dead seem to me to deserve something better than to serve as
instruments in the quarrels that divide us, and I have sufficient
respect for their memory and their repose not to drag them into the
arena of our every-day disputes. It should never be forgotten that it is
an outrage to history to subject it to the changing interest of parties,
and that it should be, according to the fine expression of Thucydides,
a work made for eternity.
These precautions being taken, let us penetrate with Cicero’s
letters into the Roman society of that great period, and let us begin
by studying him who offers himself so gracefully to do us the
honours.
 CICERO IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

I
CICERO’S PUBLIC LIFE
Cicero’s public life is usually severely judged by the historians of
our time. He pays the penalty of his moderation. As this period is
only studied now with political intentions, a man like him who tried
to avoid extremes fully satisfies nobody. All parties agree in attacking
him; on all sides he is laughed at or insulted. The fanatical partisans
of Brutus accuse him of timidity, the warmest friends of Caesar call
him a fool. It is in England and amongst us[26] that he has been least
abused, and that classical traditions have been more respected than
elsewhere; the learned still persist in their old habits and their old
admirations, and in the midst of so many convulsions criticism at
least has remained conservative. Perhaps also the indulgence shown
to Cicero in both countries comes from the experience they have of
political life. When a man has lived in the practice of affairs and in
the midst of the working of parties, he can better understand the
sacrifices that the necessities of the moment, the interest of his
friends and the safety of his cause may demand of a statesman, but
he who only judges his conduct by inflexible theories thought out in
solitude and not submitted to the test of experience becomes more
severe towards him. This, no doubt, is the reason why the German
scholars use him so roughly. With the exception of M. Abeken,[27]
who treats him humanely, they are without pity. Drumann[28]
especially overlooks nothing. He has scrutinized his works and his
life with the minuteness and sagacity of a lawyer seeking the grounds
of a lawsuit. He has laid bare all his correspondence in a spirit of
conscientious malevolence. He has courageously resisted the charm
of those confidential disclosures which makes us admire the writer
and love the man in spite of his weaknesses, and by opposing to each
other detached fragments of his letters and discourses he has
succeeded in drawing up a formal indictment, in which nothing is
omitted and which almost fills a volume. M. Mommsen[29] is scarcely
more gentle, he is only less long. Taking a general view of things he
does not lose himself in the details. In two of those compact pages
full of facts, such as he knows how to write, he has found means to
heap on Cicero more insults than Drumann’s whole volume contains.
We see particularly that this pretended statesman was only an egotist
and a short-sighted politician, and that this great writer is only made
up of a newspaper novelist and a special-pleader. Here we perceive
the same pen that has just written down Cato a Don Quixote and
Pompey a corporal. As in his studies of the past he always has the
present in his mind, one would say that he looks for the squireens of
Prussia in the Roman aristocracy, and that in Caesar he salutes in
advance that popular despot whose firm hand can alone give unity to
Germany.
How much truth is there in these fierce attacks? What confidence
can we place in this boldness of revolutionary criticism? What
judgment must we pronounce on Cicero’s political conduct? The
study of the facts will teach us.

I.

Three causes generally contribute to form a man’s political

opinions—his birth, his personal reflections, and his temperament. If
I were not speaking here of sincere convictions only, I would readily
add a fourth, which causes more conversions than the others, namely
interest, that is to say, that leaning one has almost in spite of oneself
to think that the most advantageous course is also the most just, and
to conform one’s opinion to the position one holds or wishes for. Let
us try and discover what influence these causes had upon Cicero’s
conduct and political preferences.
At Rome, for a long time past, opinions had been decided by birth.
In a city where traditions were so much respected the ideas of
parents were inherited as well as their property or their name, and it
was a point of honour to follow their politics faithfully; but in
Cicero’s time these customs were beginning to decay. The oldest
families had no scruple in failing in their hereditary engagements. At
that time many names which had become illustrious by defending
popular interests are found in the senatorial party, and the most
audacious demagogue of that time bore the name of Clodius. Besides,
Cicero would never at any time have found political direction in his
birth. He belonged to an unknown family, he was the first of his race
to engage in public affairs, and the name he bore did not commit him
in advance to any party. In fact, he was not born at Rome. His father
lived in one of those little country municipia of which the wits readily
made fun, because doubtful Latin was spoken and fine manners were
not well known in them, but which, none the less, were the strength
and honour of the Republic. That rude but brave and temperate
people who inhabited the neglected cities of Campania, Latium, and
the Sabine country, and among whom the habits of rural life had
preserved something of the ancient virtue,[30] was in reality the
Roman people. That which filled the streets and squares of the great
city, spent its time in the theatre, took part in the riots of the Forum,
and sold its votes in the Campus Martius, was only a collection of
freedmen and foreigners among whom only disorder, intrigue, and
corruption could be learnt. Life was more honest and healthy in the
municipia. The citizens who inhabited them remained for the most
part strangers to the questions that were debated in Rome, and the
rumour of public affairs did not reach them. They were sometimes
seen on the Campus Martius or the Forum, when it was a question of
voting for one of their fellow-citizens, or of supporting him by their
presence before the tribunals; but usually they troubled themselves
little about exercising their rights, and stayed at home. They were
none the less devoted to their country, jealous of their privileges,
even when they made no use of them, proud of their title of Roman
citizens, and much attached to the Republican Government that had
given it them. For them the Republic had preserved its prestige
because, living at a distance, they saw less of its weaknesses and
always recalled its ancient glory. Cicero’s childhood was spent in the
midst of these rural populations, as backward in their ideas as in
their manners. He learnt from them to love the past more than to
know the present. This was the first impression and the first teaching
he received from the places as from the people among whom his
early years were passed. Later, he spoke with emotion of that humble
house that his father had built near the Liris, and which recalled the
house of the old Curius[31] by its stern simplicity. I fancy that those
who lived in it must have thought themselves carried back a century,
and that in causing them to live among the memorials of the past, it
gave them the inclination and taste for old-fashioned things. If
Cicero owed anything to his birth it was this. He may have gained in
his family respect for the past, love of his country, and an instinctive
preference for the Republican Government, but he found in it no
precise tradition, no positive engagement with any party. When he
entered political life he was obliged to decide for himself, a great trial
for an irresolute character! And in order to choose among so many
conflicting opinions it was necessary early to study and reflect.
Cicero has embodied the results of his reflections and studies in
political writings, of which the most important, The Republic, has
only reached us in a very imperfect state. What remains of it shows
that he is here, as everywhere else, a fervent disciple of the Greeks.
He attaches himself by preference to Plato, and his admiration for
him is so strong that he often almost makes us think that he is
content with translating him. In general Cicero does not appear to
care much for the glory of originality. This is almost the only vanity
he lacks. In his correspondence there is a singular admission on this
subject, which has been freely used against him. In order to make his
friend Atticus understand how his works cost him so little trouble, he
says: “I only furnish the words, of which I have no lack”;[32] but
Cicero, contrary to his usual custom, calumniates himself here. He is
not such a servile translator as he wishes to make believe, and the
difference between him and Plato is great, especially in his political
works. Their books bear, indeed, the same title, but as soon as they
are opened we perceive that in reality they are quite unlike. It is the
characteristic of a speculative philosopher like Plato to consider the
absolute end in everything. If he wants to form a constitution,
instead of studying the people to be governed by it, he begins with
some principle which reason lays down, and follows it up with
inflexible rigour to its logical consequences. Thus he succeeds in
forming one of those political systems where everything is bound and
held together, and which by their admirable unity delight the mind of
the sage who studies them as the regularity of a fine building pleases
the eye of those who look at it. Unfortunately this kind of
constitution, thought out in solitude and cast all of a piece, is difficult
of application. When it comes to be put in practice unexpected
resistance crops up on all sides. National traditions, character, and
recollections, all those social forces which have been overlooked, will
not submit to the severe laws imposed on them. It is then perceived
that these things cannot be moulded at will, and since they
absolutely refuse to give way, one must be prepared to modify this
constitution which seemed so fine when it was not put into use. But
here again the difficulty is great. It is not easy to change anything in
these compact and logical systems, where everything is so skilfully
arranged that one piece being disturbed throws the rest out of gear.
Besides, philosophers are naturally imperious and absolute; they do
not like to be thwarted. To avoid that opposition that provokes them,
to escape as much as possible the demands of reality, they imitate the
Athenian of whom Aristophanes speaks, who, despairing of finding
here below a republic to suit him, went to look for one in the clouds.
They also build castles in the air, ideal republics governed by
imaginary laws. They frame admirable constitutions, but they have
the defect of not applying to any particular country because they are
made for the whole human race.
Cicero did not act thus. He knew the public he addressed; he knew
that that grave and sensible race, so quick to seize the practical side
of things, would be ill-satisfied with these fancies, and so he does not
lose himself in these dreams of the ideal and the absolute. He does
not presume to make laws for the universe; he is thinking especially
of his own country and his own times, and although he appears to be
drawing up the plan of a perfect republic, that is to say, one that
cannot exist, it is plain that his eyes are fixed on a constitution which
does really exist. The following are very nearly his political theories.
Of the three forms of government usually distinguished, none
altogether pleases him when it is isolated. I need not speak of the
absolute government of a single man, he died in order to oppose that.
[33]

The other two, government by all or by a few, that is to say

democracy and aristocracy, do not seem to him faultless either. It is
difficult to be quite contented with the aristocracy when one has not
the advantage of belonging to a great family. The Roman aristocracy,
notwithstanding the great qualities it displayed in the conquest and
government of the world, was supercilious and exclusive like others.
The checks it had suffered for a century, its visible decline, and the
feeling it must have had of its approaching end, far from curing its
pride, rendered it more intractable. Prejudices seem to become
narrower and more inflexible when they have but a short time to live.
We know how our émigrés, face to face with a victorious revolution,
used up their last strength in foolish struggles for precedence. In the
same way the Roman nobility, at the moment when the power was
slipping from it, seemed to make a point of exaggerating its defects,
and of discouraging by its disdain the respectable people who offered
themselves to defend it. Cicero felt himself drawn towards it by his
taste for refinement of manners and elegant pleasures; but he could
not endure its insolence. Thus he always kept up the ill-will of the
discontented plebeian against it, even while serving it. He knew very
well that his birth was not overlooked, and that he was called an
upstart (homo novus), and in return he was never tired of jesting
about those fortunate people who do not need to have any merit, who
do not require to take trouble, and to whom the highest places in the
republic come while they are sleeping (quibus omnia populi romani
beneficia dormientibus deferuntur).[34]
But if aristocracy pleased him little, he liked popular government
still less. It is the worst of all, he said, anticipating Corneille,[35] and
in saying so he followed the opinion of the greater number of the
Greek philosophers, his masters, who have almost all shown a great
aversion to democracy. They were not only kept aloof from the
multitude by the nature of their studies, pursued in silence and
solitude, but they carefully shunned it lest they should partake of its
errors and prejudices. Their constant care was to keep themselves
outside and above it. The pride that this isolation nourished in them
prevented them seeing an equal in a man of the people, a stranger to
those studies they were so proud of. Thus the supremacy of numbers,
which gives the same importance to the unlearned as to the sage, was
distasteful to them. Cicero says positively that equality understood in
this way is the greatest inequality, ipsa aequitas iniquissima est.[36]
This was not the only nor even the greatest reproach that the Greek
philosophers, and Cicero with them, threw on democracy. They
thought it was naturally restless and turbulent, the enemy of
meditation, and that it does not give that leisure to the learned and
the sage which is needful for the works they are projecting. When
Cicero thought of popular government, he had in his mind only
wrangles and faction-fights. He recalled the plebeian riots and the
stormy scenes of the Forum. He fancied he heard those threatening
complaints of the debtors and the needy which had troubled the
repose of the rich for three hundred years. How could any one apply
himself amidst this turmoil to studies which require peace and
quietness? The pleasures of the mind are interrupted every moment
in this reign of violence, which constantly drags people from the
tranquillity of their library into the public streets. This tumultuous
and unstable life was ill suited to such a firm friend of study, and if
the arrogance of the nobles sometimes threw him towards the
popular party, dislike of violence and noise did not allow him to
remain in it.
What form of government then seemed to him the best? That
which unites them all in a just equilibrium—he says so very plainly in
his Republic. “I should wish that there be in the state a supreme and
royal power, that another part be reserved for the authority of the
chief citizens, and that certain things be left to the judgment and will
of the people.”[37] Now this mixed and limited government is not,
according to him, an imaginary system, like the republic of Plato. It
is in actual existence and working; it is that of his own country. This
opinion has been much contested. M. Mommsen thinks it agrees as
little with philosophy as with history. Taking it strictly, it is certainly
more patriotic than true. It would be going very far to consider the
Roman constitution as a faultless model, and to close our eyes to its
defects at the very moment when it perished through those very
defects; yet it must be admitted that, with all its imperfections, it was
one of the wisest of ancient times, and that none, perhaps, had made
so many efforts to satisfy the two great needs of society—order and
liberty. Nor can it be denied that its chief merit consisted in its effort
to unite and reconcile the different forms of government,
notwithstanding their obvious antagonisms. Polybius had perceived
this before Cicero, and it derives this merit from its origin and the
way in which it was formed. The constitution of Greece had almost
all been the work of one man, the Roman constitution was the work
of time. That skilful balance of powers that Polybius admired so
much, had not been contrived by one foreseeing mind. We do not
find in the early times of Rome a single legislator who regulated in
advance the part each social element was to play in the general
combination; these elements combined by themselves. The seditions
of the plebeians, the desperate struggles of the tribunate with the
patricians, which terrified Cicero, had contributed more than all the
rest to complete that constitution that he admired. After a struggle of
nearly two hundred years, when the opposing forces perceived that
they were not able to destroy each other, they resigned themselves to
unite, and from the efforts they made to agree together there resulted
a government, imperfect doubtless—can there be a perfect one?—but
which is none the less the best, perhaps, of the ancient world. We
remember, of course, that Cicero did not bestow this praise on the
Roman constitution as it was in his time. His admiration went
further back. He recognized that it had been profoundly modified
since the time of the Gracchi, but he thought that before it had
undergone these alterations it was irreproachable. Thus the studies
of his riper age carried him back to those first impressions of his
childhood, and strengthened his love of ancient times and his respect
for ancient customs. As he advanced in life all his mistakes and all
his misfortunes threw him back to that time. The more the present
was sad and the future threatening the more he looked back with
regret on the past. If he had been asked in what time he would have
wished to have been born, I think he would have unhesitatingly
chosen the period that followed the Punic wars, that is to say, the
moment when Rome, proud of her victory, confident in the future
and dreaded by the world, caught a glimpse for the first time of the
beauties of Greece, and began to feel the charm of letters and the
arts. Cicero considers this Rome’s best time, and places in it by
preference the scene of his dialogues. He would certainly have liked
to live among those great men whom he causes to speak so well, in
the company of Scipio, Fabius, and Cato the Elder, by the side of
Lucilius and Terence; and in this illustrious group, the personage
whose life and career would most have tempted him, he that he
would have wished to be, if a man could choose his time and order
his destiny, was the wise and learned Laelius.[38] To unite, like him, a
high political situation to the cultivation of literature, to add to the
supreme authority of eloquence some military successes, which the
greatest preachers of pacific triumphs do not disdain, to reach the
highest dignities of the republic in quiet and orderly times, and after
an honourable life to enjoy a respected old age—this was Cicero’s
ideal. What regrets and sadness does he not experience, when he
wakes from this fine dream to the disappointments of reality, and
instead of living in a tranquil republic, and in free intercourse with
the Scipios, he must be the rival of Catiline, the victim of Clodius,
and the subject of Caesar.
Cicero’s temperament, I think, had still more to do with his
political preferences than his birth or his reflections. There is no
more to learn about the weaknesses of his character; they have been
laid bare with delight, they have even been wilfully exaggerated, and
since Montaigne it is the usual thing to laugh at them. I need not
repeat, then, what has been said so often, that he was timid,
hesitating, and irresolute. I admit with everybody that nature made
him a man of letters rather than a politician, but I do not think that
this admission does him so much harm as might be thought. The
mind of the man of letters is often more perfect, more
comprehensive, broader than that of the politician, and it is precisely
this breadth that cramps and thwarts him when he undertakes public
affairs. We ask ourselves what qualities are necessary for a
statesman; would it not be wiser to seek those it is good for him to
lack, and does not political capacity show itself sometimes in its
limitations and exclusions? A man of action who ought to decide
quickly may be hampered by the number of contradictory reasons a
too close and penetrating view of things may present to him. A too
vivid imagination, showing him many plans at once, prevents him
fixing on any. Determination often comes from narrowness of mind,
and is one of the greatest virtues in a politician. A very sensitive
conscience, by making him too particular in the choice of his allies,
would deprive him of powerful support. He must distrust those
generous impulses which lead him to do justice even to his enemies:
in the furious struggle for power a man runs the risk of disarming
himself and allowing an advantage to be taken if he has the
misfortune to be just and tolerant. There is nothing that may not
become a danger for him, even to that natural uprightness, the first
quality of a statesman. If he is too sensitive to the excesses and acts
of injustice of his party he will serve it feebly, if his fidelity is to be
unshaken he must not only excuse, he should be able to shut his eyes
to them. These are some of the imperfections of heart and mind by
which he gains his successes. If it be true, as I believe it is, that the
politician often succeeds in the government of a state through his
defects, and that the literary man fails by his very qualities, it is
paying the latter almost a compliment to say he is not fit for the
management of affairs.
We may say then without discrediting Cicero, that he was not
altogether fit for public life. The causes which made him an
incomparable writer did not allow him to be a good politician. That
openness to impressions, that delicate and irritable sensitiveness, the
principal sources of his literary talent, did not leave him sufficiently
master of his will. Particular events had too great a hold on him, and
a man must be able to detach himself from these in order to control
them. His versatile and fertile imagination, by drawing his attention
to all sides at once, rather incapacitated him for forming well-
connected plans. He could not delude himself enough about men or
enterprises, and thus he was subject to sudden fits of irresolution. He
often boasted of having foreseen and predicted the future. It was
certainly not in his position of augur, but by a kind of troublesome
perspicacity, that showed him the consequences of events, and the
bad ones rather than the good. On the nones of December, when he
executed Catiline’s accomplices, he did not forget the vengeance to
which he exposed himself, and he foresaw his exile: that day then,
notwithstanding the irresolution he has been reproached with, he
had more courage than another who in a moment of excitement
would not have seen the danger. One cause of his inferiority and
weakness was that he was moderate, moderate by constitution rather
than principle, that is to say, with that nervous and irritable
impatience which at last employs violence to defend moderation. In
political struggles all excess can seldom be avoided. Usually parties
are unjust in their complaints when they are beaten, cruel in their
reprisals when they conquer, and ready to do without scruple, as
soon as they are able, what they blame in their enemies. If any in the
victorious party perceive they are going too far and dare to say so,
they inevitably irritate everybody against them. They are accused of
timidity and vacillation, they are called weak and changeable; but is
this reproach well deserved? Did Cicero contradict himself when,
after defending the unfortunate men whom the aristocracy
oppressed under Sulla, he defended, thirty years later, the victims of
the democracy under Caesar? Was he not, on the contrary, more
consistent than those who, after bitterly complaining of being exiled,
exiled their enemies as soon as they had the power? We must,
however, admit that if this lively sense of justice is honourable in a
private man it may become dangerous in a politician. Parties do not
like those who refuse to join in their excesses, and in the midst of
general licence set up the claim of alone remaining within bounds. It
was Cicero’s misfortune not to have that firm resolution which fixes a
man in his opinions, and to pass from one opinion to another,
because he saw clearly the good and evil of all. A man must be very
self-reliant to try and do without others. This isolation takes for
granted a decision and energy that were wanting in Cicero. If he had
resolutely attached himself to one party he would have found in it
traditions and fixed principles, firm friends and steady leading, and
need only have allowed himself to be led. On the other hand, by
endeavouring to walk alone he risked making all the rest his enemies
while he himself had no clearly marked out line of conduct. A glance
at the chief events of his political life is sufficient to show that this
was the origin of a part of his misfortunes and his faults.

II.

What I have just said of Cicero’s character explains his early

political opinions. He first appeared in the Forum under the
government of Sulla. The aristocracy was then all-powerful, and
strangely abused its power. Having been conquered for a moment by
Marius its reprisals had been terrible. Tumultuous and
indiscriminate massacres could not appease its rage. Applying its
cold and orderly spirit to murder itself, it had invented proscription,
which was only another way of organizing assassination. After having
thus satisfied its vengeance it began to strengthen its authority. It
had dispossessed the richest municipia of Italy of their property,
excluded the knights from the tribunals, lessened the privileges of
the popular comitia, deprived the tribunes of the right of
intervention, that is, it had levelled everything around itself. When it
had broken down all resistance by the death of its enemies, and
concentrated all power in itself, it solemnly declared that the
revolution was ended, that legal government would recommence,
and that “killing would cease after the kalends of June.”
Notwithstanding these pompous declarations, massacres still
continued for a long time. Assassins, protected by the freedmen of
Sulla, who shared the profits with them, went out by night into the
dark and crooked streets of the old city, even to the foot of the
Palatine. They murdered rich men returning home, and under some
pretext or other obtained their property from the courts of justice, no
one daring to complain. Such was the government under which men
lived at Rome when Cicero pleaded his first causes. A moderate man
like him, to whom excess was distasteful, must have had a horror of
this violence. An aristocratic tyranny did not suit him better than a
popular tyranny. Before this abuse of authority that the nobility
allowed itself he felt himself naturally drawn to aid the democracy,
and he began his career in the ranks of its defenders.
He made a bold and splendid beginning. In the midst of that silent
terror that the memory of the proscriptions kept up, he dared to
speak out, and the universal silence gave a louder echo to his words.
His political importance dates from the defence of Roscius. This
unfortunate man, whose property had been first taken, and who had
then been accused of murdering his father, could find no defender.
Cicero undertook his defence. He was young and unknown, two great
advantages in undertaking these bold strokes, for obscurity
diminishes the danger which a man runs, and youth prevents the
seeing it. He had no trouble in proving the innocence of his client,
who was accused without evidence; but this success was not enough
for him. It was known that one of the most powerful freedmen of
Sulla, the rich and voluptuous Chrysogonus, was the hidden mover of
the accusation. No doubt he thought the dread his name inspired was
a sufficient protection against the boldness of the defence. Cicero
dragged him into the case. Traces of the dismay that seized the
audience when they heard this dreaded name are perceptible in his
speech. The accusers were dumfoundered, the multitude remained
silent. The young orator alone seemed tranquil and self-possessed.
He smiled, he joked, he dared to jeer at those terrible men whom no
one else dared look in the face, because in doing so they thought of
the two thousand heads of knights and senators they had cut off. He
does not altogether respect the master himself. That surname, “the
happy,” that his flatterers had given him gave rise to a pun. “What
man is happy enough,” says he, “not to have some rascal in his
train?”[39] This rascal is no other than the all-powerful Chrysogonus.
Cicero does not spare him. He depicts his vulgar luxury and
arrogance. He shows him heaping up in his house on the Palatine all
the precious objects that he had taken from his victims, annoying the
neighbourhood with the noise of his singers and musicians, “or
hovering about the Forum with his hair well combed and shining
with unguents.”[40] More serious accusations are mingled with these
jests. The word proscriptions is sometimes pronounced in this
speech, the memory and impression they have left is found
everywhere. We feel that the speaker, who has seen them, has his
mind full of the subject, and that the horror that he feels and that he
cannot master prevents him keeping silence whatever danger there
may be in speaking. This generous emotion shows itself every
moment, in spite of the reticence the neighbourhood of the
proscribers imposes. Speaking of their victims, he dares to say that
they have been cruelly murdered, though it was usual to attribute to
them every kind of crime. He holds up to public scorn and hatred the
wretches who have enriched themselves by these massacres, and
with a successful pun calls them “cut-heads and cut-purses.”[41] He
then demands formally that an end should be put to these
proceedings, of which humanity was ashamed; “otherwise,” he adds,
“it would be better to go and live among wild beasts than to remain
in Rome.”[42]
Cicero spoke thus at a few paces from the man who had ordered
the proscriptions, and in the presence of those who had carried them
out and profited by them. We can imagine the effect his words must
have produced. They expressed the secret feelings of all, they relieved
the public conscience, forced to keep silence, and humiliated by its
silence. Thus the democratic party showed the most lively sympathy,
from that time, for the eloquent young man who protested so
courageously against a hateful rule. The remembrance of this
preserved the popular favour for him so faithfully even to the time of
his consulship. Every time he sought an office the citizens hastened
in crowds to the Campus Martius to record their votes for him. No
politician of that time, and there were many more eminent than he,
so easily reached the highest dignities. Cato suffered more than one
check, Caesar and Pompey needed coalitions and intrigues to
succeed. Cicero is almost the only one whose candidatures succeeded
the first time, and who never had to recur to the means usually
required for success. In the midst of those scandalous bargains which
gave honours to the richest, notwithstanding those deeprooted
traditions which seemed to reserve them for the noblest, Cicero, who
had no claims of birth and but a small fortune, always defeated all
the rest. He was appointed quaestor, aedile; he obtained the urban
praetorship, which was the most honourable; he attained the
consulship the first time he sought for it, as soon as the law
permitted him to aspire to it, and none of these dignities cost
anything either to his honour or his fortune.
It is worthy of remark, that when he was appointed praetor he had
not delivered any political speech. Up to the age of forty years he was
only what we call an advocate, and had not felt the need of being
anything else. Forensic eloquence then led to everything; a few
brilliant successes before the tribunals were sufficient to carry a man
to public dignities, and nobody thought of asking Cicero for any
other proof of his capacity for public business, when they were about
to commit the highest interests of his country to his charge, and to
invest him with the supreme authority. However, if this long time
passed at the bar was not detrimental to his political career, I think it
caused some injury to his talents. All the reproaches we may address
to the advocate of to-day, wrongly, no doubt, were well deserved by
the advocate of those times. It may be said of him with truth, that he
took all cases indifferently, that he changed his opinion with each
suit, that he used all his art in and made his fame by finding good
reasons for supporting every sophism. The young man who devoted
himself to oratory in the ancient schools, never heard it said that it
was necessary to be convinced, and proper only to speak
conscientiously. He was taught that there are different kinds of cases,
those which are honest and those which are not so (genera
causarum sunt honestum, turpe, etc.).[43] It was not thought
necessary to add that the latter were to be avoided. On the contrary,
by exaggerating the merit of success in these, he acquired the taste
for undertaking them by preference. After he had been taught how to
defend and save the guilty, he was, without hesitation, also taught
how to bring discredit on an honest man. Such was the education
received by the pupil of the rhetoricians, and when he had quitted
their schools he did not lack opportunity of applying their precepts.
For instance, he did not make the mistake of being moderate and
restrained in his attacks. By constraining himself to be just he would
have deprived himself of an element of success with that fickle and
passionate mob which applauded satirical portraits and violent
invective. He was not more prejudiced in favour of truth than of
justice. It was a precept of the schools to invent, even in criminal