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Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of 'precariat': single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self- )employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü ('left-over women') in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women's professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self- )exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand- empirically and specifically-women's everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.

Abstract
This essay introduces Kiki, a transgender sex worker in Hong Kong, who is not adopting the term transgender and is not particularly involved with the transgender movement. Rather, she chose a particular Chinese term to conjure, evince, and categorize herself: renyao. While ren can be translated to "human being," yao to "monster," and renyao to "shemale," those well versed in its vernacular circulation in Hong Kong would understand it as a somewhat old-school but definitely discriminatory, derogatory usage, primarily used to sneer at people who were not readily identifiable as male or female and are viewed as freakish, monsterlike, or less than human. With renyao, Kiki finds her ways to queer transgenderism. By reclaiming a shameful, derogatory term, by bringing transgenderism beyond the language of medicalization and legalization, by inserting playfulness and pleasure, by opting for sex work and founding an organization that defends the rights of male and transgender sex workers, by not wanting to pass, by being neither this nor that, she is renyao, not a transgender person. This essay is to insert Kiki's self-representation, visually and linguistically, into our examinations and explorations, to weave the narration of one Asian transgender person into the weft of trans scholarships and activisms in Asia.

Chapter 1 Documenting the Past, Sustaining the Present, Making the Future -- Chapter 2 Colonial Nostalgia and Postcolonial Longings -- Chapter 3 The Worst of Times, The Best of Music -- Chapter 4 Forbidden Love, Forgetting Gender -- Chapter 5 It's My Party -- Chapter 6 1+1=? - Chapter 7 We Think We Should Stop Now.

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- I. Introduction: We Must Create? / Scheen, Lena / Fai, Chow Yiu / Kloet, Jeroen de -- II. 'Creative China' and Its Potential to Problematise Western- Modern-Romantic Ideologies of Creativity / Wilf, Eitan -- Section 1: Boredom -- Essays -- 1.1 Create No More! Clutter and Boredom, a Hong Kong Perspective / Coppoolse, Anneke -- 1.2 Combating the Boredom of Traditional Performing Arts? The Case of Muyuge / Cuiyan, Wen -- Interlocuting -- 1.3 You Must (Not) Be Bored! Boredom and Creativity in Global Capitalism / Peeren, Esther -- 1.4 Boredom and Creativity in the Era of Accelerated Living / Lindner, Christoph -- Notes from the Field -- 1.5 Evaporating Ennui Water Calligraphy in Beijing / Vermeeren, Laura -- 1.6 Male Cinderella on the Small Screen in mainland China / Hao, Li -- In Dialogue -- 1.7 'Performativity' in the Age of Banality / Shing, Kung Chi / Ng, Kingsley / Shan, Lo Yin -- Section 2: Shanzhai -- Essays -- 2.1 New Productive Culture Shanzhai or Second Degree of Creation? / Yin, Yiyi / Fung, Anthony -- 2.2 Creative 'Shanzhai Labour'? Leung Mee-ping's 'Made in Hong Kong/Shenzhen' / Ho, Louis -- 2.3 Maoism and Disruptive Creativity Shanzhai - an Alternative Perspective / Yuefan, Xiao -- Interlocuting -- 2.4 'Isn't that funny?' The Unsettling Effect of Shanzhai Products / Scheen, Lena -- 2.5 Shanzhai = Creativity, Creativity = Shanzhai / Landsberger, Stefan -- Notes from the Field -- 2.6 Bringing the Chinese Dream to the U.S. A Curatorial Practice in Art Education / Fan, Feng -- 2.7 'Banal Creativity' What Does It Mean to Be Creative for Hunan TV Practitioners? / Nauta, Arjen -- In Dialogue -- 2.8 Two sides of SZ (Shanzhai & Shenzhen) / Chunru, Deng / Dai, Dai / Shan, Lo Yin -- Section 3: Digitisation -- Essay -- 3.1 Creativity, Affordances, and Chinese Traditional Culture / Keane, Michael -- Interlocuting -- 3.2 Digital Payment, Vernacular Creativity, and Governmentality / Siyu, Chen -- 3.3 Shopping 'Natural' and 'Local' food as Everyday Resistance Digitisation, Platformisation, and Online Retail of Rural Products / Guohua, Zeng / Guohua, Zeng -- Notes from the Field -- 3.4 Participatory Art On-off a Digital Platform A Mobius Strip: On Cyber Nails in Curated Nails / Deng, Zoénie Liwen -- 3.5 Ongoing Digitisation and Independent Chinese Documentary A Field Report from Beijing 2015-2016 / Parry, Rowan -- In Dialogue -- 3.6 Digitisation with (in/out) Borders / Leung, Isaac / Fong, Janet / Shan, Lo Yin -- Index