Lifestyle mobility: shifting conception of home in modern China

Abstract: This article examines new practices of mobility that are situated in-between tourism and domestic migration. The modern consumer society allows urban middle class in China to move around the country in search of alternative lifestyles and employment. Illustrating the step-by-step transformation where initial tourism leads to relocation, dwelling and new business in Lijiang, this study investigates the reasons and consequences of the relocations, and how such practices shape their cultural conception of home. Phrased here as lifestyle mobility, such form of movement allows people to consume an instant satisfaction of their new chosen home while using professional skills to pursue alternative entrepreneurship in the local tourism industry. This article shows how the traditional Chinese notion of home has shifted from a lineage-bounded, fixed-place unit to an individual enterprise for happiness and simultaneous connections to multiple places. However, lifestyle mobility is not only associated with individual agencies, but also closely influenced by external factors and structural conditions, such as class, ethnicity and life stages. These relocation and home-making practices are never a single act, but an on-going process of searching and strategising to meet their multiple needs at various stages of ones life.