Cosmopolitan Imaginaries, Specialty Coffee, and the New Life in Dali
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24228780 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Zhiying Xiong, Peter Guangpei Ran |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 146 |
| Pages | 15-25 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Perspectives chinoises (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1021-9013 • E-ISSN: 2070-3449 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/16w6d |
| OpenAlex | W7219896537 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 39 |
In recent years, tourist destinations in southwest China have become attractive sites of relocation for educated urbanites seeking alternatives to the intense competition and precarity of China’s major cities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among three independent coffee ventures in Dali, this article examines how two migrant entrepreneurs and one Bai local mobilise specialty coffee to pursue self-determination, professional reinvention, and aesthetic labour, reconfiguring Dali from an ethnically exotic frontier into a cosmopolitan hub and aspirational refuge from urban pressures and gendered familial expectations surrounding marriage and childbearing. Yet, these aspirations unfold within state-led rural revitalisation, tourism development, and market competition, which simultaneously enable and constrain independent coffee ventures, rendering their aspirational projects increasingly precarious.
aesthetic labour · Cosmopolitanism · Dali · immigrant entrepreneurs · independent coffee shops · professional reinvention · rural revitalization · Self-determination · specialty coffee · state-led development · tourism development · urban precarity · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy
Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang
The Good Life
What is made-in-China feminism(s)? Gender discontent and class friction in post-socialist China
The Location of Culture
China's Leftover Women
The crisis of social reproduction and 'Made-in-China' feminism
Caffeinated aspirations
Brands and Urban Life
Creating land markets for rural revitalization
Landscapes of homesickness
Selling rural China
Cultural literacy, cosmopolitanism and tourism research
Displacing Desire
Small city big thinking
Place-makers in the digital age
The Cosmopolitan Hope of Tourism
Belonging'in the Cosmopolitan Imaginary
Gender and Internal Orientalism in China
The Class Consciousness of Frequent Travelers
Tourism and cosmopolitanism
How Culturally Significant Imaginings are Translated into Lifestyle Migration
Toward a Critical Sociology of Lifestyle Migration
Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life
Social Space and Symbolic Power
Producing Cosmopolitanism at the Borderlands
Coffee Landscapes
The placing of care
Opting out of the city
Yunnan
| Highly cited | No |
|---|