The Art of Getting By

Sound Bite

A work that is simultaneously ethnographic fieldwork, social theory, and intimate portraiture, The Art of Getting By takes us into a hidden world and nestles in, learning some of the ways people keep themselves intact in tough circumstances.

About the Book

In the shadowed alleyways of Guangzhou's urban villages, poor migrant women navigate a world of falang—small hair salon brothels—where survival hinges on sharp observation, tangled kin ties, and quiet acts of solidarity. This vagrant anthropology gathers two decades of stories from these women, their customers, and the author who walked beside them, revealing how they craft livability amid exploitation and erasure.

Picture Wangjing, a falang worker who roams neighborhood parks each morning, dissecting lovers' quarrels, haggling vendors, and exchanges flirtatious shouts with her shopmates during slow afternoons. These walks yield alley wisdom: which paths to avoid due to bribed security guards, how smells of rancid oil and sewage mark safe havens or dangers. Wangjing's remittances fund a frail father's medical bills, even as her mother shames her for her unseen work—a self-sacrificing love that infuriates yet endures.

Meet Ah Hong, a savvy falang boss who builds loyalty through patient rituals of tea and talk, teaching that true entanglement demands skin in the game. Her shop buzzes with iterative storytelling, discussing everything from customer deceptions to ethical quandaries, forming a collective archive sharper than any academic survey. Younger workers like Christine dream of the world of bookstores and online writing, whispering tales inspired by The Little Prince with her inseparable friend Xiao Xu, while older ones like Fei Fei channel bittersweet Hong Kong romances into notes of longing that draw repeat patrons.

The book traces these lives against draining marshlands turned into seas of progress, where entrepreneurial falang spaces yield to corporate saunas and KTVs. It contrasts sundry shops like Ah Liu's—nodes of credit lines, gossip, and global supply chains—with the inner chambers of moldy rooms shared with boyfriends. Men like Lao Wang reminisce about emotional ploys that blur transaction and affection, echoing historic courtesan guides yet grounded in today's cash-strapped realities.

Beyond Guangzhou, threads connect to Malaysian palm plantations, Hong Kong's New Territories youth, and Myanmar women crafting papier-mâché dolls of their treacherous journeys. Here, radical love isn't poetry but footfalls: bodies pulling together in radical care, filial debts that break backs, and tactics against stigma—from dodging muggings to negotiating family bribes.

No tidy solutions or scalable lessons, just raw tales of getting by in hard times. For readers weary of abstract theory, this offers grounded glimpses of resilience: how the poor spot machineries of profit others miss, evade them with nerve, and sustain kin through unreciprocated devotion. In a planet of slums and extinctions, these stories urge us to walk alongside, feel for the next stone underfoot, and join the fight—hope or no hope.

Introduction

The Art of Getting By: Wisdom and Resilience from China's Migrant Women invites readers into the disappearing alleyways and vibrant communities of southern China's urban villages, offering an intimate look at the lives of poor migrant women navigating worlds of exposure and exploitation. Through what Kevin David Ming calls a "vagrant anthropology," this book chronicles two decades of walking, listening, and storying with women who work in the sexual labor industry, primarily in falang (hair salon brothels), but also beyond, in China, Malaysia, and Thailand.

This unique narrative gathers fragments of life—snatches of song, shared meals, daily gossip, and poignant personal histories—to illuminate the ingenuity, resilience, and complex desires of its subjects. We meet Wangjing, whose dreams of a modern kitchen reflect aspirations for respectability and security for her family. We learn from Qi Qi about the careful art of "fishing" for customers in upscale hotel bars, a delicate dance of observation and performance. Christine's story reveals a love for literature and a quiet determination to write her own future, even amidst challenging circumstances. These women, often dismissed or stereotyped, are shown to be adept at forming connections and finding temporary inhabitance in worlds designed for their estrangement.

Beyond individual portraits, the book uncovers the broader forces shaping these lives: the relentless pace of urban development that obliterates communities, the "cannibalizing capitalist present" that scavenges on networks of care, and the enduring weight of filial obligations. It challenges conventional notions of hope, offering instead a vision of "present hope"—an energetic continuance born from struggle and the indeterminacy of an uncertain future.

The Art of Getting By is a meditation on attention and responsibility, a social history woven with true fables. It questions how we hear the stories of those on the margins, urging us to move beyond preconceived notions and listen anew to the wisdom of survival. This is not a search for grand solutions or meaning in suffering, but an honest sharing of extraordinary lives, demonstrating how shared life is made legible in materially and historically constituted ways, and how reciprocity and connection are forged in the necessities of daily existence.

Information

“Beautifully written and captivating... Based on extensive long term research, Kevin Ming has produced an artful, poetic, deeply respectful book, with finely rendered ethnographic detail and attention to the minutiae of these women’s everyday lives, including their challenges and struggles. The book reflects Ming’s keen awareness of the nuances of gendered power and precarity and of the shifting Chinese socioeconomic and political urban context... The Art of Getting By is both a brilliant and moving anthropological study and a personal labor of love."

— Nicole Constable, Professor, University of Pittsburgh. Author of Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations and Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers

“Reading the intimate portraits of these women is a sensorial experience into the precarious worlds they inhabit, and more importantly the love and wisdom they embody in their struggle for survival. With extraordinary dexterity in weaving intellectual debates, historical and literary analyses into rich ethnography, Ming has provided us with an intellectual feast that is also deeply moving.”

— Sealing Cheng, Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Author of On the Move for Love: Migrant Entertainers and the US Military in South Korea

"A powerful read, beautiful, heart wrenching and intense. Ming found the right balance between poetic and lyrical prose and politically engaged social theory that connects the dark side of development to the lives of those at the bottom of the social ladder. This will shake up your frame of reference for China’s development and add depth to your understanding."

— Bob Spires, Associate Professor, University of Richmond. Author of Preventing Human Trafficking: Education and NGOs in Thailand

“An extraordinary work of ethnographic care. Rather than speaking for the women whose lives fill these pages, he walks alongside them, earning their trust through years of shared presence, attentiveness, and unwavering solidarity. The result is a rare book that preserves the dignity, confidence, and complexity of its companions, refusing the voyeurism and simplification that so often mark accounts of marginalized lives. These stories are told with profound humility, tenderness, and respect, allowing the women to emerge not as symbols of suffering but as thinkers, friends, workers, daughters, and creators of their own worlds.”
— Jason Waite, NS Lecturer in History of Art, St. Anne's College, University of Oxford