Book review: Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital’s Center

Abstract

Harriet Evans’s Beijing from Below: Stories of Marginal Lives in the Capital’s Center presents an exceptional insight into the precarious lives of what Evans calls the ‘subalterns of history’ through sketches of residents in the Dashalar neighbourhood located in central Beijing. With oral histories on subaltern experiences, the author attempts to question a dominant historical narrative in the People’s Republic of China, and urban areas of Beijing in particular. Urban poverty, Evans argues, has been a constant throughout the complex history of Dashalar. Her argument runs counter to the dominant narrative that during the Mao era urban poverty was largely absent, because state accommodation, education, and health benefits for all resulted in an equal society. According to this narrative, urban poverty is a consequence of marketization which led to socio-economic differentiation. Oral histories on subaltern experiences such as what Evans has documented in her book reveal that this dominant view of history is too simplistic, and that oral histories are indeed necessary to complicate, challenge, and add difference to egalitarian assumptions. Subaltern experiences might be unlike history writ large, but are never, as Evans argues, immune to its normalizing effects. Evans thus approaches subalternity not as completely outside and unaffected by the system of dominance, but rather as a discernible trace within the functioning of power (p. 6). This book draws on years of fieldwork during which the author befriended and talked at length with the people of Dashalar, who ended up as protagonists in this book. Complemented by archival evidence which substantiates their narratives, the book is a trove of rich ethnographic material combined with a talent for compelling storytelling, or rather, for bringing to life the stories of the Dashalar residents about their own lives. The urban poor, as Evans argues, make no claims to a privileged victimhood, nor do they search out formal recognition of their suffering (p. 98). The stories they tell about themselves, however, reveal the need for the hardship and pain which they endured to be seen and recognized. It shows their sense of self, their perseverance and resilience, 1019702 CIN0010.1177/0920203X211019702China InformationBook reviews research-article2021