Being Single in the City

What does it mean to be a single woman in India or China? Being single is an advancing trend, also in Asia. There is an ambivalent fascination with the single woman as a new type of empowered, pleasure-seeking, competent lifestyle-surfer, and dedicated career-maker. And yet, the single woman is also stigmatized and isolated, discriminated against or stereotyped as someone who challenges social norms. Place matters for singlehood. This book focuses on the urban fabric of India, mainland China, and Hong Kong. For it is here that social, economic, cultural, and political transformations become manifest and new possibilities of living are tested and vividly contested.