Zixuan Wang

Zixuan graduated with distinction from University College London (UCL), where her undergraduate dissertation investigated the changing moral code of ‘eating bitterness’ (chiku) and intergenerational conflicts in post-socialist China against the backdrop of ‘psychologisation’. This early work established her interest in how Chinese youth navigate competing value systems and generational expectations in times of rapid social transformation. 

She continued her studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she again graduated with distinction. Her master’s dissertation explored rural-to-urban migrant youth and their resistance through the Shamate subculture, examining how marginalized young people create alternative identities and forms of belonging in China’s urban landscapes.

Zixuan is studying the young Chinese people who withdraw urban white-collar jobs to engage in coffee production in rural Pu'er, Yunnan, China. The research examines their motivations of urban to rural migration and changes in lifestyles amidst economic uncertainties; how individual and collective moral obligations are (re)negotiated in terms of defining success; the active value-making of 'specialty coffee' against the backdrop of state-led revitalisation discourse to unravel established rural-urban binary. 

Therefore, the research sheds light on the ongoing anthropological debates on food studies, rural-urban division, and the making of youth identities to gain a deeper understanding of the political, cultural, and economic, and environmental transformations taking place in a precarious society.