FF, FINANCIAL FREEDOM OR FINAL FANTASY? A STUDY OF SINGLE WOMEN, CREATIVE WORK AND RETIREMENT IN CHINA

According to an essay gone viral in China this year, there are 15 levels of “female financial freedom”, from the very basic latiao freedom (to buy as many bags of spicy dough sticks as she wants), all the way to romantic freedom (to break up when she does not need to rely on a man for living) and the highest level of house-buying freedom. That the essay enjoys massive circulation corresponds to what I have observed during my initial rounds of interviews with single women doing creative work in Shanghai and Beijing. They frequently talk about financial freedom (caiwu ziyou 财务自由 ) – or is it another version of final fantasy? In a nation whose official retirement age ranks the lowest in the world (55 for women, lower for some professions) – it is hardly surprising that many of the single women I talk with already contemplate retirement when they contemplate their future, some already retired. Informed by empirical work with single women doing creative work, the current inquiry seeks to understand Chinese women’s retirement experience and imagination in the specific context of personal and professional precarity. While single women may feel the necessity to take care of their own lives without (assumed) spousal (financial) support, creative workers have to deal with multiple demands of managing their own present and future. In this sense, this inquiry of the Chinese experience of female retirement aims to enrich the field of aging studies with its intersections with female singlehood and creative work