Empty homes: filming homeownership in rapidly urbanising China

Abstract

With 22 per cent of its housing stock vacant, China has the highest vacancy rate in the world. Yet Chinese cities are marked by constant expansion and the construction of high-rise buildings. Why are all these ‘empty homes’ being built? And what moves people to buy homes in which they cannot live? In this article, we explore these questions through a filmmaking project embedded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Wuhan. The film Empty Home, included in this article, focuses on the social and symbolic aspects of home- and city-making, revealing the importance of homeownership for mobile Chinese families in a rapidly transforming society. This article views the real-estate market as an important site for constructing citizen-state relations and argues that the symbolic and social significance of empty homes is crucial for understanding the deep meanings of the Chinese state’s drive for urban expansion and Chinese citizens’ desire to become homeowners. In addition to contributing to knowledge about Chinese homemaking, the article shows how using filmmaking in ethnographic fieldwork can strengthen the research process.