Landscapes of homesickness: mobilizing affect for rural return in Xi Jinping era, China

Abstract

The invocation and mobilization of xiangchou–understood as a form of homesickness, nostalgia, and topophilia for the literal or proverbial ‘hometown’–has emerged as a form of affective governance in Xi Jinping era China. Discursive analysis of official documents and mainland Chinese scholarship reveals the term’s deployment in encouraging various forms of ‘rural return’ during an era of simultaneous urban excess and rural depletion. A case study in Xinjian Township, Zhejiang Province, further illustrates the ‘materialization’ of xiangchou in the Chinese countryside under the banner of ‘rural revitalization’.