LAUSR

ABSTRACT China’s extraordinary socioeconomic development over the last forty years has brought about vast regional disparities and significant changes in family relationships and practices. Using interviews and observation, we investigate lesbians’ experiences of parental pressure to enter a heterosexual marriage in three Chinese cities of different tiers in the East Coast and Inland West regions. Having no way to communicate with their parents regarding their sexuality, our participants in a small western city feel they have little choice but to enter a contract marriage to follow the traditional norm of filial piety. In the eastern coastal metropolis, elite college graduates have more leverage to inform and negotiate with their parents, and they accumulate more resources to go overseas to avoid a contract or heterosexual marriage. Our participants in a big city in the west fall in the middle, weighing the feasibility of a contract marriage against the option of going overseas.