Watching videos/livestreams concerning pets is becoming an increasingly popular phenomenon among youth in China, thus the social dynamics and psychological impacts of this pet-centred online activities worth in-depth exploration. This study investigates the sensual experiences of the audiences who have watched pet videos/livestreams and examines how these online experiences influence their subjective well-being. We develop a conceptual model that bases on the relationships between telepresence, social presence, flow experience, and subjective well-being to comprehend this mechanism. The result of 439 samples indicates that both telepresence and social presence have significant positive effects on flow experience, and social presence also has a positive impact on subjective well-being. We also examine the role of loneliness and perceived stress in moderating the effects of online pet watching on subjective well-being, showing that loneliness has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between social presence and flow experience, while perceived pressure has a negative moderating effect on the relationship between telepresence and flow experience. This study not only demonstrates the positive effect of an online pet on subjective well-being and but also uses interview data to comprehend the social processes underlying this effect. We also discuss the theoretical and practical values of this study in improving public health in the digital age.

In this paper, we argue that research on the everyday life of older people needs to move beyond anthropocentrism because non-human support contributes to the diversity of their social networks. We elaborate this argument by examining how companion dogs are involved in the urban empty-nest family in Guangzhou (an aging and highly urbanized city in China), the building of multispecies kinships by urban empty nesters in later life and improving the health of urban empty nesters. Participatory observations and 20 in-depth interviews were combined to assess the association between dog ownership and the reconstruction of later life. Specifically, we focus on the co-disciplined pursuit of outdoor activities by urban empty nesters and their companion dogs; this pursuit represents a shared leisure practice that maintains multispecies kinship and is a creative way for older individuals to improve their happiness and physical functioning. This paper provides a relational and reflective understanding of the interaction between the urban empty nesters and companion dogs and the implications of this interaction in the urban leisure space.

Ordos is notoriously represented in media discourses as one of China’s principal “ghost cities”, with skyscrapers, apartment estates and grandiose squares largely unoccupied. The “ghost city” emerges from massive (over)investment in the urban built environment. Aware that economic and financial sustainability are in question, we nonetheless choose to investigate this issue from the perspective of social sustainability, utilizing a theoretical framework informed by geographies of home. Relatively little analysis has thus far been applied to local residents’ everyday practice and agency in making place and home in allegedly “unhomely” ghost cities. This article first examines media discourses and representations of the “ghostly” aspect of the new town in Ordos. It then investigates the ways in which local residents practice and perform their place identity and sense of home in an alleged “ghost city”. Our empirical research in Kangbashi New Town demonstrates that the discourse of ghost cities is valid in so far as we take into account the local residents’ engagement in a process of home-making from below. This sense of place is created by connecting new and old homes, and constructing an emotionally delineated place identity. We argue that the issue of social sustainability in Ordos is multifaceted, and more nuanced than it has hitherto been represented in media reports.

Rural areas have undergone visible transformations in recent decades. It leads to some ecological problems. Enhancing rural resilience is necessary in the face of these changes. However, previous literature often ignored the roles of indigenous actors in this process. Consequently, we conduct participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore the process by which local farmer knowledge is produced in Fenghuang, a rural area that concentrates on the tea industry in China, and how this process contributes to the agriculture resilience of individual and rural areas. We find that local knowledge is a dynamic composition of daily practice highlighting the nature of adaptability in farmers’ pursuits. Such knowledge is found to be constructed, exchanged, and then reshaped into a new and heterogeneous form that involves a mix of scientific forces and local practices, building a solid basis for individual and rural resilience. In addition, both sustainable agriculture and successful market promotion can be achieved by knowledge production. In this way, the meaning of “place” is reconstrued, morphing from a barren and backward rural area to a green and unique land with idyllic beauty. This metamorphosis offers belongingness to tea farmers and imposes on them the responsibility to contribute their efforts to the land.

Wildlife residing in cities has made encounters between humans and wild animals a common phenomenon. The perspective of the conflict-laden animal–human relationship has been over-emphasized by traditional media, which neglects the peaceful and harmonious daily encounters between residents and urban wildlife. This paper addresses the lacuna in extant literature by examining the virtual encounters between urban residents and wildlife on TikTok by sharing the living habits of Falco tinnunculus. Participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, and text analysis were adopted to explore the knowledge production process of urban wildlife as well as the emotional response of audiences. We found that displaying urban wildlife in short videos is a dynamic process involving the mutual participation of wildlife and humans. Meanwhile, audiences’ anthropocentric gaze of wildlife via TikTok attends to their desires for intimacy with nature and demonstrates the unequal and unbalanced power between wild animals and humans. These findings suggest that more efforts should be made to guide the public to pay attention to native urban wildlife species and to reflect upon the ethics and rationality of such unequal power relations between wild animals and humans.