Willful times: Unpredictability, planning, and presentism among entrepreneurs in a central Chinese city

On the basis of more than twenty‐four months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted between March 2013 and March 2016 in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, this article examines the reasons why three different generations of entrepreneurs continue to make what appear to be risky economic decisions in the face of what they admit is an economic downturn. I argue that in Zhengzhou, recent historical experiences of sudden, unexpected outcomes have resulted in a preference for presentist practices that allow people to leave decisions unmade until the last minute. In the wake of the unprecedented liberalizing policies that transformed the People's Republic of China, people were often arbitrarily and unexpectedly rewarded; even success appeared to happen by accident. My research indicates that as a result of these unexpected personal outcomes, people have begun to cultivate willfulness (renxing), an orientation that allows them to place opportunity in opposition not to risk but to other people's opinions. Finally, observing that risk grows out of a specific conception of time that directly links present actions to future consequences, I argue that unpredictability is a better analytic concept for events and decision making in Zhengzhou.