This study is to provide a preliminary ethnography of the domain of leisure constraints as perceived by the residents of six large cities in China．Our ethnographic approach to the study of leisure constraints differs from the social psychological one most commonly used in North America．We find that informants in six large Chinese cities group leisure constraints，based on their perceived importance，into eight，relatively distinct，types．Moreover，we believe that the kind of information about leisure constraints that we have provided in this paper iS much more useful to both government officials and leisure service providers than abstract classifications provided by the social
psychological approach，in which leisure constraints are categorized as"intrapersonal"or"structur"．We believe that more research is clearly needed on classifying leisure constraints from the”bottom-up"，that is，based on information provided from informants(ethnographic approaches)rather than imposed by researchers(social psychological approaches)．