Workers

 The population of a Chinese city is a matter of fuzzy math.  If you ask the population of Suzhou, you will get answers anywhere from 6 million to 13 million.  For Shanghai, you will be quoted figures from 20 million to 35 million.  Despite the fact that the Chinese authorities are meticulous in tracking residency and temporary residency, no one seems to know the population figures.  The answers are algebraic.....6 million + x....20 million +x.

The "x" in these equations are the workers.  The term "worker", by the way, is synonymous with the term "migrant worker".   These are the army of people, mostly men, who build the skyscrapers and the subways and the apartment buildings and the sewers in Suzhou and Shanghai and Beijing and any other large city.  It's easy to recognize them because they they usually carry their orange hard hat with them.  If not, you can recognize them by their faces. Faces that are darkened by the sun and dried by the wind and the cold. 

The workers are the men who did not score highly on their college entrance exams and, thus, failed to grasp the golden ring.  In fact, they may not have had a chance to attend school at all.   They come mostly from the farms and the small villages.  They live in the cities, but do not reside there....."reside" being word with both metaphorical and a legal meanings.

 All over Suzhou you can see the dormitories for the migrant workers.  You can see them in the photo above; the mass-manufactured modular units (or porta-cabins as the Europeans call them).  You find these all over town.  Often, they are sited right next to the construction site.  This is where the migrant workers live. Maybe not all of them, but a good portion.  They are crammed together by the dozens into the equivalent of a tool shed that is steaming hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter.  They live like Spartans to minimize their living expenses.  Most of the money they earn is going back home to the family. 

To understand the world of the migrant worker, you first need to understand the system of "Hu Kou".  Hu Kou is the legal system in China that establishes where one's residency lies.  With residency, Hu Kou also establishes what public benefits you are entitled to and where you kids must go to school and what medical care you are entitled to.  I'd always thought (and I suspect most others think so as well) that China is a monolithic, national state.  But it is truly as the name of the country implies - the People's REPUBLIC of China.  It is, in fact, a very federal and very regionally fragmented administrative system.  And your Hu Kou determines where in that fragmented system you get to play.

 The Hu Kou system was established 50 years ago to prevent the chaotic rush of people to the cities from poor rural areas.  In that aspect, it has been a success.  The top tier cities in China are not surrounded by shanty-towns like in San Paulo or in Mexico City.  But if you want to stay in the city, then you have to have Hu Kou.  In a first-tier city like Shanghai or Beijing, or a second-tier city like Suzhou, the only way to get Hu Kou is to be born to parents with Hu Kou or to have a college degree and high job prospects. 

Seriously, if you don't have a college degree then, statistically, it will be impossible for you to get residency in the city.  And residency in the city, the city Hu Kou, is the big ticket.  It means you have access to the best medical care and the best retirement plans and the best public transport and your children have access to the best schools.  The funding for these benefits is locally generated - like the local tax base for a school system in the US.  Big cities generate lots of funds and provide lots of benefits.  Poor villages and rural areas, not so much. 

Suzhou is a very nice city.  Some visitors say it is better in many respects than any U.S. city.  But you have to remember that it is a bit of an exclusive club.  Not just anyone can join.  The world outside the cities - in the farms and in the small villages - is a far, far different world. 

Migrant workers come to the cities on a temporary residence permit to provide the labor which sustains the Chinese economic miracle.  The migrant workers are the "vast labor pool" that everyone associates with China.  In the construction jobs, almost always, they are men.  They leave their wives and children behind.  Hu Kou dictates that the children can only get access to public education in the their home town, in their legal residence.  So if you are imagining the black-and-white photos of the 1930's migrant families in the U.S. - the workers and their families living together near the Hoover Dam construction site - forget about it.  There are no families here. Only the fathers.

In other cases, the men are young and unmarried.  They always have a home-town girl-friend that they desperately want to marry.  But in order to get the family approvals, they first must be able to afford an apartment and a car and the other fixtures of stability and success that the bride's father and mother will demand.  They work long hours in construction or as waiters in the Western restaurants or in the factories that assemble electronics.  (When you hear horror stories of Chinese sweatshops assembling IPODs or cell phones, you need to remember that, in most cases, the workers WANT to work 16 hours a day to get all the overtime money they can.  The faster they get the money, the faster they can go home and marry their sweet-hearts.)

In still other cases, the migrant workers are female.  Some are old women that work at pruning trees and bushes and planting flowers.  (At least they look old, after so many years of exposure to the elements.)  Others are young girls come to work at the assembly factories for electronics.  Others are young women that come to work in the massage parlors and Karaoke studios in hopes of meeting an affluent and available marriage prospect.

And so these migrants work for 11 months of the year far away from home; sending home every dime they can possibly spare.  Family obligations overrule all else.  Then, in the Spring Festival (aka Chinese New Year) they all travel home for two or three or four weeks of re-united bliss.  Often, they trickle back days or weeks late.  Often, they never return at all.  (It's hell to be a construction manager in China during the Chinese New Year time.)

By the way, just for your reference.  The average migrant construction worker in China makes around 1500 to 2000 RMB per month.  (About $250 to $320).  The average factory worker, maybe 2000 RMB to 3000 RMB per month (about $320 to $480).