Apologies for recycling material - I'm snowed under and abroad for the next ten days, so in the interests of continuity, here is the first of two parts of an interview piece on migrant workers produced for a local magazine last November. The introduction, on re-reading, is over-wrought and over-written. Far better to let the interviewees speak for themselves:
Li Chao, 40, Street-Sweeper
Despite the sickly bittersweet smell of generic fermentation that suffuses the place, the waste-processing post near the intersection of Danfeng Jie and Zhujiang Lu is unexpectedly spotless, its white-tiled surfaces gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Inside, we meet Li, an unassuming yet affable man sitting resplendent in his brand new glowing orange safety jacket. It’s the job of Li and his team to make sure that their designated section of road is kept spotless throughout the day. The hours are long: “Normally I’m up and working by four in the morning,” Li says. “We work through until a bit before seven, then set down to breakfast. We don’t clock off until ten at night, so I only get about four hours’ sleep a night.” It’s not always enough. “If there’s a break in the work, I might catch forty winks now and then, though strictly speaking it’s against the rules,” he says with a smile.
Li first moved to Nanjing eight years ago. Like so many new arrivals, he found his job through personal connections: “My aunt was in Nanjing. She helped sort me out. It’s hard to just roll in and find a job.” As street sweepers, he and his wife are able to earn enough to put their two children through university, so long as they all live frugally. “Things are alright here, it’s a pretty cheap place to live, we can get by on about five hundred yuan a month. That leaves us a thousand or so to put the kids through school. That said, they’re on a tight budget, even the school canteen’s expensive, so it’s no gourmet dinners for them!”
With his old village some two hundred and fifty kilometres away, Nanjing is beginning to feel more and more like home for Li. “If someone were to tell me I had to up sticks and work elsewhere, I think I’d find it pretty hard to leave,” he says. “You could say Nanjing is my second home town now.” Yet so long as he is unable to register as an urban resident, the future remains uncertain. “We’ve got no pensions. I certainly hope our kids will end up taking care of us, but that’s just a hope. Whether they choose to or not is up to them, really.” And if the worst comes to the worst? “Well, I’ll just have to move back to my first home town and grow old, won’t I?”
Chen Changyou, 47, Taxi Driver
Originally from a peasant household, Chen was awarded the much-sought after status of full urban resident after a stint in the army. With access to healthcare, a pension, and the right to own property, he has been blessed with the opportunity to integrate into his adopted city in a fashion most migrants can only dream of. As he puts it, “Nanjing’s my mother-in-law.” Working in the relatively lucrative taxi business (on average, he can expect to take home 4,000 yuan a month), he has been better placed than most to view the city’s evolution in the 28 years since he first arrived. For people in his line of work, development’ translates directly: a new road to be traveled, an new landmark to be committed to memory. “When I first arrived in town, the tallest building around was six floors,” Chen says. “And that was a hotel. Back then, the roads were narrow, torturous. There were still plots of cultivated land strewn about the place. There were no expressways, airports or anything like that. The reality of life today goes way beyond what I could ever imagine as a child. Back then, even driving cars was the preserve of party secretaries and cadres. Now, I’ve got two homes, and I can buy my own car if I want to. Life’s better everywhere, sure, but it’s 28 years of hard graft that got me where I am today.”
Chen’s work ethic is simple. “You’ve got to get your hands dirty. If you want to get rich, you’ve got to be prepared sweat blood, just like a peasant.” Every inch the self-made man, he is nonetheless fiercely proud of his adopted home and the opportunities it has afforded him. “Ever since I retired from the army, I’ve been doing everything I can to make a contribution to this city, my new hometown. Whenever I pick up foreigners in my cab, I feel like I’m acting as a representative for Nanjing itself.” But despite being able to consider himself a proper Nanjingren now, he remains aware of the gulf he has traversed to make it this far, one that so many others still face. “Every month I put a bit of money aside to give to the migrant school here. Happily, I’m lucky enough to be in a position to do this.”
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