Chinese Migrant Workers: Bridging the Gap
I come from a small town in China’s countryside, and upon graduating from a Beijing university in 2014, I went to work at a media company in the capital. Last week, I helped an older cousin of mine who did not finish secondary school find a job as a waitress in Beijing. She is part of China’s millions-strong population of transient migrant workers, moving about the country and doing jobs that locals prefer not to. She needs money, and the job provides her more than what she could earn working in her hometown. But migrant life is a tradeoff, and my sister often weeps at the thought of her two children, a girl (13) and boy (7), at home with their grandparents. My cousin believes that China’s urban residents do not care about her or respect her, that there exists a gap in society between them and her. From reading newspapers and learning of other migrant workers’ experiences, she feels that rural migrants work the jobs that city folk don’t want while being looked down on by those being served like royalty on their subjects. This says much about China’s social attitudes towards migrant workers, hard-working yet mostly uneducated laborers and waitresses, hairdressers and stall owners, who often come from the vast interior of the country and make up half […]
Jul 14, 2015