Chapter 3 Chapter Two

"Why are you asking so many questions?" A rural young man sitting next to me gave me a distrustful look, and then continued to chat with his companions in Hunan dialect. In early May 2007, on a hot afternoon, I was sitting on a waiting chair at Shaling Coach Station, Fenggang Town, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, China.Not waiting for the bus, but just getting out of the car, because I was overwhelmed by the chaos I saw after getting out of the car, so I sat down and rested first, trying to rise between the crests of the visual flood and catch my breath. Buses, minibuses, and minibuses one after another are constantly transporting young men and women speaking various dialects. These long-distance buses come not only from dozens of towns in Dongguan City, but also from many provinces in mainland China; The buildings of the "Fenggang Labor Market" are covered with colorful billboards, which seem to be some kind of footnotes for the running routes of these long-distance buses: "Fenggang = Nanyang: every day, departing at 10 am", " Bijie Special Line in Guizhou Province", "Shaling Station - Hunan Shaodong, Shaoyang City, Longxipu, Lengshuijiang, Xinhua"...

Before coming to Fenggang Town, a friend from the Dongcheng District of Dongguan told me that most of the new migrant workers in Dongguan were rural young men and women who were not deeply involved in the world. say." What's more, the other party is a strange middle-aged man like me with suspicious background and motives. I changed chairs and tried to strike up a conversation with another young woman who was alone: ​​"Where are you from?" "I'm from Dongguan." She looked me up and down with the same suspicious eyes, but her Anhui accent "gives away the truth": she is not a local.

However, she wasn't entirely wrong.Before the trip, my friend said that the combined population of permanent residents and migrants in Dongguan must exceed 10 million, but the number of migrant workers is seven or eight times that of the locals in Dongguan. The new appellation: the locals in Dongguan are "Old Dongguan people", and the migrant workers are "New Dongguan people".That friend told me that if you meet someone who speaks a foreign accent but claims to be "Dongguan native", you can basically conclude that this person has been working in Dongguan for many years.

If the Pearl River Delta is the epitome of China's urbanization, then the towns in Dongguan, Guangdong are the epitome of China's large population flow and integration, and Fenggang Town is no exception. When I walked out of the station, besides a lot of "Motor" drivers (taxi drivers driving motorcycles), there were also colorful and messy shop signs: "Guangxi Shiduo Restaurant", "Henan Township Restaurant" , "Fengyang steel wire", "Hunan characteristics, Baolun logistics"... Just like New York, the United States can call itself the "international city" of the earth, Fenggang seems to be able to call itself an "interprovincial town" in China, because Fenggang These shops on the street are not only not shy about showing their provincial identity, but even a little proud and ostentatious.

That friend knew that I was going to Fenggang Town, so he didn't think so: "Fenggang is not the busiest town in Dongguan, nor is it the most concentrated of foreign-funded enterprises. If you want to see the town with the most concentrated electronics factories, you have to go to Shi Jie and Qingxi; if you want to go to the town with the most concentration of sports car garment factories, you should go to Houjie and Humen.” But I'm going to Fenggang Town to meet someone: a "wage earner" recommended by Yuan Xiaobing, a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily.I arrived at Fenggang Town two hours earlier than the appointment time, just to see this "not the most lively town in Dongguan".

Leaving the bus station, turn left, a listless, filthy river winding through industrial waste, cross dusty bridges, and turn left again into a dense factory district.The first one on the right is a factory with a small courtyard surrounded by barbed wire. The factory name is painted in large traditional Chinese and English on the gate, and there are two lines of small characters written vertically next to it: "During working hours, no visits are allowed. "; the big door is covered with a small door, the big door is closed, the small door is open, and a recruitment notice is pasted on the small door. Typical Hong Kong-style language such as "payment on time" shows that this may be a Hong Kong-funded enterprise.

Soon, a young man on a bicycle quietly stood beside me, thinking carefully about this job notice just like me. "Are you looking for a job too?" I handed him a cigarette. "Yes!" He showed his smoky teeth, and took my cigarette awkwardly, but the suspicion and confusion in his eyes told me: he didn't believe that I was his kind. "New to Dongguan?" Unfortunately, I can only speak Mandarin without an accent and without distinction. "I did it here before. I went back to my hometown in rural Sichuan during the busy season. I just came back and looked for a job again." He moved closer to my lighter, lit a cigarette, and took a deep breath.At this time, the suspicion in his eyes faded, and he spoke more, but the confusion in his eyes never drifted away with the smoke rings he kept spitting out.

I understand why he is confused: whether it is the people wandering before the recruitment notices at the gates of various factories, or the people entering and leaving the "Fenggang Labor Market", they are all young people in their 20s who look like rural people.Later, I simply gave up trying to pretend to be a job seeker, and directly confessed my identity as a reporter, which in turn eliminated the suspicion and confusion in the eyes of the person I was talking to.During the waiting time of more than an hour, I chatted with several job seekers from Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, and Yunnan in this new and open way.

Fenggang town can probably call itself China's "interprovincial town" However, although the confusion in their eyes disappeared, the confusion in my heart intensified as the number of chatter increased: what is the force that drives these young rural children from all over China to pour into this lively but dirty place? Small towns in the south, voluntarily committing themselves to these factories surrounded by visible or invisible barbed wire? Unfortunately, most job seekers are in a hurry, and I can only talk with them in general, and it is difficult to talk in depth.Just as I was trying to mention this issue to a youth in rural Yunnan who had a fairly speculative conversation, my cell phone rang...

"Where are you?" I looked around and called into my phone. "I saw you." A "motorcycle" drove towards me in the distance, and a man in work clothes in the back seat held a mobile phone in one hand and waved it high at me with the other. He is Wu Shengfa, a "wage earner" recommended by Yuan Xiaobing, a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, for my interview.Before the trip, Yuan Xiaobing introduced to me that Wu Shengfa came from a poor mountain village in Yugan County, Jiangxi Province. Because his family was poor and could not afford to study, he only went out to work after graduating from junior high school. But after he came to Dongguan, he never sold his physical strength. Starting from the bottom-level workers, they are down-to-earth, diligent and studious, and now they have mixed into the status of engineers and middle-level managers. "It should be said that Wu Shengfa is a successful migrant worker." Yuan Xiaobing added at the end.

Yuan Xiaobing and Wu Shengfa are fellow villagers in Jiangxi. Yuan Xiaobing once wrote a report entitled "Machine in a Foreign Land, Blurring the Sound of Insects in Hometown", which was devoted to Wu Shengfa and his wife.Before coming to Fenggang Town, I also read this report in detail on the Internet. Wu Shengfa jumped off the motorcycle, shook my hand and said hello.He is of medium height and thin. Although Yuan Xiaobing said that he is in his early thirties, when he smiles, he is very simple and even a little reserved. He still looks like a young man in his early twenties who just came out of the countryside. The few job seekers I just talked to don't seem to be much different, but they are quite different from the "successful people" I imagined. "Didn't you have dinner? I'll treat you to dinner." After exchanging pleasantries, he said to me. "How can I invite you, let me invite you." After a fight, he gave in.We sat on the back seat of another "Motor" and walked through the hot and noisy streets and alleys of Fenggang Town in the evening, and came to a Northeast restaurant. As I waited for the food to arrive, I realized that his smile was "deceptive" - ​​he was actually very talkative.He kept asking me about the situation in the UK, as if I was the interviewee: he asked about the housing in the UK, the medical care in the UK, the income of the British people, and even the news about the change of the British Prime Minister reported on Chinese TV at the time... ...He asked so many questions that I couldn't "turn over" and couldn't find a chance to ask questions.I answered his question absent-mindedly, but there was always a question in my mind: Could it be that the traction that attracted Wu Shengfa from the familiar mountain village to the unfamiliar factory at that time was the kind of curiosity about the outside world that prompted him to keep asking me questions? Heart? After leaving that Northeast restaurant, Wu Shengfa invited me to sit at his home.During the long night train journey, I finally found the opportunity to "turn over" and ask questions. However, I found that when talking about himself, Wu Shengfa was not as excited as when he was asking about the customs of the UK. His expressions and words seemed to have never been "flying" along the way. Wu Shengfa's own small home is in Liaobu Town, Dongguan City, an hour and a half drive from Fenggang Town, where he works.Because of the distance and frequent overtime work, he only spends a short weekend with his wife and seven-year-old son every week, and has to live in the factory dormitory for the rest of the time. "Why don't you find a job in Dongguan City? Or ask your wife to work in Fenggang Town?" I asked back. "It's not easy. It's hard for both of us to find jobs with similar income and positions." The light in the car was dim, so I couldn't see his expression clearly, but I could feel that his brows were frowning at the moment from his tone. "General workers are easy to find, but they work more than ten hours a day, and their income is only around 1,000 yuan." After a moment of silence, he added. "General workers" is the abbreviation of "ordinary workers", who have no skills and no "money" opportunities.But Wu Sheng discovered that he was an engineer in a hardware factory in Fenggang Town, with a monthly salary of 3,500 yuan, and his wife was a senior technician in a telephone factory in Dongcheng District. Among the millions of "migrant workers" working in Dongguan, he could get to this point. couples are rare, but the price is "two places for one family". Of course, the cost of working away from home for 12 years is far from limited to the separation of the two places.Wu Shengfa and his wife came to Dongguan to work separately around 1995, which happened to be the era when China's urbanization process was accelerating. Although Wu Shengfa has lived in Dongguan for more than ten years, he still has no sense of belonging to this city evolved from a rural area and the world-famous "world processing base". "What are you asking? What's a 'sense'? A 'sense of belonging'?" At this moment, the bus we were riding was passing through another brightly lit town, and through the blurred and flickering neon lights, I could clearly see what was in Wu Shengfa's eyes. Confused, "No, no. All I have is 'insecurities.'" After more than an hour of ups and downs, we finally came to the apartment rented by Wu Shengfa's family in Liaobu Town, Dongguan City.Wu Shengfa's wife, Wu Yumei, was helping her son with homework. When she saw us coming in, she got up and cut a melon for us.His seven-year-old son, Jing Hui, was jumping up and down on the bed while eating melons: In this one-bedroom apartment, there are only a few beds inside and outside the room for Jing Hui to jump on. Wu Shengfa told me that this apartment with a monthly rent of 300 yuan actually lived in five people: three of them lived in the inner room, and the outer room was the sleeping place of Wu Shengfa's two nieces, who also worked in Dongguan.The narrow balcony is separated by three compartments, which doubles as a kitchen, toilet and shower room.Wu Shengfa said that this is a common form of renting for migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta. The local residents built their houses on their own homesteads up to seven or eight stories high, and then divided them into pigeon cage-like units, renting them cheaply to people like him. Migrant Workers. Wu Shengfa often said to his relatives and friends: "I will go back after working in two or three years." Although he has worked in Dongguan for twelve or three years, he has not realized the dream he often weaves: go back to his hometown and become his own boss . However, Wu Shengfa and his wife did not buy a house in Dongguan either.Although according to the income of the couple, they can buy their own real estate with bank loans, but they still live in this small and simple apartment. "Why not buy a house?" I asked. "Where can I buy it?" Wu Shengfa asked me back, "What if I lose that job? Who can guarantee that I will find another job with similar income and status?" Indeed, no one can guarantee.Even if he lives here for another 12 or 3 years, even if he is "successful" at work, even if he climbs up the social ladder here, he is still a person who does not have a registered permanent residence in Dongguan and therefore does not have corresponding social security. "Migrant workers". Seeing that I was silent for a long time, he said another sentence, probably to enliven the atmosphere: "Save more money when you can still do it, and go back to your hometown in the countryside to build a house for the elderly." He smiled, but it was a forced smile. For some reason, the scene in Yuan Xiaobing's report describing Wu Shengfa and his wife suddenly appeared in my mind—— "The roar of machines has replaced the chirping of insects and birds, and the streets are full of cars, motorcycles and unfamiliar faces that need to be vigilant. They comfort each other in a foreign land, live cautiously and humblely, and sometimes have the melancholy of the idyllic love that cannot be returned .Similarly, my hometown only lives in my memory. Now my hometown is as confusing as the city where I work.”