THE MIGRANT WORKER

In recent years, millions of peasants have migrated from the poverty-stricken rural areas to big cities in search of better job opportunities. Many of them end up working on construction sites or at clothing and toy factories. According to a Chinese government statistic, about 114 million rural laborers, known as min gong, or “peasant workers,” swarmed into China's major cities in 2003.

In Chengdu, the Nine-Eye Bridge area has the most crowded labor market. The line of job seekers stretches as far as several blocks. On a recent winter morning, I disguised myself as a recruiter and visited the area, hoping to talk and get some stories out of the migrants. However, the trick did not work because nobody had the time to chat. Later that evening, I bumped into Zhao Er on a side street near the New South Gate. Zhao, in his forties, was one of the migrants who took shelter on the street. He came from the northern part of Sichuan. He wouldn't tell me his real name. I heard his shelter mates call him Zhao Er, or Zhao the Second.

LIAO YIWU: How long have been away from home?

ZHAO ER: Seven years.

LIAO: Are you homesick?

ZHAO: Of course. I have a wife and a bunch of kids.

LIAO: What do you mean when you say “a bunch of kids”? Don't you guys in the rural areas have to follow the one-child policy?

ZHAO: Of course we have to abide by the policy. In my village, you have to pay a fine of 3,000 yuan [US$380] if you have an additional child. I don't have no money to pay. What can they do? Not much. It's not like in the old days when officials would penalize the violators by razing their houses or forcing women at childbearing age to have loops inserted into their wombs. Once they put the loop in, it was very hard to get it out. Some desperate peasants used chopsticks but still couldn't pull it out. Since Western countries criticize China for treating women like animals, the local government has stopped the practice, or at least they don't do it openly.

There used to be a well-known comedy skit that made fun of country folks who ran away with their pregnant wives to faraway places so they could breed more kids. That was such an exaggeration. Come to think of it, it takes money to run away. Who is paying for the transportation? Nowadays, it's hard to sneak on and off trains without a ticket. I have three daughters. They were all born in the village. Since I had violated the policy, a family planning official visited my house, which was a dump. It was so dark inside my house, she couldn't see nothing. She tripped over a makeshift stove and became panicked. At that time, my wife was breastfeeding our third daughter. The other two kids seized the official's coattails and begged her for candy. She ran out as fast as she could. After that visit, she never bothered us again.

LIAO: If you were so poor, why did you keep having children?

ZHAO: I am penniless. I have no luck with money at all. That's my fate. But my dick is not willing to accept fate. That stuff down there is the only hard spot in my body. The more seeds I plant, the more likely it is that I can change my fate and fortune. Also, unlike you city folks, we peasants don't have money to go visit the nightclubs. In the evenings, when it's dark and boring, we have nothing else to do except to pin our wives down and go “nightclubbing.” If you are not extra careful, accidents will happen. Your wife's stomach will get big again. Who do I blame? My wife badly wanted a son. The more she wanted a son, the more damn daughters she bred.

LIAO: Do you save money to send home?

ZHAO: Yes, I used to send money regularly. But I haven't done that for over half a year now.

LIAO: Without the money, what are your wife and kids supposed to do at home?

ZHAO: They have to figure out their own ways to survive. My wife knows the township pretty well. When times are hard, she drags the kids along, begging from door to door. She probably gets more income than I do. Children in the countryside are not born with silver spoons in their mouths. When they get to the ages of two to three and start to walk steadily on their own, they begin helping out with household chores or go out begging for food. I find that kids growing up in rich families are more difficult to raise. They look damn healthy and fat, but end up in hospitals every other day. My kids, on the contrary, never get sick. They are tempered by wind and rain. They are just like young trees. When you just leave them alone, every time you turn around, they get a bit taller.

LIAO: As a father, how can you be so guilt-free about this?

ZHAO: I can't even take care of myself. Life at home might be hard but at least they have a home. I have to sleep on the street. Look at these folks around me here. They're all much younger. I'm an old fart and have to put up with a lot of crap here. This location is close to the Nine-Eye Bridge Labor Market. I need to be there early tomorrow. If I'm lucky, I can probably get a job with a restaurant nearby. Early in the day, I was planning to look for a construction job. Construction is hard work, but the pay is slightly better. When my stomach gets empty and the cold air moves in, all I crave is a restaurant job where I can get a bowl of hot noodles for free. Over there, near the funeral home, there is a noodle place run by a plump lady. She charges three yuan per bowl of noodles, with free refills on the noodles, not the sauce. Once, I was so starved that I ended up eating seven bowls of noodles!

LIAO: Sounds like you are more attached to your noodles than to your own daughters.

ZHAO: Hey buddy, can you spare a couple of yuan so I can get a bowl of noodles?

LIAO: Here is ten yuan. Be quiet and don't make any fuss. Otherwise, the other guys will come asking for money from me. By the way, do you always sleep on the street like this?

ZHAO: You can't call this “sleeping on the street.” This is a rainproof plastic tent. Down here, I'm sleeping on a waterproof sheet. When I put a quilt on top of the sheet, it's like sleeping on a comfortable bed. Being frugal can save me from future starvation.

I lived on the street when I first arrived in the city. Later on, I started a tricycle business and had money to share an apartment with a couple of other guys. Then, after several of my tricycles were confiscated, I went broke. I couldn't afford the rent. I thought of getting a cheap five-yuan hostel room early this evening, but by the time I got there, the place was full.

LIAO: Where is this place? Why is it so cheap?

ZHAO: Near the Nine-Eyed Bridge. There are a bunch of plastic tents and some shabby houses. During daytime, it is a market. Vendors use the tents as stalls for their merchandise. In the evening, the tents are converted into bedrooms, with all sides sealed. For a bigger tent, you can squeeze seven or eight people in there. In the wintertime, when bodies are crammed in together, you get pretty warm. Sometimes, it's so warm that you sweat simply by blowing a fart. Each day, before dusk, the owner will stand outside the tent to collect money and get as many people in one tent as possible. Her favorite saying is a spoof on an old quote from Chairman Mao: “We come together from all corners of the earth, united by a common goal of starting a Communist revolution.” She changed it to: “We are all travelers, coming from all corners of the earth. For one common goal of making money; we are now squeezed together.” Even that damn place was fully occupied tonight. Last week, I got a nice paid spot deep inside a shabby building. But around midnight, I got up to take a dump. When I returned, I found the spot had been taken. I tried hard to squeeze in but got kicked out by seven or eight pairs of feet. I was so mad. So I wrapped myself in a quilt and sat by the door until morning. Sleeping over here is not bad at all. At least it's spacious. If this were summer, it would be even better.

LIAO: How did you end up in the city? Do you own any land at home?

ZHAO: No, I don't. About ten years ago, my parents' family was allotted a small piece of farmland. When I got married, the village didn't have any land left. Even if we had, we wouldn't be able to make money on the crops. The local government levied all sort of taxes. Many young people left the village to search for jobs in cities. I did the same thing. I got my first job at a coal mine, not far away from my village.

LIAO: Were you employed by a township-run coal company?

ZHAO: No. I worked for a small privately owned coal company, which piggybacked on the state mines. If the state company dug coal from one side of the mountain, my boss would secretly dig from the other side. The whole mountain looked like a beehive, with all sorts of holes. The local government was aware of our illegal mining activities but turned a blind eye. Most county officials took bribes from the private company owners.

We would normally dig a tunnel with a tiny entrance. We had to crawl inside with a basket on our back. The coal mine was shaped like a wine bottle. As you went down the tunnel, the place got bigger. It was always pitch-dark down there.

LIAO: Didn't you guys have cap lamps and a pneumatic coal pick?

ZHAO: We were illegal miners and didn't have fancy equipment like that. We simply tied a flashlight to our heads. As for the pneumatic coal pick, we couldn't use it at all. Once you plugged it in, the vibrating noise was too loud. It was dangerous because the vibrations could cause the mine to collapse. The structure of the coal mine was made of cheap wood sticks—any type of shaking could topple it. Nowadays, you hear a lot about people dying inside mines. I know exactly what has caused the accidents. There is no safety protection. Those private mine owners are brutal bastards. They never care for workers' safety. I worked for the coal company, on and off, for three years. My daily salary was about two or three yuan. My face was smeared with so much coal dust. As time went by, the dust seeped into the skin around my neck and the back of my ears. I couldn't get it off. It wouldn't help even if I tried to rub the skin off. I was tired all the time. Sometimes, when I got home, I fell asleep while eating.

LIAO: Why did you leave?

ZHAO: In the 1980s, I could pretty much make ends meet by working in the mine. However, in the mid-1990s, everything became so expensive, but our salary remained the same. Sometimes, I worked seven days a week and the money I got couldn't even buy enough food for my family. On top of that, county officials also charged us all sorts of fees. We worked our asses off only to fatten the pockets of those bastards. Then several state coal companies in the region went bankrupt because they had bad management. The laid-off state workers clenched their teeth with hatred each time they saw us. They felt that we had stolen their jobs. We were worried that those angry state workers could become desperate and block the entrance of our coal mine. We could all be dead inside. Aiya, as a result, many of us fled. In my village, many young guys moved to the cities to work on construction jobs; many women worked as nannies. Some women became whores. I don't blame those poor women. Luckily, my wife had three kids, otherwise, she would also be turned into a whore. Two months ago, I ran into a shoeshine woman near the Nine-Eye Bridge. It was getting dark but she was still busy peddling her service: “shoeshine, shoeshine.” She somehow looked familiar. I went up closer and found out that she was the wife of my fellow villager, Dog Mouth Zhang. It turned out that she was polishing “yellow shoes.”

LIAO: What's that?

ZHAO: It's the code name for prostitution. Those women will come out in the evenings and look for clients in the name of polishing their shoes. Once a guy stops and shows some interest, she will start polishing his shoes first, and then reaches up to fondle his ankle, while haggling over the price. For fifty yuan [US$6.40], she is willing to offer a full service. Of course, if a chick is young with full breasts, the transaction is easier. An older woman will have a hard time. My friend, Dog Mouth Zhang's wife, is almost thirty and has several kids. Her boobs sag to her waist! She will be lucky if she can sell herself for twenty yuan.

In this area, the young, pretty, and slick-tongued chicks go pick up clients at nightclubs. The older and ugly ones conduct their businesses at hair salons, or on the street. Let me tell you, those hookers from the countryside are picking up new things very fast. Shortly after they arrive in the city, they begin to drop their accents and speak standard Mandarin, powder their faces, and flirt by swinging their little butts. Some hookers even pay money to buy a fake college degree. Having a college degree can get them a rich guy. Then they will make up lies by saying that they hope to earn more money so they can change to a new career that matches their degree. So much bullshit!

Every now and then, I will indulge myself and get a hooker. I normally pay ten or sometimes twenty yuan. One day, I was really short of money. I tried to bargain down to five yuan but ended up getting a smack on the head with a shoe brush. That bitch stood up, with her hand on her hip, and said: You are much older than I am. Why don't I pay you five yuan to get a piece of your ass?

LIAO: You are such a jerk.

ZHAO: Don't you think I earned my money easily? When I first arrived in Chengdu, I worked at a construction site, pouring concrete and digging dirt. After more than a year, I had saved two hundred yuan [US $24]. With the help of a friend, I bought a tricycle and used it as a cab to drive people or deliver merchandise. It was kind of exciting. One bad thing was that we couldn't get city registration because I wasn't a city resident. I had to dodge the police constantly, like a chicken dodging a wolf.

LIAO: How long did you drive a tricycle?

ZHAO: For over two years. The city confiscated three of my tricycles.

LIAO: There are over ten thousand unregistered tricycle cabs in the city. Those registered tricycle cabs are complaining that you guys are stealing their business.

ZHAO: We made our living through hard labor. It's better than stealing or robbing people. I'm kind of mad that migrants like me are being treated like thieves. In those days, when someone yelled, “Police are coming,” everyone would pedal away as far as our legs carried us, like geese hit by a bamboo stick. We would all dive into the side streets. I seldom got caught.

But greed is my weakness. Each time, someone offered me a high price, I forgot about the risks. On one occasion, a woman customer wanted a ride from the Intercity Bus Terminal near to the Baiguolin area. I didn't want to go. So I called out a random price—ten yuan. I didn't think she would agree to it. But she did. I was still reluctant to go, but she begged me and called me, “Sir, sir.” She was kind of cute and her pleading softened my heart. I figured it was Sunday and the route around the second ring road would be okay. So I decided to take her.

It was in the summer. Out-of-towners love to take tricycle rides: cheap and cool. The second ring road was pretty dusty, but the scenery wasn't bad. I offered the woman my umbrella so she could shield her face from the sun. Soon, I was sweating. I took off my shirt and bared my back. She told me to be careful, not to catch a cold. When a customer started to be real sweet, I couldn't help chatting away. I just couldn't shut up. I told her about the best park in town, the shop where she could get good bargain prices, et cetera. I acted as if I were a Chengdu native. In reality, I was just bragging for the heck of it.

As I was making a turn near Zhongxin Road and sliding down a slope, a couple of police motorbikes blocked my way. I was scared shitless. I turned around and tried to go back up the slope. I pedaled very hard and several times the tricycle slid back down. That woman was also scared and tried to jump from the tricycle. She poked my bare back with the umbrella. My back was bleeding but I didn't dare to stop. She then raised the umbrella and beat me with it. She was also kicking me. That umbrella cost me eight yuan, but soon it was in shreds. Later on the police motorbikes caught up and cornered me. Damn it. I had just paid off my tricycle loan. I clung to my vehicle and wouldn't let go. Tears and sweat ran down my cheeks. The police didn't give a damn about how I felt. They threw the vehicle onto a truck waiting nearby. I ran after the police for a couple of blocks, begging and crying. It was useless. I had lost my vehicle and my umbrella. I didn't even get to collect the fare from that woman. She even had the nerve to ask me to compensate her for the emotional trauma I had caused her. That bitch! During the next several hours, I walked around the city aimlessly. I felt so empty inside.

LIAO: Why didn't you do your business outside the second ring road, as was required by city ordinance?

ZHAO: There were too many migrants outside the second ring road. The neighborhood was not safe and many people took rides without paying, especially members of the local triad gangs. They would constantly collect protection fees from us. For us illegal tricycle cabdrivers, we couldn't go report to the police if we were blackmailed. Near the Wukuaishi region, all pickpockets have formed their own gangs. Sometimes, they use knives in gang fights. A guy got stabbed and his intestines were pulled out. Since it was too expensive to send him to a big hospital, his fellow gang members used my tricycle and took him to a small clinic to have his stomach sewed up. Hey, let me tell you that shitty doctor wore a pair of old reading spectacles and worked on the wounds like he was sewing shoes, pulling the strings in and out. The guy was dripping blood. So the doctor put a basin under the operating table. It was scary, but miraculously, the guy survived.

The most brutal bunch are those ethnic Yi people. During daytime, they all squat by the side of the road, a whole bunch of them in their black shawls, like a flock of bald eagles. No local gangs dare to touch them. They call those Yi guys “dark clouds.”

LIAO: That's very vivid.

ZHAO: The ethnic Yi people are very unique. Unless they are desperately hungry, they won't rob a pedestrian. But if they see a pickpocket stealing, they will immediately follow him like a dark cloud. Then they spread their black shawls and surround the pickpocket guy and scream, “Wow, Wow, Wow.” If the guy is smart, he will turn over his money. If he tries to fight back, the knives of the Yi guys are faster than you can imagine. Those knives have been soaked in poisonous liquid. Once you get a cut, it becomes infected and takes months to heal.

LIAO: In other words, those pickpockets have become the slave workers for the Yi guys.

ZHAO: Almost. That's why you never see any pickpockets in places where the Yi guys stay. Well, those Yi guys are not angels. They normally do their dirty business after midnight. They attack residential buildings one by one. All they need is a rope with a hook at the end. Most Yi guys are skillful mountain climbers. With the rope, they can climb walls easily. When they steal, they take anything they see: sausages, preserved meat, clothes, even diapers that people hang on their balconies. They just dump everything into their shawl. Once they break into a house, they take all the things that move. For big items, such as refrigerators, washing machines, they generally smash them. People hate them. Every year, the police will raid those places where Yi people gather and send them back to their hometowns in the mountains. After a couple of those raids, the neighborhood will be quiet for a month or so. Then the pickpockets will return. The residents in the area are facing a new set of problems.

LIAO: Have you ever seen any thieves in action? They are pretty rampant in big cities now.

ZHAO: Yes. Those thieves rob people in broad daylight. They snatch earrings and necklaces. Sometimes, they will grab a woman's hand and try to pull the ring from her fingers. The easiest victims are those well-dressed girls, carrying purses as big as your palm, and swinging their asses to the point of blinding you. Hey, within seconds, their purse is cut open. If they scream “Thieves,” they may end up getting beaten up. Once, I drove a businessman and we were passing Moping Road. My client looked strong and big. He was chatting on his cell phone. Pulling him on a tricycle needed lots of strength. I was soon out of breath. At that point, six or seven people jumped onto my tricycle cab, one grabbed the big guy's neck and another wrestled his arm. The tricycle was almost turned upside down. Damn. Within minutes, all the pockets of that businessman's suits and pants were searched. His belt was pulled out. They even patted his underwear to make sure he didn't hide money there. In the end, he begged them not to take his shoes because he wouldn't be able to walk home. The thieves completely ignored his plea, saying that they wanted to see if there was any money hidden inside. That businessman was left with nothing. He ended up covering his face and crying like a woman. Many people saw those thieves, nobody stepped up to help.

LIAO: What were you doing? Why didn't you call the cops?

ZHAO: How could I get away? I was so shaken that I began to have cramps in my legs. Also, there are so many thieves nowadays. What could I do? I wasn't looking for trouble. All I cared about was my tricycle. If those guys broke it, it would cost me a bundle to have it fixed. On the other hand, that business guy was as stupid as a bear. From his looks, you would assume he would know some Chinese martial arts. Nope. Later on I tried to push him out of the cab, but he wouldn't move. So I drove him home. But when I asked him to pay the fare, he started to swear at me.

LIAO: You certainly know how to protect yourself.

ZHAO: Sir, are you being sarcastic? I'm already a homeless person, and I don't possess any superhero qualities. Sir, are you a reporter? Superman was a reporter. China needs selfless supermen at the moment. Crime has gone up and people are desperate. China's economy seems to be developing very fast, but there are still too many poor people. Too many people want to strike it rich. I'm lucky that I didn't turn into a thief.

Oh well, it's been raining for quite some time now. I wonder what the weather will be like tomorrow. Maybe I should go pick up an odd job at a construction site if it's sunny. Who knows!