China's 'country bumpkins' invade cities

China's 'country bumpkins' invade cities

By Philippe Massonnet

BEIJING (AFP): Wang Xiaoming does not have a cellular phone nor does he play the stock market. He is not on the cover of a magazine as a shining example of China's new entrepreneurship.

Wang is one of the estimated 80 million Chinese peasants -- nicknamed "country bumpkins" by disgruntled urbanites -- who have left the countryside to find their fortunes in the cities.

Under a bright spring sun, Wang, 32, plays cards with three friends in front of Beijing's central train station, the arrival point for tens of thousands of people coming from China's poor rural areas. They are mostly young men, but women carrying babies are often seen as well.

Many have been there for hours, others days. They are living on the sidewalks and streets, most dressed in rags, carrying their belongings in worn plastic bags. Cracking open hard-boiled eggs and drinking green tea from old instant coffee containers, they wait for work, mostly as laborers or domestic help.

"Where I'm from, there is nothing to do, the land is too bad. I've been traveling the country for three years," said Wang, a former farmer from Shanxi in the north who has become a construction worker. "I work about nine months out of the year, usually in Beijing, and I can make up to 400 yuan (US$45) a month."

"It is grueling. In the summer, we are housed in old tents, in winter, in huts where we freeze. But at least I can support seven people in my family."

In Beijing, there are 1.5 million migrants in addition to the city's nine million residents. In Shanghai and Guangzhou, they number two million. All together, officials estimate that more than 80 million rural residents have migrated to the cities, floating from one area to another looking for work.

In rural areas, there is just not enough employment to go around, and the number of surplus workers continues to grow, reaching 130 million and causing headaches for the government, as well as becoming a dangerous source of social instability.

There are those that leave the countryside to escape poverty, and others who are attracted by the city's bright lights and dreams of the good life.

"In my district, those who drive Audis are communist party officials," said one of Wang's companions, laughing, with dirty matted hair and a cheap cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth.

"We the 'bumpkins' are trying simply to survive. The millionaire farmer, it's propaganda for foreigners," he added, before spitting on the ground.

Xiao Zhao, 28, a peasant from the poor eastern province of Anhui, considers herself lucky. For the last four years, she has been a domestic worker for a cadre's family and earns 170 yuan (US$20) a month, including room and board.

She can go home two weeks a year to see her two children, who are being raised by her parents. Her husband is working in construction in the city.

"I at least have not become a thief, beggar or prostitute, like some migrants," she says proudly.

On her arrival in Beijing, she was lodged in a filthy dormitory for two months before "being put on the market," then hired illegally by her current employers, who had to pay a "sum" to some middlemen.

Like Xiao, most of the migrants arriving in Beijing are taken care of by a clan from their home province. As the rural exodus has progressed, the migrants have organized themselves by community, to the point where Beijing is composed of "villages," which have escaped official regulation.

Xiao plans to spend another five years working in the capital, and with her savings -- "I don't spend anything in Beijing," she says -- hopes to return home and open a business.

The train for Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi, leaves in 30 minutes and Wang Xiaoming has finally been authorized to enter the station's huge interior hall. He has not been home in six months.

The trip will take 12 hours in third class -- "hard class" -- on straight wooden benches made for two people. But three to four travelers will squeeze onto them.

As Wang takes the escalator to the first-floor departure area, numerous television sets display images of the Western good life, of cellular telephones and stock markets.