China Migrant Workers II

Around 200 million workers in China are on the ‘tramp’, erecting the country’s shining metropolises as labourers and running the factories as shift workers.

China’s exceptional growth would be inconceivable without this vast army of workers who form the backbone of the Chinese economic boom and are widely regarded as the largest migratory movement in the history of time. And yet theirs is a position on the fringes of society, often living and working in degrading conditions and segregated both socially and legally.

The “Migrant Workers” photographic project aims to deal with the situation of these travelling labourers and their families.

The main focus of the documentary however will not so much be laid on the conditions of their work, but rather on these people’s private lives, their interpersonal relationships, the situation of their families left behind in the country, as well as their overall place in Chinese society.

Shedding light on the huge diversity of migrant workers in China, photographs will portray examples from all parts of the country and from a wide range of trades, ranging from the classical labourer at one of Shanghai’s vast construction sites to the coalminers of the north and the shoe factory seamstresses in the south, all the way to the hostesses at the karaoke clubs in the country’s new boomtowns, the chefs and waiters at the large Beijing restaurants and the domestic helpers employed by rich Hong Kong families.

This story:

Ye Mingfa and Ye Saiqin are a migratory couple, travelling from one building site to the next with their son.

As so many others, both left the countryside, following the call from the cities to find work and escape the dullness of rural life. Mingfa has laboured at some of Beijing’s largest construction sites and Saiquin worked in the factories of southern China. Today they mostly live in Wuhan, a megacity in Central China; four of them to a small room of 8 sqm, together with Saiquin’s brother.

Mingfa works mainly as a bricklayer at one of the many sites in the city. Saiquin looks after their two-year old son Wenjie.

Every two months, when Mingfa is hired at another site, they change their lodgings. Only once a year, at Chinese New Year, can they go back to visit their home village.

Like many migratory workers, Mingfa has no education or training and remains at the very bottom of the building site’s hierarchy.

His irregular wages average at 2,000 Yuan a month, about 200 Euros. Often however, workers aren’t paid for months. At the end of a hard day’s work, the two of them take their son and go spend the evening in the dormitory of one of Mingfa’s colleagues from the building site, where he plays Mahjong and she chats with the labourers’ wives.

How do they imagine their future?

“The most important thing is to earn enough money to pay for our son’s education. We want him to live a better life than us!”

© Benjamin Haselberger, 2008