Yesterday I heard a Ted talk about Chinese peasants migrating to cities. It's so well-done that I feel compelled to share it.
The speaker stayed for about two years in a big city in south China, working and living with some female peasants, now assembling line workers. While we debate about globalization, we have neglected to hear the voice of the workers themselves impacted. That's what she is trying to get.
These former peasants choose to leave their villages in order to make big money, to learn new skills and to see the big world outside. She learned about their daily interests. Their living conditions were very substandard, yet were better than their village life.
She made acquaintance with an 18-year-old girl named Min, who changed jobs 5 times over the course of 2 years from an assembly line worker in an electronics factory to a lucrative job in the purchasing department of a hardware factory. Later she married a fellow migrant worker, moved to his village, gave birth to 2 daughters, and saved enough money to buy a second-hand Buick for herself and an apartment her parents in the village. Later Min moved back to the city alone taking up a new job. In an email to the speaker, she explained, "A person should have some ambition while she is young, so that in old age she can look back on her life and feel that it was not lived to no purpose."
Life is tough for them. The speaker expected to find them feeling depressed and miserable and full of complaints. Instead, she found these young women 聪明、有趣、勇敢、大方 (cōngmíng 、 yǒuqù 、 yǒnggǎn 、 dàfāng), smart, funny, brave and generous.
Across China, there are 150 million workers like Min, one third of them are women who have left their villages to work in factories, hotels, restaurants or construction sites in big cities. Together they make up the largest migration in modern history.
The speaker ended with this reminder: It is the globalization that begins in Chinese village like this and ends with iPhones in our pockets and Nikes on our feet. I hope people are aware of the existence of these people and think of them while using their electronics every day.