At nightfall, a sentimental flute tune wafts through the air.
Near a construction site in downtown Shanghai, residents taking
their evening stroll are already used to the sight of an aging
worker who sits by the roadside playing the flute.??
"It's my only way to kill time. Since coming here I've been
leading a lonely and meaningless life," said 53-year-old Jiang
Chunlai of Shouxian County, Sichuan
Province, who left home to work as a stonemason five years ago.
"Most of my fellow workers are in their 20s and 30s, still
unmarried. In leisure hours their favorite pastime is playing
mah-jong or cards. Occasionally they go whoring. There are
many prostitutes living close to our building site; it's cheap to
visit them, only a few dozen yuan. I often warn my son, who is
working in another place, not to visit prostitutes."
Many healthy young migrant workers see few alternatives to the
prostitutes. "We don't know many people and don't have stable jobs,
so we rarely get the chance to form a love relationship,"
complained Fang Hui, a peasant worker from Hubei
Province.
According to a questionnaire handed out during random interviews
with 200 migrant workers in Shanghai, only 5 percent of male
workers and zero female workers have regular weekly sexual contact.
Some 19 percent of male and 18 percent of female workers said they
didn't remember the last time they had participated in sexual
activity with partners.
Without a regular partner with whom to have a physical
relationship, lonely workers seek other alternatives. Twenty-five
percent of male workers chose "watching blue videos," 21 percent
"whoring," 18 percent "lying awake all night," and 18 percent
"drinking." Among female workers, 19 percent chose "working like
crazy," and 5 percent "restraining themselves."
Most migrant workers are not well educated and have a difficult
time finding more legitimate alternatives in an unfamiliar city.
The same questionnaire shows that 22 percent of male and 30 percent
of female interviewees think that urban life is as dull as
ditchwater.
"Discrimination is the most unbearable thing for us," said Zhang
Qiang, from Sichuan's Anyue County. "Since childhood we have been
brought up with traditional moral views firmly established in the
countryside for thousands of years. But the hostility we experience
between town and country has smashed many of our dreams."
Lin Zijiang is a village schoolteacher in Renshou County,
Sichuan. "A lot of my students left home to work in cities. When
they returned during the Spring Festival I found that they had
developed many bad habits, just so they wouldn't be looked down
upon by city dwellers. As a matter of fact, their morals changed a
lot, which will inevitably influence our next generation," he
said.
Indeed, disillusion and discrimination are heavy blows to the
pride of the farmers-turned-workers, and can sometimes lead to
dangerous behavior. Lin Peiliang of Fuyang County, Anhui
Province, is now serving a sentence in a Shanghai reformatory
for juvenile delinquents. Often getting beatings and scoldings from
two adult fellow workers in a Shanghai machinery plant, the
15-year-old killed both in a moment of desperation.
The Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions reports that migrant
workers make up just under 50 percent of the city's 7.7 million
industrial workers.
Finding ways to fill the vacuum in the hearts of migrant workers
and add variety to their recreational activities have become urgent
tasks.
Sichuan's Chengdu No. 2 Building Company has the highest number
of migrant workers in the provincial capital. In 1997 it began to
set up night schools at different construction sites. Over the past
seven years, a total 30,000 migrant workers have received
continuing education and skill training at the schools.
Yi Guang from Zizhong County in Sichuan made the most of
opportunities offered by the night schools. He got a pay raise and
promotion, and bought a 60-square-meter apartment in Chengdu. "I've
turned myself into a true city dweller," he said.
Since June 2003, Changzheng Township in Shanghai's Putuo
District has allocated 100,000 yuan (US$12,100) to organize visits,
get-togethers and lectures for over 1,000 migrant workers. The
local government has set a goal of making Shanghai a second
hometown for migrant workers.
(China.org.cn by Shao Da, November 29, 2004)
