Seven months later she got a better offer – 90 yuan a month – from a nearby telephone factory. Intelligent and reliable, Yang was soon promoted to a more demanding, better paid position. Later she was transferred to office work, a significant change envied by her workshop colleagues. But her ambition was to land a managerial position. “How I longed for position like that of my supervisor, going around the factory, entering any workshop, and stopping to chat with anyone just as I liked,” says Yang. With this little dream in her head, she switched jobs again to work in a leather goods factory.

Yang Qin sees these younger migrants as quite different from the first generation, though they started their harsh migrant life the same way as the older generation – by working on the production line.

Yang stayed there for ten years, working her way up from lathe hand to forewoman and finally to supervisor. Having achieved a certain level of seniority she was able to help people from her hometown by recommending them for jobs in the factory. She has been instrumental in finding nearly 800 of them positions in Shenzhen.

Over more than 10 years working in the city, Yang kept on sending her savings back home to pay tuition for her younger siblings and cover the living and medical expenses of her parents. As a result, when she was ready to get married in 2001 she found herself urgently in need of money, though she was by then earning over RMB 10,000 a month.

Through the decades, as her positions and salary improved, so too did the city’s infrastructure and appearance. “Buildings went up at an amazing speed; a network of roads was built and more and more people kept pouring in,” she recalls. Though the length of her service in the city qualifies her as an applicant for permanent residency in Shenzhen, she has decided against it. “Life’s too difficult in Shenzhen. I don’t feel like I belong here,” she says candidly.

Home for Yang now is Chenjiang Town in Huizhou City, adjacent to Longgang. She owns an apartment of 100-plus square meters which entitles her nine-year-old daughter to local educational resources. “I still want a better apartment and a better car; I want to learn how the ‘upper class’ do things and enjoy the same things they do. Everyone has a dream, but whether a dream becomes reality depends on how much effort you put in.”

New Generation, New Expectations

Zhou Wei, born in 1988, headed for Shenzhen in 2007. That was the year Shenzhen was voted one of the ten most popular cities among migrant workers, in a poll jointly sponsored by a number of central and local media, including China Central Television and Guangzhou People’s Broadcasting Station.

A middle school dropout, Zhou could see no better opportunities than getting a job somewhere in Shenzhen. Over the past three years she has been working in an amplifier factory production line, earning RMB 2,800 a month, including an RMB 1,600 overtime bonus for working a 12-hour shift, seven days a week. Leave requests were never granted and “absences would result in a fine.”