Homesickness

• Parents and caregivers play a vital role in college students' transition to a new school due to the multifaceted support they provide.
• Here are 12 tips on how parents and caregivers can facilitate their students with a smooth transition into college:
  Have open communication.
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• GUANGZHOU, China, June 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently, Guangzhou historical and cultural city international image film "Guangzhou :Historical Flower City" has been unveiled at New York Times Square.
• Guangzhou is renowned both at home and abroad as the millennial commercial capital, the originating port of the Maritime Silk Road, and the birthplace of China's democratic revolution, which all contribute Guangzhou to be one of China's famous historical and cultural cities.
• At the same time, the image film also focuses on the kindergarten transformed from the former site of Chengzhitang warehouse, Guangzhou Railway Museum, 1978 CINEMA and other vivid cases showing Guangzhou's protection of historical and cultural city with meticulous effort like "embroidery".
• Caption: Guangzhou historical and cultural city international image film "Guangzhou:
  View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/guangzhou-historical-and-cultur...

• They showed young rural migrant workers in intimate, though not overtly sexual situations: talking quietly, holding hands, kissing, embracing, or simply sitting close to each other with their limbs intertwined.
• While some women in the photos wear casual or even sexy clothes, others wear factory uniforms.
• As a cultural anthropologist who has spent 20 years studying rural migrant workers in China, I was immediately captivated by these images.
• I wanted to know what rural migrant workers themselves would make of these images and these polarised responses.

The iPhone and iPad workers of Shenzen

• In addition to these in-depth, one-off interviews, I also invited ten workers – five men and five women – to participate in my research over three years, so I could document the changes in their lives.
• The main site of my fieldwork was Village Q, a “village within the city” enclave that lies outside Foxconn’s plant.
• Spicy aromas of food from Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan fill the nostrils, ameliorating homesickness and gratifying the chilli-loving palates of large cohorts of workers from these provinces.
• It’s all cheap and cheerful, catering exclusively to workers on a wage of around 3,000 yuan (approximately US$440) a month.

‘A very modest dream’

• They are also in the construction sector, the service and hospitality sector, small businesses, and a wide range of other areas.
• Chinese cities cannot function smoothly for a single day without rural migrants.
• The China’s so-called economic miracle simply would not have been possible without the cheap labour they supply.
• Nongmingong have become part of urban life since the start of the economic reforms of the 1980s.

‘Without betrothal gift, my family would be embarrassed’

• WJ’s only brother had just gotten married and was expecting a baby, so he was living at home for the moment.
• And to add the final straw, he may not have been able to afford a betrothal gift, even though the expected betrothal “fee” (caili) from the groom’s family in WJ’s hometown is not high.
• Furthermore, S’s family could not afford to pay betrothal money – an amount of about 100,000 yuan (more than AUD$20,000) – in WJ’s hometown.
• The practice of giving “betrothal money” to the bride’s family has survived in China from a much earlier era.
• People may say that your daughter is so cheap she’s prepared to go without any betrothal money.

‘My daughter doesn’t want to talk to me anymore’

• After MB married this way and their daughter was born, she and her husband came to work at Foxconn in Shenzhen.
• At that meeting, MB told me she had not seen her daughter for a couple of years.
• Social media platforms such as QQ and WeChat were useful to connect with her daughter, but only to a limited extent.
• But she was sad that her daughter no longer wanted to talk to her.
• They seldom saw each other in the factory – it was a huge complex and they worked in different departments.
• Last year, MB told me via WeChat, 11 years since I first spoke to her, that she was finally divorced.

‘You never get ahead by working hard’

• Younger people, those born in the 1990s, tend to have a more casual approach when it comes to girls.
• That may not be a problem if you’re loaded with money; your money can talk on your behalf.
• But what chance do you have if you have no money, you look ordinary, and you don’t know how to talk to girls?
• Most of the men you see here fit that description, especially those born in the 1980s.
• That’s why you see so many lonely souls here – starving for love, sexually frustrated, and feeling lost.
• Younger people, those born in the 1990s, tend to have a more casual approach when it comes to girls.
• When I first met him in 2015 in Shenzhen, he was working 12 hours a day, six days a week at Foxconn plant, assembling iPhones.
• Now, he is adamant that “you never get ahead by working hard.”

  Read more:
  Pity China's 'bare branches': unmarried men stuck between tradition and capitalism

Love doesn’t conquer all

• One key message I got from my conversations with workers is that love does not conquer all, as we are often told.
• For instance, I talked to both young rural migrants and their educated urban counterparts about how they made decisions about wedding photography.
• The love lives of the workers are not only personal and individual matters; they are closely related to how the Chinese state governs.
• Wanning Sun’s new book, Love Troubles: Inequality in China and its Intimate Consequences, is published by Bloomsbury, May 2023.

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