Longhua District

• 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.