Others News
- Migrant workers tackle transport chaos for Spring Festival home visiting
Date: 6-Feb-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
Carriages reek of stale sweat, cigarette smoke and spilt alcohol, the aisles are blocked by aching limbs. Li Xianmin and his two friends, migrant workers traveling home to China's most populous province of Henan from Beijing for the family-reunion Spring Festival, were lucky.
The other two members of their five-man group could not squeeze onto a train that resembled the capital's subway in rush hour. They were stranded on the platform with a useless scrap of paper that up until five minutes ago was their ticket home.
'We spent the whole night squatting on the toilet floor. When someone had to take a leak we all had to stand up and let him or her in,' says Li, recalling last year's nightmare journey back home for the lunar New Year.
Hailed as the 'greatest human migration on the planet', the 40-day 'Chunyun' transportation period during the festival season brings agony and relief. The majority of the country's 150 million migrant workers join college students in a rare opportunity to return to their families but, as the transport network buckles under the strain, some journeys reach Odyssean proportions.
Deng Tiejun, 45, has bought a standing ticket on a slow train to his hometown of Nanchong, a city in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The journey will take 26 hours and then he will need to take a five-hour bus to his village. Before he boards the train, he will sit in the waiting-room for 21 hours. 'I can't wait to see my wife and sons,' he says simply.
At least he has a ticket. Li, 30, finished a construction project last Friday but is worried he will not receive his year's salary. 'The boss told us we have to wait several days before we receive our pay,' he said. He is reduced to scanning the red electronic boards at Beijing West Railway Station and hoping tickets to his hometown of Zhengzhou do not run out. He only receives a pay packet once a year. Without it, he can't go home.
Other migrant workers are more fortunate. Half a dozen construction workers from central China's Henan province pause for a break on a site near the second ring road in the west of the capital. Their hands are covered in calluses and dirt is a permanent fixture under their fingernails. But hard work can reap annual salaries of 1,500 yuan (less than 200 U.S. dollars), far higher than the average migrant wage.
'Each of us gets paid 50 to 75 yuan per day, which is obviously much higher than what we would get from farming,' says 29-year-oldLiu Zhiqiang. 'Our boss give us 200 yuan to 300 yuan every month for general living expenses but we only get paid once a year.'
'Our pay is transferred by our boss, who is from the same county as us in central Henan, directly to our bank accounts back home so that my wife can withdraw the money any time she needs it. This also means we don't have to carry lots of money on the train with us.
'I have worked with the same boss on many projects in Beijing including the Olympics village and he always pays us on time,' he says.
Liu has decided to pay to sidestep the train scrum. He and his colleagues will travel home by bus even though the 120-yuan ticket for the 540-kilometer journey is four times as much as a train ticket. He does the same journey twice a year, once at the Spring Festival and once during the autumn harvest.
'The bus is more convenient than the train. Since overloading is banned, everyone will have a seat. Traveling on a slow, dirty, crowded and sweltering train is just unbearable,' he says.
Efforts are also being made to give priority to migrant workers when they try to buy train tickets home. Chang Jihong, a 37-year-old from Sichuan, is surrounded by a mass of tattered bluebags and red plastic barrels that carry half his life. He is the centre of attention as he distributes over a hundred tickets to his fellow workers.
'Our boss has ordered us 118 tickets so we have an entire carriage to ourselves,' he grins.
Group ticketing has become more widespread this year in an attempt to temper the chaos created by the ticket scramble. Railway staff have distributed tickets to about 70 construction sites in Beijing and more than 80,000 migrant workers have received tickets this way, according to Yao Hongren, deputy party chief of Beijing West Railway Station, the country's largest rail station which is expected to carry more than 200,000 passengers per day between Feb. 13 and 18 when the festival season falls.
As urbanization continues at breakneck speed, the demand for train tickets during the Spring Festival can only climb and Ren Yumin, a sociology professor at Renmin University, believes the Spring Festival homecoming is an essential part of a migrant worker's life.
'Why do almost all migrant workers choose to go home despite the hardship on the way? Because they cannot feel at home in communities where they are just a member of the labor force. Spring Festival is the only time they really feel relaxed when they are back in the warmth of their own home,' she said.
But for some, financial pressures mean even a trip home is a luxury they cannot afford.
Wang Tiezhong, 40, and Wang Jiafu, 50, two farmers from Henan Province, stand in Beijing station, overhearing conversations about wives, children and holiday television. They earned 1,200 yuan a month in Beijing building the 'Bird's Nest', the main stadium of the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
'We finished our particular project a day in advance, so each worker was given a 20-yuan bonus,' Wang Tiezhong explains.
After 12 hours on a train, they will pass almost straight through their hometown, past family and familiarity, and continue to Shenzhen to begin work on another construction project.
'Our boss has received an order for a large project in the southern booming city of Shenzhen for the next half of the year and our monthly salary is going up to 1,800 yuan,' he says. 'I am willing to work there because I can earn more money to pay for my two sons' education.'
Sponsor Results:
