The Concrete Dragon by Thomas J. Campanella

Author:Thomas J. Campanella [Campanella, Thomas J.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: 2012-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Homeless laborer, Dalian, 2006. PHOTOGRAPH BY AUTHOR

Chinese society is extraordinarily homogeneous—more than 90 percent of the population is Han Chinese—and “otherness” is less a function of race or ethnicity than of class, income, birthplace geography, job, or hukou status. The migrant laborer is close to the bottom of China’s urban social ladder. Migrants are derisively called mingong, a term roughly equivalent to the American “cracker” or “redneck.” They are blamed for nearly every urban problem and stereotyped as ignorant rubes with a penchant for crime. They are routinely denied access to stores, shopping malls, or hotel lobbies, and often evicted wholesale in advance of high-profile events, especially in Beijing. Migrant families, though relatively few in number, have it especially hard. Without local hukou registration, their children have little or no chance to attend school, and teens are virtually barred from a university education. Little is gained by being born in a city, either. Like low-caste Indians, children of migrants inherit the mother’s hukou, and are thus also excluded from the welfare benefits of the urban franchise.

The single men and women who make up the majority of the migrant worker population face additional challenges when it comes to mating and marriage. Marrying into the local population is uncommon in a Chinese society increasingly preoccupied with class and status. For men, the prospects of finding a mate in the city are especially dim. Mao-era progress in terms of gender equality has been countered somewhat by a return of traditional gender roles and a “re-feminization” of Chinese womanhood—especially among the middle and upper classes. The ruddy-cheeked factory girls on Maoist posters have largely traded in their gloves for makeup and motherhood. If print and television advertisements are any measure of cultural values, and they usually are, the prevailing image of domestic bliss in China today is very similar to that of the United States circa 1955—a handsome husband with a good income; a gifted and obedient child; a charming, effeminate wife who lunches with her girlfriends and hosts Tupperware parties (Tupperware is in fact very popular today with the emergent Chinese middle class, and Tupperware Brands operates some 1,900 franchised storefronts in 200 cities across the People’s Republic).

Given this, the typical male migrant worker—with meager income, bad clothes, and the wrong hukou status—has little chance indeed of catching a city girl. His chances among the floaters are not much better, not only because of a gender imbalance among the migrant population—males predominate by a wide margin—but because migrant women are also looking to marry up the food chain. Workers’ sexual needs are, inevitably, met by prostitution, which is rampant now in Chinese cities. The sex trade is typically carried on in small shops fronting as hair salons and often marked by pink or purple lighting (or, more obviously, by the fetchingly clad “hairdressers” therein). Invariably, such shops are staffed by country girls themselves trying to make it in the city.38

In spite of all these challenges, China’s migrant workers are an extraordinarily resourceful and resilient lot and usually scrimp and save enough to send money back home to their families.

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