3 decades on, China´s migrants still outside looking in

AT CITY'S DOORSTEP

In Beijing, the location of the five-room museum is where many migrants feel they themselves are: at the city's doorstep.

Picun, which literally means "rubber village," is just a few kilometers from the Capital International Airport. A trip to the nearest town in the neighboring province of Hebei takes an hour, while a bus ride to downtown Beijing takes about two.

Xu Guojian and his friends chose this obscure village to set up the museum largely because it was out of the way and therefore free from relocation concerns.

"The long arms of real estate developers won't reach here because high-rise buildings are forbidden near the airport," said Xu.

The village has about 1,500 permanent residents, but four times as many migrants like Xu, an amateur ballad singer and guitarist from the wealthy eastern province of Zhejiang who is head of the museum.

After he lost out in the intense competition of the national college entrance exam, Xu came to Beijing in 1999 to learn rock'n'roll at a private music school.

To make a living, he delivered distilled water, taught music ata private school for migrants' children and most of those years, sang in the street or at subway stations.

In 2001, Xu met Wang Dezhi, another street singer who borrowed 100 yuan from him to get back a guitar that had been confiscated by a policeman. "We often played hide-and-seek with the cops in those days," said Xu.

Out of a love for music and the desire to "do something" for migrants, Xu, Wang and Wang's friend Sun Heng, a migrant from the central Henan Province, set up a band in 2002. "It was on May 1, the day the Chinese celebrate the annual labor day holiday," said Xu.

Over the past six years they have traveled to many cities, singing for migrants for free. They composed all the songs, mostly rap and rock'n'roll, to depict the migrants' hard work, tough and often tedious life and longing for a better future.

Their songs have been released on two albums, whose combined sales have topped 1 million.

With 75,000 yuan in royalties from their first album, the band settled down in Picun Village in 2005, with a school for migrants' children, which serves also as a night school for migrant workers in the village.

Six months ago, they renovated a former glazed tiles workshop that serves as a club named "home of migrants." In that club, the museum was set up to tell how China's excess rural laborers have eked out a living and fought for their rights in cities during the country's 30 years of reform.

China's reform and opening-up drive started in rural areas in 1978 with collectively-owned farmland contracted to individual families. This freed about 100 million peasants from farm work.

However, until 1984, most of these people were tied to the countryside by a residence-based rationing system for virtually everything, including food. About 63 million of these former farmers were given jobs in the village-run enterprises that mushroomed in those days.

A policy change in 1984 first allowed farmers to find jobs in cities but the massive migration of redundant rural laborers didn't start until after China decided to move to a market economy in 1992.

The rapid inflow of investors created many construction, factory and mining jobs, most of which urban dwellers consider too tiring or dirty.

The number of migrants grew from 60 million in 1992 to 120 million in 2003 and 210 million this year, according to central government figures shown on a display board at the museum.

The work of the migrant population has generated 21 percent of China's gross domestic product in the past 30 years, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has found.

But few migrant rural laborers feel truly respected, nor do many enjoy city life. The vast majority of them must work overtime and some work seven days a week.

A 2006 survey by National Bureau of Statistics found nearly 40 percent of migrants couldn't spare the time or money to see a doctor when they were ill. More than half spent all their free time either sleeping or watching TV.