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

BITTER HISTORY

Except for the display boards and press clippings, most exhibits at the museum were donated by migrants from across the country: personal letters, residence permits, pay slips, petitions demanding wages held in arrears, and documents that tell of a life beyond many urbanites' imagination.

"Respected managers, I apologize for having dozed off at work on June 8," read the photocopy of a note by Zhao Wenfeng, a migrant worker in Shenzhen.

"I was working nights but had to visit a relative who got injured during the day and therefore didn't have enough sleep ... I'm fully aware it's in violation of the company's rules. I promise I will never make such mistakes again and will put the interest of the company above my own."

The letter seemingly saved Zhao's job at a printing company in Shenzhen, as a photocopy of his work ID suggested. But a letter Qin Mei wrote to her parents in July 1993 amounts to the girl's last words -- she died with 86 co-workers when their toy workshop caught fire four months later. She was 16.

"Dear Mom and Dad, I've made 350 yuan this month and plus what I saved from last month, I've mailed home 400 yuan. Please make sure you repay my third uncle the 100 yuan we owe him," Qin wrote. Her signature reads "your good-for-nothing daughter."

More than 400 migrants were trapped when a short circuit caused a fire at the Hong Kong-invested company where Qin worked in Shenzhen on Nov. 19, 1993. Rescuers found three of the building's four exits had been blocked and the only passageway to the one working exit was a mere 80 cm wide. Most victims suffocated to death near the exit.

Until 2005, the migrant population was largely unprotected in cities. Without any trade union to represent them, many had to work long hours without adequate protection from industrial diseases or accidents.

A primary school student told of the hardship her parents endured in Beijing with a pencil drawing: her father, wearing a helmet, sweated as he toiled at a construction site under the blazing sun, while her mother was busy cleaning the floor in front of a gleaming office building.

"Dear Mom and Dad, you've sweated so much to support the family," wrote Huang Ruixin, who studied at a privately-run school for migrants' children.

In Huang's drawing, which was carefully framed and hung on the museum's wall, even a small bird was shown in tears.

While most migrants willingly endured any hardships to put food on the table, even the strongest despaired when their wages were cut unfairly or held in arrears.

Wang Binyu, a peasant from the northwestern Gansu Province, stabbed four relatives of his foreman to death in 2005, when his pleas for the year's 5,000 yuan in wages were repeatedly ignored. Wang desperately needed the money to help his father, who had a broken leg.

Wang was sentenced to death. "Even prison is a better place than the construction site where I worked," Wang said before he was executed.

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