“The only character to describe migrant workers is nan,” he said, tracing in even strokes the Chinese character for “difficult, not good” into his palm. “If we stay, it’s hard. If we go, it’s hard. Sure, this life has always been this way. But it’s especially tough now.”
Lauren Keane of Washington Post Foreign Service Desk wrote a very poignant piece on the plight of millions of migrant workers in China as the country’s manufacturing base contracts in the light of the world economic crisis. The article focused on one man and his son and their uncertain journey back home. Go to the link below to read more.
Washington Post
Tags: bricks, capitalism, news, poverty
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Jinde Charities, China’s largest Catholic charity, will be launching concerted disaster relief efforts to the towns and counties affected by the Sichuan earthquake. Bricks shall be working with Jinde Charities in mobilizing donations for the relief operations. We shall be posting details on how to help very soon.
Tags: Wenchuan Earthquake
Waking along Shanghai Road in Hong Kong yesterday, I passed by the Kowloon City Immigration office. It is a rather unglamorous building on an equally unglamorous thoroughfare, The street might, at a pinch, be described as atmospheric, but even that faint praise could not be applied to the Office. Such places are largely unknown to me, in Europe, I can travel freely and outside the EU, my passport fast tracks me past these rather dinghy buildings. But for economic migrants the world over, these offices are the norm, and the anonymous civil servants who staff them can literally assume a life and death significance. Continue Reading »
Tags: migrants
This week, a field visit off the beaten track required a journey on a slow K class train back to base. Having gotten used to the sleek new D class service, this felt rather like slumming it. As the train pulled into the station very late the feeling was confirmed. The train was very full and hardly anyone got off at our “rural outpost”. The hoards struggling to get on pushed, shoved, cried and swore until the guards started pulling the last stragglers off so that the doors could close.
I began to feel that they were the lucky ones as we pulled out of the station. Continue Reading »
Tags: Beijing Diaries, migrants, urban migration