Holiday home

• Source: Global Times
• [21:19 February 28 2010]
• Comments

Text by Jiang Xueqing and photos by Zhao Yong

Su Xiucai, a pedicab driver from Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, keeps business running during the Chinese New Year's holiday. He picks up a woman passenger working at a big hotel in Wenzhou at about midnight on February 9. Photos: Zhao Yong

For some migrant workers in the prosperous port of Wenzhou, going home at Chinese New Year is not an option. Their reasons are simple: The seven-day break costs. It's too short for the trouble and suffering of traveling with the huge crowds.

A 52-year-old cleaner in the Milisha Garden neighborhood of the prefecture-level city hesitated when asked whether he would return to celebrate the festival with family in his Anhui Province hometown. Turning away briefly, he soon regained his composure.

"Wherever you spend the holiday, it's the same," he said.

Prospering through light industrial product manufacturing, this major city in southeastern Zhejiang has the largest number of migrant workers in the province. The migrant population totaled 3.4 million at the end of 2008, according to the official website of the Wenzhou City Bureau of Statistics.

After the city was hit by the global financial crisis two years ago, tens of thousands of workers did not go home at new year for fear of losing their jobs. Although the economy improved somewhat last year, many still continued to stay.

For those who live in faraway mountainous areas, a round trip home could take as long as eight days, barely enough to cover the holiday. How to get a ticket also remains a problem, especially for people working in small private enterprises, individually-owned commercial or industrial units. One migrant worker had to wait in line two days and nights at the ticket office of the train station, partly because the real-name train ticket system has not yet kicked off in Wenzhou.