The journey home for the Lunar New Year holiday for China’s millions of migrant workers is often described as the largest human migration in the world. The Los Angeles Times tells the story of one construction worker in Beijing and his long trip home to a family and a village where he no longer feels he belongs:
This is the world’s largest human migration: Every year, millions of workers flee the big cities and industrial hubs en masse and retrace their steps to their home villages.
These precious days are the most eagerly awaited of the year: a rare chance for rest, and the coming together of families painfully split apart by economic necessity. Self-conscious spouses are reunited. Children peer shyly at parents they haven’t seen in a year. Men who are mocked and exploited in the slick cities puff out their chests and strut, get drunk on rice wine and lavish their hard-won cash on their families.
Many of the workers sleep outside train stations for days to get tickets, then stand packed tight as cattle in train carriages. Li opts for the relative comfort of the bus for the 12-hour trip to his village, about 400 miles south of Beijing in Shandong province.
In the drowsy din of the bus station, Li’s eyes dart anxiously from gate to gate, but he tries hard to appear nonchalant. The 38-year-old has been making the journey for 16 years, and tries to adopt the swagger of the big city.
“I used to get very excited,” he says, shrugging, “but now I go back and forth every year.”
