This article also appears on The Atlantic, a Tea Leaf Nation partner site. In Beijing, budget rental housing—especially bunk beds, small apartments and single rooms in the more dilapidated hutong areas — are easy to find after Chinese New Year. This is because many migrant workers who leave the capital for their home regions for [...]
The weeks preceding Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, are notoriously miserable for train travelers in China. The holiday is China’s main traditional festival, and it is generally considered vital to return to one’s home region at this time to celebrate with family. In recent years, travel by air and car have greatly expanded. But [...]
Millions of Chinese migrant workers fail to get paid for their work each year, in spite of ongoing government efforts to increase official monitoring of labor relations in the country. For some, however, attracting media attention and sympathy from China’s online community has proven to be an effective method of pressuring errant employers into coughing [...]
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