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The museum guide urged the children to be “civilized spectators,” and the third- and fourth-graders filed into History in ragged lines. Soon the huge lobby was deserted, and I was left alone to ponder the unlikelihood of a Chinese history museum that did not make a single mention of Mao Zedong.

3 To Die Poor Is a Sin

May 25, 1994

After I was fired from the Yongtong factory, fortunately my wages were fully paid. I had more than one hundred yuan on me and I was not frightened at all. Still I was a little worried, since after all I did not even have an identity card. But with no way out I could only take an ID card that said I was born in 1969 and try my luck. Who knew my luck would be pretty good? I made my way into this factory’s plastic molds department.

Since I have come to Guangdong, I have jumped factories four or five times, and each factory was better than the last. More important was that at each instance, I relied on myself. I never begged for help from anyone. Although I have a few good friends, not one helped me at the time when I most needed it.

I remember when I fled back from Shenzhen. At that time, I truly had nothing to my name. Other than my own self, I had nothing else. I wandered outside for a month, completely penniless, once even going hungry for two days, and no one knew . . . Although older cousin and his wife were in Longyan, I did not want to go find them, because they could not really help me. I often wanted to rely on others, but they cannot be relied on. You can only rely on yourself.

Yes, I can only rely on myself.

The first time Wu Chunming went out she did not tell her parents. It was the summer of 1992 and to migrate was something bold and dangerous. In her village in Hunan Province, it was said that girls who went to the city would be tricked into brothels and never heard from again.

Chunming was seventeen years old that summer. She had finished middle school and was peddling fruits and vegetables in a city near home; she migrated with a cousin who was still in school. The two girls borrowed money for train tickets to Dongguan and found jobs in a factory that made paint for toys. The smell of the chemicals gave them headaches, and they returned home after two months as broke as before. Chunming went out again the following spring. Her parents objected, and argued, and cried. But when she decided to leave anyway, with a few friends from nearby villages, her mother borrowed money for her train fare.

Guangdong in 1993 was even more chaotic than it is today. Migrants from the countryside flooded the streets looking for work, sleeping in bus stations and under bridges. The only way to find a job was to knock on factory doors, and Chunming and her friends were turned away from many doors before they were hired at the Guotong toy factory. Ordinary workers there made one hundred yuan a month, or about twelve dollars; to stave off hunger, they bought giant bags of instant noodles and added salt and boiling water. “We thought if we ever made two hundred yuan a month,” Chunming said later, “we would be perfectly happy.”

After four months, Chunming jumped to another factory, but left soon after a fellow worker said her cousin knew of better jobs in Shenzhen. Chunming and a few friends traveled there, spent the night under a highway overpass, and met the girl’s cousin the next morning. He brought them to a hair salon and took them upstairs, where a heavily made-up young woman sat on a massage bed waiting for customers. Chunming was terrified at the sight. “I was raised very traditionally,” she said. “I thought everyone in that place was bad and wanted me to be a prostitute. I thought that once I went in there, I would turn bad too.”

The girls were told that they should stay and take showers in a communal stall, but Chunming refused. She walked back down the stairs, looked out the front door, and ran, abandoning her friends and the suitcase that contained her money, a government-issued identity card, and a photograph of her mother.