The lengths workers go to to see their families during the country’s biggest holiday, which this year began February 19, is one facet of migrant worker life captured by factory hand turned photographer, Zhan Youbing.
For more than a decade, Zhan was himself one of China’s 250-million strong “floating population” of migrant workers.
Originally from the rural, inland province of Hubei, he worked as a security guard in the factories that surround the southern boom town of Guangzhou, over a thousand kilometers away.
Familiar ground
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“The parents have devoted their lives to the manufacturing industry, but they barely get anything. Now their kids start entering the sad cycle.”
Despite his success, Zhan thinks himself no different to a migrant worker and says the feeling of uneasiness from that time will never fade.
“I feel like rootless duckweed on a strange land.”
IN PICTURES: Lunar New Year
