Adrift in the South

A new title from Granta Magazine Editions: A first-hand account of a migrant-worker's journey along the factory floors of southern China.

When Xiao Hai turned fifteen, his family paid a vocational-school teacher 1,200 yuan to find him a factory job in Shenzhen. So began a decade spent moving between the garment mills and electronics factories of China's fast-growing southern cities. Adrift in the South is a first-hand account of a life spent dodging corrupt officials and abusive employers, working long hours in brutal conditions and sleeping in overcrowded dormitories. Xiao Hai gives voice to a generation of migrant workers searching for survival, meaning and dignity in a country undergoing dramatic economic and political transformation. A landmark work from China's migrant worker literature movement, this memoir offers a rare perspective on the human cost of the country's economic rise.