MARK LEONG—REDUX FOR TIME

JOB SEARCH: Mo visited an employment agency, took a motorcycle taxi to a factory, and got lost on buses

For the first 20 minutes of her new life in Shenzhen, Mo Yunxiu stood perfectly still. Behind her, sleeper coaches rolled groaning into the city's crowded bus depot. Ahead stretched a tangle of freeways already teeming at 10 a.m. on a Sunday. A plastic bag containing a package of sour plums, a water bottle and the remains of a loaf of sliced bread—snacks left over from the overnight ride—hung from her left wrist. Her right hand gripped the handle of a small suitcase on wheels, and she leaned against it stiffly as if for support. It was a bright morning, and Mo squinted as she fastened her eyes on the traffic racing past her.

Mo said nothing but it was clear she had a lot on her mind. She was 17 years old, and farther from her farm in Guangxi province than she'd ever been. She knew no one in Shenzhen, and had nowhere specific to go. This was a place she'd dreamed about. She had seen pictures of Shenzhen's high-tech factories on television, and she pictured herself working in one, wearing a smart uniform and making a good salary. But her dream had left out the scenes between the arrival of her bus and her arrival in paradise.

At last, for no discernible reason, Mo moved. Dragging her suitcase, she walked uncertainly and very quietly asked a policeman for directions to the nearest bus stop. There, she stood silently again for 20 minutes, looking at the buses come and go and wiping the back of her hand across her eyes. Finally, she asked a stranger where to find a cheap place to stay. Within minutes Mo was back on a bus, pressing her face to the window, watching the sprawl of her new home slip by.

Our arrival in Shenzhen had been fraught with anticipation: for Mo because she had so much riding on this journey; for me because I was writing about what would happen to her. I'd told Chinese friends that I wanted to find a country girl lured from home by the promise of the city. My curiosity was only partly professional. I'd written often about China's 100 million-strong floating population and wanted to see firsthand how migrants like Mo start from scratch in a new place. But I was also curious about how that journey might feel. My father's parents and my mother's grandparents had migrated to New York from Europe when they were not much older than Mo, and I had often wondered what it was like for them after they stepped off the boat.

Mo had been introduced to me by her cousin, a successful, self-made tour guide in Yangshuo, a vacation spot on the Li River about 640 km from Shenzhen. When I met Mo, I thought she was all wrong. I wanted a typical migrant—whatever that meant—and Mo had tinted hair and stylish, bleach-striped jeans. After a three-month stay with her cousin—living among tourists and backpackers—she already seemed a bit worldly.

Mo had been one of the best students in her middle school, but high school cost $500 a year—nearly seven times her farmer family's annual income. If she got a decent job in Shenzhen, she figured, she could save enough money in a year or two to attend a vocational school and learn a skill, like computer programming or English, which in turn could get her a better job. She wanted to build a new house for her parents and, if she had money left over, treat herself to "one of those tape recorders, the kind with the earphones that you can listen to in bed before you fall asleep." She believed Shenzhen had the power to change her life.

I was impressed by Mo's determination—and by her courage. She had only $100 when she boarded the bus in Yangshuo. It seemed to me an incredibly risky proposition, but when I'd pressed her to tell me how she would manage, she just shrugged her shoulders. She'd work it out when she got there. "Bu yaojin," Mo would often say: "It's not serious."

But now that she'd arrived in Shenzhen, it all felt very serious. I started to worry that the trip had been a mistake. I had made a pact with Mark Leong, who'd come along to photograph Mo's journey, that we would try our best to observe Mo without interfering in her decisions; we'd agreed to intercede only if we thought she was putting herself in danger. Now we wondered if we'd been irresponsible to put so much faith in the dreams of a 17-year-old who'd never been more than three hours away from home.

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Aug. 18, 2004	Aug. 19, 2003	Aug. 20, 2003