Leaving It All Behind — page 3

The local Shenzhen bus dropped us off at Gangxia, close to the center of downtown. The buildings were more than 20 stories high. When an alley plastered with signs for boardinghouses came into view, I heaved a sigh of relief. The neighborhood looked promising: crowded and poor, but not seedy. Mo's eyes were fixed on the ground. We wandered aimlessly for nearly an hour, passing restaurants, hardware stores and boarding-houses. There were people all around, but Mo didn't ask anyone for advice. Once or twice I asked her where she was going: she said she didn't know. Eventually we wound up where we had begun. Mo slipped into the first boardinghouse we'd seen and emerged a few minutes later with her first smile of the day. She'd found a room. It was just big enough to hold a single bed, an electric fan and a plastic basin for washing clothes. It looked safe. It cost $3 a night.

	People aren't born with an understanding of how cities work

After a quick lunch, Mo started to look for work. We walked all afternoon along wide roads lined with skyscrapers. I recognized them as luxury apartments, and could tell that we wouldn't find factories in this neighborhood. But Mo couldn't discern this, and I reminded myself that people aren't born with an understanding of how cities work.

Even here, though, Shenzhen revealed itself as a city thriving on migrant labor. Walls, sidewalks, trees and sewage pipes were covered with phone numbers of people selling ID cards and the documents out-of-towners need if they are to work legally in Shenzhen. (Mo had proper papers.) At one intersection we came across a bulletin board full of job announcements, mostly for hotel workers and security guards. The salaries were high—up to $200 per month—and most employers wanted applicants under the age of 30. While Mo studied the board, a couple of men walked up and offered unsolicited advice. "Don't believe these ads," they told her. "They're fakes. They trick you into paying deposits, and then they disappear."

That night, Mo washed one of her three sets of clothes and hung them in my room to dry—hers was too small. "Tomorrow," she said, spreading a Shenzhen map on my bed, "we'll go to Longhua." Earlier this year, a woman from her village had come home and said that she'd worked in a factory in this industrial, Shenzhen satellite town, but that was all Mo knew. "I think Longhua has a lot of factories," said Mo, "but I guess they don't put them on the map." She was wearing a nightgown with a teddy bear on it, and she looked exhausted and very young. I frowned, then caught myself and tried to look encouraging. "Bu yaojin," she said.

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