Borrowing Money to Make It in Guangdong: My Comeback on the Assembly Line

Zhang Jianjun was born in 1982. When his family was suddenly struck by misfortune, he resolutely gave up on his academic dreams and took on the burden of supporting them. At 17, with the money for a long-distance bus ticket pooled together by five relatives, he said goodbye at the dusty crossroads near his old home and set off south to Guangdong to find work, beginning a career full of challenges and opportunities. More than twenty years of experience unfold through one vivid story after another, revealing the rich inner lives and unyielding spirit of migrant workers. Perhaps this is what the youth of the early generation of workers who headed south looked like.