SHENZHEN, China (AP) — Xiao Wang works in a massive factory in southern China that makes Apple iPods. But lately, he's been spending most of his time cooking Chinese hot pot feasts with fatty slices of pork carved from a pig's head.
It's the Lunar New Year, and the 23-year-old migrant worker is supposed to be home hundreds of kilometers (miles) away celebrating China's most important holiday, which began Thursday. But snow storms kept him and millions of other workers from traveling.
Many said they were sad to be stranded at their factories, but Wang couldn't be happier.
''Actually, I would rather be here with my friends. We're having more fun and there's much more freedom,'' said Wang, as he and three co-workers watched a butcher in an alley market chop up pork, mix it with scallions and toss it into a plastic bag.
The worker — who asked to be called ''Xiao Wang'' or ''Little Wang'' because his employer doesn't allow him to speak to reporters — is part of a new generation of migrant laborers in China's manufacturing juggernaut, which has sucked away millions of jobs from America and Europe in recent years.
The young workers have fewer ties to the countryside. Unlike previous generations, they're not interested in saving up money to resettle in their village, marry a rural sweetheart and tend the family's plot of land. Like Wang, they enjoy the city life and want to stay.
Wang works for Foxconn International Holdings Ltd., a sprawling factory complex in the boomtown of Shenzhen, close to Hong Kong. About 270,000 workers are employed at Foxconn, which along with iPods and iPhones has also produced Nintendo Co. video game consoles, Motorola Inc. phones and Lenovo Group computers.
''I really hate the job. It's awful and boring,'' said Wang, adding that he makes 1,700 yuan (US$236; euro161) a month.
But he said he liked his lifestyle in the city, and he looked urbane with a spiky hairdo and a new red jacket. Many workers live in the factory dormitory, but Wang and his friends rent their own places in a cluster of eight-story apartment blocks near the plant. The grotty buildings look depressing, with small windows covered in metal cages crowded with dripping underwear and socks hanging out to dry.
When snow storms began shutting down the railways last week, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were unable to leave Guangdong for the holiday — the world's biggest annual mass movement of people. The government quickly began urging the workers to scuttle their plans to go home and spend the holiday in Guangdong.
About 12 million of the 30 million migrant workers in Guangdong decided to stay in the province, the official Xinhua News Agency cited the Guangdong Provincial Department of Labor and Social Security as saying.
The government has urged factories to make sure the workers have a festive holiday. Foxconn workers said they were happy so far. The company served them a holiday meal Wednesday on the eve of the Lunar New Year. They had a special dumpling party on Thursday, and more dinners were planned for the next three days.
But Wang and his friends were passing on the free meals. Along with the pork, they had plastic bags stuffed with greens and string beans for the hot pot. For entertainment, they bought a pirated DVD of a concert by Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau.
The other migrants in the workers' ghetto looked like they had their own parties planned. Young couples — likely unmarried — did last-minute shopping in the market, enjoying a life far from the gossip and social restrictions of their villages.
Most of the workers at Foxconn looked more like college students than laborers. They wore acid-washed jeans, foreign-brand running shoes and pouffy hairstyles copied from Japanese cartoon characters.
They were very different from the workers who got stranded at the railway stations and spent days waiting for seats to open up. Many of those workers were from earlier generations, in their 30s and 40s, with children and spouses back home whom they were desperate to see.
The majority of Chinese — about 737 million people in a population of 1.3 billion, or 57 percent — still live in the countryside, Xinhua reported last year. But it said the rural population has declined from 64 percent of the total in 2001 and 74 percent in 1990.
Settling in the cities has become easier for migrants because the government has relaxed restrictions that once drove people back to the countryside, said Ellen David Friedman, a visiting lecturer at the Social Work Research and Education Center at Zhongshan University in the southern city of Guangzhou.
It was once difficult for migrants to have a family in the city because their children were only allowed to attend school in the village. But special schools for migrant students have been sprouting up in cities.
''There are now 300 schools for children of migrant workers in Guangzhou,'' the capital of booming Guangdong province, Friedman said.
Foxconn worker Wu Zhengyuan, 18, moved to the city a few months ago and is already leaning toward settling down there. She was holding a Winnie the Pooh doll as she strolled around outside the factory with a colleague.
''I'm still young and I'm not sure what I'll do for sure,'' said Wu, who assembles personal computers. ''But I like it here. It's so much more comfortable than home.''
