UNDERNEATH the golden arches of the huge McDonald's hoarding outside Guangzhou Railway Station sleeps six-year-old Xiao. It is 5am, a dreamy smile spreads across her dirty face and her tiny hands clutch a comforter - not a favourite doll or teddy bear, but an iron stake.
Xiao is an orphan from Hunan province and one of the hundreds of children and about 2,000 adults who sleep every night on the station's car parks and forecourts. They live in the shadow of China's economic miracle, sucked down train lines from all over China by dreams of fortune to be swallowed into a soulless metropolitan vortex. As Chinese New Year approaches, officials expect the number of people living on the station to quadruple when up to 400,000 people pass through in search of work each week.
By 6am the square has burst into life. The first of up to 100 daily trains has disgorged its passengers. The traffic on the dual-carriageway at the bottom of the station square is almost bumper to bumper, drawing a thick curtain of smog across the station which will remain until midnight. Everywhere, people are getting up, washing, stuffing rag blankets into rice sacks - the universal form of luggage - cleaning their teeth or sitting quietly in meditation. Women start to circulate with trays of breakfast buns and sticky rolls.
A youth who has been cleaning his teeth is grabbed by two policemen. One pulls him to his feet, the other swings a long steel bar on to his kneecap. The youth crumples. He is pulled up and hit again and again. Each time the steel bar strikes his knees there is a chilling thud of metal against bone. The youth is screaming, but the policemen look impassive, even bored. Slowly, hitting him all the way, he is dragged away.
By 7am, the race to find work has started. 'There are lots of jobs, but there are too many people,' said Ni Wan, 36, from Shandong. Four months ago, he left his wife and child in his village, took the train to Guangzhou and, unable to find a secure job, has been living at the station.
'I am looking for a job with accommodation that pays around 1,000 yuan [HK$1,340] a month, but so far I have only got work for a few days or a week at a time.' Every day his quest for employment is the same. 'First I go down to the poster corner, then, if there is nothing, I try the trucks. If that fails, I walk around nearby construction sites and factories to see if they need anyone.' Poster corner is a seven metre-long wall pasted thick with job notices. Most are factories and construction firms looking to hire workforces wholesale. Many of the factories are joint ventures with Western firms, turning out a bewildering array of toys, electronics, computer games, trainers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Jurassic Park gimmicks; many offer conditions that would make Charles Dickens cringe.