Xu Guanghui had not seen his family for two years when he sat down for a celebratory feast in Luzhou, Sichuan province. The 34-hour bus journey over bumpy roads to get to his family from his job in Guangdong had taken its toll, and he was apprehensive about the homecoming.
Over Sichuanese dishes of shuizhu huangshan (spicy yellow eel) and fenggan niurou (wind-dried sliced beef), washed down with baijiu, a strong white liquor, the migrant worker was welcomed by his wife of 26 years, his elderly mother and his two children and was introduced to a new granddaughter, already 16 months old. About 20 relatives crowded around two large dining tables, cracking jokes and laughing loudly.
'Come home, come home,' a brother-in-law, Li Tinghui, cried out, while pouring baijiu for Xu. 'You will earn far more over here than in Dongguan, like me.'
The circumstances 49-year-old Xu and his family find themselves in today reflect China's ambitious economic development. Wealth, once concentrated along the coast, has spread inland. At the same time, expectations have altered with the generations, reshaping the country's labour force and the businesses that depend on it. Xu was among the first wave of mainland workers who opted to leave their families in search of work after China's economy opened three decades ago. His children, though, have different ideas.
The goal of the first generation of migrants who went to Guangdong's factories 'was to earn enough money so that they could send it back to the families', says Ken DeWoskin, Beijing-based director of Deloitte China Research and Insight Centre. 'The second generation coming in now, their goal is to have a Maserati, to be able to buy Gucci purses or a 10-million-yuan apartment.'
What's more, many migrant workers are choosing to return home. All of Xu's 30 friends and relatives who went to southern China for work 20 years ago have gradually come back to Luzhou, some as recently as last year. His wife, Huang Xianjun, returned to help look after their grandchild.