shanghaiist is part of my web surfing regimen. it features good stuff and neat tidbits of info, such as the fact that chongqing’s official “rural migrant workers day” was the first of november.

this is a glorious music video for a supposedly popular tune, “migrant worker’s song,” which has an interesting backstory. though i know the video is supposed to be stirring, i find it rather ineffective and boring, lacking any raw grittiness. plus it shines with gloss characteristic of a expensive puff piece, perhaps for the government and more specifically, perhaps for premier wen jiabao. regardless, i do think it’s cool that the catchy tune is sung by actual workers. and c’mon, i’m all about supporting the workers’ cause.

if anyone knows about bitter struggle, it’s those guys.

the story goes a lil’ something like this:

“The whole idea of the song came about after Wen Jiabao visited Chongqing in 2006 and met with some actual migrant workers. He told them that their situation was one of his greatest concerns over the last few years. The migrant workers were moved by this true man of the people and took some pictures with him. Later, after the song became the popular, they hatched the idea of letting the premier hear their song, so they got together over a thousand people and had them sign a letter, and sent this, along with the song, to the premier. A few days letter they got the reply and what seemed like a promise to let the song be performed during the CCTV Spring Festival concert.”

taken from one shanghai daily article titled “migrant workers honored for toil”:

“China has more than 120 million migrant workers, mostly farmers from west China seeking work in eastern China’s boom towns and cities. They mainly work in construction, mining, cleaning and catering industries, or the kind of jobs usually labeled dirty, heavy, and exhausting.”

errr, i’ll say!
you see why i think that’s a funny line, right? i hope this was just a badly translated article.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under asia, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.