Eating Bitterness: Stories from the Front Lines of China's Great Urban Migration

by Michelle Loyalka

Overview

Every year over 200 million peasants flock to China’s urban centers, providing a profusion of cheap labor that helps fuel the country’s staggering economic growth. Award-winning journalist Michelle Dammon Loyalka follows the trials and triumphs of eight such migrants—including a vegetable vendor, an itinerant knife sharpener, a free-spirited recycler, and a cash-strapped mother—offering an inside look at the pain, self-sacrifice, and uncertainty underlying China’s dramatic national transformation. At the heart of the book lies each person’s ability to “eat bitterness”—a term that roughly means to endure hardships, overcome difficulties, and forge ahead. These stories illustrate why China continues to advance, even as the rest of the world remains embroiled in financial turmoil. At the same time, Eating Bitterness demonstrates how dealing with the issues facing this class of people constitutes China’s most pressing domestic challenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520266506
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/19/2012
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michelle Dammon Loyalka has lived in China for 13 years, during which time she has written a language-learning textbook, launched a business consulting company, co-hosted a radio talk show in Mandarin, and headed the educational products division of a Chinese software company. A freelance journalist and editor, Loyalka holds a master’s degree from the Missouri School of Journalism and currently lives in Beijing.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Veggie Vendors
2. The Impenetrable Knife Sharpener
3. The Teenage Beauty Queens
4. The Ever- Floating Floater
5. The Landless Landlords
6. The Nowhere Nanny
7. The Opportunity Spotter
8. The Big Boss
Epilogue

Research Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"What Loyalka finds is fascinating. . . . Details . . . make the book read like an ethnography, with a lot of first-hand discovery, and give it lasting power as a historical record of the biggest, fastest urbanization in human history."—San Francisco Chronicle

"A vivid portrait of the migrant experience in the burgeoning western Chinese city of Xi'an. . . . An insightful look at the hard lives of real people caught in a cultural transition."—Kirkus Reviews

"A thorough and insightful examination of the gritty, arduous side of the Chinese economic miracle."—Publishers Weekly

"One of the first books to examine the complexities of rural-to-urban migration through the life stories of individuals."—Pacific Standard

"Eating Bitterness sheds light on another dimension of the vast spectrum of Chinese society and is a valuable addition to the nonfiction literature on China."—Asian Review of Books

Editorial Reviews

Each year, as many as 150 million poorly educated migrant workers flock to China’s big cities, where they chiku (“eat bitterness”), working difficult, low-paying jobs that nevertheless offer better options than rural farming. In her first book, journalist Loyalka offers a handful of lucid, moving portraits of workers toiling in the western city of Xian: the amiable junk recycler Zhang Erhua who drifts from job to job across China; the countryside nanny to a rich urban family’s spoiled toddler; and the enterprising hostel operator whose husband lacks her drive and ambition are all portrayed with nuance and dignity. Most migrants aim to save almost 100% of their meager incomes, but the internal residency–permit bureaucracy denies them full benefits in cities, tying them to rural land allotments that offer the prospect of subsistence farming if all else fails. It’s one of many factors that mean migrants are “neither able to completely abandon their rural lifestyles nor... fully join the urban ranks.” While Loyalka’s writing sometimes sags and a few key context points are repeated without truly conveying how urbanites are passing migrants by, this is a thorough and insightful examination of the gritty, arduous side of the Chinese economic miracle. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

The book is a welcome complement to the many monographs and economic studies that have charted China's economic progress. . . . Highly recommended.

Choice - F. Ng

One of the first books to examine the complexities of rural-to-urban migration through the life stories of individuals.

Pacific Standard - Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Eating Bitterness sheds light on another dimension of the vast spectrum of Chinese society and is a valuable addition to the nonfiction literature on China.

Asian Review Of Books - Hilton Yip

"Extremely readable, with each portrait of a migrant’s life qualifying as a literary short story."

China Perspectives - Kimiko Suda

A vivid portrait of the migrant experience in the burgeoning western Chinese city of Xi'an, told through eight profiles of peasants who left their villages in search of a better life. In 2006 and 2007, Loyalka, a freelance journalist who has lived in China for years, interviewed and closely observed men and women who have endured great hardship with spirit and determination, a situation summed up by the Chinese word chiku, meaning "eating bitterness." All live in the rapidly disappearing old village of Gan Jia Zhia, which is surrounded by the city and adjacent to the modern and expanding High-Tech Zone. Among Loyalka's subjects are a family that spends long hours running a vegetable stand, an illiterate knife sharpener whose equipment is mounted on a bicycle that he pedals through neighborhoods in search of work, a live-in nanny who cares for a rich couple's house and children in order to make a better life for her own, teenagers entering into the beauty industry and a young man working in the recycling business who lives atop a mound of old newspapers. Two women are depicted as inventive and industrious supporters of shiftless and incompetent husbands. The final profile is of a businessman who represents for Loyalka the future direction of China, for he has achieved material success and is directing his energies toward finding spiritual satisfaction in doing social good. The author brackets her eight up-close profiles with an introduction and an epilogue that give a broader picture of the plight of migrants who no longer fit into the farm life they have left behind yet lack the education and skills valued in city life, of the contribution they are making to the booming Chinese economy, and of the efforts that the Chinese government is making to deal with the problem of millions of peasants pouring into urban centers. An insightful look at the hard lives of real people caught in a cultural transition.

Kirkus Reviews

"Loyalka's intimate portraits are able to provide new insight into the daily lives of the workers whose stories might otherwise seem too small and too humble to represent the Chinese economic juggernaut."

Asian Affairs 41, no. 3 - May-Lee Chai

What Loyalka finds is fascinating. . . . Details . . . make the book read like an ethnography, with a lot of first-hand discovery, and give it lasting power as a historical record of the biggest, fastest urbanization in human history.

San Francisco Chronicle - April Rabkin

"What Loyalka finds is fascinating. . . . Details . . . make the book read like an ethnography, with a lot of first-hand discovery, and give it lasting power as a historical record of the biggest, fastest urbanization in human history."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A vivid portrait of the migrant experience in the burgeoning western Chinese city of Xi'an. . . . An insightful look at the hard lives of real people caught in a cultural transition."--Kirkus Reviews

"A thorough and insightful examination of the gritty, arduous side of the Chinese economic miracle."--Publishers Weekly

"One of the first books to examine the complexities of rural-to-urban migration through the life stories of individuals."--Pacific Standard

"Eating Bitterness sheds light on another dimension of the vast spectrum of Chinese society and is a valuable addition to the nonfiction literature on China."--Asian Review of Books

From the Publisher