Despite meeting them every day and seeing regular coverage about them in the media, most city dwellers are indifferent about migrant workers. This group, which in the past three decades has grown to 250 million people according to an April 2012 report by the National Bureau of Statistics, has become an indispensable part of Chinese urban development. Still, the majority of migrant workers feel they are not regarded as legitimate members of the local society.

The new book Going Out of Liangzhuang by writer Liang Hong who is known for her last reportage work China in Liangzhuang in 2010, centers on a large representative group of migrant workers and in March topped the Most Quality Book List compiled by the book channel of sina.com.

Revisiting Liangzhuang

In China in Liangzhuang, Liang depicts the living state of people living in her hometown, Liangzhuang in central Henan Province after their relatives left to seek jobs in big cities. Most of those left behind are children and the elderly.

The village, according to Liang, is representative of many others in China now, neither rich nor too poor. "What they can get from farming work is just enough to feed themselves," said Liang.

 To tell the other half of the story, the part about the workers themselves, Liang returned to her hometown.

In 2011, she went back to Liangzhuang to ask family members of migrant workers for their contact information and places of employment. Then for two years, she visited over 10 cities including Xi'an, Nanyang, Beijing, and Qingdao, interviewing more than 340 people. Armed with 2 million words of material, she compiled the book Going Out of Liangzhuang.

In the past 30 years, people from Liangzhuang have sought work as far west as Aksu in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. To the north, they went to Xilin Hot in Inner Mongolia, and to the south they are concentrated in places like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to Liang.

"The most difficult part (in the research) is how to find them since over the years they have gradually lost touch with their families back home due to their non-permanent residences," she told the Global Times.

Different stories, same sadness

Going Out of Liangzhuang tells the stories of these people in a documentary style, mixed with the author's observations on the group and society. Though most parts of the book are flat narrations about their living conditions, surrounding environment, and encounters with local people or law enforcement officers, readers can still feel the deep sadness beneath the words.

Xi'an in northwestern Shaanxi Province was Liang's first stop during her research. About 15 of her hometown villagers worked there, some driving pedicabs, some selling vegetables or peddling other goods.

Reading the description of their living state brings a familiar feeling; it's something we have either experienced in our own city or something that we have at least witnessed before.

Peddlers, law enforcers and local residents - those identities are not unusual images in the conflicts that occur during the process of migrant workers' integration into cities. In the book, the "battle" between pedicab drivers from Liangzhuang and local law enforcers (most of whom are not actually registered government officials, but contracted workers) is practically an everyday occurrence.

"One time they cornered me under an overpass and took away my pedicab without saying anything," said Wanguo who had been in Xi'an for almost 20 years, "There were at least seven people, but only one of them was wearing a police uniform. I fought back, but they handcuffed me."

As she listened to the story, the next part was very thrilling to Liang, but to the story-teller it was not a big deal at all and even proud.

"After I tried all the usual ways (bribing the enforcers through an intermediary) to get my pedicab back and failed, our hometown villagers here decided to gather in front of the traffic police offices to request official word about my pedicab, and finally they gave it back to me," said Wanguo.

"They didn't look sad when they told me the story, sometimes they even laughed loudly, but I feel deeply sad and guilty for them," said Liang, "They know they are unfairly treated each day, but they choose to overlook it and just feel satisfied if they can make money or escape a seizure."

Besides the insecurity brought by the lack of effective management from local governments, local residents' contempt toward them was also an invisible hurt. "You disgusting vegetable peddlers! You humble pedicab drivers!" are phrases commonly heard among urban residents, according to Liang.

"They used to lead such an easy and calm life in villages, but in cities [with defective laws, they are caught between] punishment and humiliation. They have come to symbolize bad citizens and a disturbing group," Liang wrote in the book.

And in Qingdao, Liang personally experienced the working conditions in the electroplate factory where her uncle Guangliang and his wife now work. It is the place Liang most wanted to visit but also feared most because one of her cousins, Xiaozhu, died there several years ago.

"It was so hazy that workers there are like 'ghosts,'" she wrote, "each breath is like inhaling a full nose of sand, only they were more like metallic particulates."

Those particulates are like cyanide, highly poisonous to the human body, according to Liang. But even in such an environment, workers there didn't wear masks. "Wearing them would be very suffocating due to the high temperature and humidity here," said her uncle, "Doing this work is like chronic suicide. We are used to it, and we'll die sooner or later after all."

During Liang's visit to this factory in Qingdao, she learned that cases like Xiaozhu are not unheard of. Some die here; others leave and die at home. "I cried when I was there, it was one of my most painful experiences in Qingdao," said Liang.

Poking a numb nerve

As a bystander with no personal interest in this group, we can easily attribute all the conflicts that arise from migrant workers to their own lack of self-discipline and the government's inability to manage them. However, the book, which pokes at our numbed nerves with each story, is like a reminder for all of us to face this group as not just the government's business, but as everyone's responsibility.

"What the author did is unique, those experiences and details in the book have been rarely recorded before," said Xie Xizhang, a culture critic. "She brings an invisible 'China' to the public sight and enables us to sympathetically feel the state of migrant workers who have been ignored for a long time," said Xie.

"A social system is not an abstract concept. How we face those pedicab drivers and other migrant workers in the city every day is what the public needs to be more concerned about," said Liang.