Homes made of rubble.  Men lounging on their doorsteps, unable to find productive work.  Worn clothes hanging on lines above the narrow alleys.  Birds in suspended cages.  This is the migrant community around Yu Xing Elementary, the migrant school where we will hold our More for Migrant Kids (MMK) camp next week.  As I navigate through the alleys towards the school, I notice that very little about the appearance of the community has changed since last summer.  This is surprising to me because it seems like the entire city of Shanghai is being renovated in preparation for the 2010 World Expo.  Maybe Yu Xing Elementary School and the migrant community have been forgotten.  But wait – what is this?  A large red mark on this building.  And another on the wall next to it.  In fact, all the buildings and walls have the same large red mark on them.  What is going on?  Dan, our program director, informs us that the red mark (tsai) signifies a target for demolition.  The entire community is going down and new high rises are to be built in its place before the Expo deadline.  Only Yu Xing Elementary will remain standing – for now.  In three years, the migrant school will also be destroyed.

As we enter Yu Xing Elementary, we are warmly welcomed by the school administrator.  She offers us a tour of the four-story building.  Our group follows her up the stairs until we reach the top floor, where she opens the door to one of the classrooms.  All the classrooms are the same, she says, so we only need to see one to see them all.  The room is very bare.  There are desks and chairs for the students and a podium for the teacher, but little else.  The windows are dusty and locked shut.  Tatters of artwork hang unevenly on one wall.  Everything in the room, even the chalkboard, is obviously old.  I try to find a nice chair to sit on – one that is not chipped or unsteady – and cannot find any.  Discouraged, I slip away from the tour group and wander down the single hallway.  There is almost nothing to see here either, except for a few posters reminding students to walk, not run and to wash their hands.  I notice one poster advertising the World Expo and encouraging students to protect the environment.  Written underneath the World Expo’s blue mascot (haibao) is the slogan “Better City, Better Life.”  I pause and wonder, will this promise of a better life include these migrant students?  Or is it only a false hope?

This morning in class, Professor Pan Tianshu lectured about China’s urban migrant population.  He explained how rural transformations have caused huge labor surpluses and rural-urban migration on a large scale.  Motivated by dreams of a better life, rural people move to the cities in search of work and education opportunities.  Professor Pan stressed the challenge for rural migrants to better their lives in the city without a household registration (hukou).  To show us the significance of a hukou, he poignantly compared a rural migrant to a Shanghai urbanite.  The Shanghai urbanite holds a city hukou and enjoys an ascribed status.  Because he has a hukou, he has access to many goods and services (including education and health care).  Life for him is not only convenient, but also more cosmopolitan.  In stark contrast, the rural migrant does not have a city hukou and is kept out of the formal labor market.  He is denied many basic services, and life for him is full of inconveniences.  Such social inequality is likely to be perpetuated to his second generation because his children are not provided with quality education.  Professor Pan then gave us several examples of the kinds of hardships rural migrants face in the city, such as factory girls who are overworked or families living in urban poverty.  Is this what the poster means by a better life?

Before rejoining the tour group, I head downstairs to get some fresh air.  As I pace back and forth on the cement trying to avoid the mosquitoes, I suddenly hear a voice calling out to me.  I turn around and see a woman peeping out from the school office door.  She invites me to come inside and take a break from the heat.  I am all too happy to oblige, and I follow her into the air-conditioned room and sit down across from her desk.  She is a teacher at the school, I discover, and has been teaching at Yu Xing Elementary for seven or eight years.  She tells me that most of the teachers at the Yu Xing are retired teachers who volunteer their time to help the migrant students.  I comment on how this must be a great blessing to the students, who often encounter high teacher turnover rates at other migrant schools.  She sighs and begins to share with me more about the migrant school system.  As we talk, I am reminded of one of my readings – an article titled “Educational Inequality for Migrant Children Perpetuates Poverty” by Mary Ma.  In this article, Ma summarizes the plight of migrant children who have no access to quality education.  Even after thirty years of economic reform, the majority of rural migrants in China’s cities are still kept out of the formal labor market because of educational deficiencies.  Ma points out, “In China, education, often considered a way of changing one’s life trajectory, now only reproduces social status and reinforces class boundaries.”  High turnover rates, discrimination and segregation, the “ceiling effect,” and identity crisis all serve to keep migrant children from receiving the education they need to eventually break free from poverty.

I left Yu Xing Elementary today with both sore feet and a sore heart.  It is still hard for me to comprehend the many obstacles that pile up against rural migrants and their children.  I cannot even imagine what it must be like to grow up in such an environment, but I so badly want to help.  God has given me the opportunity to expand my perspective a little more, as well as a new resolve for our MMK project.  I pray that He will show me how I can serve the migrant children in more ways next week.