Changle lacks a long-nurtured culture of migration. What has suddenly motivated this exodus? Several possibilities emerge from these interviews. One is a feeling of being stuck, without prospects in an impacted society, with little betterment to be expected for the next generation, much less for one’s own. “In China there’s no work to do. [People in the villages] can’t get by.” Here is a poor agricultural community with too little work for its surplus population. A sense of hopelessness perfuses the scene. Without a cocky, self-confident family-based commercial tradition like Wenzhou’s, Changle people see only one way out and are voting with their feet.
