見證中國鉅變的父女 How the Chinese dream was built in a single generation

Wu Jiayao and Wu Jianfei are at opposite ends of China’s migrant miracle. One was there at the very beginning, and the other came on the scene only as the miracle began to fade. The lives of this father and daughter are like bookends to the economic transformation of China. What a difference a generation makes.

吳佳瑤和吳建飛處於中國移民奇蹟的兩極。一個出現在最初階段，另一個則只是出現在奇蹟開始消退之際。這對父女的生活就像是中國經濟變遷的序幕和尾聲。一代人之間的差別可真大。

Jiayao, 28, has a car, a flat, two degrees, a white-collar job and a money-market fund — not to mention a husband, a baby and the coveted right to live as a permanent resident of the ultra-modern city of Shanghai.

吳佳瑤今年28歲，有一輛車、一套公寓、兩張學位證書，一份白領工作以及一份貨幣市場基金，更不用說還有一個丈夫、一個寶寶以及令人豔羨的超現代大都市上海的永久居住權。

Jianfei, 50, has a simple one-storey home surrounded by peanut fields and drying corn cobs. He lives in an ancestral compound, alongside his octogenarian mother, in the village of Qinghu, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province. It used to take a whole day to travel from Qinghu to Shanghai by boat; now it takes a couple of hours using a vast suspension bridge and multi-lane tunnel. What a difference three decades make.

吳建飛今年50歲，只有一間被花生地和幹玉米棒包圍着的平房。他現在與自己80多歲的老母親住在江蘇省青湖鎮的一個老宅裏（見上圖）。在過去，從青湖坐船到上海需要一整天時間；現在有了巨大的吊橋和多車道隧道只需兩個小時。30年見證了多大的變化啊。

In their own way, they are both foot soldiers in the migrant army that built the economic phenomenon that is China. This is the cohort that helped lay the foundation for a two-superpower world anchored at one end in Washington and the other in Beijing . But life in the trenches just isn’t what it used to be.

他們分別以自己的方式，成爲建設中國經濟奇蹟的農民工大軍的步兵。正是他們這些人幫助爲當今世界兩個超級大國的格局打下了基礎——這個世界的一頭是華盛頓，另一頭是北京。但是第一線的生活已今非昔比了。

Jianfei spent a lifetime away from his wife and his mother, and from Jiayao, who was raised in the village while her father worked as a painter far away. Sometimes, like other migrant construction workers, he lived in the flats he was decorating, inhaling the fumes of the paint he applied during the day. They are flats like the one his daughter now lives in — except, he says, hers is even nicer. For much of her childhood he came home only once a year, even when he lived in Shanghai, now just a short car drive way.

吳建飛一輩子都沒有多少時間陪伴其妻子和母親以及佳瑤。佳瑤在青湖長大，而他的父親卻在遙遠的地方當油漆匠。與其他從事建築業的農民工一樣，他有時會睡在自己做裝修的公寓單位，吸着自己白天塗的油漆的氣味。他說，這些公寓就像他女兒現在的家，只是她的住房更高檔一些。在佳瑤小時候的大部分時間裏，吳建飛一年纔回家一趟，即便他住在上海——現在兩地只有很短的車程。

Two decades later, he had enough money to pay for only half of his modest Rmb100,000 home. It is spotless, shining and decorated with colourful ceramic tiles but is furnished with only simple wooden benches and a couple of bamboo-covered lounge chairs in the sitting room.

20年後，他攢了5萬元人民幣，然後又借了5萬，纔買了一套房子。新家乾淨整潔，光線充足而且還鋪着彩色瓷磚，但客廳裏的傢俱只有簡單的木凳和一對竹藤躺椅。

Though Jiayao went to university on a scholarship, the cost of raising her left Jianfei having to borrow half the money for his new house. The only signs of prosperity are the motorcycle parked in the sitting room, and a modest washing machine tucked next to the lavatory hand basin.

吳建飛和他用一輩子的打工積蓄在家鄉蓋的房子 儘管佳瑤靠獎學金上了大學，但撫養她長大仍讓吳建飛捉襟見肘，他買新房的一半資金不得不靠借債。表明他生活還不錯的僅有跡象是客廳裏停放的摩托車，以及衛生間洗手池旁邊的一臺中檔洗衣機。

Jianfei’s was the first generation of young men from his village sent out to labour as migrant workers, building the Chinese dream. As part of the village’s construction team — a vestige of the days when the Communist party gave everyone a job and told them when and where to do it — he was sent to work in Shanghai, collecting a meagre annual payout of Rmb200.

吳建飛是他的村子裏第一代外出打工、建設中國夢的年輕人中的一員。作爲村裏建築隊——國家對個人大包大攬時期遺留下的產物——的成員，他被派到上海乾活，當時年收入只有區區200元人民幣。

Four years later, he moved to Xinjiang province to help build worker accommodation at the vast Karamay oilfields in the far north of the country. It took a week to get home, on a special migrant worker train, but at least the pay was 10 times what was available in Shanghai. Jianfei spent 11 years in Xinjiang.

4年後，他到了新疆，在中國西北巨大的克拉瑪依油田幫助建造工人宿舍。從那裏乘坐農民工專列火車需要一週時間才能回家，但最起碼報酬是上海的10倍。吳建飛在新疆呆了11年。

And, thanks to that sacrifice, the daughter whom he seldom saw graduated from high school, received an undergraduate and a masters degree in Shanghai, became a teacher in one of the city’s most prestigious high schools and then a human resources professional in an ecommerce company.

得益於這種犧牲，他那很少見面的女兒從高中畢業，在上海完成了本科和研究生學業，成爲該市最知名高中之一的教師，隨後又跳槽至一家電子商務公司從事人力資源工作。

While her father still refuses to use an ATM machine, and keeps his cash stashed in the house, she saves in a money-market account and uses Alipay, the Chinese online payments service, to do her shopping, making most of her purchases online. She likes to dabble in investments, sometimes on behalf of her parents.

儘管她的父親仍拒絕使用自動取款機，將現金藏在家裏，但佳瑤卻會購買貨幣基金，使用中國在線支付服務支付寶(AliPay)來購物，大量使用網購。她喜歡嘗試投資，有時還幫父母投資。

Now the flood of migrants to the cities has eased, and many of those who previously only squatted there — living in prefabricated hostels on construction sites or in fume-filled empty flats or in squalid warrens of rented rooms — are buying flats, getting married and settling down in cities forever.

如今涌向城市的農民工大潮有所減退，許多早先只是暫住城市的農民工——住在工地上的預製板房或者散發着濃厚油漆味的空房間，或者租住骯髒擁擠的屋子——買了房，結了婚，在城市裏定居下來。

What a difference a generation makes: the generation that separates Jiayao and her father. China, and its migrant miracle, will never be the same again.

佳瑤和她父親之間的這一代人見證了多麼巨大的變化。中國及其移民奇蹟將再也不會和過去一樣了。