CHEN HUI HAI helps many workers negotiate with the labour bureau. He thinks they should be helping the workers assert their rights. But the labour bureau tells them to obey the company’s orders.
    LI HONG LI is a young migrant worker who likes to read books. Once he quitted his job and went back to school. On a mountain road his mother and his grandmother tried to stop him from going to school.
    YIN JIA YING decorates shops in Dongguan. One time a lot of policemen with guns were about to execute somebody. It was somewhere out on the street. He got caught as well and the police shot him.
    HONG LIN knows that the city government is corrupt. Sometimes he is fighting with them, or arguing with some bureaucrats. In reaction they might send someone to beat him up or they might even put him in jail.
    ZHANG YA LIANG has a small hairdresser’s saloon in Guangzhou. One morning, many years ago, her teacher didn’t let her into the classroom. She didn’t understand why she couldn’t get in.
    YAN SHAO HUA works for an insurance company in Taiyuan. Before he started to work there he used to be a policeman, and also a member of the Eighth Route Army. Once he even got shot in his leg in a gunfight.
    LI NA didn’t pass the entry exams for university, about 28 years ago. One of the exercises was too difficult. When she came home, she went through it step by step, and finally she reached the solution.
    MU CHUN flew from Guangzhou to his hometown and landed there. The people from his hometown admired him a lot; they thought he must be a magician or something like this.
    RAN LIANG worked in a leather factory in Sichuan for more than seventeen years. In 1999, there was a problem with the production and the factory had to close down. She was just an ordinary worker.

BELOVED
ASPIRATION
TENSION
SUDDENLY
DISILLUSION
HARDSHIP
MOVEMENT
PERSISTENCE
ACHIEVEMENT
DESOLATION