Adrift in the South - by Xiao Hai (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When Xiao Hai turned fifteen, his family paid a vocational-school teacher 1,200 yuan to find him a factory job in Shenzhen. So began a decade spent moving between the garment mills and electronics factories of China's fast-growing southern cities.

Adrift in the South is a first-hand account of a life spent dodging corrupt officials and abusive employers, working long hours in brutal conditions and sleeping in overcrowded dormitories. Xiao Hai gives voice to a generation of migrant workers searching for survival, meaning and dignity in a country undergoing dramatic economic and political transformation.

A landmark work from China's migrant worker literature movement, this memoir offers a rare perspective on the human cost of the country's economic rise.

About the Author

Xiao Hai was born in Shangqiu City in Henan Province in China. At fifteen he moved to Shenzhen to join the workforce, and spent the next thirteen years moving between cities and working factory jobs before publishing his first poems. He is now a member of the Picun Literature Group. His poems have appeared in World Literature Today and Chinese Literature Today.

Tony Hao is a Connecticut-based Chinese-to-English literary translator and writer. Authors he has translated include Taiwanese novelist Tong Wei-Ger, Chinese short story writer Ban Yu and Chinese essayist Xiao Hai.