Source: China Daily

12-14-2008 14:18

By Zhang Ran (China Daily)

Twenty-one-year-old Zhen Bo has a dream. The young man, who works in a factory producing jeans in Foshan city, Guangdong province, manages one dyeing machine and four people.

Three years from now his dream is to manage the entire dyeing plant and all 12 employees. He also hopes his salary, which is 4,500 yuan, will be around 6,000 to 7,000 yuan by then.

Zhen comes from a small village in northern China's Hebei province, where his father, and grandfather are all farmers who never left the land. He quit school soon after finishing the nine-year obligatory education requirement. After helping his father with farm work for a while, he found a job as an apprentice dye worker in a State-owned garment-making plant in Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei.

Three years later, his master recommended him as an honest, hard working guy to a factory in Xintang Area of Guangzhou city, where he could earn 3,800 yuan a month in the Pearl River Delta, three times the wages he made back at home. A year after that, Zhen found his current job in Foshan, where he is making 800 yuan more.