China is transforming itself from a land of villages to a land of cities. The government estimates there are now some 200-million rural migrants working in urban centers. That's having a profound impact on cities and on the villages left behind. Money sent back home helps build houses and put kids through school. It also increases prosperity in the villages.

But it often comes at a cost - both to the migrants, and to those remaining behind. The World's Mary Kay Magistad looks at the view from a village in southern China.

all photos: Mary Kay Magistad

Magistad: It seems an idyllic scene here in Wangwan village - rolling green hills, terraced fields, a couple of water buffalo wading contentedly in a lily pond. But Zhao Yunhua doesn't see it that way: she says people around here are so poor it took 20 families to buy those two water buffalo. Her family barely ekes out a subsistence living growing peanuts, corn and wheat. And it's still in debt from money borrowed five years ago for medical treatment, after she was bitten by a rabid dog. But hundreds of miles away, in the megacity of Shenzhen, Zhao Yunhua's son is doing what he can to change his family's fortune.

Tian Haitao

Magistad: Tian Haitao lives here, in a tiny concrete room in a back alley of Shenzhen's shopping district. There are worn blankets on the floor, a small scattering of clothes and a few random toiletries. Tian shares this room with three of his buddies from the village. He jokes that they don't bother locking it - because there's nothing to steal. Tian has already been a migrant laborer for five years - since he was 15.

Tian Haitao: "I worked in construction sites in Wuhan for three years, but I didn't save any money, and I didn't feel it was really promising. It didn't go anywhere. So I came to Shenzhen."
Magistad: You started working very young. Why?
Tian Haitao: My family is very poor, and my older sister is studying."

Magistad: Suddenly, Tian looks like he's about to cry. He bites his lip and looks down, and struggles to regain his composure. Eventually, he explains why. He's working to put his older sister through college. He says this was his idea. He tried to get her jobs around here, but she kept complaining and quitting, and saying she wanted to go to college. He says, he figured, he's a man, so he can do hard labor. But to put her through college, he says, he's had to sacrifice his own dreams:

Tian Haitao: "Sometimes, I think about it. Sometimes, when I'm sleeping, I actually dream of going to school. It's torture."

Magistad: For now, Tian says, he just puts in his workdays, seven days a week, earns his $ 8 a day, and sends most of it home. When he has a free moment, he strolls around the city, tries to learn something new, picks up a little English from visitors. Someday, he says, he'd like to find a way to help his village so other kids don't have to leave school early to work in cities, like he did, like his 15-year-old cousin is doing now, like many teenagers are doing around China.

Munro: "The authorities regard this as an embarrassment, as an issue not to be talked about."

Magistad: Robin Munro is research director of the labor rights group China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong.

Munro: "The extent of the underage labor problem in China is impossible to quantify, because the government is not putting out its own statistics on this issue. There are state secrets legislation in place in China that explicitly say any information on the child labor problem in China is to be treated as a state secret."

Magistad: But Munro says China Labor Bulletin's own research in China suggest cases like Tian's - of under-age village kids dropping out to become migrant laborers - is on the rise. He says most are around 15, like Tian was - the legal working age is 16 - but some are younger. And then there are the estimated 20 million or so children nationwide who have been left behind in villages, so their parents can go away to work as migrant laborers.

Magistad: Back in Wangwan village, some neighbors of Tian's family are hosting a boisterous game of mahjong. The couple who own this spanking new concrete and tile home have both been migrants workers - and they left a child behind who is doing just fine. Duan Yongzhen is his mother. Duan says she left when her son was 5, and put him in the care of her parents. She worked for six years in an electronics factory hundreds of miles away, in Guangdong proince. Her husband did construction jobs somewhere else, because the pay was better. She says it was hard for all of them to be apart, but it was the only way they could afford to build this house, and put their son through school, and improve their lives. Now, Duan is living here again, their son is in middle school, and Duan's husband Chen Qiang wears a proud smile as he cradles their new two-month-old son. But Chen is only here for a visit. He's still working as a migrant laborer, in a city a couple of hours away. He says he wishes he could be around more to watch his baby son grow, but he thinks it's more important to give him a good life:

Chen: "When I was little like my baby son here, we didn't have decent clothes to wear, and sometimes not even enough food to eat. Since economic reform started, 30 years ago when I was small, the changes here have been huge."

Wei Daokuan

Magistad: For evidence of that, just ask Wei Daokuan, down the street. He runs a general store, where another mahjong game is in progress. He says he's had this store ever since economic reform began - and he's noticed a considerable increase in how much villagers spend, and in how many little luxuries they can afford to buy now. He says that's pretty much because of one thing:

Wei: "The economy in the village is mostly because of the people working outside. When people come back from the city, from working outside, they can make houses, they can do small business."

Magistad: This kind of ripple effect is happening in villages all over China, with migrant laborers helping make villages both more prosperous, and more plugged in to the national economy. But even with village life improving, the pull to the cities is still strong. The average urban income is about three and a half times what the average villager makes, and the gap is widening. The Chinese government has taken steps, in recent years, to ease farmers' burdens - getting rid of some taxes, paying new subsidies, and making education free in village schools. But for many, that's not enough. Tian's father, Tian Binguo, complains that even with his son having worked in cities for five years, his family is still sharing its mud-brick house with the pigs and chickens, and is still struggling:

Tian Binguo: "In our village, some people's houses are better. And that's change. They dress better and live better. But that hasn't happened for my family."

Magistad: Well, there is the new refrigerator, and the new television, which Tian bought for his family And there is the fact that he's helping his sister do a university degree in English. But Tian's parents seem curiously unexcited about that:

Tian Haitao's parents, Tian Binguo and Zhao Yunhua

Magistad: His mother says she worries whether he daughter's going to be able finish, or find a good job. She says college is too expensive for poor villagers like them, and anyway, if anyone was going to go, it should have been their son. Now there's no chance of that, she says.

But their son hasn't given up hope. He's living in a city of migrants - a city where people remake their lives all the time. I ask him what he'd like to be doing in five years:

Tian Haitao: "I can't think that far ahead. I can only think about three years - because in three years, my sister will graduate, and I'll be free to look for a more comfortable job, in a better place, and do something with my life."

Magistad: I tell him, 'your sister is lucky to have a brother like you.' Yeah, he says, that's what I think.

For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad in Shenzhen.