Word: fujian
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...True, when he takes time to reflect, Big Lin admits he is lonely, and not quite the success he imagined he'd be. But the specter of social alienation means little for those back in Fujian, who are nourished by stories of riches made from manning a wok. Even the tragedy of the 58 Fujianese who suffocated to death while being smuggled in a truck to Dover in 2000 did not dent interest in a passage to Britain, according to Fujian locals. "If you're from Fujian, everyone expects you to go overseas," Little Lin says. "Fortune only comes from...
...salary, he can afford Levis and Internet sessions to learn about his future home. He prefers David Beckham to Wayne Rooney, and knows the pound-yuan exchange rate. Often, Little Lin talks with his friends in England through icq or text messages. "There is not so much distance between Fujian and England," he says...
...first thing the snakehead wants to say is that he isn't some slave driver or gangster. He is, he says, a respectable businessman from Fujian's interior who settled in the Czech Republic in the early 1990s and started a textile import company. That was just after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and it was easy for an enterprising Fujianese to sell cheap cloth to Czechs. Today, he has upgraded his trading from cloth to people. Willing people, he insists. "There are too many people in China, so we have to go abroad to make money," he says...
...odyssey begins in Fujian, where the snakehead's contacts in the local Public Security Bureau help the customer get a Chinese passport. Then it's on to Beijing to apply for a visa to Russia, which easily grants visas to Chinese. The trip to Moscow is the simple part of the journey. The snakehead then takes the person's passport. He says it's for safety - it's harder to deport someone without ID - but, clearly, holding the document gives him power over his clients. From Russia, the Fujianese cross the forested and poorly patrolled Ukrainian and Slovakian borders...
...says Big Lin. "But I can't really tell him why." For every tale that burnishes the myth of immigrant success, there are many others that speak, if not of failure, then of drudgery, loneliness and a future in a land that will never quite be home. Back in Fujian, Big Lin had a decent job with a construction firm. He made enough to play games of pool with his friends and occasionally treat himself to a seafood feast. Still, Fujian is a place which young men leave, so Big Lin made preparations in 1997 to go abroad, too. More...