Abstract
People migrate to the cities for various reasons. For Qiu, it was a fight that happened at school that resulted in a family conflict. When he was 18, Qiu went to a city looking for people from his home area to help him find accommodation and a job. Life in the city is always difficult for the newcomer, but they gradually settle into the urban way of life. Qiu met Ju, a girl from the same home area, and they soon married and had twin boys. With help from Ju’s cousin, they started in business, but the hard work it required put pressure on their marriage, which finally led to their divorce.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2016, 2.9 billion passenger journeys were undertaken by Chinese during the Spring Festival. The 40-day travel period around the Spring Festival is called Chunyun, meaning “national migration”. Nowadays, train tickets can be booked by smartphone so people no longer have to queue in the cold weather to buy tickets. People can take high-speed trains, making travel much faster, but some people, in order to save money, still choose to take the slow trains. Although previously travellers brought lots of luggage with gifts for children, parents, and relatives, today, they buy gifts from the likes of Alibaba and Amazon and have them delivered directly to their home.
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Liu, X., Burnett, D. (2019). Qiu’s Story: Third Son. In: Golden Goose. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3774-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3774-1_9
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3773-4
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3774-1
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