Slideshow China’s floating villages on www.vn.nl

This week, the Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland publishes our story about China’s ‘floating villages’. We spend a week on a construction site in Chongqing and talked to the workers and small businessmen who inhibit the place. A slideshow of pictures from the floating village in Chongqing you can find on the website of Vrij Nederland.

China’s floating villages

This seams to be a regular building site in Chongqing, one of China’s fast growing mega-cities. But it also is a so called ‘floating village’ : a temporary residence of migrant workers around one of the thousands of construction sites in China. The inhabitants work as a chef,  a shop owner or a prostitute. China’s ‘floating population’ counts 150 million. After work is finished, the whole village moves to the next building site.

For one week we walked through the village on the picture. We talked with restaurant owner Deng and his wife about their business model, and with manager Wen who dreams about retirement. We tried to reveal why the 800 inhabitants leave their homes and kid and move into a container or under a corrugated roof. What seems to be a slum, turns out to be a vibrant village with its own fresh market, health center and cinema.

The whole story about the floating village in Chongqing is in this weeks’ Dutch weekly Vrij Nederland.

Check also: Eeuw van de Stad » Go West Project (5): China’s ‘dolende dorpen’.