The Permanent Migrants: Modern China Explained by Mushroom Hunters, Noodle Chefs and Undercover Police

The people of Dragon Ditch Village had been farming for centuries before they elected 27-year-old Eastern Sun as their leader. When Eastern Sun unveiled his plan to build a ten-story eco-hotel and flood the villagers' cornfields so that the hotel would have a lake view, how do you think the villagers reacted? They turned to me and smiled. "We think of him like our son." In Permanent Migrants, Amos Irwin abandons the usual top-down view of contemporary China in favor of conversations with the Chinese people themselves. From the cement factories of Inner Mongolia to the temples of Shanxi, Permanent Migrants investigates the lives of village politicians, monks, undercover cops, and migrant noodle chefs. While they race to get ahead in the fastest-changing economy in the world, they struggle with the test-centric educational system, with the One Child Policy, and with hukou, the population control system that makes two in ten Chinese people illegal migrants in their own country. Permanent Migrants is based on dialogues with Chinese people eager to talk to their first-ever foreigner. It provides the reader with incisive explanations of Chinese policy and twentieth-century history. It illustrates not only the incredible warmth and generosity of these individuals, but also their place in the rapid yet restrictive evolution of modern China.

Amos Irwin lived in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, from 2009-2010, teaching English at Kunming University. He returned to China in the summer of 2012 to write Permanent Migrants. From 2011 to 2014, Amos researched the social, environmental and economic impact of Chinese investment in Latin America at Tufts University’s Global Development And Environment Institute and Boston University’s Global Economic Governance Initiative. He has taught courses on China, macroeconomics, and the War on Drugs at Northeastern University’s Foundation Year Program and the Osher Center at Tufts University. Amos currently works to reform U.S. drug policy at the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Farsi, and Dari.