To work, to sleep, perchance to dream

"Perhaps that's why people don't talk to me - because of my dirty coat," she says.

It is 10 years since she bought any clothes for herself, she says. The clothes she does obtain usually come from rubbish bins, but not having new clothes does not seem to bother her.

"Some of them are really in good condition. I don't know why they have to throw them away. Back in my hometown, people would do anything for those clothes."

Yuan's hometown is more than 1,500 kilometers away in a village in Guizhou province.

"The village is surrounded by mountains, water is scarce and the soil is not very fertile. Even today, most people earn less than 3,000 yuan a year."

To make a living, Yuan and her sisters left the village for the city in 1992.

"The first time I arrived at Guangzhou railway station, I was struck by the fact that buildings were more than one story high," she says.

Her formal schooling ended when her family could not afford to pay when she was in third grade.

"I have four older sisters and two younger brothers. My father felt that girls did not need to know much as long as we could write our names. So we had few education opportunities."

It is something she resents her father for, she says.

When she came to Hangzhou, she aspired to work as a maid for rich families but her education was not up to scratch, she says.

"I never dreamed that to be a maid you would need to have graduated from junior high school. Otherwise, I would not have quit my job to come to Hangzhou."

In that previous job Yuan worked in a textile factory in Zhaoqing, Guangdong province.

A relative put her on to the idea of being a maid, telling her there were many in Hangzhou and that they were better paid than textile workers. So she and her sister immediately headed for the bright lights.

Yuan says that for migrant workers like her what city you live in is unimportant, so long as you have work.

"But I like it in Hangzhou, and hope one day my children can live in those fancy apartments."

She has three children, the eldest of whom is 20. As she talks of them, there is desolation in her eyes.

"We did not have time to look after them so we gave them to their grandmother to look after."

Yuan says that over the past 22 years she has been home no more than 10 times.

"Tickets are expensive. I need to save money for my sons to get married."