Can migrants ever really go home?

China spent decades drawing on the deep well of workers from all over the country to power the "factory to the world". But now, with many small towns and villages virtually depopulated except for seniors and children, there is movement in the other direction.

Some towns are luring migrant workers back, offering loans, business space and other incentives for them to return and start their own enterprises using skills they acquired in the cities.

The prospect of reunited families and a new wave of rural entrepreneurs is indeed appealing. But when I read these reports, I often wonder about these workers readjusting to a world they left behind. How have they changed while gone, and how have their hometowns changed?

Is it true that, as the saying goes, you can never go home?

This question has a very personal edge to me, given that, in essence, I am a migrant worker. I left the area where I grew up some 35 years ago, and have only visited since then.

In thinking about my fellow migrant workers in China, I decided to look up the small town where I grew up, hoping pictures would rekindle memories and feelings.

Indeed, when a picture of the historic town square of McDonough, in the US state of Georgia, appeared on my computer screen in Beijing, a wave of nostalgia swept over me that was surprising in its intensity. The iconic courthouse was among my earliest memories.

As the past came flooding back, the longing I felt intensified, but I soon recognized that it was homesickness not only for a place, but also for a particular time in my life. It was a time when I roamed around a small town of 2,000 people with my best friend and a black-and-white dog. In my memory, it was much like the fictional town of Mayberry portrayed in a popular television series, The Andy Griffith Show.

Of course, time moves on. McDonough's population is 10 times or more of what it was. My grandmother's girlhood home - a beautiful white clapboard house on a knoll, surrounded by daffodils - has been replaced by a factory. The high school where I graduated, in nearby Stockbridge, is no longer a school.

Sure, I still have family and friends there, though many also have moved. It still feels like home, in a kind of distant way, when I go back.

But my day-to-day reality is in China. Beijing is what feels normal now. I stay in touch as best I can with folks back home, but they also have moved on with their lives. They have new jobs, new loves, new children or grandchildren, new houses, new friends.

The Expatexchange website even has a checklist for people going back to distant homes. It warns: "Many repatriating families experience a sense of alienation in their own country."

I have to wonder if Chinese migrant workers may be feeling a degree of that. If they're lucky, perhaps they will find that some of the "Mayberry" they once knew is still there.

Contact the writer at matthewprichard@chinadaily.com.cn