Sichuan Learns To Help Itself.(World Affairs)(Sichuan earthquake)

Byline: Melinda Liu; With bureau reports

A rugged diaspora is aiding the province as it recovers from the quake.

This had to be Yu Hongbin's worst vacation ever. The Sichuan native had worked in Shenzhen, the Chinese boomtown near Hong Kong making chips for Nokia cell phones. It was a good life for an 18-year-old: he pulled in nearly $200 a month--more than some Sichuan farmers make in a year--and often blew it all on karaoke restaurants and a gym. On May 12 he was visiting his home village when the ground started bucking. Houses crumbled; dust filled his mouth and nose. He found his mother, dazed, near the "1,000-year-old tree" that locals believed is a protective talisman. A group of weeping villagers kneeled before the tree wailing, "Our god! Our heaven!"

Now Yu sits in a bus-station waiting room, on his way back to Shenzhen. The best way to help his family, he figures, is to keep on working. "But I'm not going to waste money like I did before," he says. "Now I'm going to send $140 a month back home to my folks. The earthquake made me regret I never sent them money before." Multiply Yu's sense of responsibility by 20 million to 30 million--the estimated number of Sichuanese migrant workers like him--and you begin to see a silver lining for this western province. The magnitude 7.9 quake killed some 86,000 people and caused tens of billions of dollars in economic losses. But up to a third of Sichuan's 85 million natives are working away from home and many have--or may find--jobs outside the devastated disaster zone. The money they send home will be critical to helping Sichuanese recover.

This diaspora is a relatively new phenomenon. Under Mao, rural Chinese rarely moved outside their hometowns, let alone their province--and had to get special permission to do so. Since Deng Xiaoping launched sweeping economic reforms three decades ago, however, tens of millions of Chinese have begun moving yearly in search of good jobs, many traveling from interior provinces like Sichuan to the export powerhouses on the coast. In fact, Sichuan is the largest single source of migrant workers, accounting for at least a tenth the estimated 200 million rural-born laborers now working in Chinese cities.

These mobile masses aren't always welcomed. Migrants have been blamed for rising crime and urban unrest. But they're also the engine of China's economic boom--helping stabilize the country and now in the quake zone. Sichuan-born artists contributed works to a May 25 charity silent auction in Beijing that raised more ...