Changes to China’s hukou system are creating new divides

CHEN JUN had a good job in Shanghai making eyeglasses. Last year he gave it up and went back to his home village in Anhui, an inland province. He dug out a basin, filled it with water and stocked it with crayfish. He went not for the work—there is less money in crayfish farming than in lens crafting—but for his family. Mr Chen could not afford to bring his children to the city, so had left them at home to be raised by his parents. But his parents were ageing and his children needed attention. “It could not go on like that,” he says, still wearing his blue factory jacket from Shanghai.