Emigrants from a small corner of China are making an outsize mark abroad

Wang rui (pictured) was too young to remember his parents when they left him. He was just two when his mother set off to start a new life in Europe. A year later his father followed her. In the countryside around the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou, young adults like them were doing the same in droves—abandoning their towns and villages, and often their children, in pursuit of a dream. Why eke out a hand-to-mouth existence in Wenzhou when there was far more money to be made in sweatshops in France or Italy? Why stay behind when so many had already left?