The year in Shenzhen doesn’t start in January. It starts when the orders come in. Because so many consumer industries – toys, clothing, electronics – are tied to the Christmas shopping season, many of this southern Chinese manufacturing city’s factories close for the Chinese New Year, in January or February, and don’t reopen until they have the orders to justify it. For some factories, the break lasts only a few days. For others, it’s a month or more – a difficult time for workers, who return to the cities after the holiday well fed but cash poor. As US consumers check their bank balances nervously after the holiday season, so too do Chinese migrant workers: closed factories don’t pay wages.

In early March 2006, the Shenzhen Rishen Cashmere Textile factory was still closed. Yet one of its employees, Li Luyuan, had returned the week before from Jiangxi, where she spent the holiday watching television, hiking, setting off fireworks and praying at a local mountain-top temple. Her prayers were specific: she asked for more money.