Last year, Yang Li left Luzhou, her quiet home in China's Sichuan province, to work in a lock factory about 1,000kmaway in the bustling Pearl River delta just north of Hong Kong. After a month of polishing locks for 13 hours a day, she returned home, exhausted.

Today, Ms Yang runs a hair salon in Luzhou and is relieved that her days as a labourer are over. "Every day at the factory was just work, work," she says. "My life here is comfortable. I can close the salon whenever I want."