When a Young Woman Walks into Northern China’s Biggest Day-Labor Market
- 19 hours ago
- 12 min read
It was a midsummer Sunday afternoon in July. Along the south bank of the Liangshui River, the crowds that had packed the streets at 4 or 5 am for the day’s work had long since dispersed. At the intersection of the main commercial street, a dozen or so workers who hadn’t found day labor lingered by the roadside.
I, a woman in my early 20s stood by the roadside, as more and more middle-aged men began to gather around her. Some squatted, others stood, all just a few steps away, their eyes fixed on me with varying degrees of curiosity. Their stares began to feel inescapable.
Thankfully, a middle-aged woman in sun-protective clothing, wearing light makeup and flip-flops, came walking toward us from a distance, stepping straight into the men’s line of sight. After sizing me up for a few seconds, she approached and urged me to leave.
She positioned herself between me and the dozen or so men, one hand shading her forehead, her brow furrowed in the shadow of her palm, the other hand on her hip. Then, loud enough for everyone around to hear, she said to me:
“Girl, let me tell you something: whether you’re an undergrad or a PhD, pretty or not — come here, and you’re prey!”
Some men grumbled behind her. She spun around, pointed at them and half-jokingly raised her hand as if she were about to smack them. Then she turned back to me and said, without lowering her voice:
“Don’t talk to them. All they want to do is buy you a meal and then to sleep with you. That’s it.”
“These guys are bad news,” she added. “Don’t go anywhere with any one of them!”
She was a labor broker who had lived here for seven years and knew most of the men by sight. She had a commanding presence. The men behind then largely stayed silent. A few even chimed in, urging me to leave.
This is Majuqiao, the largest day-labor market in northern China — a distinctive fold in the layered Chinese capital Beijing.
I came here for the first time with a question: how, if at all, was the rapid rise of AI and automation changing the lives of workers at the bottom of the labor market? Just across the Liangshui River from Beijing’s economic and technological development zone, the “urban village” of Majuqiao seemed like a place to find some answers — and to understand the stories of the people who live and work on the city’s margins.
But I totally did not expect to become part of the story myself.
The day laborers who make a living on these streets were not unfamiliar to me. They appear periodically in media reports, including fieldwork and on-the-ground accounts by female researchers and journalists. Their stories are often framed around a popular Chinese saying: “When you fall on hard times, come to Majuqiao.”
“Working-class,” “ordinary,” “laborer,” “hardship,” “pity”…
These are some of the words that tend to define them.
That day, I deliberately dressed down: a loose, dark T-shirt, a canvas tote, and no makeup, hoping to blend in as much as possible.
But the moment I walked into this small community dominated by middle-aged men, I realized that an unfamiliar young woman’s face just stood out automatically.
The fieldwork I had planned ended almost as soon as it began, squeezed between the weight of those stares and the warnings of a well-meaning woman and several seemingly concerned men.
The Majuqiao community is far more complicated than I had imagined.
“When You Fall on Hard Times, Come to Majuqiao”
Majuqiao, literally meaning “the bridge of young horses”, takes its name from the late Sui and early Tang dynasties. The area was once lush with grass and water, a pasture for military horses. According to local lore, young horses were raised here, and soldiers and villagers built a settlement called “Maju Li” on the south bank of the Liangshui River. A bridge was later built across the river, giving the place its name: Majuqiao, or “Horse Foal Bridge.”
Over the decades of China’s urbanization, Majuqiao became one of more than 4,000 “urban villages” sprawling across the country, gaining nationwide recognition for its spontaneously formed day-labor market.
There are no horses here anymore; What crowds the south bank of the Liangshui River now are tens of thousands of migrant workers from across China — people hustling and scraping along the margins of the country’s political center, carrying with them the grind of getting by and the faint hope of a different life.
“When you fall on hard times, come to Majiaqiao.”
The saying, widely known in Beijing, captures the struggles of day laborers here — who could be security guards, delivery sorters, porters, construction workers and others — living close to the line of basic subsistence. It speaks to the helplessness of people knocked off course, but also to some hope that they might somehow turn their lives around.
I arrived in Majuqiao around noon and followed my map to a new day-labor market built by the local government.
According to Chinese state media, the Majuqiao authorities converted an abandoned parking lot into the new market in 2024, part of an effort to bring the chaotic roadside labor market under control and provide migrant workers with employment services and avenues to protect their rights.
The first thing I saw inside was a forest of signs, large and small, most bearing the same words: “No photography.”
Several shirtless men sat in small groups on the ground or sprawled across benches.
From the moment I stepped inside, I knew I was an outsider.
As I watched them, they also watched me.
I cautiously scanned the room. They made no effort to conceal the way they were looking me over. Some gazes were curious; others felt more like scrutiny. I did not dare stay long.
After leaving the compound, I stopped several people on the street and asked where the workers actually went to look for jobs. They told me the day laborers still gathered at their “old spot.”
Following their directions, I walked west along the south bank of the Liangshui River, passing people in worn clothes sleeping beneath bridges. I then turned south through narrow, chaotic lanes lined with self-built housing, eventually reaching Majuqiao’s main commercial street.
It looked much like a third-tier Chinese county. Cheap restaurants lined the street, selling familiar fare like braised chicken over rice and malatang (spicy hot pot that’s perfect for one). Mixue, a budget Chinese drinks chain, appeared to be the busiest shop I passed.
Most of the people walking toward me or roaring past on motorcycles were middle-aged men in loose, dark T-shirts and flip-flops. Young women were conspicuously absent.
As I walked along the street, a thin, dark-skinned man suddenly stopped me. He spoke in a strong regional accent that I struggled to understand. After repeating himself several times, I finally made out the question:
“Want a part-time job at a nightclub?”
I quickly shook my head and walked away.
I had been there for less than half an hour, yet the stark gender imbalance and the warning signs coming from some of the men had already begun to unsettle me.
Still, I kept telling myself there couldn’t possibly be that many bad people here. Or perhaps I simply had an irrational faith in my own luck.
So I decided to keep the exploration anyway.
A Literature Lover and a Drifter
Less than 100 meters from the busiest intersection for finding work, I struck up a conversation with a man standing by the roadside, a black backpack slung over his shoulders.
Surnamed Wu, he had once farmed in rural Hebei, where his son was in eighth grade. Farming was not enough to support the family, so a little over a year ago, he came to Majuqiao in search of work.
Like many of the day laborers still lingering on the streets that afternoon, Mr. Wu had failed to find suitable work that day. He was preparing to return to his rented room and sleep.
Workers told me most rooms in the area cost only a few hundred yuan a month, with the more expensive ones going for around 1,000 yuan.
I asked whether AI and factory automation had affected his ability to find work.
He did not answer the question.
Instead, he told me about how he used Doubao, a Chinese AI chatbot, to analyze Dream of the Red Chamber — one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels, which he had spent much of his free time studying over the past four years.
“AI is pretty powerful now,” he told me. “With Dream of the Red Chamber, basically, whatever I want to know, I ask it and it knows everything. Look, I can talk to it about Dream of the Red Chamber every day. It’s really interesting. Sometimes I can chat with it for hours.”
Mr. Wu also showed me his Douyin account, which is called “Folk Redology,” with a profile description that reads: “Literature, history, and indexes to Dream of the Red Chamber.”
His videos are mostly beauty-filtered selfies, captions overlaid as he offers his interpretations of the novel from different angles.
But his most-liked video had just 23 likes.
“I make these Dream of the Red Chamber videos, and I think the content is pretty good, but hardly anyone follows me,” Mr. Wu said.
“But I don’t care about views. I just want to put what’s in my head out there. It’s not that I’m trying to be lofty or anything. It’s basically a way of passing on culture.” He added, smiling a little sheepishly after saying this.
His teeth were yellow and blackened; he was clearly a longtime smoker.
He was not particularly talkative, but once the conversation turned to Dream of the Red Chamber, he came alive, speaking at length about the intricacies of the classic.
After several dozen minutes, he went back to his rented room to rest, and I continued toward the intersection where day laborers gathered in the early morning — the place where I would later find myself surrounded by a wall of male gazes.
Across the street, a middle-aged woman selling boxed meals caught my attention.
She was squatting beside two white plastic buckets. One was filled with rice; the other held a jumble of cold dishes.
I was about to speak to her when a man who looked to be around 30 approached. He was wearing flip-flops, his toes caked in dirt. He squatted down beside me and asked if I could buy him something to eat because he had no money.
I agreed almost instinctively.
The meal cost just 5 yuan (74 cents) — far less than I had expected. The woman said if she charged more, no one would buy it.
The man took the heaping box of food and immediately began wolfing it down.
As he ate, he told me about his “tragic life story.” He said he had been abandoned as a child, had no family to rely on, and had spent most of his life drifting from place to place. He had arrived in Majuqiao just two days earlier, had no phone and could not find work.
After finishing his meal, he pulled a household registration booklet from his bag, seemingly to prove his story, then directed me to a video of a year-old interview he had given to a content creator on Douyin, Chinese version of TikTok.
In the video, he was sitting beside a barbecue stall in Sanhe, Shenzhen, one of the best-known day-labor markets in southern China.
He talked about being abused by his adoptive father as a child, contracting HIV at 17 or 18 after falling in with the wrong girl, being tricked into working in a scam compound in Myanmar, and eventually escaping.
He spoke of a life marked by wandering, illness and hardship. He railed against the unfair hand he had been dealt.
“I was born with a worthless life,” he said in the video. “No matter how hard I work or how strong I try to be, I still can’t escape the judgment of fate.”
In the 2025 interview, he said he had been diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer and had only five years left to live.
I had no way of knowing how much of his story was true.
But the desperation with which he devoured that simple vegetarian meal in front of me was unmistakable.
After he left, the woman selling the meals, whom I came to know as Auntie Hu, lowered her voice and said:
“Don’t be so kind as to buy them food. Don’t believe them… This place is very chaotic .”
“Chaotic”
“Chaotic.”
It was the word I heard most often that afternoon to describe Majuqiao.
Auntie Hu was soon recruited by a labor broker to work as a dishwasher about 150 meters from the intersection, for 50 yuan ($7.5) an hour.
She seemed unsure what to do with her two buckets of food, so I offered to watch them while she worked — a decision I would soon regret.
A 22-year-old man from Heilongjiang was one of Auntie Hu’s regulars.
He first came to Beijing in April 2025 with no money. His first stop was Majuqiao, where he found work sorting packages for logistics companies, earning a little over 200 yuan ($30) for a 12-hour shift.
He later spent two months working as a security guard another district, standing for 12 hours a day for around 120 yuan ($18).
After his employer withheld his wages, he fought to get the money back and quit. Eventually, he returned to Majuqiao.
But when I met him, he had already taken several days off, because the day-labor jobs simply “didn’t pay enough,” he said.
He assumed I had come to Majuqiao because I was broke and looking for day work.
Before I could explain otherwise, he warned me:
“Majuqiao is really chaotic. You came to the wrong place.”
By “chaotic,” he meant the mix of people, as well as the fights, gambling and disputes that occasionally break out on the streets.
Just as he finished speaking, a black Mercedes pulled up on a side road behind me.
Within seconds, more than a dozen men surged toward it, surrounding the car.
Before I had time to process what was happening, one of them had already climbed into the back seat.
The car drove away. The entire exchange took less than a minute: A job found. A worker hired.
Chaotic, but efficient.
The young man followed the crowd back toward the corner. He told me he did not even know what the job was. Someone had simply gotten into the car and left.
“How did they know that was the job?” I asked.
He smiled and said: “They’re old hands.”
The people actively looking for work were only one slice of Majuqiao’s day-labor population — hard work was not the only story here.
Mr. Liu, who had just finished a temporary overnight construction job and was passing by on an electric scooter, told me that many people in Majuqiao simply did not work.
“One word: lazy,”said Liu, who has been in Majuqiao since 2008.
I asked him how people survived without working. He did not answer.
I found one possible explanation in the new book Time in Majuqiao: My Days as a Day Laborer, by Cong Rui’an, a doctoral student in political science at Beijing’s Tsinghua University who spent eight years immersed in the life of a day laborer in the town.
The “idlers” of Majuqiao, Cong’s book suggests, may live by a rhythm of “work one day, play for three.” In a place where daily living costs can be as low as 50 yuan ($7.5), and where most day-labor jobs pay at least 140 yuan ($21), it is possible, with enough frugality, to stretch a single day’s earnings across several days.
But Cong also observed that while day labor allows workers to escape many of the constraints of long-term employment, it can be difficult for them to have “self-discipline”. Plus, the harsh day-labor working environment and the lack of labor protections and stability can make it harder for them to sustain a daily work routine.
Under these conditions, day laborers can become stuck in a “work one day, play for three” rhythm.
“Day labor attracts the so-called ‘idlers,’ but it also turns them into ‘idlers,’” Cong wrote in his book.
Male Gaze
An hour had gone by, but Auntie Hu still had not returned.
As more and more male day laborers gathered around me, I grew increasingly uneasy. No one touched me or said anything overtly sexual. But their sticky, lingering gazes alone were enough.
I wanted to leave, but I also did not want to break my promise to Auntie Hu.
Just as I was wondering what to do, the female labor broker came walking toward me in her flip-flops.
She stood between me and the men, shielding me from their gaze.
Just a few minutes after she had warned me that don’t go anywhere with anyone who offers to buy me food, a young man with dyed blond hair came over and started talking to me.
When he learned that I was there doing fieldwork, he became really keen, volunteering himself for an interview and asking for my contact information.
His eagerness made me wary. When he saw me hesitate, he invited me to join him for a meal and talk over food. I shook my head.
The labor broker, standing behind him, shook her head at me too.
The young man eventually left. And the woman walked over and said:
“See? What did I tell you? Get out of here. This isn’t a place for a young girl like you.”
I made sure Auntie Hu’s two buckets of food were safely placed, called her to tell her where they were, and then turned to leave.
Even as I walked away, I could still feel those gazes clinging to my back.
When I reached the next intersection, Mr. Liu came riding up on his electric scooter, his white T-shirt rolled up over his belly in the classic “Beijing bikini” style.
He told me several men had been following me, then slowed down and rode alongside me all the way to the main street, then urged me to go home.
I thanked him, but deep down, I couldn’t help wondering:
Was he genuinely trying to help me? Or did he have another motive?
I did not know.
That afternoon in Majuqiao, my planned fieldwork never really got off the ground, but I came away with another kind of fieldwork experience:
When a woman steps into a world dominated by men, her gender alone can shape what she is able to see.
I thought I was the observer. But I ended up becoming the one being observed.
Or, even the “prey.”
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