Ｓｅｌｆ－Ｈｅｌｐ　Ｉｎｉｔｉａｔｉｖｅｓ　ｏｆ　Ｍｉｇｒａｎｔ　Ｗｏｒｋｅｒｓ’Ｏｒｇａｎｉｚａｔ.docVIP

Ｓｅｌｆ－Ｈｅｌｐ　Ｉｎｉｔｉａｔｉｖｅｓ　ｏｆ　Ｍｉｇｒａｎｔ　Ｗｏｒｋｅｒｓ’Ｏｒｇａｎｉｚａｔ 　　ALTHOUGH he has become the head of the Home of Migrant Workers, Sun Heng still calls himself an “ordinary migrant worker.” The Home of Migrant Workers Cultural Development Center, the Migrant Workers Cultural Museum (opening soon), and the Tongxin Experimental School are all located in Picun, in the northeastern suburbs of Beijing. Picun, which lies at the juncture of three districts ?C Chaoyang, Tongzhou and Shunyi ?C is more than 30 kilometers from downtown Beijing, and is little known to most city residents. 　　 　　The “Picun Phenomenon” 　　 　　 　　On my way to Picun, the taxi driver told me that some of his colleagues had been robbed in the Picun area, and that he himself was robbed once. “Leaving their villages for cities, some farmers cannot find good jobs and are reluctant to bear the hardships, so they steal and rob,” he said. Local residents frequently complain that social order in areas where migrant workers live has deteriorated. 　　The taxi driver told this reporter that he himself is a farmer from Tongzhou District, to the east of downtown Beijing. His father takes care of the 0.8 mu (0.13 acres) of farmland his family has contracted. These days, a large number of taxi drivers in Beijing are farmers from suburban Beijing. “Urbanites are reluctant to do this work because it is exhausting,” he said. But for all the extra hours and days he puts in, a taxi driver has a monthly income of RMB 2,000-3,000, higher than the average income of many urban inhabitants. Migrant workers from other parts of the country are not entitled to such jobs, since the local government reserves them for native inhabitants. 　　Picun is a small village whose native residents number a little more than 2,000. “Very few young villagers live here, since most of them have settled in the downtown area, leaving the elderly to take care of the old houses for rent,” said Sun Heng. This is common in villages on the urban fringe. The rati