WITH his dirty crumpled blue clothes and equally dirty tangled hair, Li Sheng is just one of the 3 million migrant workers looking for opportunities in Shanghai.

　　The dazzling modernity of the metropolis surrounds the migrants and - at the same time - seems very far away.

　　Two years ago, Li left his hometown in North China's Henan Province and headed first to Dalian, then to Beijing and he now resides in Shanghai.

　　"The little agricultural land my family worked could scarcely support the whole family," he said.

　　"The taxes levied on farmers makes it hard to earn a better living after making both ends meet. During bad years, we even lose money, after a whole year of hard work."

　　Many of the young people in Li's hometown have left the countryside to seek job in cities. Li is currently working at a construction site.

　　"It is hard for migrant workers to find a decent job or a decent place to live, due both to our low education level and the urbanites' discrimination against countryfolks," he said.

　　Detention

　　Like all the other migrant workers, being stopped on the way and interrogated by police is a common occurrence.

　　"My poor dress, dirty appearance and countryside accent quickly reveals that I'm a migrant worker, and we are often regarded as dangerous people by the urbanites," he said with a forced smile.

　　"Sometimes the police doubt the origin of my bicycle - wondering whether I stole it - and sometimes they have demanded three different documents: my ID card, temporary residence card and working card, which together provide the legal basis for a migrant worker to stay in the city."

　　If the migrant worker fails to provide one of them, he or she may face being thrown into a detention centre, a place designed to hold vagrants, beggars and migrant workers who have failed to produce the three cards.

　　After a period of detention the centre expels the migrants from the city, sending them back to their hometowns.

　　A colleague of Li's was once detained in one of the centres in Shanghai. The man had left his ID card at home when joining the construction team heading to Shanghai. Without an ID card he couldn't get a temporary residence card.

　　As a young man, he failed to control his anger when challenged by the police. After a quarrel, he was thrown immediately into the detention centre.

　　The man was asked to work three months for the centre to cover the transport costs, Li said.

　　However, when this writer called one of the city's detention centres for confirming whether they force its detainees to work to earn their own transport costs, they denied it.

　　Notorious relay stations

　　To save trouble, the detention centre won't deliver people all the way to their hometowns. There are some relay stations in the neighbouring provinces. Li's colleague coming from the north was sent to the centre in Xuzhou, in Jiangsu Province.

　　The migrant workers are left there waiting for relatives to claim them back with money. For those who don't have relatives to claim them back, being beaten at the detention centre for causing trouble is not uncommon.

　　To gain increased profits, some detention centres even collude with local families. Some locals would "buy" the migrant workers out first, then lock them inside their houses and charge their relatives large sums before releasing them, according to Huashang Bao newspaper.

　　The fate of women migrant workers can be even more tragic. Apart from being beaten, they may even be sold. Not long ago in Beijing a restaurant was found providing prostitution services to its guests. All the prostitutes working with the restaurant had been "bought" by the restaurant boss from the Xuzhou detention centre, Huashang Bao reported.

　　From time to time, there are news reports of migrant workers dying orshavingsbeen raped during their stay in the detention centres. Many of them had committed no crime themselves. They had just failed to present their documents properly and may not have spoken to the inspectors with sufficient deference.

　　Cat and mouse game

　　"Although the fee has been getting lower over recent years, it is still a troublesome matter to renew the card every year," said Chen Zhigang, another migrant worker, who sells newspapers for a living.

　　"You need an introduction letter from the company and sometimes also rent permits from the landlord to prove that you have a place to live and are not a wanderer."

　　But what's the point of the cards except for coping with the inspectors? "They don't allow us to enjoy any of the city's welfare schemes and local schools still charge us a higher amount to educate our children," Li said.

　　After staying three years in the city, Chen has learned some tricks to escape the inspections. The most effective way is to make yourself look like a native - wearing clean clothes and frequentlyshavingsyour hair cut.

　　"What the police or inspectors with red sleeve emblems are interested in first is not your cards but your dress," he said.

　　"If you ride an old bicycle and wear shabby clothes, you are more likely to be inspected even if you have a decent job."

　　Other tricks Chen has used was to pick up a ticket from the floor of the railway station and tell the inspectors that had he just arrived from another city and would leave Shanghai very soon. Sometimes inspectors would arrive at the migrant workers' houses unexpectedly. Chen asked people to lock his shabby house from the outside to make it look unoccupied.

　　Chen remembered the first year he worked in the city. He had a temporary residence card valid for half a year but he left the city after one month's stay. The city didn't refund the fee for the remaining five months. When he returned to the city the next year, he had to apply for the card again.

　　"My temporary residence card expired last October, but I'm not thinking of getting a new one. It is not a matter of the cost but of equal residence status," Chen said.

　　Recently, the Ministry of Civil Affairs changed some sections of the old regulations. Migrant workers failing to provide the correct documents but who have a stable job in the city may not be detained.

　　But there is no sign that the country will repeal the regulations. There is still a long way to go before there is free movement of people, China Youth Daily reported.