The Regional Nature of the Shanghai Labor Market

Subei people constituted one of the largest immigrant populations in Shanghai, by 1949 representing approximately one fifth of the city's 5 million residents.^[7] Whether they had migrated from Subei themselves or were the offspring of Subei migrants, whether they were poor peasants fleeing the prospect of starvation or wealthy landowners fleeing land reform in the 1940s, Subei people in Shanghai concentrated in jobs that Shanghainese regarded as inferior. Republican period surveys of the Shanghai work force reveal three general patterns: (1) unskilled, physically demanding occupations were dominated almost exclusively by people from Subei; (2) occupa-

[7] It is impossible to know the exact percentage of the Shanghai population that was composed of people from Subei for other points in time, since population statistics that indicate native place specify only the province, not the district or county. According to the only available statistic, there were 1.5 million people from Subei in Shanghai in 1949. The entire population of Shanghai at that time was 5,062,878. See Xie Junmei, "Shanghai lishishang renkou de bianqian," Shehui kexue 3 (1980): 112.

tions attracting people from Jiangnan as well as Subei were stratified, with Subei people performing the lowest-paying, lowest-status jobs; and (3) jobs requiring high levels of skill or education were rarely available to Subei people.

The description of the labor market that follows relies on qualitative as well as quantitative data. An analysis of labor market segmentation in Shanghai would ideally include wage data, comparing the earnings of workers in different occupations. Unfortunately, such data are largely unavailable. Most of the unskilled jobs performed by Subei people were never surveyed by officials, who were more concerned with the plight of factory workers. Even when data are available, they are often unreliable. For instance, wage data for rickshaw pullers ignore the amount they had to pay for renting the rickshaw; conversely, wage data for barbers ignore the room and board that came with the job. Wage rates for most occupations fail to account for the seasonal nature of employment. Finally, wage data for any given occupation obscure the multitude of grades of workers within that enterprise, each of which had a different salary. Therefore, in the discussion that follows, wage data are used only when they may be helpful in placing the earnings of Subei workers in perspective.^[8]

It was not in the ranks of the industrial proletariat but rather among coolie laborers that Subei people were most commonly found in Shanghai. Occupations most closely associated with Subei people were those that required little skill, were physically demanding, offered low pay, and promised only irregular employment. They were, in other words, precisely the kinds of job constituting the "secondary market" in the theory of dual labor markets.

Rickshaw pulling, more than any other occupation, was associated with and symbolized the status of Subei people in the Shanghai labor market. From the beginning of Shanghai's rapid development in the mid-nineteenth century, transport vehicles that depended on human labor power were considered the domain of Subei migrants. In the 1860s, well before the appearance of rickshaws, wheelbarrows used to transport both materials and people were called "Jiangbei carts," since Subei migrants were the majority of cart pullers.^[9] When rickshaws began to be used in 1875, Subei people immediately took over the work of hauling rickshaws. By 1913, when there were approximately 10,000 rickshaw pullers in Shanghai, an estimated 80–90 percent were from Subei.^[10] By the mid-1930s, when the number of rickshaw

[8] For a more thorough discussion of the problems of wage data in Shanghai, see Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs, City Government of Shanghai, Wage Rates in Shanghai (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 33–62.

[9] Shanghaishi Chuzu Qiche Gongsi, "Shanghai jiedao he gonglu yingye keyun shiliao huiji" (Shanghai, 1982), p. 17.

[10] Huang Renjing, Huren baojian (Shanghai, 1913), p. 85.

pullers had soared to 80,000, 90 percent were of Subei origin.^[11] So extreme was the dominance of rickshaw pulling by people from Subei that one Republican period surveyor complained that the prevalence of Subei dialect among rickshaw pullers was an obstacle to his research work.^[12] Another reporter observed that only Subei people, plagued by natural disasters and economic destruction in their home villages, would condescend to do this "bestial" and "inhuman" work.^[13]

While rickshaw pulling may have been the job most immediately associated with Subei people, migrants from northern Jiangsu also dominated the ranks of freight haulers. The approximately 50,000 Shanghai dock workers in the 1930s were dominated by the so-called Subei bang . The predominance of Subei people among the loaders at the Shanghai docks was so extreme that, as in rickshaw pulling, the Subei dialect was the language of the trade.^[14] And like rickshaw pulling, dock work did not offer stable employment. Most employees worked on a temporary basis, usually 15 to 20 days a month.^[15] Most of the workers who hauled freight at the Shanghai train station were also from Subei.^[16]

The final category of jobs dominated by Subei people was in the service sector. The overwhelming majority of barbers, bathhouse attendants, cobblers, and night soil and garbage collectors were from Subei.^[17] Particularly the latter two jobs—quite literally "shit work"—were ones that only Subei people seemed willing to do, both confirming and reinforcing their lowly status. As one description of Shanghai Municipal Council employees notes, "Country people from Jiangbei, the Chinese who are most able to swallow hardship, are concentrated in the garbage department. Although there are individual Jiangbei people in other departments, the garbage department is

[11] Shanghaishi Shehuiju, "Shanghaishi renli chefu shenghuo zhuangkuang diaocha baogaoshu," Shehui banyuekan , Sept. 10, 1934, p. 103.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Shanghaishi Renlicheye Tongye Gonghui, Shanghai gongbuju gaige renliche jiufen zhenxiang (Shanghai, 1934), p. 3.

[14] Zhu Bangxing, Hu Lin'ge, and Xu Sheng, Shanghai chanye yu Shanghai zhigong (Hong Kong, 1939), p. 573. In addition to the Subei bang , there were also Hubei, Ningbo, and Guangdong bang at the docks. According to one study, workers from Subei did the heaviest jobs of transporting cargo on shoulder poles, while those from Guangdong worked aboard the boats, arranging cargo. Shanghai Gangshi Hua Bianxie zu, Shanghai gangshi hua (Shanghai, 1979), pp. 276–79.

[15] Shanghai Gangshi Hua Bianxie zu, Shanghai gangshi hua , p. 276.

[16] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," Xin qingnian 7 , no. 6 (May 1920): 60.

[17] On the dominance of Subei people among barbers, see Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49. See also Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915. For bathhouse workers, see Shanghaishi Renmin Zhengfu Gongshangju Jingji Jihuachu, ed., Shanghai siying gongshangye fenye gaikuang (Shanghai, 1951), p. 66; for cobblers, see Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915; for night soil collectors, see interview with Zhou Guozhen, Zhabei District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 3, 1986; for garbage collectors, see Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 607.

really theirs."^[18] So demeaning was it to be a garbage collector that a man from Yancheng preferred the privation of unemployment. When, in order to survive, he finally had no choice but to become a garbage collector, he did not want anyone to know. "Garbage collectors employed by the city had to wear a red shirt," he recalled. "I hated wearing that red shirt because everyone could then see who I was and what I did. So as soon as we finished work each day, I would take off that shirt."^[19]

The occupations dominated by Subei people were characterized by a further regional hierarchy. The most important division was between people from Yangzhou and those from the more northern areas of Yancheng and Funing. In general, people from Yangzhou had the jobs requiring slightly more skill and offering better working conditions than those employing people from farther north, reflecting perhaps the prosperity of Yangzhou compared with Yancheng. While some Yangzhou people could be found in all the occupations discussed above, they were particularly known for dominating the "three knives" occupations as barbers, bathhouse pedicurists, and cooks.^[20] Yangzhou was famous as an exporter of barbers, particularly to Shanghai, and the head of the barbers' guild in 1920, Chen Sihai, was a Yangzhou native.^[21] As one man who had come from a village near Yangzhou in the 1930s to work as a barber in Shanghai recalled, "My father was a barber in Shanghai; I was a barber, and my brother was a barber. In our village, at least ten out of every twenty families had members who were barbers in Shanghai!"^[22] People from Yancheng and Funing, in contrast, could claim dominance of the rickshaw-pulling profession. A survey of the native place of rickshaw pullers in 1934–35 showed some 53 percent coming from Yancheng and Funing, while only 17 percent hailed from the area near Yangzhou.^[23]

The hierarchy of jobs dominated by Yangzhou and by Yancheng and Funing people was confirmed by attitudes of pride and resentment expressed by people from each of those areas. People from Yancheng knew they could

[18] Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 607.

[19] Interview with the author at the Jing'an District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 18, 1986.

[20] Wu Liangrong, "Shanghaishi Subeiji jumin shehui biandong fenxi," in Shanghai shehuixue xuehui, ed., Shehuixue wenji (Shanghai, 1984), p. 177.

[21] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49.

[22] Interview with He Zhenghua, Xinxin Beauty Salon, Shanghai, Nov. 12, 1986. There were also a number of barbers in Shanghai from Zhenjiang, but the Yangzhou bang was clearly the dominant one. See Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49; see also Shen Bao , Apr. 26, 1915.

[23] Shanghaishi Chuzu Qiche Gongsi, "Shanghai jiedao," pp. 127–29. This survey was of 3,517 rickshaw pullers. The predominance of people from Yancheng and Funing among rickshaw pullers is confirmed by another 1934 survey. See Shanghaishi Shehuiju, "Shanghaishi renli," pp. 104–5.

not aspire to enter the occupations controlled by the Yangzhou bang . "The jobs done by people from Yangzhou were much better than ours," a man from Jianhu (near Yancheng) observed bitterly. "Their work was easier and lighter. Being a barber was much better than pulling a rickshaw! The worst work was hauling night soil carts, collecting garbage, and sweeping the streets. Not many Yangzhou people did those kinds of job. They were mostly in barber shops and bathhouses."^[24]

The envy Yancheng people felt for Yangzhou natives was matched by pride among the Yangzhounese. So strong was their sense of job superiority that people from Yangzhou sometimes expressed precisely the same attitudes of scorn and disgust toward Yancheng people that Jiangnan natives more frequently expressed toward Subei people as a group. Their sense of superiority was occasionally so extreme that they insisted Yangzhou was not part of Subei. For example, in explaining why the bathhouse bosses hired only people from Yangzhou, one man, himself a pedicurist from Yangzhou, said:

It was because we people from Yangzhou know how to speak well; we speak in a rather cultivated way. It was important for the service people to speak well, or the customers would not come. Our speech is very careful and soft, while theirs [people from Yancheng] is very crude—wawawawawawa . We were much more picky, while Subei people were very coarse; we were very sophisticated, while they were very poor.

Even though we were from Yangzhou, people still used to call us "Jiangbei folk." It was derogatory and it upset us. We knew we were from Yangzhou and were not really Jiangbei folk, but they did not know the difference.^[25]

Even he admitted, however, that despite the skill required to be a barber or pedicurist, both occupations were regarded as low-class by the more elite groups in Shanghai. Moreover, although the Yangzhou natives who worked in the service trades may well have represented the elite of Subei workers, their earnings were substantially less than even those Jiangnan natives who worked in the service sector. For example, tailors, most of whom came from the Jiangnan areas of Ningbo and Changzhou, earned 3–7 yuan (dollars) a day in 1920, while barbers could only count on making 2–3 jiao (dimes).^[26]

In addition to the occupations described above—ones completely dominated by Subei natives—a number of enterprises employed workers from both Jiangnan and Subei. Almost all such enterprises had a hierarchy of jobs in which Jiangnan natives were at the top and Subei people at the bottom. The most important such case, in terms of the number of Subei people employed, was factory work. As noted above, the majority of Subei migrants worked outside the ranks of the industrial proletariat. For them, factory employment

[24] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[25] Interview with Xu Liansheng, Yudechi Bathhouse, Shanghai, Nov. 12, 1986.

[26] Li Cishan, "Shanghai laodong qingkuang," pp. 48–49.

was the highest-status work to which they could aspire. Recalled a man from Yancheng, who worked as a garbage collector, "We really wanted to work in a factory, and I was very envious of my relatives who had factory jobs. But we just couldn't get in."^[27] Another man who worked for the city's sanitation bureau insisted with absolute certainty that "no people who were themselves born in Subei could get jobs in cotton mills. The only Subei people who were able to work in cotton mills were people who had been born and raised in Shanghai."^[28] In fact, a sizable number of women actually born and raised in Subei worked in Shanghai's cotton mills.^[29] His distorted impression shows that, for Subei people, securing a factory job was considered a step up.

The elite of Shanghai's industrial working class—those who performed highly skilled jobs, became technicians, and were employed at the highest wage rates—were primarily from Guangdong and Jiangnan. The scarce information available about the native-place origins of factory workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suggests that Subei people were quite possibly latecomers to factory work in Shanghai.^[30] The earliest groups of factory workers were from Canton, Ningbo, and Shanghai proper. For example, when the first machine-building factories were established in the 1850s, skilled workers were recruited from Canton, where a foreign-owned shipbuilding factory already operated. Peasants from Ningbo and Shanghai were employed to perform the unskilled jobs. No mention was made of any workers from Subei.^[31]

When, in the early 1920s, Subei people began to appear in records of factory workers, they concentrated in industries that generally required the least skill and offered the lowest pay, such as silk reeling and cotton spinning. For example, while workers in the machinery industry earned an average of $0.85 a day in 1934, and those in shipbuilding earned $1.24, workers in silk filatures earned only $0.31, and in cotton spinning only $0.47. This gap partly reflects the difference in the earnings of male and female workers, for

[27] Interview with the author at the Jing'an District Sanitation Bureau, Shanghai, Nov. 18, 1986.

[28] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[29] Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 (Stanford, 1986), pp. 59–62.

[30] The possibility that Subei people were latecomers to factory work, suggested by the scarce factory records that are available, is reinforced by the description of Subei people in a Japanese study written in 1909. The author observed a "class" comprising Subei people who worked as cobblers, coolies, cart and rickshaw pullers, night soil and garbage collectors, and peddlers. No mention was made of Subei people as factory workers at that time. This does not imply that no Subei people worked in factories but rather that their number was relatively small. See Toa Dobunkai, Shina keizai zensho (Osaka, 1908), 1:388–89.

[31] Zhongguo Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, ed., Shanghai minzu jiqi gongye (Beijing, 1966), 1:50–51, 58, 68. See also Yuen Sang Leung, "Regional Rivalry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Shanghai: Cantonese vs. Ningpo Men," Ch'ing-shih wen-t'i 4, no. 8 (Dec. 1982): pp. 39–40.

the machinery and shipbuilding industries were dominated by men, while textiles primarily employed women. Yet even within the female-dominated textile industries, those dominated by Subei natives—cotton spinning and silk reeling—offered substantially less pay than industries where the majority of workers came from Jiangnan. In underwear-knitting factories, workers earned an average of $0.79 a day in 1934; in silk-weaving factories, $0.90; in cotton-weaving factories, $0.61; and in tobacco factories, $0.57^[32] —more than they earned in either cotton-spinning or silk-reeling factories.

Even within cotton mills and silk filatures, the higher-paying, skilled jobs went to people from Jiangnan. In the cotton-spinning industry—one of the largest employers of Subei workers—Subei women, considered strong, robust, and accustomed to dirt, were channeled into the workshops where the work was most arduous and dirty. Initially they dominated the undesirable jobs in the reeling workshops; in the 1930s, when mill managers began to hire women instead of men in the roving workshops, they recruited Subei women for the jobs.^[33] "This was because natives of Shanghai were not willing to do that work," a mill manager explained. "The wages were not necessarily the lowest, but the work was rough. In roving there was more dust and the air was not very good. Since the work was hard, Subei people were more able to do it."^[34] Women from Jiangnan villages concentrated in the weaving department, where the jobs generally required more skill and paid better: in 1934, women weavers earned an average of $0.64 a day, while women spinners earned $0.46; women rovers $0.53; and women reelers $0.43.^[35] Furthermore, a number of Jiangnan women who worked in the mills eventually became factory supervisors, secretaries, or bookkeepers, advancements unimaginable to women from Subei.^[36]

A similar division of labor between workers from Jiangnan and Subei was apparent in the silk-reeling industry. (The separate, and more prestigious, silk-weaving industry was dominated by workers from Zhejiang, Changzhou, and Suzhou.)^[37] When the head of the YWCA Labor Bureau, Cora Deng, visited a Shanghai silk filature in the late 1920s, she was especially struck

[32] Bureau of Social Affairs, Wage Rates in Shanghai (Shanghai, 1935), pp. 80–81. These wage statistics serve only as a rough index of the differences in earnings of workers in Jiangnan-dominated versus Subei-dominated industries. As averages, they represent workers in all workshops of particular industries, women, men, and children, those employed on both time and piece rates. They do not take into account the seasonal nature of some industries.

[33] The division of labor according to native place in the cotton industry is discussed more extensively in Honig, Sisters and Strangers , pp. 72–74.

[34] Interview with He Zhiguang, Putuo District Federation of Commerce and Industry, Shanghai, June 26, 1980.

[35] Bureau of Social Affairs, Wage Rates , pp. 102–3; 108–9. This represents the wage for women in the weaving department of cotton mills, whereas the $0.61 listed earlier is for women in separate weaving mills.

[36] Honig, Sisters and Strangers , p. 73.

[37] Zhu Bangxing et al., Shanghai chanye , p. 125.

by the concentration of Subei women in the worst jobs, which often involved the painful work of bobbing silk cocoons in boiling water. Women from Jiangnan, on the other hand—having personal connections to the factory management—were hired to work under much better conditions.^[38] Likewise, in the tobacco industry, where most of the workers were from Zhejiang, the minority of Subei workers were hired only to perform the unskilled tasks. Employed on a temporary basis, they were reportedly "maltreated and abused practically all the time, sometimes even being punched and kicked."^[39] In the flour industry, dominated by workers from Ningbo, Wuxi, and Changzhou, those from Subei worked primarily as coolies, loading the heavy sacks of flour to be transported for sale.^[40]

Even among prostitutes, the division between women from Jiangnan and Subei (and the further division between Yangzhou and the northern parts of Subei) was obvious to observers. The highest-class prostitutes (changsan ), who lived in lavishly furnished brothels, acquired skills as entertainers, and catered only to wealthy businessmen and officials, came from Jiangnan. The second-class prostitutes (yao'er ) were primarily from Yangzhou. Women (and more commonly girls) from Subei, many of whom had been kidnapped from their home villages, were the overwhelming majority of "wild chickens" (ye ji ), who wandered the streets of Shanghai's red-light district soliciting customers.^[41]

The dominance of Subei people in unskilled, low-paying jobs may obscure an equally important aspect of the work experience of Subei people in Shanghai: many never entered the formal labor market at all or worked outside it for long periods of time. Large numbers of Subei migrants eked out a living by peddling food, collecting and selling paper, hulling rice, making and selling charcoal briquettes, or doing other people's laundry. The garbage collector Zhou Guozhen spent several years supporting himself by peddling vegetables before securing a regular job in the city's sanitation bureau.^[42] One man who eventually worked as a rickshaw puller survived by picking and selling garbage when he first came to Shanghai in 1925; another made shoes and repaired umbrellas; a woman helped support her family by making charcoal briquettes and by selling vegetables and occasionally fish.^[43] Chen Dewang, selected as a model worker in the 1950s, recalled that upon arriving in Shanghai from Hai'an in 1944, he first lived with a group of rickshaw pullers in

[38] Yuzhi Deng, "A Visit to a Silk Filature in Shanghai," Green Year Supplement (Nov. 1928): 9–10.

[39] Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, Nanyang Xiongdi Yancao Gongsi shiliao (Shanghai, 1958), p. 74.

[40] Shanghai Shehui Kexueyuan Jingji Yanjiusuo, Rongjia qiye shiliao (Shanghai, 1980), 1:134.

[41] Honig, Sisters and Strangers , p. 71. See also Huang Renjing, Huren baojian , p. 127.

[42] Interview with Zhou Guozhen.

[43] Interview with retired workers at the Zhongxing Street Residence Committee, Zhabei District, Shanghai, Nov. 4, 1986.

the Nanshi District—all men from Subei who had come to Shanghai alone. "I couldn't pull a rickshaw then because I was too small. People felt sorry for me because I had no parents, so they let me wash their clothes, clean vegetables, and help them cook." When he was finally tall enough to pull a rickshaw, he still could not afford the rent, so he spent several years pulling other people's rickshaws when they were between shifts. Only after several years was Chen able to borrow enough money to rent a rickshaw with three other men and begin to work regular shifts.^[44] Some women from Subei gleaned some cash by working as "poor people's seamstresses" (feng qiong po ), sewing and mending clothes for factory workers and apprentices whose wives remained in the countryside.^[45] Many people from Subei, in other words, worked for long periods of time outside or on the fringes of the formal labor market, some never securing regular jobs at all. For them, regular employment as a rickshaw puller or garbage collector was a step up.

To the extent that Subei people performed casual labor and concentrated in unskilled, low-paying jobs, the Shanghai labor market was a divided one. The labor markets that employed people from Jiangnan were almost completely inaccessible to Subei migrants. Broadly understood, then, labor market segmentation theory contributes to a description and analysis of the status of Subei people in Shanghai, where hierarchical divisions were based on native place rather than race or nationality. It explains how the Shanghai labor market reinforced and perpetuated inequalities between Subei and Jiangnan natives, as the American labor market has done between blacks and whites.

The question that remains, however, concerns the creation of those inequalities. Labor market segmentation theorists, writing about the United States, assume the relative status of various social groups—that white people, for example, are of a higher status than black people and are therefore more likely to be found in one of the primary sectors of the labor market. Focusing more on how the labor markets actually operate, the theorists do not offer an explanation of why certain groups are located in particular sectors. Yet the relative status of Jiangnan and Subei natives cannot be taken for granted. Understanding the status of Subei people in Shanghai requires an examination of why they, in particular, dominated the ranks of laborers in unskilled, low-paying, physically demanding jobs.