Shenzhen, China - HE NORMALLY works in a huge factory making Apple iPods, but lately, he's spent most of his time cooking hotpot feasts with fatty slices of pork carved from a pig's head.
It's the Lunar New Year, and Xiao Wang, 23, should be home hundreds of miles away celebrating China's most important holiday, which began on Thursday. But snowstorms kept him and millions of other migrant workers from traveling.
Many were sad to be stranded at their factories, but Mr. Wang couldn't be happier. "Actually, I would rather be here with my friends. We're having more fun and there's much more freedom," he said, as he and three colleagues watched a butcher in an alley market chop up pork, mix it with spring onions and toss it into a plastic bag.
The worker – who asked to be called "Xiao Wang", or "Little Wang", is part of a new generation of migrant labourers in China's manufacturing juggernaut.
The young workers have fewer ties to the countryside and, unlike previous generations, are not interested in saving up money to resettle in their village, marry a rural sweetheart and tend the family's plot of land. Like Mr. Wang, they enjoy the city life and want to stay.
He works for Foxconn International, a sprawling factory complex in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong. About 270,000 workers are employed at Foxconn, which, along with iPods and iPhones, has also produced Nintendo video-game consoles, Motorola phones and Lenovo computers.
"I really hate the job. It's awful and boring," said Mr. Wang, who makes the equivalent of \£120 a month. But he said he liked his lifestyle in the city – he has a spiky hairdo and new red jacket.
Many workers live in the factory dormitory, but he and his friends rent their own places in a cluster of eight-storey flats near the plant. The buildings look depressing, with small windows covered in metal cages crowded with dripping underwear and socks hanging out to dry.
When snow storms began shutting down the railways last week, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers were unable to leave Guangdong for the holiday – the world's biggest annual mass movement of people.
The government urged people to shelve plans to go home, and some 12 million of the 30 million migrant workers in Guangdong decided to stay.
Factories were urged to make sure workers had a good holiday, and Foxconn workers said they were happy so far. The company served up a holiday meal on the eve of the Lunar New Year, they had a special dumpling party on Thursday and more dinners are planned over the weekend.
But Mr. Wang and his friends are passing on the free meals. Along with the pork, they had plastic bags stuffed with greens and string beans for the hotpot. For entertainment, they had bought themselves a DVD of a concert by the Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau.
The other migrants in the workers' ghetto also seemed to have their own parties planned. Young couples – probably unmarried – did last-minute shopping in the market, enjoying a life far from the gossip and social restrictions of their villages.
Most of the workers at Foxconn looked more like students than labourers –very different from those in their 30s and 40s who were stranded at the railway station and spent days waiting for seats so they could get home to their spouses and children.
EASING OF RESTRICTIONS BOOSTS CITY LIVING
THE majority of Chinese – about 737 million people in a population of 1.3 billion, or 57 per cent – still live in the countryside, Xinhua reported last year. But the agency said the rural population has declined from 64 per cent of the total in 2001 and from 74 per cent in 1990.
Settling in the cities has become easier for migrants because the government has relaxed restrictions that once drove people back to the countryside, said Ellen David Friedman, a visiting lecturer at the Social Work Research and Education Centre at Zhongshan University in the southern city of Guangzhou.
It was once difficult for migrants to have a family in the city because their children were only allowed to attend school in their villages. But special schools for migrant students have been sprouting up in cities.
"There are now 300 schools for children of migrant workers in Guangzhou," the capital of booming Guangdong province, Ms Friedman said. (By William Foreman)
[More Guangdong & PRD News]
Firm Publicizes Info on Edible Oil Secretly Recalled 
Intensive Checks on all Vehicles Entering Guangzhou
New Life to Chen Clan Academy