Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Piles to go ... a worker in Shenzhen assembles parts for a computer bag for Leeds, a Pittsburgh-area company that makes promotional products.

By Dan Fitzpatrick, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

SHENZHEN, China -- It took freckled teenager Lem Ying Ling two hours, riding on three separate buses, to find her way to this dark, dusty boom town and a job paying $100 a month.

	Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette A worker in Shenzhen stitches together portfolios for Leed's, a Pittsburgh-area promotional products company. Click photo for larger image.

The 18-year-old sometimes works 12 hours a day packing notebook portfolios and briefcases for a Pittsburgh-area promotional products company, Leed's, and sends half of what she makes back home to her parents and younger brother in rural China. The paycheck leaves her with enough money to hang out at a local Internet "bar" and chat online with former classmates for 63 cents an hour.

That she can afford such leisure is a point of pride. "I feel excited about spending my own money," said the dark-haired Ms. Lem, a multicolored medallion hanging from her neck.

Over the last quarter century, as the Chinese Communist Party opened itself to the West, millions like Ms. Lem have left behind the wrenching poverty of inner China for low-skilled manufacturing jobs along the coasts, where incomes are two-thirds higher, helping to transform an agriculturally based country into a workshop of the world, just as European immigrants did in Pittsburgh a century ago.

China's rural-to-urban migration, ranging in estimates from 90 million to 300 million, now represents the greatest mass movement in human history. And like the American move westward in the 19th and 20th centuries, the journey is about the search for a better life, a better wage and new opportunities as China recovers from decades of extreme poverty, widespread famine and untold hardship.

Perhaps no Pittsburgh-area company is working harder to benefit from this rural exodus halfway around the world than Leed's, an Upper Burrell-based maker of tote bags and notebooks decorated with corporate logos. One of the largest privately held companies in Western Pennsylvania, Leed's sold $205 million of its products last year, up from $165 million in 2004 and $123 million in 2003. Because of the recent revenue increases, more than 1,000 now work at its corporate headquarters northeast of Pittsburgh, double the number that worked there five years ago.

It keeps its costs down by importing 98 percent of what it sells from China, where Leed's co-founder Bruce Weiner first ventured on a business trip with his father in 1979, a year after the country opened to the West, believing that "over a period of time that China would become a low-cost producer."

"To us, it just seemed like the next logical step," said Mr. Weiner, who started Leed's in 1986 but sold his interest in 2000. "You always want to be ahead of the curve."

The company never built a factory in China, thinking such an investment would be too "risky," said Leed's President David Nicholson, 36. But it does have 50 employees spread across China, and it buys from about 30 regular suppliers, some of the relationships dating back to Mr. Weiner's time with the company.

Half of what Leed's orders each year begins at factories here in Shenzhen, China's first experiment in homegrown capitalism and a major destination for rural migrants. When Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980 selected the small Pearl River Delta fishing village as the first of many "special economic zones," Shenzhen had only 70,000 people. Two and a half decades later, the southern Chinese city has a population of 7 million, making it a magnet for young workers (most new arrivals are under the age of 30), foreign investors and pickpockets.

Money, money, money

The place is representative of China's new freedoms -- and temptations.

"It seemed that everyone had come to this strange city to make money," writes author Mian Mian in "Candy," a 2003 novel about hedonism in the new China. "It was hot and muggy, and the streets were always full of distraught people. Prostitutes were everywhere."

At rush hour in late September, Shenzhen is a mix of dust and haze and smoke, with 40-container trucks and buses and cabs and bicycles and pedestrians all competing for spots on the choked roadways, drivers zigzagging for any open space, no matter how small, their horns blaring.

Cages and bars cover apartment windows and balconies, sending a signal about crime here. On the roads are billboards advertising, respectively, the country's one-child policy and civic pride -- a young girl standing amid a field of flowers, saying "Mommy, just give birth to one, one is enough" and "Build a nice environment. Be proud of your traditions."

Bruce Weiner, co-founder of Leed's, first traveled to China in 1979. He said he believed "over a period of time that China would become a low-cost producer." Click photo for larger image.

As the sun goes down, a government-enforced power blackout turns the streets dark. In the southern section of the city, inside the government-controlled Fuchengau Industrial Zone, is the white-and-blue-checkered factory that produces bags for Leed's, and pulling up to the gate are Mark Yuk Cheong and Eileen Chua, the Hong Kong couple that owns the factory and another one nearby.

Leed's is the biggest client for Mr. Cheong and Ms. Chua, and 90 percent of what is made here travels to Pittsburgh, via Hong Kong, Long Beach, Calif., and Chicago, by boat and truck and train. Mr. Cheong has a relationship with Leed's dating back to its founder, Mr. Weiner, who hired Mr. Cheong in the 1990s as Leed's overseas operations manager, buying from all over Asia.

Mr. Cheong left Leed's, set up a separate trading office in Sri Lanka, and eventually returned to Hong Kong to start a manufacturing company that now has revenues of $8.5 million, according to Mr. Cheong. He will ship 260 containers to Pittsburgh this year -- about 8 percent of the 3,000 containers Leed's imports from China annually.

Leed's is obviously comfortable with the 39-year-old, English-speaking Mr. Cheong, the son of a Hong Kong bus driver. Dealing with contract operators in China can "be somewhat of a crapshoot," Mr. Nicholson said. "You're dealing in locations halfway around the world and ... if you don't have people watching it you can trust, you never know. There is still quite a bit of corruption under the table."

Greasing the palms

Asked about what it takes to keep a local business going, Mr. Cheong said his partner in Shenzhen will sometimes put "a few thousand'' Hong Kong dollars -- about $256 in U.S. dollars -- in a red envelope and slip it to a local official. Other times, it's wine. Or cigarettes.

It's an accepted practice here, and the amount they provide "is considered small," Ms. Chua said. When profit margins were larger, "I paid 10,000 ($1,284 in U.S. dollars), easy," Mr. Cheong said.

Work at Mr. Cheong's factory starts at 7 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. and lasts until 10 p.m. or 10:30 p.m., with breaks for lunch at noon and dinner at 5:30 p.m. The factory floor on this night is a flurry of stitching and gluing and packaging and sorting, "Leed's" boxes stacked throughout the building.

The 400 workers here live in a dorm next to the factory, many sleeping several people to a room, their bunk-bed frames draped with sheets for privacy. They also eat every meal at the factory, their dinner bowls stacked outside on shelves. Live chickens also are on site.

Tonight, they consume a meal of rice, vegetables, cabbage, hot soup, stir fried pork and chicken. The young women watch a TV serial on outdoor benches, and some of the boys play basketball, ping-pong and Chinese chess. Others relax in their rooms, watching TV. During rare days, when demand is high, these workers will stay on the job until 2 a.m.

But the long hours are not a problem, Mr. Cheong said. At least 70 percent of the factory workers are from outlying provinces, having traveled long distances to make what they can and send it back home. Wages range from less than $100 a month on the factory floor to $380 per month for the highest-paid office worker. "They come here just to make money," Mr. Cheong said.

Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette A young woman works at a sewing machine in the Shenzhen factory. Click photo for larger image.

That includes 39-year-old Li Man Chung, one of the oldest workers at the factory. Although he lives just an hour and half away by bus, he rarely has had the chance to venture home to his family since coming to the factory four years ago, visiting them once a year.

He makes $190 a month, or $2,280 a year, for his work -- a good wage in a country where the average factory wage is about $1,000 a year. His main task is to make sure all materials are cut correctly before they are assembled into bags and portfolios.

Prior to getting this job, Mr. Li was a solider in an outlying province making only $50 a month -- the "burden of the family," as he described it. His family could afford to eat meat only once a week.

Today, there is enough money for his 12-year-old son and wife to have pork with every meal.

"Now, I am actually taking care of the family," he said.