ABSTRACT
About 50 women sit in the small, crowded room on rows of chairs designated for domestic workers. Each of them wears a badge showing her name, province of origin, and education level. They are chatting among themselves. Women from the same province are seated together, allowing them to converse in their own dialect. Once in a while, a prospective employer, a man or woman, comes in, walks around the room eyeing prospective employees, and occasionally asks some questions. It’s a bit like speed-dating. A man in his thirties comes in and, after hovering around the room for a couple of minutes, zeroes in on a woman from Sichuan:
PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYER (PE): We have an old person (lao ren) in our family who needs looking after. Are you interested?
