ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we heard of Bao, a young man who migrated from another province to Shanghai. In one sense Bao' move to university was an unremarkable example of internal migration now common in China. But in another sense, Bao' experience is a remarkable example of mobility. Behind this train trip from place to place were other, more profound forms of mobility that are becoming an integral part of global and local contemporaneity. His was the first generation to migrate from the village to the city, the first to benefit from a university education, the first to move their source of income from agriculture and family businesses to white-collar corporate work, and the first to move from a life structured by layers of localised and national tradition to a life increasingly structured by the demands of globalised modernity. Bao' is a mobile generation indeed.
