ABSTRACT
In this chapter I introduce the topic by firstly discussing the current status of mobile phone use in China today. This is then illustrated by an examination of the role and functions of mobile phone technology used for social relations among Chinese with an anecdote set in Dongguan city in Guangdong Province about two local people and “the mobile”. Building on this example I will go on to suggest that the workers’ situation in such a socio-technical landscape is totally different from that of local villagers because of their mobility and the characteristics of the charges for mobile phone services in China. The chapter continues by discussing how the Chinese Internet instant messaging, Mobile QQ, has combined with the mobile phone and how Mobile QQ constituted another form of social connection between workers in southern China. In conclusion, the chapter tries to show that such cyber connections may cause peasant-workers to succumb to a condition whereby they forget their former life-world and withdraw into their new floating or migrant world—one that could also be a virtual world.
