Tiny district in Guangzhou is home to thousands of workshops

Factory owners and job seekers swarm a street in the Kangle-Lujiang area in Haizhu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province, on Feb 4. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Following the end of the 15th day of the Lunar New Year, the urban villages of Kangle, Lujiang and Datang in Guangzhou's Haizhu district were once again full of life and energy.

During the Spring Festival holiday, its hordes of garment factory workers left to return to their homes for New Year celebrations, and now, they were coming back to work.

That's why on the morning of Feb 22, factory owners were lined up on a street in the Kangle-Lujiang area in search of workers. Job seekers walked up and down, inquiring about salaries whenever they found a potential employer, and once an agreement was reached, the employers escorted their new recruits to their factories.

Workers watch a colleague participating in a skill test in a garment factory on Feb 22. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Vehicles carrying materials to factories found it difficult to navigate the streets, which were crowded with people, so traffic police occasionally had to step in to maintain order.

Kangle-Lujiang is adjacent to the Zhongda Cloth Market, one of the largest textile trading centers in China, and just 2 to 3 kilometers from bustling downtown Guangzhou.

Since the late 1990s, textile workshops, large and small, have proliferated in these urban villages. Thousands of workshops and over 100,000 migrant workers are now packed into an area barely 1 square kilometer in size.

Around 11 pm, the Guangzhou Tower lit up with the word "good night", but the factories in Kangle-Lujiang were still brightly lit.

One owner from Chongqing was busy running a small garment factory. After the New Year, orders at the factory piled up, so he and his employees were working overtime to meet deadlines. Having worked for more than 10 years in Kangle, he has come to consider Guangzhou his second home.

Job seekers check a fabric's lining and craftwork while asking about the salary on Feb 12. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

A factory in an industrial park in Qingyuan, Guangdong, tries to attract job seekers in the Kangle-Lujiang area on Feb 22. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

A lion dance is staged in a garment factory in the Kangle-Lujiang area to pray for a good year on Feb 5. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Employers wait for job seekers while demonstrating their factories' main products in the Kangle-Lujiang area on Feb 5. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Job seekers visit the industrial park in Qingyuan on Feb 22. The park is expected to replace Guangzhou's urban villages in the future. (ZHANG YOUQIONG / FOR CHINA DAILY)