In 1848, Charles Dickens vividly described in Dombey and Son the hordes of men and women streaming into London from the countryside, “footsore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before them, as if foreboding that their misery there would be but as a drop of water in the sea.” Nearly two centuries later, a similar migration is occurring in the Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen. The poor are lured from the country by the promise of a better life, only to be swallowed up in the city’s immensity.

Those with enough luck and fortitude to make the…