READER Peter Vancouver sent us a few pictures of two kinds of women, the kind we pass every day and never notice.

One is a cleaning woman in a blue uniform, sitting on a curb, her face buried in her hands.

Another is a woman rubbish collector, standing beside her tricycle cart piled with spoils, her face beaming with satisfaction.

Vancouver suggests that "Shanghai should declare a day of recognition and respect for all the women and men in blue (and not in blue), who are keeping this city clean and livable."

He said, "In my opinion without their valuable services (low paid, I assume) this city would be a total mess."

I could not agree more.

Yes, they are low paid, and - for his information - these two women are almost certainly migrants.

As a matter of fact, no self-respecting Shanghainese would deign to take on these "jobs."

On the morning of June 29, I was caught in a downpour just as I was going to escort my son to his kindergarten.

As we waited at the gate for the rain to subside, an aged rubbish collector was pushing along a cart, picking up rubbish. He was soaking wet but apparently oblivious to the discomfort.

We are constantly being persuaded, coaxed, and coerced to consume our way to our nation's prosperity, but our attention generally stops at the garbage cans where our consumer goods often end up.

The subsequent journey to the landfills and the landfills themselves that encroach upon our sprawling cities - that much we can afford to ignore, because these migrant scavengers can be so efficient.

They can be summoned, and dismissed, at will.

It's no longer fashionable to sing the praises of mere workers (honest workers).

But Monday's Xinmin Evening News paid a modest tribute to a few grass reapers in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.

Ningbo is known for weaving a kind of grass (Chinese small iris) into a straw mat and the challenge of harvesting has been outsourced to rural women from neighboring Jiangxi Province.

One picture in the evening paper showed 57-year-old Xu Xianying struggling to load a heavy bundle onto a vehicle, and another featured a barefoot woman showing her daily wages - and her feet that are blistered and festering after days of being soaked in dirty water.

After 20 days of hard work, these women expect to make 1,000 to 3,000 yuan (US$147-441), which could go a long way in paying their kids' tuition and their daily expenses.

Sometimes the pain can be inflicted needlessly.

Last Saturday morning, as I was riding a bus on Shenjiang Road in Jinqiao, an industrial park, I caught sight of an aged male worker pruning short shrubs into neatly rounded shapes right in the middle of the road, in sweltering heat.

In the past we used to grow pedestrian-friendly trees along roads, but urban designers, and their audience, have acquired bourgeois taste for landscaped shrubs, grass, trees, and lawns, which need constant tending, fertilizing, spraying with pesticide, and pruning - which benefits no one.

There are concerns that the aging of the population is approaching a level that may dictate a review of China's family planning policy.

My impression is that so long as there is an abundant supply of migrants, we urbanites really need not panic.

One day of recognition of their service is probably a good beginning, but not sufficient.

A real recognition of their existence should involve according them all the necessary conditions for basic urban subsistence: housing, medicine, care of their children and their aging parents.

None of that can happen without first scrapping the highly discriminatory hukou system of household registration that legalizes and perpetuates the great divide.

Work ethic

It was reported recently that by 2015 China's urban population will exceed its rural population.

It would be very interesting to know how researchers worked that out.

Are the migrants around us urbanized?

The readiness of incoming migrants in cities to jump at any jobs deemed menial by urbanites is leading to some very unsettling changes.

When I was here 10 years ago, I was impressed that Shanghainese had a very strong worth ethic, compared with Beijing people.

That is because Shanghai people took their jobs very seriously, however humble they were.

Today the most challenging jobs are taken over by the migrants.

In the city's formerly agricultural fringes the changes are more dramatic still.

One of my relatives' employment with a foreign company ended last year as the plant moved to Chongqing.

She stubbornly refused to work again, because her family already has several millions of yuan's worth of property.

A few years ago, their parents were still honest farmers, but thanks to the soaring property market, they were generously compensated for having their old residence pulled down.

These hectic developments have given a group of people huge fortunes without also giving them the wisdom to properly spend it.

It is hard to find books in these overnight-millionaires' homes, nor bookstore or library in the whole neighborhood.

A familiar greeting is about the winnings at a mahjong table and a popular form of exercise is to go to the Lotus or Carrefour superstore. These ex-peasants are more vulnerable to the corrupting forces of money and leisure.

Meaningful jobs

A top national, or international, priority is to create jobs. But we need meaningful jobs, not the kinds of jobs at Foxconn.

A lot of office workers are doing jobs no more inspiring and fulfilling than those at Foxconn.

When a peasant cultivates a piece of land, he derives a kind of satisfaction very different from that derived from trimming shrubs in the middle of a road.

Similarly, a writer of advertising copy is meaningless compared with a kindergarten teacher. But today the meaningless jobs are usually the more remunerative.

Just think of the high-flying investment bankers, consultants, CEOs, entertainers, property agents, advertisers, stars - and try to imagine how we could live without them.