Mr. Zhang saves almost nothing of the $260-a-month salary he earns assembling cardboard boxes, another notable shift from the previous generation, which saved voraciously. By Western standards, he works hard — six days a week, sometimes more when orders pile up — and he spends about a fifth of his pay on a rented apartment, having long since fled the bunk beds and curfews of the factory-owned dormitory. His dream: to one day run a factory of his own. “But for now, I’d love to work in an air-conditioned office,” he said.

Image Laborers filled out applications for factory employment at a recruiting station. Credit... Ariana Lindquist for The New York Times

One factor in the expanding consciousness of migrant laborers is an astounding rise in education, with an additional three million students graduating high school between 2004 and 2008. The result is that a growing number young people are ambitious, optimistic and more aware of their rights, said Lin Yanling, a labor specialist at the China Institute of Industrial Relations. Then there is their fluency with technology — cellphones, e-mail and Internet chat — that connects them to peers in other factories. “When they bump against unfair treatment, they are less afraid to challenge authority,” she said.

With her iridescent fuchsia toenails and caramel-tinted hair, Liang Yali does not exactly fit the stereotype of the “made in China” worker bee. Raised by rice-farming peasants on the island province of Hainan, Ms. Liang, 22, is happily employed at a lock factory, where she packs up the finished product into boxes.

She rents an apartment with two friends, eats out for most meals and spends Saturday night bar-hopping or singing at a local karaoke parlor. At night, before she goes to sleep, she sometimes plays a computer game in which participants steal vegetables from one another’s virtual farm.

Unlike many workers in Zhongshan, Ms. Liang had heard about the strikes, perhaps because the front door to Guangdong Mingmen Lock Industry sits across a muddy canal from where employees of a Honda lock factory held a rare protest last month. She expressed measured sympathy for the strikers, but said she was not interested in following their lead. “My boss is nice and the work isn’t strenuous, so I have no complaints,” she said.

Her friend and co-worker Li Jingling, 27, nodded in agreement, adding that their company sponsored sports activities and allowed employees to dress in street clothes on Saturdays. When the topic turned to her parents, Ms. Li said she felt sorry for them. “They go out to the fields when the sun rises and return home when the sun goes down,” she said. “No matter how difficult their marriage was, they would stick it out. For us, whether a bad marriage or a bad job, we’ll leave it if it’s lousy.”

Back on recruiters’ row, the afternoon sun had thinned the already sparse crowd of job-seekers, leaving a few roughneck kids so undisciplined that not even the sweltering pipe factory was interested in taking them on.