Parents can call the nearest city, for example, to find out what has happened to the remittance from their son working on a construction site in the Gulf.
At a time when most Asian investors were focusing on high-growth markets close to home, he was nurturing contacts and making introductions between Chinese construction and engineering companies and Gulf contractors and officials.
Families are close, but there's little work, so many people spend as long as two years away from home in the sweatshops of big Asian cities or in the construction sites of the Persian Gulf.