No one knows it more than Liu, 22, a migrant worker from Zhugao in rural Sichuan province who is struggling to readjust to life here after getting laid off from a factory job on China's vastly more developed southern coast.

"Zhugao seemed so big to me when I was a child. But I feel now that the lifestyle here has nothing to offer me anymore," Liu said.

"I don't think I will be able to adjust," he added, waiting at a chaotic bus station to see off a fellow migrant who had a job to go back to following the recent Lunar New Year holiday.

China said last week that at least 20 million migrant workers had been left jobless by the global economic downturn.

For many, typically younger migrants, the stress of losing income vital to their peasant families is compounded by wrenching lifestyle change.

During the four years he worked in an electrical equipment factory in Guangdong province, southern China's manufacturing heartland, Liu enjoyed a host of new experiences.

After sending part of his 2,000-yuan (295-dollar) monthly salary home, he had enough left for new clothes each year. Off hours were spent hanging out with friends at malls or enjoying the occasional KFC meal.

But in December he was forced to return jobless to Zhugao, where the biggest excitement each week is the influx of peasant farmers selling baskets full of onions, cabbage and tangerines grown on surrounding farmlands.

"For a young person, it is very hard to be here. There is no work but farming," said Liu, who hopes to find a job in the provincial capital Chengdu more than an hour's drive away.

But with China's economy shedding jobs, there are no easy solutions for such frustrated youths, said Professor Ren Yuan of the population studies institute at Shanghai's Fudan University.

"This second generation of migrant workers was quite different from their parents' generation. They not only want to find jobs in cities, but also want to settle down and get a new life, a new identity," he said.

Zhong Yan, 26, acquired a taste for stylish clothing during the eight years she toiled in Guangdong.

"With so many factories there, it was easy to find clothes that were cheap but also nice," she said.

But since returning in December after getting laid off by an embroidery factory, her spending habits have rankled her elders, who feel every yuan should be stuffed under the mattress.

"They don't understand spending money on personal possessions. They are a different generation," said Zhong, who opened a small clothes shop in Zhugao with 20,000 yuan in savings, in part to maintain some personal financial independence.

Besides being jobless, many such returnees are a further economic burden as they are now unable or unwilling to do farm work, said Fudan University's Ren.

"Many know little about farming. They have witnessed or even experienced metropolitan lifestyles and want to live the way urban citizens do," he said, adding this could contribute to potential social unrest in the countryside.

At any rate, agriculture cannot absorb large numbers of workers, Ren said, adding that one solution could be to loosen residential registration rules in cities to encourage more permanent migration there.

However, such measures would likely have no effect until job creation begins again, he said.

For Liu Tong, that means shelving his dreams for now and helping his grandparents dig a living out of the soil of the family onion plot in the dusty, rolling hills outside Zhugao.

His grandparents have expressed disbelief that he has forgotten how to work on the farm, he said.

Asked whether he has truly forgotten how or whether it was a ruse to avoid such toil, he responds with a laugh: "A little bit of both."

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