Mindsets of the migrants. [Photo/China Daily]

The attraction is understandable enough: Dazzling lights, being freed from the clutches of meddling parents and the endless fun that supposedly comes with big-city independence. Then there are the career opportunities and the cachet that comes with being able to say you have worked in Beijing rather than Beihai or Shanghai rather than Shangluo.

But is living in the fabled metropolises of China all it is cracked up to be?

Leaving aside the problem of foul air that has become an unwelcome trademark for Beijing, cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, magnets for the young and the ambitious, face the problems of a high cost of living, forbidding house prices and fierce competition for jobs.

Right decision

Gao Bin, 31, knows the feeling well. In 2010 he left Wuhan, Hubei province－which with a population of 10 million is not exactly a village itself－for Shanghai, drawn by the plethora of job opportunities in the IT industry. Two years later, the urgings of his girlfriend who wanted him to return to Wuhan proved irresistible.

Yes, he earned a lot more money in Shanghai than in Wuhan, he says, but the cost of living was a lot higher, too, as was the cost of housing, his annual disposable income being only enough to buy four square meters of living space, meaning he would have to work for 20 years' on his salary at the time to pay off an 80 sq m apartment－without even taking into account inflation and interest on any money borrowed.

Gao was fortunate, because branch offices of IT companies domestic and international were springing up all over Wuhan at the time, and he decided, with friends of his who also work in IT, that Wuhan, with good jobs and a stable lifestyle, was the place to be.

"It was exactly the right decision. I have a happy family life and my son was born in December," he says.

Gao concedes that when it comes to infrastructure and public transport there is no doubt Shanghai beats Wuhan, but the Hubei capital is closer to his hometown, he says, and it boasts good educational facilities for children and has excellent hospitals.