And young women with a higher education, say high school, are most popular. “We have to receive five to 10 times clients as usual everyday recently,” the staff said. “For the previous days, we have got altogether more than 50 clients,” he added.

“When the Spring Festival is over, kids will go back to school. And that leads to a rising demand for maids to take care of the children,” he explained.

Despite the difficulty owing to the high demand, local families are a little particular when finding a maid, the Laodong Daily said.

It seems most families prefer the maids from Sichuan Province or Anhui Province, who are believed more capable, smart and simple.

And some families, especially the intellectuals, will chose a better educated one. What they need is more than a mere labor, but someone who can tutor the kids sometime and provide some medical care to the family.

In fact, the most preferable maid is an educated, experienced and hard-working Shanghainese, Yu Daxin, a director with the city’s general labor union said. Some Shanghainese maids serve several families a day.

However, the available maids of such kind are far from enough to meet the high demands. Shanghai’s domestic service market is now dominated by migrant maids, Yu said.

(eastday.com 01/30/2001)