Abstract: Literary image of the peasant migrant workers in China is closely related with the process of urbanization in contemporary China, and during the process, the image of peasant migrant workers has undergone significant transformation with the drastic change of literary ecology. When peasant migrant workers as characters entered the mainstream literature at the beginning of China's reform period, they appeared to be the "new character" that embodied the social ideal and life expectation of the intellectuals. The image changed, however, around the turn of the century when peasant workers became the strugglers of survival who had degraded to the concerns of almost social strata, especially the elite group. After the image of the peasant workers released the spiritual energy it had previously embodied, they rapidly fell to the bottom of the society, their intellectual air lost while turning back to the status of peasants. When the peasant workers are deprived off the image of the burden-bearers in the heroic drama of the time, and relapse into the weightless existence in the postmodern tragicomedy, they are in varying degrees rewritten and oversimplified.

Key words: urbanization, literary image, peasant migrant workers