Dragon slayers for hire: young people in China will play your favorite computer game for you, hour after hour--for a fee. In fact, it's becoming a booming business.

Wealthy countries like the United States have exported an increasing amount of work in recent years to China, with its vast pool of cheap labor. Now, however, in the latest wrinkle on "outsourcing," young Chinese are being hired to do our playing for us.

From Seoul to San Francisco and beyond, affluent online garners who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of popular computer games, like World of Warcraft or Magic Land, are willing to pay people in China to play the early rounds for them.

GAMING FACTORIES

In Fuzhou, on the southeastern coast, in the basement of an old warehouse, a corps of young people were recently glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards hour after hour. They were working at a gaming factory. Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they fight battles and kill on-screen monsters for hire. The factory not only sells its workers' time at the keyboard, but as the players move through the levels, they wrack up virtual gold coins and other make-believe rewards. These electronic spoils can be sold for real cash, making these games big business.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," says a 23-year-old garner who works in the Fuzhou factory. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had."

There are now perhaps thousands of gaming factories in China, employing, by some estimates, 100,000 young Chinese full-time. The factories are tapping into the world of "massively multiplayer online games," which involve role-playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies. More than 100 million people log on monthly to play these games, battling players around the world.

VIRTUAL ECONOMIES

The games allow players to trade currency to other players, who can then use it to buy better armor, magic spells, and other weapons to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters. Internet sites such as eBay are filled with ads from companies and individuals auctioning for real money their virtual gold or their powerful characters, called avatars.

"What we're seeing here is the emergence of virtual currencies and virtual economies," says Peter Ludlow, a professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

For the Chinese garners, though, it is not all fun. They have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses. In fact, the gaming factories resemble the thousands of textile mills and toy factories that have moved to China from other parts of the world to take advantage of China's low wages.

David Barboza covers China for The New York Times.