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Hand-to-mouth existence

"The food here is awful," says Me-Ying, "And the accommodation, too." She pays 15 renminbi (￡1) per month for her lunches and dinners, and eating them in her room which usually shared by eight to twelve people. There was no canteen for workers, but only two tables outside the office for the management with various dishes on at mealtimes. The ‘chef special’ at that night was one certain unrecognizable, brown vegetable stir-fry. Like it or not, there was only one dish in every mealtime for Me-Ying and her fellow workers. “I only spend about 80 to 90 renmibi (￡6) every month, mostly on food, and some daily necessities,” she says, “ So I can manage to send a monthly 200 renminbi (out of 300) to my parents.”

As for her free accommodation provided by the factory, comes with a hidden price. It looks like a room that embodies minimalism – six bunk beds, one window, and a door and nothing else. “If I share my bed with another, then I don’t have to pay anything,” says Me-Ying, “But the manager will charge me 30 renminbi (one tenth of her salary) per month if I occupy the bed myself.” Not surprisingly, there were two pillows on each bed in that room. Perhaps to Me-Ying, “existing” is the most appropriate term to describe her life there.

Same Shit Different Day

Me-Ying’s multi-functional room, which doubles as canteen, kitchen and sometimes her playground, is dark, damp and dusty. However, it is not totally hopeless and unchangeable – the managers chipped in some money and bought one broom for all of them to ‘clean’ their living environment (eight rooms, two bathrooms), though that one and only brush was kept at the guard’s room. Later, I headed for their toilets. Before opening the door, I was nearly repelled by its strong and extremely unpleasant smell. In fact, there was no toilet inside, but a small, yellowish, repulsive ditch which divides the molded floor in half. To use the toilet there, one has to be armed with an extra half-full bucket and of course the toilet paper too. But the situation of Me-Ying’s fellow male workers living upstairs was even worse.

There are five rooms along the wet and dark aisle. The ‘boys’ lived in the first three which were untidier. Before proceeding to see the rest, there was an old poster on the wall saying, “No urine here.” The fourth and fifth rooms were not in use and one of it was locked because the factory did not pay the rent for it. Supposedly, there ought to be nothing inside. I opened to window and only to discover the inaccessible room was filled with excrement, urine and toilet papers. “Do your managers know anything about it?” I ask a worker living next to it. "They never come here, and it does not belong to our factory," he replies. “It is not our business anyway,” says another young but faceless worker, “It has been there for a long time,” he adds and then resumes his dinner.

The fifth room was a deserted toilet and the door was left ajar. When trying to open the door, I felt something made it difficult to open. I then made an extra effort to push it and found it was stuck by some dried human excreta. The interior was full of something more than I expected to see – flies, used toilet papers, excrement and urine on the floor as well as the toilets filled with them over the brim. The dreadful living environment is a sign of robust inner state – it requires courage and strength of mind. It seems that my account of the workers’ life above can be condensed into four words – same shit, different day.

China, as a member of WTO (World Toilet Organization), loudly declares that having a loo is a human right in the fourth world toilet summit held in Beijing this year. But their public amenities are not up to the mark, or way behind, to be exact. However, the horrendous condition above (or the deprivation of human rights) neither bothers the workers, nor the factory’s customers.

CSR-free zone

"Our customers are satisfied with our quality control and the rate of production," one manager proudly states. Before placing their orders, the Japanese buyers visited the factory to see the assembly line, equipment, and had a meeting with the management. However the managers failed to show them the building opposite the factory where Me-Ying lives or to mention about the migrants’ job description. The Japanese businessmen did not ask that anyway. Rather the managers took pride in fulfilling Japan’s ‘notoriously’ strict and high demands for the quality of their products. The joy of being acknowledged by the picky Japanese businessmen is at the expense of their workers. Here, labor rights are irrelevant, silenced and a non-issue in their contract. Here, CSR is unrecognized and impenetrable.

"I quit school after graduating from primary school," says Me-Ying. Her fellow workers receive education no more than junior high because of their same poor backgrounds. They don’t know their right of association, to organize and bargain collectively, to work in the acceptable conditions, not to mention CSR. In fact, independent unions are illegal.

The sole legal workers’ organization, All-China Federation Trade Unions (ACFTU), is controlled by the Communist party and headed by a high-level party official. “It’s okay, we don’t have culture anyway,” Me-Ying states, “What difference will it make even if we know?” She has been long treated without respect, living with no dignity, and worse Me-Ying looks down on herself, thinking she does not deserve better treatment because she did not receive enough education and comes from a rural peasant family. In China, migrants are considered less civilized and held responsible for increasing crime and dirtiness in the deteriorating urban environment. Prejudice against them is common and strong, particularly among urban residents. Despite this plight, Me-Ying as well as her fellow workers, still stand firm on Deng Xiaoping’s ideal – “To get rich is glorious.”

Me-Ying is a homesick optimist and knows her hardship here may pave the way for a better life in future. And during the spring festival (the only time migrant workers return home), when she makes journey home as a heroine with stripy nylon bags full of gifts for her parents, and envelopes contain her savings along with the joy of family reunion after a year, all her hard work pays off. She is therefore forward-looking and is ready to endure such a life. Therefore, she too does not give too much thought to whether or not the factory provides any pension plan, or medical insurance, whatsoever. She just wants to make and save more money.

Sadly but hardly surprising, her willingness to work long hour for low wages plus the lack of education make her easy to exploit just like her fellow workers there. “A couple of months ago, there was a strike at a factory in Dongguan,” one manager recalls, “It happened not because of the furor over long working hours, but because of the discontent at too many holidays!” “The factory was law-abiding, but the workers just wanted to earn more money,” he concludes.

Here capitalism is raw and unregulated. The air is pungent. The rivers run black. It is not pretty, but it’s thriving. Before I left that factory, I told one Chinese manager briefly about what I saw. He smiled embarrassingly and said, “We will do something about it.” “A sincere deceiver,” I thought to myself.

The moment when Shenzhou-5, China’s first manned spacecraft, blasted off into space last October, I wonder how many Chinese laborers were hoping to bring their government down to earth. They deserve a share of the billions of renminbi space project and more attention, at least they have provided the human fuel for it behind the scenes. But it is doubtful, given Me-Ying’s experiences that this will happen soon.