Several others were taken away at the same time. Some did not have temporary-residence permits, while even more were caught without health certificates. There were also unmarried couples who were living together without marriage certificates.
Around here, it was perfectly normal for two people who had decided to be together to live under the same roof. But without a marriage certificate, it was considered illegal cohabitation. Once the matter was treated as a legal violation, the fines were no longer just a hundred or two hundred yuan. A whole chain of consequences could follow. If they failed to show up for work that day, they could be treated as absent without leave and fined by the factory. In more serious cases, they could even be accused of prostitution and risk being fired.
Lijuan and I both drew a sharp breath when we heard this.
When Chen Gang came back after work, Lijuan was no longer in the mood to be nice to him.
“When are we actually going to be able to get into your factory?”
Chen Gang, who had looked listless a moment earlier, lowered his head. After stammering for a while, he finally said, “Actually, we got paid yesterday. I asked our supervisor to talk to the personnel department for you, but they said there won't be any more work once this batch is finished. It's the off-season now. They aren't hiring. They might even have to lay people off again.”
“What? They're not hiring anymore?” Lijuan jumped to her feet and cried out sharply. “Then what are we supposed to do? We've already been here for half a month!”
Chen Gang's face immediately turned red.
“I... I can't do anything about it either. Why don't you two try looking for something yourselves first?”
Over the past half month, Lijuan and Chen Gang had grown quite close. In fact, I had often seen Chen Gang secretly kiss her, while Lijuan had begun looking at him with growing affection.
But now Chen Gang's earlier promise had turned out to be empty words. Naturally, Lijuan was anxious, and I was just as worried.
Just then, Wang Lei hurried into the room.
When she saw him, Lijuan's expression softened. She turned to Chen Gang and said, “Do you know that we only avoided getting into trouble last night because of Wang Lei? If it hadn't been for him, you'd have had to pay money to get yourself released today.”
Chen Gang quickly stepped forward and said warmly, “Thank you. Let me buy you lunch.”
Wang Lei did not even look up.
“No. I'm leaving this place right now.”
He said it without another word and began packing his bedding and belongings.
I asked enviously, “Did you find a job?”
“No.”
His answer was brief and cold. His distant attitude made it impossible for us to say anything more.
He had very little luggage. In no time at all, he had packed everything. Then he put the room key on the table and said expressionlessly, “Give this to A-Ling. She'll return it to the landlord.”
I had always thought he was difficult to get along with. But he had been the first person I met after coming to Dongguan. The thought that we were now going our separate ways, perhaps never to see each other again, made me unexpectedly sad.
Looking at his tall, thin back as he walked away, I sensed a trace of loneliness and helplessness in him. This quiet young man from Hubei must have had a heavy burden on his mind, just as I did.
Lijuan stared at the empty bed he had left behind and muttered unhappily, “What a strange guy.”
Chen Gang said cautiously, “Forget about other people's business. What are you two going to do?”
Lijuan rolled her eyes at him.
“How should I know? Why don't you tell me?”
Despite her anger, it was Chen Gang who eventually came up with an idea.
We shouldn't go too far. We could first find some kind of job nearby and use it as a temporary foothold. Then, once his factory started hiring again, we could transfer there.
There were all kinds of factories in Dongguan. Even a bad factory could serve as a place to get started. Once you had settled down, you could look for something better. Many people who came to Dongguan for the first time did exactly that.
There was nothing else we could do. So we decided to give it a try.
The people who had been taken away during the raid gradually returned to the compound after paying to be released. But A-Ling and her husband were nowhere to be seen, which made Lijuan and me even more frightened.
Wang Lei was gone. If another inspection came, there would be no one left to help us. The only thing we could do would be to spend another night hiding on the mountain.
But we were only two young women.
The thought of spending an entire night there terrified us.
So we decided that we had to find jobs that day. We couldn't stay in that rented room for another day.
Once we had made up our minds, we acted immediately.
Following Chen Gang's advice, we took our identity cards and diplomas, put on the newest clothes we had brought from home, filled two empty mineral-water bottles with well water, and officially began our search for work in Dongguan.
Chen Gang often worked through the night, so of course he couldn't accompany us. He only told us that if we weren't too picky, it shouldn't be difficult for two young women to find jobs around here.
The office jobs were what we wanted most.
Some factories were willing to hire high-school graduates as ordinary clerical workers, but without exception they required applicants to know how to use a computer or speak Cantonese.
At first, we refused to give up.
But after going from place to place, we finally had to let go of our hopes.
It was already October, yet the sun was still blazing. The heat was unbearable. The exposed skin on our faces hurt from the intense sunlight.
I looked at Lijuan. Her cheeks were bright red, like two ripe apples. I had no doubt that my face looked the same.
What disappointed us most was that there were very few factories with hiring notices posted outside their gates.
For lunch, we bought a one-yuan serving of fried rice noodles from a roadside stall.
The noodles were still hard and seemed barely cooked. They were oily in some places and tasteless in others, almost impossible to swallow.
But we needed to fill our stomachs, so we forced ourselves to eat them.
The middle-aged woman running the stall was from Sichuan, like us, and she was very talkative.
When she heard that we were looking for work, she told us that one of her cousins worked on an assembly line at a factory.
She also kindly explained that the peak hiring season after the Spring Festival had already passed. Recently, large numbers of students from colleges, technical schools, high schools and middle schools in the inland provinces had poured into Dongguan looking for work. As a result, most factories were already fully staffed.
On top of that, garment factories and electronics factories were both in their off-season, so finding a job at that time was especially difficult.
Lijuan and I looked at each other after hearing this.
We had been walking everywhere on our own two feet. Our feet had been scraped and bruised by the rough ground the night before, so we were now limping badly. It looked awkward, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep walking like this.
We had already finished the water in our bottles.
Fortunately, we spotted a water pipe leaking at a construction site ahead. We ran over and secretly drank our fill, then filled our bottles again.
We had just finished when some workers from the construction site came over and chased us away.
We ran off like two frightened rabbits.
We refused to let a single factory slip past us.
We walked from one industrial area to another. Yet almost all of them looked the same.
Usually, there were rows of factories, with a small market area on the edge. There would be restaurants, clothing shops and all kinds of little stores.
The shops were small and dim. The streets were shabby and badly maintained.
Large factories were rare. Most were small or medium-sized plants. Some were dirty and run-down, with the constant roar of machinery coming from inside.
We often saw workers coming out of these factories covered in grime. They looked almost as worn down as the factories they worked in.
Some factories gave off a strong, unpleasant smell even from a distance. We didn't know exactly what it was, but we had studied chemistry, so we knew that such strange odors could not be good for people's health.
We couldn't understand how factories that obviously emitted potentially harmful substances could be operating openly in densely populated areas.
Didn't anyone regulate them?
Perhaps too many people had recently poured into Dongguan from the inland provinces.
Many factories were now requiring even ordinary workers to have previous experience.
Although we were exhausted, we continued walking under the scorching sun from factory to factory.
We simply couldn't bear the thought of spending another day in that rented room.
It wasn't until three in the afternoon that we finally stopped in front of a Taiwanese-owned plastics and electronics factory.
The factory appeared to be fairly large. Although there was still a strong, unpleasant smell in the air, the place looked relatively clean and orderly.
Most importantly, we met their requirements for ordinary workers:
Female, 18–25 years old, junior middle school education or above, physically healthy, presentable appearance — 500 yuan or more per month.
For the first time that day, we felt that perhaps we had finally found somewhere we could work.
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