I nodded repeatedly and let out a long sigh of relief. Taking back my ID card, I hurried out of the factory as though I had just been granted a pardon.
I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs:
"I've got a job! I finally have a job, too!"
It wasn't until I walked out of the gate that I noticed the factory's name: Yongxin Handicrafts Factory.
I returned to the entrance of Brightlight and waited for a long time before Lijuan finally came out with the other girls.
When I told her how simple my interview had been, she could hardly believe it.
Their recruitment process had been extremely complicated. First, they had to take a written test. One person who couldn't write had even been turned away. After that, a security guard had put them through some basic drills, including marching in place, turning left, and turning right.
Brightlight also required a deposit of one hundred yuan.
Fortunately, Chen Gang had given Lijuan one hundred yuan the night before, so she was able to pay it. In return, she received meal tickets for three days, worth four yuan per day, giving her a total of twelve yuan in meal tickets.
Those who hadn't paid the deposit received no meal tickets.
She told me that someone from the personnel department had taken them on a tour of the factory. The premises were enormous. The factory had been established ten years earlier, when it had only seventy or eighty employees. Now it had grown into a large operation with more than a thousand workers, and it was expected to expand even further.
As she told me all this, Lijuan's cheeks were flushed, and her face glowed with excitement.
Thinking about the shabby, rundown factory I had just entered, I felt a sour ache in my heart.
I could only console myself with the old saying that gold would shine wherever it went.
As for what kind of light it would give off, or how it would shine, I had absolutely no idea.
There was something else, too. I had to find that bastard Qi Huaiyi. I was determined to find him.
But Dongguan, the Pearl River Delta, and Guangdong as a whole were so vast that finding one person was like searching for a needle in the ocean.
When all my hopes and plans for the future had turned to nothing, what more could I possibly ask for?
Chen Gang had finished rushing through a large order some time earlier and had now gone on temporary leave. He wasn't allowed to return home, however, and had to remain available in case the factory called him back to work overtime.
As he had told me before, when there was no work, he received only ten yuan a day for living expenses.
So he had quite a bit of free time at the moment.
When Lijuan and I returned, dragging our exhausted feet, Chen Gang was chatting in the room with A Ling and her husband.
I noticed that A Ling's husband's face was covered in blue and purple bruises.
It turned out that A Ling and her husband had spent the entire night in the public security team's detention facility.
During the previous day's crackdown, the authorities had arrested not only migrant workers from other provinces but also people from Guangdong itself. The only ones exempt were local residents of the city.
Because they weren't allowed to change their clothes, many people had been dragged away in their pajamas.
First, several hundred people had been made to squat in an open area. Anyone who paid 250 yuan could leave. Those who refused or couldn't pay were taken to the public security team's offices.
To prevent anyone from escaping along the way, each person was tied to a rope. A huge procession of people, all connected one after another, made its way through the streets. The sight was quite spectacular.
The public security team's not particularly large room had been packed with more than two hundred people the previous night.
There were so many of them that they could barely find enough space to squat down.
The concrete floor was freezing cold. There were mosquitoes everywhere, and the weather was unbearably hot. Men and women were crammed together in the same room. There were all kinds of people, and every imaginable kind of smell.
Because the authorities were afraid that the detainees might escape, nobody was allowed to use the toilet.
As time passed, some people began relieving themselves inside the room. At first, it was only the men. Later, many of the women could no longer hold it in either.
There was nothing they could do.
In order to maintain control and prevent the detainees from escaping, the public security team refused to provide a separate toilet.
And so it went on. One group of people after another was brought in, while others were gradually collected and taken away by their employers or relatives.
A Ling was finally retrieved by her factory the following morning.
Her husband had suffered much worse.
He had never been arrested before for failing to obtain a health certificate. In fact, nobody had ever told them that they needed one.
So when he was arrested the previous night, he lost his temper and started arguing with the officers.
The result was that several members of the public security team beat him until his face was swollen and bruised.
If one of the officers hadn't happened to come from the same county as them, he might have been beaten much more severely.
Anyone held at the public security team's facility for more than three days without someone paying to secure their release would be sent to Zhangmutou to perform three months of forced labor before being deported to their place of origin.
The three months of labor were unpaid. Supposedly, the work was meant to cover the cost of sending them back home.
Under normal circumstances, obtaining a temporary residence permit cost eighty yuan per person.
But if you were arrested and then had to pay for your release, it was no longer a matter of simply paying eighty yuan.
Those who behaved politely and had connections could get away with paying one or two hundred yuan.
Those who had a bad attitude or no connections could end up paying much more.
For people involved in pyramid schemes or prostitution, however, the amounts were generally fixed.
Pyramid scheme participants had to pay 1,200 yuan per person, while prostitutes had to pay 800 yuan.
Not a single cent less.
Those who were forced to squat in the large detention room were considered relatively fortunate.
Some hotheaded young men who didn't know any better were not only fined but also beaten.
After A Ling was released, she became frightened that her husband might be beaten again. She immediately asked her employer for leave and hurried off to borrow money from fellow villagers to secure his release.
Fortunately, one of her fellow villagers knew some local people.
And since they had only lacked a health certificate, rather than a temporary residence permit or a marriage certificate, their situation wasn't considered as serious.
In the end, she managed to get her husband released for just 250 yuan.
They were among the lucky ones.
People who lived together without being legally married were considered to be breaking the law. Almost all such cases were treated as prostitution, and the money demanded was no longer a few hundred yuan.
It could run into thousands or even tens of thousands.
As A Ling and her husband spoke, I noticed a flicker of relief in their eyes.
After hearing her story, Lijuan and I exchanged bewildered looks.
We were only two people trying to make our way in the world on our own two feet.
But the soles of our feet had been badly scraped the previous night, and we were now both limping. We looked terribly awkward as we walked.
Even that awkward way of walking was becoming more than I could bear.
Our bottled mineral water had run out. Fortunately, we spotted a leaking water pipe at a construction site up ahead.
We hurried over, secretly drank our fill, and then filled a bottle of water for each of us.
We didn't run away until the construction workers came over to chase us off, scurrying away like two frightened rabbits.
We refused to overlook a single factory.
We walked from one industrial zone to another, but there was hardly any difference between them.
Most industrial zones consisted of numerous factories, with a small marketplace on the outskirts. These little commercial areas contained restaurants, clothing shops, and all sorts of other businesses.
The shops were tiny and dimly lit, and the streets were in terrible condition.
Large factories were relatively rare. Most were small or medium-sized operations.
Some were filthy and dilapidated, with machinery rumbling incessantly inside.
We often saw workers emerging from these factories, each of them looking as grimy and worn-out as the places where they worked.
Sometimes, we could smell a pungent, strange odor from a factory long before we reached it.
We had no idea what the smell was, but having studied chemistry, we knew that such odors were almost certainly harmful to human health.
How could factories that were so obviously hazardous be allowed to operate openly in densely populated areas?
Was there really nobody who could do anything about it?
Perhaps there were simply too many people pouring in from the inland provinces.
Even ordinary factory jobs now seemed to require experienced workers.
Although we were exhausted, we continued searching from factory to factory under the scorching sun.
Neither of us wanted to spend another day cooped up in that rented room.
It wasn't until three o'clock in the afternoon that we finally stopped outside a Taiwanese-owned plastics and electronics factory.
The place appeared to be fairly large. Although there was still a pungent, unpleasant smell, the premises looked reasonably clean and orderly.
Most importantly, we met their requirements for ordinary workers:
Female applicants, aged eighteen to twenty-five, with a junior high school education, good health, and regular facial features.
The advertised salary was more than 500 yuan a month.
The factory was called Brightlight Plastics and Electronics.
Its buildings were relatively new, and the premises covered a fairly large area. The security office beside the entrance looked rather dim and gloomy.
Like many factories, it had an electric gate, with the security office on the left.
Outside the window facing the main road, more than a dozen young women were already waiting in line for job interviews.
Most of them looked just as timid and awkward as we did. They were shy, reserved, and dressed in clothes that looked rather old-fashioned.
One girl standing ahead of us particularly caught my attention.
She wore jeans and a T-shirt, with her long, beautiful hair hanging loose over her shoulders. A thin layer of makeup covered her face, and she was exceptionally pretty.
At a glance, I could tell she had already spent some time working away from home.
Sure enough, while we waited for the interviews to begin, she chatted freely with the others.
She was from Jiangxi Province and had actually worked at this very factory before.
After leaving, she had gone around looking for another suitable job, but hadn't found one.
Since she still had many fellow villagers working here, she had decided to come back.
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