Thinking about how shabby and run-down the factory I had ended up in was, I felt a dull ache in my heart.
I could only console myself with the old saying that gold would shine wherever it was.
As for what kind of light it would give off, or how exactly it was supposed to shine, I had absolutely no idea.
There was something else, too.
I had to find that damned Qi Huaiyi.
I had to find him.
But in the vastness of Dongguan, the Pearl River Delta, and Guangdong as a whole, trying to find one particular person was like searching for a needle in the ocean.
Yet when all my hopes, dreams, and plans for the future had turned to ashes, what else could I possibly ask for?
Chen Gang had finished a rush order some time ago and had now been given a few days off.
But he couldn't go home. He had to remain available in case the factory suddenly needed workers to rush another order.
As he had told us before, when he wasn't working, he received only ten yuan a day for living expenses.
So he was relatively free at the moment.
When Lijuan and I dragged our exhausted feet back to the room, Chen Gang was chatting with A-Ling and her husband.
I immediately noticed that A-Ling's husband's face was covered in purple and blue bruises.
It turned out that A-Ling and her husband had spent the entire night at the local security station.
The previous night, the patrolmen had carried out another round of arrests.
They weren't just arresting people from other provinces—even people from Guangdong itself were being taken away.
The only ones exempt were local residents of the city.
Because people were not allowed to go back and change clothes, many had been dragged out of their rooms still wearing pajamas.
First, several hundred people had been made to squat together in an open area.
Those who paid 250 yuan were allowed to leave.
Those who didn't pay were taken to the security station.
To prevent anyone from escaping along the way, each person was tied to a rope.
A long procession of people, all tethered together, was a startling sight.
The security station's room wasn't particularly large, yet more than two hundred people had been packed inside that night.
There were so many people that they couldn't even find enough room to squat down.
The concrete floor was freezing cold.
There were mosquitoes everywhere.
The weather was hot.
Men and women were crowded together in the same room—every kind of person, carrying every kind of smell.
And because the patrolmen were afraid someone might escape, nobody was allowed to use the toilet.
As the hours dragged on, some people could no longer hold it and began relieving themselves right there in the room.
At first, it was only the men.
Later, many of the women couldn't hold it either.
There was nothing they could do.
In order to tighten control and prevent anyone who had been arrested from escaping, the security station simply did not provide another toilet.
And so it went.
People were brought in batch after batch, while others were gradually collected and taken away.
A-Ling was picked up by her factory early the next morning.
Her husband was less fortunate.
He had never been arrested before for not having a health certificate. No one had ever told them they needed one.
So when he was arrested the previous night, he lost his temper and started arguing with the patrolmen.
Several of them beat him until his face was swollen and bruised.
In the end, if one of the patrolmen hadn't happened to come from the same county as them, who knew how badly he might have been beaten?
Anyone who remained at the security station for more than three days without someone coming to pay for their release would be sent to Zhangmutou to perform three months of hard labor.
After that, they would be deported back to their place of origin.
They received not a single cent for those three months of labor.
People said the unpaid labor was considered payment for the cost of sending them home.
Under normal circumstances, a temporary-residence permit cost eighty yuan per person.
But if you were arrested first and then had to pay to get out, it was no longer a matter of eighty yuan.
If you were cooperative and had connections, one or two hundred yuan might be enough.
If you were difficult or had no connections, you could forget about getting out so easily.
For people involved in pyramid schemes or prostitution, however, the prices were said to be much more fixed.
Pyramid-scheme workers cost 1,200 yuan per person.
Women arrested for prostitution cost 800 yuan.
Not a single yuan less.
The people crowded into the main room of the security station were considered relatively lucky.
Some hotheaded young men who didn't know when to keep their mouths shut were not only fined but beaten as well.
After A-Ling was released, she became terrified that her husband might be beaten inside.
She immediately asked for leave from work and borrowed money from fellow villagers to pay for his release.
Fortunately, one of her fellow villagers knew someone local.
And because their only offense was lacking a health certificate—not something considered as serious as lacking a temporary-residence permit or marriage certificate—they were able to get him out for just 250 yuan.
They were among the lucky ones.
For unmarried couples living together, the situation was much worse.
That was considered illegal, and they were often treated as though they had been arrested for prostitution.
Then it was no longer a matter of a few hundred yuan.
It could cost thousands or even tens of thousands.
As A-Ling and her husband told us this, a flicker of relief passed through their eyes.
Listening to them, Lijuan and I couldn't help shuddering.
If we had been arrested along with everyone else the night before, we might still have been squatting in that room right now.
We had Wang Lei to thank for that.
Wang Lei had just left that morning.
His upper bunk already had another occupant—a woman in her forties who was lying there exhausted, her face filled with worry.
Chen Gang wasn't impressed with the jobs we had found.
He said the electronics factory A-Ling had found paid far too little.
As for the factory I had found, he said bluntly that it was basically a black factory—a place that made its money by squeezing workers' wages.
Still, at least I had somewhere to stay.
More importantly, I had food and a roof over my head.
In the end, we made a plan.
Every year at the beginning of the year, Chen Gang's factory had a major recruitment drive.
When that time came, we could try again.
As for my factory, once my foot had healed, I would quit and move over to Lijuan's factory.
That way, we could work in the same place and at least look out for each other.
Early the next morning, I borrowed 100 yuan from Chen Gang.
Then I moved out of the rented room where I had lived for more than half a month.
Lijuan and I each carried our bundles of luggage and headed separately into our respective factories.
The security guard was the same man as the day before.
He led me into the second floor of another building.
The staircase was narrow and filthy, but I still found it strangely exciting.
It was the first time in my nineteen years that I had ever climbed a staircase.
When I reached the second floor, I found a long corridor lined with rooms on both sides.
I had been assigned to Room 206.
The room was much larger than I had expected.
There were eight bunk beds—sixteen beds in all.
Only one bed was empty: an upper bunk in the farthest corner.
Everyone else in the room had already gone to work.
I had barely put my luggage down when the security guard urged me to hurry to work.
The workplace was the same large room where I had interviewed the previous day.
Miss Zhao, the woman who had hired me, was still sitting behind that same desk.
Today she was wearing a white dress, her long hair falling loosely over her shoulders.
She was extraordinarily beautiful.
The dingy, chaotic, gray room seemed completely incapable of dimming her radiance.
I assumed this was what people meant by a white-collar worker.
I couldn't help admiring her.
Miss Zhao took my thirty-yuan deposit and my ID card.
Then she led me to an empty table and instructed a short-haired girl with large eyes to teach me.
She herself walked away.
The table was nothing more than a few pieces of rough wood nailed together.
The stool was higher on one side than the other, and sitting on it made you feel as though you might lose your balance at any moment.
The big-eyed girl introduced herself as A-Xiang.
She was warm and friendly, her eyes darting around constantly, giving her a bright, clever look.
The job itself was incredibly simple.
There were only two kinds of tiny metal components on the table.
Our job was simply to connect the two pieces carefully by hand.
It was best to do the work on our laps because if we weren't careful, the tiny pieces would come apart again.
Put simply, we were making watchbands—the kind of watchband people in my hometown called a “tank chain.”
Only then did I understand what the three machines in the room were for.
We connected the little pieces until we had a strip about a meter long, then placed it on the table.
Every so often, someone would come around to collect the strips and count them.
Afterward, they were placed beside those machines.
The machines then pressed the links tightly together, making sure they would no longer come apart.
We were paid by the piece.
I asked A-Xiang how much each piece paid.
She said she wasn't really sure.
A skilled worker could earn a little over 200 yuan a month, with the highest-paid workers making about 240 yuan.
Of course, as beginners, people like us would probably make only a little over 100 yuan at first.
But after two months, we could get up to 200 yuan.
Most of the factory's work involved making these watchbands.
Sometimes they also took orders for necklaces and bracelets.
I drew in a sharp breath when I heard that.
No wonder Chen Gang sometimes said his factory was working itself to death trying to meet orders, yet he still called it a good factory.
Two hundred yuan a month.
It was practically making a living by drinking workers' blood.
But I was a new employee.
There was no way I dared say any of that out loud.
Connecting the tiny metal pieces didn't require any complicated skill.
Anyone could learn it almost immediately.
The real issue was speed and familiarity.
A-Xiang and the people around her worked incredibly fast.
That morning, I managed to connect five strips.
Most of them had already finished ten.
They said that anyone who could make twelve strips in a morning was considered a fast worker.
评论
发表评论