That scare drove every trace of sleepiness out of me. But I had no desire to speak to Wu Shaofen again. I felt deeply hurt. I had never imagined that someone who had been so warm and friendly to me during the first half of the night could turn so cold in the second. She had changed her attitude faster than the pages of a book could turn.
I wanted to cry. I knew I was in the wrong for sneaking off to the toilet so often, but she could have simply reminded me. There was no need to lose her temper like that, let alone go running to the team leader to complain about me.
The more I thought about it, the more aggrieved I felt. Then, in a moment of carelessness, I felt a sharp pain in the ring finger of my left hand. I had accidentally sliced it with the blade.
I stared blankly as the blood began to flow faster and faster, not knowing what to do. Just then, Wu Shaofen handed me a piece of medical adhesive tape.
I looked at her in disbelief. She said softly, “Put this on it.”
Remembering how she had just behaved, I hesitated, unwilling to take it.
With a helpless look, she said, “Don’t be angry with me. You’re sleepy, and so am I. When I get tired, I’m in a bad mood. Looking at this mountain of work just makes me feel irritated.”
She was right. I was sleepy, and so was she.
My expression finally softened. I took the tape, wrapped it around the cut, and went back to work.
I was already doing my best, but as a beginner, I was still much slower than the others. Our regular shift was twelve hours, which meant we should have finished at eight in the morning. But some parts delivered to the production department had been rejected, so we had to work two extra hours. We hurried to the cafeteria at eight for breakfast, then returned to the workshop and kept working until ten.
After fourteen hours on my feet, I returned to the dormitory feeling as though every bone in my body had come loose. I could barely walk in a straight line. The weather was hot, and everyone was drenched in sweat and smelled of hard work, but as soon as we got back to our room, we collapsed into bed.
When I woke up again, it was already time for dinner. I hurried to the cafeteria, ate, then returned to bed and went straight back to sleep. I wished I could even sleep through mealtimes.
At 7:25, we would have to assemble on time. Another long, miserable night was about to begin.
Since night-shift workers did not have to eat lunch, we could save one yuan and fifty cents’ worth of meal tickets each day. If I worked nights for half the month, I could save meal tickets worth 22.5 yuan. That was more than enough to exchange for everyday necessities such as laundry detergent, toothbrushes, toothpaste, shampoo, and soap.
That way, I could send my entire monthly wage home.
In fact, many people in the dormitory did exactly that. Two or three of the women were married. They often bought one serving of food and split it into two meals, or cooked their own dishes to eat with rice.
The dish they made most often was pickled vegetables. Near closing time, they would go to the market and buy cheap radishes or leafy greens, sprinkle them with salt, and pack them into a crock to pickle. A few days later, they would be ready to eat.
Like me, most of them loved spicy food. But fresh chilies were inconvenient to prepare, so they usually bought chili powder instead. All it took was a little boiling water and salt to turn it into a simple condiment.
Every now and then, someone would buy kelp, slice it into thin strips with a small knife, then sprinkle it with chili powder and salt. It made a delicious side dish.
With these tricks, they could save as much as a hundred yuan a month. Meal tickets worth a hundred yuan could be exchanged at a small shop for eighty yuan in cash.
Luo Xiaohua, who came from the mountains of Guizhou, once told us that eighty yuan could go a very long way back home. As she said it, her face glowed with happiness.
Luo Xiaohua was thirty-five that year. She was one of the earliest employees at Liangguang Factory. When the factory opened twelve years earlier, it had only a little over seventy workers. Now it employed more than a thousand.
The workforce had grown more than tenfold, yet her basic wage had increased by only sixty-eight yuan. Meanwhile, the price of a pound of pork or rice had more than tripled. Government employees’ salaries had risen to more than five times their former levels.
Twelve years earlier, she had earned only two or three hundred yuan a month. In recent years, overtime pay had been calculated separately, and with the health allowance, night-shift pay, and other extras, she could now take home more than six hundred yuan a month.
At Liangguang, new workers like me started with a basic wage of just 240 yuan. It went up by ten yuan each year until it reached 280, and then stopped increasing altogether.
That meant that if I worked a normal month, I could earn 240 yuan in basic wages, plus overtime pay, an attendance bonus, the health allowance, night-shift pay, and other additions. Altogether, I could make around 500 yuan a month.
Of course, that depended on meeting every condition: no arriving late, no leaving early, no asking for time off, no skipping work, and no breaking a single factory rule.
To someone like me, who had only just arrived in Dongguan, five hundred yuan was no small sum. Compared with the roughly two hundred yuan I had earned at my previous job, it was more than double.
Thinking about it that way, I began to feel that working at this factory was actually a pretty good deal, despite the long hours of overtime, the grueling night shifts, and the strict, military-style management.
Since Lijuan and I worked in different workshops, and she was on the regular day shift, we barely saw each other during those first two weeks. Whenever we happened to cross paths, we exchanged only a few hurried words before rushing off again. We were simply too busy.
Every day, I rushed between the workshop, the cafeteria, and the dormitory. I barely had time to think. Before long, I had settled into the factory’s tightly scheduled routine.
Wu Shaofen and I slept in the same bunk bed, one above the other. We were also often assigned to the same injection-molding machine, so we were almost inseparable.
After half a month, our shift finally changed to days. Wu Shaofen’s boyfriend, Lu Meng, changed shifts with us too. As a material handler, he spent his days covered in a thick layer of dust, from his clothes to his hair.
What surprised me was that, despite handling all kinds of plastic materials all day long, he wore a mask only occasionally.
Wu Shaofen told me that the factory issued one mask every two months. If you lost it, you had to pay for a replacement yourself. That was why he often worked without one.
Everyone knew that plastic dust was harmful to the body. Even those of us who sat in front of the injection-molding machines—the so-called pi gong workers—were exposed to unhealthy fumes and odors for hours on end.
Everyone understood the risks. Yet for the sake of the thirty-yuan monthly health allowance, plenty of people were still eager to get into the injection-molding department.
There were no days off in that department. We changed shifts every half month, and the day of the change was treated as our day off.
On that day, I slept almost the entire time. I did not get up until dinner.
Fortunately, Lijuan finished work relatively early that evening, so the two of us went out for a stroll. We had no money to buy much of anything, but we were happy just to be out together.
By the time I returned to the dormitory, it was already past nine.
The moment I stepped inside, Luo Xiaohua and the others began winking at me, their faces full of mystery.
In our dormitory, each woman’s bed was her own little world. Everyone had a mosquito net hanging around her bed all year long, and most people also had curtains. Usually, the curtains were drawn only when someone was sleeping or changing clothes.
But now, at the liveliest time of the evening, Wu Shaofen’s mosquito net and bed curtains were drawn tightly shut.
Puzzled, I followed Luo Xiaohua and the others’ gaze. In front of Wu Shaofen’s bed stood a pair of purple square-toed leather shoes that she wore all the time.
And beside them was a pair of black leather shoes that clearly belonged to a man.
A man was in Wu Shaofen’s bed!
The thought flashed through my mind. I looked questioningly at Luo Xiaohua. She gave me a sly smile and raised a finger to her lips, signaling me to keep quiet.
There was no doubt about it. The man was Lu Meng.
I climbed quietly onto my bed to get a change of clothes, then carefully pulled the bucket and washbasin I used for bathing out from beneath Wu Shaofen’s bed.
I hoped Lu Meng would leave the dormitory while I was showering and washing my clothes.
As I reached for the bucket, I saw Wu Shaofen’s bed move. The motion made the bed above me creak and groan. Then a muffled moan came from Wu Shaofen’s lower bunk.
The others had heard it too. Some exchanged knowing smiles, while others frowned in disgust.
I practically fled toward the washroom.
I had slept all day, and after getting used to working nights, my body clock had not yet adjusted to the day shift. I was wide awake.
After showering, I started washing my clothes. I was nearly finished when Luo Xiaohua came into the washroom carrying her own toiletries.
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