In that sense, I was standing on the same starting line as those college graduates, wasn’t I?
Just as I was thinking this, Section Chief Ma came into the room. He wanted to take a batch of lenses I had just sorted out to the senior manager in charge of production for inspection.
As he had instructed, I had arranged the lenses neatly on a sheet of white paper about the size of an A4 sheet. The problem now was how to carry that sheet of paper to the manager without disturbing the arrangement of the lenses.
I had long known that Section Chief Ma had earned his position through eight or nine years of experience operating injection-molding machines. In fact, he had never even finished junior middle school.
Now, faced with the sheet of paper covered with neatly arranged lenses, he was clearly at a loss. He tried several different methods, but none worked, so he began asking Xiang Li for advice.
Xiang Li was even more clumsy. At one point, she nearly scattered the lenses and ruined their carefully arranged positions.
Section Chief Ma gave an irritated snort and waved her aside. But he was still no closer to solving the problem himself.
When he finally turned his gaze toward me, I knew my opportunity had arrived.
Confidently, I picked up a cardboard box that had been used to hold lenses. It was slightly larger than the sheet of paper. I placed the box flat beside the paper, then carefully slid the sheet into it.
The paper slipped into the box smoothly, and every lens remained exactly where it was.
It was one of the simplest applications of displacement in physics. I couldn't help wondering why Xiang Li, a college graduate, hadn't thought of it.
When Section Chief Ma saw the lenses lying perfectly undisturbed inside the box, he smiled and nodded at me.
Xiang Li looked at me with admiration, though there was a complicated expression on her face.
Suddenly, I remembered why I had come to Dongguan in the first place.
My first goal was to find that damned Hunan man, Qi Huaiyi, and avenge the thirty-eight people from my hometown.
My second goal was to prove myself. I had never made it to university, but I believed that gold would always shine eventually. With my intelligence and hard work, I was determined to realize my own worth.
Put more bluntly, I wanted to do better in life than the classmates who had gone to university.
Looking back, I felt that coming to Dongguan had been the right decision. Almost everyone from Hunan who went away to find work seemed to head for Guangdong, and Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan were among the most popular destinations.
Dongguan lay between Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Generally speaking, its public security was not as good as that of either city. In such a chaotic, mixed-up place, it was easier than one might imagine for someone to disappear into the crowd.
Even so, finding a particular person in a city as large as Dongguan was no easy task.
The first thing I had to do was establish myself here.
After what had happened that day, I felt more confident than ever. If I was clever enough and willing to work hard, I believed I could make something of myself.
What I hadn't expected was that things would move so quickly.
The very next morning, during our early assembly, Section Chief Ma announced that I would be taking over as the production statistician for Shift B.
Every head in the group turned toward me at once.
I was just as surprised as everyone else and didn't know how to react.
The output of the more than forty injection-molding machines in our department was recorded by dedicated statisticians. They had all started out as pi gong workers.
Our current statistician, Wenxiu, and the statistician on the other shift were both exceptionally pretty young women. Both also had influential connections within the factory.
So when I was promoted so soon after joining, it was hardly surprising that everyone was astonished.
In fact, Wenxiu had volunteered to give up the position.
Her family came from a remote mountain village, where the primary school she attended had used a multigrade classroom with only one teacher responsible for pupils of different ages.
She had wanted to study hard, but the teacher himself had only graduated from junior middle school. How much could she possibly have learned under those circumstances?
After Wenxiu joined the factory, Section Chief Ma arranged for her to become a statistician because he was her uncle. But she struggled with the reports, which were often a complete mess. As a result, both Zhang Pei and Section Chief Ma had repeatedly scolded her.
Wenxiu said she didn't care about being a statistician at all. She would rather return to being a pi gong worker. The work might be harder and more exhausting, but at least there would be less pressure.
Looking at the relieved expression on Wenxiu's face, I felt a mixture of emotions—for her and for myself.
Yes, it wasn't that she and I lacked ambition. It wasn't that we had been born content to live in poverty.
So many circumstances beyond our control had held us back, making it difficult for us to improve our lives or escape poverty.
As Wenxiu herself admitted, she really wasn't good with numbers. But when it came to trimming the rough edges off molded plastic parts, she was both fast and skillful.
And when she taught me how to prepare the production reports, she was patient and thorough, explaining every detail.
When I took the paper, pen, ruler, and calculator from her hands, I was overwhelmed by emotion.
For a time, those things had been lost to me. Now they were back in my hands.
I was determined never to let them slip away again.
But would my hands be able to hold on to them forever?
Although the statistician's wages, benefits, and working conditions were exactly the same as those of the pi gong workers, the job was relatively easy by injection-molding workshop standards. I even had a little desk of my own.
My daily task was to record the output of all forty-six injection-molding machines every hour.
The number of parts each machine produced could be calculated from its operating time. Most of the pi gong workers also kept an accurate mental record of their own output. As long as I knew how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and calculate percentages, the job was straightforward.
Besides, all forty-six machines were rarely running at the same time, so I often had plenty of free time.
My new position brought me into closer contact with Zhang Pei, our team leader. His own job was relatively easy, and he liked teasing me.
“Looks like you can slack off again!”
The first time he said it, I naively asked, “Where are there any fish in the workshop for me to catch?”
He and several people standing nearby burst out laughing.
From their laughter, I realized I had misunderstood him. I then wondered whether mo yu was simply an abbreviation for Mo Yu'er, the name of a traditional Chinese lyric tune.
It took me a while to discover that I was overthinking it.
At our factory, mo yu—literally, “feeling for fish”—meant slacking off, wandering around, or simply passing the time without doing much work.
Apparently, the Taiwanese employees at the factory liked using the expression. It was so vivid, apt, and playful that many mainland Chinese workers had adopted it too.
Generally speaking, the atmosphere was stricter on the day shift. From the boss and section chiefs to the personnel staff, inspectors, and security guards, everyone seemed to keep their eyes wide open, constantly roaming around the factory grounds and monitoring our every word and action.
Fines could be imposed at the slightest pretext.
The night shift was different. Even when security guards came by to make their rounds, they were mostly going through the motions. We were practically left to our own devices.
As long as we didn't go too far, Zhang Pei didn't stop us either.
After all, the night shift was terribly hard to endure.
Eighty or ninety percent of the factory workers were women, particularly in the production and injection-molding departments.
But in the production department, most women sat tightly packed along assembly lines. Even going to the toilet required an exit pass.
Each assembly line had only two passes, meaning no more than two workers from the same line could be away at the same time. The rules also stipulated that toilet breaks during working hours could not exceed five minutes.
Under such conditions, it was almost impossible to find an opportunity to whisper privately with the women on the assembly lines.
Our injection-molding department was different. Usually, only one or two women worked beside each machine, which was why the security guards patrolling the factory at night particularly liked visiting our department.
I never forgot why I had come to Dongguan, so I wasn't particularly talkative. Whether I was dealing with Zhang Pei, the workshop technicians, or the security guards, I always remained polite but kept my distance.
Over time, they stopped making much effort to talk to me.
Strangely, though, Li Lianping always greeted me with exaggerated warmth whenever he saw me, as if we were close relatives who had known each other for several lifetimes.
Lijuan repeatedly reminded me that Li Lianping and we came from neighboring counties. But whenever I remembered the way he had treated Jin Sanling that time, I couldn't bring myself to like him.
After several attempts to strike up a conversation with me ended awkwardly, Li Lianping finally seemed to realize how coolly I treated him.
Then, one night, just before the supper break, he approached my desk with a mysterious air.
Looking around furtively, he slipped three supper tickets onto my desk and announced triumphantly,
“These are all yours!”
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