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By Root 3901 0

the bra ring factory was one of the local companies that was hiring for the first time, and Boss Wang and Boss Gao interviewed applicants in the second-floor office. Like everything else in the factory, the office had been designed in a rush, and the furnishings felt temporary. A dirty carpet had been tossed across the cement floor, and there was a cheap couch, a low tea table, a pair of wooden desks, and two potted plants that already appeared to be dying from neglect. Brilliantly colored bra rings had been scattered atop one of the desks. They were the only spots of brightness in the room, and whenever a job applicant asked about the factory’s product, Boss Wang pushed a few rings across the desk, like a croupier in a casino. “Clothing accessories for underwear,” he would say. And often that explanation was enough, especially for female applicants, who recognized the product instantly. Only men had to be told what the rings were for.

The factory offered a starting wage of three and a half yuan per hour, which was a little more than forty cents. In Lishui, that was the legal minimum. China doesn’t have a nationwide standard—because of wide regional disparities in wealth, each city sets its own minimum wage. In 2006, a more developed place like Guangzhou had a minimum of 4.3 yuan per hour, but that didn’t guarantee that workers earned more money. In advanced cities, low-level jobs might be harder to find, or hours might be fewer. This is a key detail for workers, who care about hours as much as they care about the starting wage. Most people want to work as much as possible—since they’re away from home, there’s no point in having free weekends or holidays. They’re pleased to hear that a factory offers overtime hours, and the perfect job is one in which an employee can expect no vacation days apart from major national holidays, such as the Spring Festival. Sometimes an assembly-line worker told me proudly that she was clocking nearly three hundred hours per month. In that situation, Lishui’s hourly minimum became a monthly wage of one hundred and twenty dollars—excellent money for an uneducated migrant.

In truth, Boss Wang didn’t know how many hours he could offer, or even how many workers he needed, because it would all be determined by the demand for his product. But he told applicants what they wanted to hear: he assured them they’d have at least ten hours of labor every day, and no more than one day’s vacation every month. That was the Lishui version of a boss’s empty promise—he soothingly told applicants he’d work them to the bone, when in fact they might get stuck with only forty hours a week. The smarter applicants asked how long the company had been in the business, and many people inquired about the production process. Often a woman said, “Are there any fumes here?” In Lishui, that’s shorthand for DMF, the solvent used in pleather factories. Word had already spread about the risks, and even uneducated newcomers had a surprisingly accurate understanding. Women who hadn’t yet had children usually avoided working with pleather, because of rumors that the chemicals cause birth defects. And men only worked there if the money was good—pleather factories had to offer more than the minimum wage.

At the bra ring factory, Boss Gao’s father helped with hiring, and he let me sit in his office while he interviewed workers. Most applicants were teenagers, and they stood with their heads down, mumbling answers. They fiddled nervously with the bra rings—everybody who entered the room invariably fixated on these colorful objects. But occasionally there was an applicant who stood out from the rest. During one interview, Mr. Gao asked a woman for her age, and she said, “Do you mean my real age, or the age that’s on my identity card?”

“What does your identity card say?”

“It says I’m twenty-five, but that’s not right. I had it changed when I first went out to work, because I was too young. That was many years ago. Now I’m really twenty-three.”

Mr. Gao nodded and added her name to the list of qualified workers. It reflected how quickly