Country Driving [164]
Initiative mattered most, regardless of how bosses imagined ideal employees. Often they made them sound like automatons—over and over, Boss Wang and others told me that they wanted applicants to be young, inexperienced, and uneducated. They didn’t want distinctive hairstyles; they didn’t want people with hobbies; they didn’t need opinions on the work floor. But the truth was that even the most pragmatic boss was susceptible to a strong personality. By the second day, the bra ring factory had already filled its potential worker list, and Mr. Gao turned people away at the door. He told one young woman that he’d add her to the backup list, but she lingered in the office.
“Can’t you put me on the regular list?” she said.
“I told you, it’s full. I’ll put you on the second list. If somebody decides not to work, we’ll call you.”
She smiled sweetly and said, “Just switch my name with somebody else’s.”
“I can’t do that. We already have enough. We have nineteen workers for that job.”
“I’ve already worked in a factory. I’m a good worker.”
“Where did you work?”
“Guangdong.”
“So young and you’re already experienced!”
The woman’s card identified her as Tao Yuran, born in 1988. She was only seventeen, barely old enough according to Chinese law, which requires factory workers to be at least sixteen. Tao had short-cropped hair and lively eyes; unlike many job-seekers, she looked directly at the older man when she spoke. She couldn’t resist fiddling with the bra rings—nobody could—but she handled them differently from the other applicants. She picked up a few and held them tight, as if they were pieces in a game she was determined to win.
“Just change a name,” she said. “Why does it matter?”
“I can’t do that,” Mr. Gao said.
“I would have come yesterday if I’d known.”
“I’ll make sure you’re first on the second list,” he said. He scribbled her name at the top of the paper. “See, I even wrote ‘good girl’ next to your name!”
But Tao refused to be patronized. She remained beside the desk, clutching the rings and pleading her case. After five minutes Mr. Gao stopped responding. He busied himself with paperwork, ignoring the woman, but she still kept pleading. “Just switch my name,” she said.
Mr. Gao said nothing.
“Can’t you just add it to the list?”
Silence.
“What does it matter?”
Silence.
“I’ll work well. I’ve already worked in Guangdong.”
Silence.
“None of those people will know you’ve changed it!”
Finally, after a full ten minutes, Mr. Gao relented. He added her name, but then he looked at the list and the Wenzhou superstition came into play. “Now it’s ershi,” he said. “Twenty. That’s a bad-sounding number—too much like esi, starving to death. I’ll have to add another name after yours.”
Tao thanked him and dropped the sweaty rings onto the desk. She was almost out the door when Mr. Gao called out a warning. “Remember, it’s the boss’s final decision,” he said. “If the boss says twenty-one is too many, then it’ll have to be nineteen.”
The woman walked back to the desk, her jaw set. “Move my name up the list.”
Five minutes later, after another one-sided conversation, Tao Yuran’s name was squarely in the middle of the sheet. She left triumphant; the older man looked faintly exhausted. After she was gone, he turned to me and shook his head in admiration. “That girl,” he said, “knows how to get things done.”
In time, the bosses would learn that the young woman wasn’t at all who she claimed to be. She had no experience; she had never worked in a factory; she hadn’t been anywhere near Guangdong Province. She wasn’t seventeen and she wasn’t Tao Yuran. That