Factory Girls_ From Village to City in a Changing China - Chang, Leslie T_ [33]
A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life!
But in a place with no moorings, Min was prone to wild changes in mood. She decided it wouldn’t be proper to join her boss in Beijing. He was a man, he was not family, and she didn’t trust him after all. She would stay where she was.
Production in the factory was picking up; her dorm room now housed nine people, up from six. With so many people working different shifts, it was hard to sleep at night, and Min thought again about leaving. Next door to her office was the human resources department, where Min sometimes saw people lined up for job interviews. Ten people were interviewed for every one hired, and many of them had college diplomas. Min felt lucky then to have the job she did.
The assembly-line workers in Min’s factory made 320 yuan a month. That was low for Dongguan, and it bothered Min. She always said hello to the workers but she never got to know them better. “Some of the people in the office won’t even speak to the workers, because they look down on them,” Min said. “But I used to be a worker too.”
* * *
In late May, Min sent me a message from her mobile phone. I have a pleasant surprise for you. I won’t tell you now. Ha ha.
I was on my way to see her, and I raced through the possibilities in my mind. She had quit her job. She had found a boyfriend. She was going to Beijing after all.
I answered her: I’m very curious.
Maybe you’ll think it’s not good, she wrote back. Ha ha. I hope you won’t be disappointed.
She was waiting for me at the factory gate, and I saw that she had straightened her hair. It was sleekly cut in an asymmetrical line; her girlish long curls were gone. The chemical treatment had taken three hours and cost one hundred yuan at a salon, Min told me. She had just gotten her first full month’s pay.
She shared the gossip from work. Her immediate superior, who was a few years older than Min, had fought with his girlfriend. She was smart and made twice as much money as he did, a fact that everyone in the office knew and relished. She had saved eighty thousand yuan; everyone knew that too. If they were going to split up, the girlfriend demanded ten thousand yuan in compensation for the seven years she had spent with him. That was a breakup, Dongguan style: Emotional hurt gave way to financial calculation, and everyone in the factory knew every last detail. Now her young boss was quitting the factory, Min said, and several others with him. There was no reason to stay, so she had resigned yesterday.
“You’ve decided to leave?” I asked. The swiftness of her decisions took my breath away.
“I handed in my resignation letter yesterday,” Min said.
Her boss, the one she disliked, had asked why she wanted to leave.
“I want to go home,” Min had lied.
“Have you found another job?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I just have things to take care of at home.” Another lie.
“You’re doing well here,” her boss said. “Why do you want to leave?” For once he was not rude to her. But he didn’t approve her departure either; he told her he would decide within a month.
This was Min’s surprise: She had straightened her hair. She had also made a move to quit her job and jump back into the unknown, but apparently she did not consider that news.
THAT AFTERNOON, we went to a small park near Min’s factory. It was ringed by apartment buildings, with a pond of greenish yellow water the color of Mountain Dew. Children waded up to their knees, filling shallow pans and glass jars. “At home the ponds where we go swimming are deep and the water is clear,” Min said.
“In the summers when I was a child,” she continued dreamily, “we would plant watermelons. About ten minutes’ walk from home, the adults would build a shed with tree trunks for posts and put a plank of wood with grass on top. We would sit under it all day guarding the watermelons and my father would sleep there at night.
“My older sister, my cousin, my two younger