No Way Out (Part 1)

July 6th, 2024:

As promised, I arrived at the gates of the Lihua Garment Factory again, waiting for Sister Man to appear. At 5:30 sharp, waves of people began pouring out of the factory gates, all in a hurry. They walked about 50 meters along the street that leads up to the factory gate, and turned into a narrow alley. At the end of the alley stood a tin-roofed building with a small yard – this was the workers’ dining hall. I followed Sister Man as we walked and chatted, eventually entering the canteen. Cabbage, thin carrot strips, winter melon with slices of fatty pork, and seaweed egg soup – that was dinner, or for them, overtime meal. The tin building was sweltering, so some workers took their lunchboxes and stood outside in the yard to eat. They just ate, heads down. There was no conversation; everyone just focused on their food. Some took only a few bites before dumping the rest into the trash and hurried back to the factory building.

On one side of the yard were the dormitories for the garment factory workers. The tiled walls were covered in sheets of old dust – gray, brown, and then yellow layered on top of each other, and clothes and underwear hung from every balcony. Opposite this shaded wall, across the yard, stood the dormitories for a tech company. Its mosaic-tiled walls were much cleaner, and their large, empty balconies tidier. The yard, where people ate, was wedged between the two buildings, separating the two worlds.

A young woman, skipping and bouncing down the stairs of the tech company’s building, tossed a half-full cup of coffee into the trash. Sister Mann dumped her food too, barely touching it before she did so. “It’s too hot,” she said, “I can’t eat. The heat kills your appetite.”

During our conversation, Sister Mann kept her head down, her gaze constantly avoiding mine, as if she were telling someone else’s story, not her own. She was 45 years old, from Meizhou in Guangdong province. Meizhou is in northeast Guangdong, with over 70% of its land being mountains. It’s far from the Pearl River Delta – the economic center of Guangdong province, making it underdeveloped when it comes to education and the economy. Sister Mann’s family is a typical example of a rural family from a remote, mountainous part of Meizhou. There were five siblings, plus her parents, making seven people living off just over four acres of farmland. They couldn't survive on farming. So Sister Man left home before graduating from middle school, following her relatives to the booming cities to find work.

She’d done it all – worked as a supermarket saleswoman, a restaurant waitress, a day laborer at construction sites, and a sewing worker at different parts of the assembly lines in various garment factories, large and small. Every new job came with a glimmer of hope that seemed to show the brightness of her future, but each time, only disappointment followed. Hope, disappointment, and a new source of hope – this cycle repeated. But she kept going, and now she works at Lihua Garment Factory, earning just over 4,000 yuan a month. She hasn’t switched jobs again because, at her age, jobs are hard to come by. As long as her eyesight and hands hold up, she has enough experience to keep working at Lihua. In a way, Lihua’s fate is tied to hers. But in the past two or three years, the dwindling number of garment orders retailers place, seemed to hint at the looming future of both Lihua and, perhaps, the entire industry.

Sister Mann’s eyes welled up, her face partially hidden by a few strands of messy hair across her cheek. She wiped her eyes and nose and said, “Kiddo, I’m probably around your mom’s age. Sorry to make a fool of myself in front of you." Quickly, I shook my head and handed her a tissue. "No, no, I totally understand. I’ve talked to many workers, and I really get it. You’ve got to believe that you’ll find a way out, even in the toughest situations." Sister Mann lifted her head and glanced at me. It was a mixture of sadness and, perhaps, disbelief, that I saw in her eyes. "There’s no way out of my desperation," she said quietly.

She began to explain the series of setbacks that had led her to this point. The reason she had switched jobs so often was partly because of her family and children, and partly because she hoped for better pay and prospects. But each time, she found herself stuck in the same place, running in circles of hope and despair.

When she was 17, she worked as a waitress at a restaurant in Luohu district. Her main tasks were serving food and cleaning tables. “Everyday, my only thought was to work diligently and hope the boss would give me a raise. And after a year, my monthly salary went from 700 to 800 yuan. Every day, I tried my best to greet my customers warmly, and with care, like what they told you to do during the short training sessions before you start this job. Eager to do my best, I was. Then there was this one rainy day, people were constantly coming in and going out, and the first floor of the restaurant became slippery – you can see the reflection of lights on the ceiling clearly on the white ceramic tile floor, that’s how watery the floor is. I was carrying a tray of dishes, some of the dishes were quite deep and heavy, you know, those dishes used to carry soup. I slipped and spilled soup on a customer’s clothes. I didn’t know what to do but to repeat ‘I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,’ you know, ‘I didn’t mean it, the floor is slippery, I’m really sorry,’ that sort of thing. And I was really sorry, I meant it. The customer wouldn’t forgive me. I was probably too nervous, I didn’t say the right words; the customer was unhappy. The clothes were expensive, and the restaurant owner had to pay for them. After that, he deducted a month’s salary from me. 7 hundred, 8 hundred yuan, deducted at once, gone.” After that, Sister Mann left the restaurant, hoping to find a job where she’d be paid by the day so she could at least secure her living.

Through connections from her hometown, she landed a job at a construction site, doing menial tasks like carrying bricks, mixing cement, and cleaning up. But as an 18-year-old girl with little strength, she didn’t last long. “Just a few days after joining the construction site, I hurt my foot while carrying bricks, and accidentally hit a coworker with a brick too. The bricks were heavy. And when mixing cement, I got splattered everywhere. The cement looked fluid, but it was actually thick once you started trying to stir it. I was also the slowest at cleaning up.” Her coworkers grew impatient with her, complaining that she was more trouble than help, calling her a burden. “A nuisance, that’s the word they used. I felt humiliated. I was determined to improve, not to be looked down upon, at least. I was young back then, and it felt as if I had a fire in my gut.” Despite her injuries, she worked harder and faster, pushing through the pain. She became more efficient, but jobs on the construction site required physical strength she simply didn’t have. She still lagged behind. “Even though I improved a little, my coworkers continued to criticize me, especially the more capable female workers. The stronger and more skilled ones couldn't stand my slowness.”

Seeing her small and struggling frame, her hometown friend who had helped her get the job, advised her to seek another. He helped her to get her pay for her 15 days of work, plus a small compensation for her injury. “The wages were 50 yuan a day, 750 for 15 days. Added to the compensation, that totaled 800 yuan for 15 days of work. Though it wasn’t much, it was better than nothing, and it was the best outcome I could get, the best my friend could negotiate for me. If it weren’t my hometown friend, I don’t know how that’ll end up.” But Sister Mann was lost again, unsure of what to do next. “Maybe I could work in the construction site’s canteen, I thought. Perhaps chopping vegetables or washing dishes, that sort of stuff. But then when I actually asked around, I was told that the canteen didn’t need more hands. In fact, they preferred to hire women in their thirties or forties, since they’re generally believed to have more experience and endurance.” Defeated and with no other choice, she left the construction site in search of yet another job.

After wandering for a month, Sister Mann, who wasn’t great with words, managed to land a job as a supermarket saleswoman. Her task was simple: stand at a supermarket entrance and hand out flyers advertising cosmetics. “I’ve always believed that, I mean, I suspected that I got the job because no one else wanted it. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.” The base salary was only 300 yuan a month, and if someone bought the products on the flyers, she’d earn a commission. “300 was very far from enough. Most of my income had to come from the commissions. So I worked from 9:30 in the morning to 9:30 in the evening at the supermarket – 12 hours a day, only getting the chance to sit and rest during brief meal breaks. The rest of the time, I had to stand. By the end of each day, my legs, my feets, they were all swollen.”

Her earnings in the first month were only 750 yuan, half of what she could make on the construction site. “I looked at my wage, and later on, I realized that I had to become bolder, more assertive in advertising, and learn how to talk to people, to promote the benefits of the cosmetics products so that I can sell more.” Slowly, she improved, becoming more confident and proactive. “I learned to read faces and identify potential customers.” Her monthly salary began to increase. Her year working at the supermarket was one of the most formative in her life. She grew from a timid, shy girl into someone more confident and outgoing, someone who could stand her ground.

But then, an incident shattered the confidence she had worked so hard to build. That day, as usual, she stood at the supermarket entrance, promoting her products. “It was a tall man dragging a woman behind him. He and the woman, his wife, stormed over and up to me without giving a single word. He yanked and ripped all the flyers, a whole stack, from my hand. A whole stack. He took a very short glance at the flyers, then he…uh…he shouted something like, ‘You’re the one who ruined my wife’s face! Do you yourself even use the cosmetics you’re selling?’ And then…and then he kept going on: ‘Look at you. Someone as short and ugly as you, standing out here and ruining the lives of others with your garbage!’ His wife, even his wife, chimed in, ‘yeah I know right – her face isn’t suited for selling makeup. It’s a waste for her, with that face of hers, to use it, let alone sell it. She probably doesn’t even bother."

Sister Mann was stunned. It was the first time she had faced such aggression, and she “didn’t know how to respond. My mind was…just a white sheet of paper…entirely blank. I stuttered. I didn’t know what to say. Then staff from the supermarket heard the sound, and came and stepped in.” The supermarket staff tried to help her calm the couple down. With her help, Sister Mann stammered an apology. “After she came, I started apologizing repeatedly, again and again. I started reciting the product ingredients that I memorized and reviewed everyday after work. And I even promised to talk to the cosmetics company, to see if they can offer to test the wife’s skin reactions or allergy or some other conditions – if the company can cover the fees, basically.” The crowd dispersed, and the confrontation ended, once the couple left. “But no one, um…no one other than the supermarket staff, no one said a single word in defense of the products, let alone standing up for me. But they all knew…they all saw how unreasonable, how hurtful those two aggressors have been.” The looks people gave her as the crowd dispersed – sympathetic, disdainful, or hateful, even – all blurred together. From that day forward, Sister Mann never worked as a saleswoman again.

After leaving the supermarket, she looked everywhere for new job opportunities but no longer wanted a job where she had to deal with people face-to-face. Factory seemed like a better option. “I thought that jobs involved in factories would be less public, more suited to my personality. I imagined, you know, they stay with the same group of co-workers in a building all day long, and they don’t even have to talk to each other – let alone strangers – during work.” She went to Longhua district, where many of Shenzhen’s industrial parks were located. “I went on the streets on my own, and read every job posting I could find. Eventually, I got hired at a small garment factory, starting as a thread trimmer. I was told that speaking with coworkers was not only not required for my job – in fact, it was prohibited by factory rules. Prohibited during working hours, of course.” For the next 25 years, she drifted from one garment factory to another, and here she was now, still at it. She went through marriage, childbirth, and separation from her husband during over these two and a half decades.

When Sister Mann was 22, her parents decided it was time for her to settle down and marry. Through family connections, she met a young man named Li Gang (a pseudonym) from a nearby village. Li’s family ran a small grocery store in town. “At first, when we first met, I didn’t feel particularly fond or repelled by him, if that makes sense. I guess it was the same for him. Neither of us liked or disliked each other, but, you know, under our parents’ urging – forceful urging – we dated for a year. If that could be called dating. Over that year, I thought he was – I mean, he appeared – hardworking and free of bad habits. He saw me as kind and diligent. So we got married.

Sister Mann thought she had found a safe harbor and looked forward to her new, married life. What awaited her, however, were nothing but the stormy seas. After the wedding, Li Gang had her help with running the grocery store, but the income that the store generated was meager. Sister Mann suggested Li to join her in finding work in the city, leaving the store to Li’s parents. “But his parents were in poor health, and they can’t read – illiterate. Running a store was a lot of tedious work; it wasn’t simple, you know. You need to keep track of what you ordered from wholesale, the price of each item, all that sort of stuff. His parents couldn’t manage the business on their own. So he told me, ‘you stay and manage the store, and I’ll go out, to the cities, to work.’ But we just got married. The in-law’s home still felt foreign to me. I said, I was used to working in the cities, and I didn’t want to stay. He got mad immediately. Really angry. And I ended up staying behind.”

A year after their marriage, they had their first child. Caring for a child, managing the store, and living with her in-laws, made a breeding ground for constant, unending, conflicts, and the strain of her distance with Li Gang was overwhelming. “I had my daughter with me, in a store, with in-laws around, living with me, and customers storming in and out. All the while my husband spent most of his time away from all this. All of this, and you feel like you can’t breathe. It felt…suffocating.” When their daughter turned one, Sister Mann proposed selling the store, leaving the child in the care of her grandparents, and moving to Shenzhen to join Li Gang in Shenzhen factories’ migrant workforce. “But he…he was so attached somehow to the store, he couldn’t bear to part with the store. But I couldn’t see how the income from the store would support our whole family, especially with a child now – a family of 5, our extended family that depends on the earnings of him and I. There was no way we could make enough money from the store, it was very clear.” After much back and forth, they agreed that Li would stay home to run the store and handle everything, while Sister Mann headed to Shenzhen to work. “And so, that’s how we spent the next two years, living mostly apart, barely ever seeing each other. I was alone in Shenzhen. I felt lonely sometimes, but it’s hard to say if I missed him.”

Their first child being a girl, Mann was pressured nonstop by her in-laws to have another child, to give birth to a boy. After the New Year break, she returned to the clothing factory she worked at in Shenzhen, and soon found out she was pregnant again. “I kept working. I worked until I physically could no longer handle it. After that, I took leave and went back to my in-laws’ home. Our second child was also a girl, and my in-laws, their attitudes toward me, got even worse. They don’t smile at their granddaughters, let alone me. No smile whatsoever for the babies; they were their own granddaughters.” During her postpartum recovery period, her in-laws didn’t take good care of her, leaving her with lingering, lasting health issues. “When my maternity leave ended, I couldn’t bear to leave her children. I can’t imagine what their lives would be like if I left them with their grandparents. So I messaged my boss, I quit my job at the factory because they don’t extend maternity leaves, and I stayed home to care for my daughters, until my younger one was a year and a half old.”

So 18 months after she started her maternity leave, Sister Mann returned to Shenzhen and found work at another garment factory. “I spent the entire rest of the year in Shenzhen alone, and the next time I went back to my hometown, it was the next New Year’s holiday. So I went on the bus, went back to my hometown as usual. That’s when I realized something very bad…heartbreaking: my family, including my two daughters, treated her like a stranger. My daughters didn’t even care to go and wait for me at the bus station – only my husband went to meet me. But he did not go for me. The first question he asked? He asked how much salary the factory paid me! Literally, at the end of a whole year, his only concern was how much money I had brought back; there was no – he showed no – care or concern for my well-being or whatsoever. And then there were my in-laws, on the other hand, who kept asking when they would get a grandson from me to carry on the family line. But I’ve already given birth to two children at that time. But that was half expected. They’ve been like this, and I had only a dim hope on the bus that they would change – entirely unrealistic hope. At least I got to see my daughters and spend some time – a week or so – with them, I thought. But even my daughters, I found out that all they had been told was that their mother only cared about money, that their mother loved money more than them. They called me by my name; they never called me ‘mom.’ They asked me why I preferred working far away from home, rather than staying home with them.”

That entire New Year’s holiday was spent in constant arguments. By the end, Sister Mann’s heart had turned cold. She boarded the bus back to Shenzhen before the holiday ended, her mind filled with the determination to earn more money to provide for her daughters’ living expenses, education, and their future. The communication between her and Li Gang became more and more sparse, “dwindling to almost nothing – to the point where we didn’t even feel like talking anymore. I didn’t want to speak to him because when I did, it always ended in bitter arguments and more conflicts.” Their marriage was, in essence, nothing but an empty shell. “It feels over. Already.”

At least the grueling work at Lihua’s factory allowed Sister Mann to momentarily forget the misery of her marriage.

Q: I noticed you barely ate your dinner and threw most of it away. Is lunch they offer here as bad as dinner?

A: It's the heat. It’s just too hot, I’ve got no appetite. Lunch is somewhat better, but we have to pay for lunch ourselves. If we work overtime until 10 pm, we get a free dinner. The meal budget is something like six or seven yuan per meal. Sometimes, when you stay late enough, they give us “eight-treasure congee” at night. But if we only work overtime until 7 or 8 in the evening, then there's no free meal.

Q: Your day ends at 5:30 in the afternoon right. That’s almost 5 hours away from 10 PM.

A: Yeah, we work long overtime. But our base salary is not high – you don’t earn nearly enough if you don’t work overtime.

Q: What part of the assembly line exactly do you work on in this factory? Is your pay based on how many hours you work or how many items you produce?

A: I work on sewing, both knit and woven fabrics. My wage is based on the number of pieces I complete. I haven’t been doing this for long. Some people here have been at it for over ten, even twenty, years, or more. They’re skilled, much faster than I am, so they earn more than me.

Q: Wow, some people have been here for decades? It sounds like the factory treats its employees fairly well, for those people to keep working here.

A: Yeah, there are quite a lot of long-term workers here. There are over 300 of us working here now, and most of them are older workers. The majority are in their 40s.

Q: Does the factory pay for your social security plan? Do you get time off during regular holidays?

A: Yes, they pay into our social security. We get time off for all national holidays, otherwise, they have to pay us three times our usual wage – that’s required by law. We often work overtime on weekends, but I’m not really sure how they calculate our overtime pay here. It’s all based on piecework anyway. Everyone wants to work overtime – and work longer overtime – so we can earn more. But it all depends on how many orders the factory has. They don’t pay you to produce unless they can sell what you produce. This year, orders are getting fewer and fewer.

Q: Do you live in the dorms here too? (I pointed to the dormitory building across from the canteen.)

A: Yes. The factory provides housing. No rent, and we don’t have to pay for water fees either. We only have to cover the electricity bill. If we meet our production quotas, they’ll even waive the electricity bill. But there are no private bathrooms, so we have to line up to shower. It’s not very convenient, which is why many workers here rent rooms outside on their own.

Q: Do you have any plans or hopes for the future?

A: I’ll keep working as long as I can. One day at a time, I guess. I don’t have any expectations – no real hopes. I mean, when even your own kids don’t like you, what else is there to hope for?

Q: Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding. I’m sure deep down, your children do love you.

A: No, they don’t. No one in this world loves me—not even my parents.

Q: Do you think the way you’re feeling now has something to do with how you grew up?

A: Maybe. I’ve always been the least liked in my family since I was little.

Q: Would you mind sharing some of those experiences from your childhood?

A: I’ve got two older sisters and two younger brothers. I was always the one my parents ignored, the one they liked the least. My eldest sister was the firstborn, and she was beautiful. My second eldest sister was tall and outgoing. Both of them were likable. As for my two younger brothers, they were always the apples of my grandparents’ eyes. They liked the boys the most. But me? I didn’t talk much, I was very quiet, I was slow at doing things, and I wasn’t cute at all. No one liked me.

I remember when we had watermelon at home. My grandparents would make sure my brothers ate the watermelon first. They always took the best parts of the melon. You know, the watermelon’s the sweetest towards its middle part, so when you split it in two, the part on top is the best – whoever ate first got the best. My second sister would cut three slices of the watermelon, bring two of them to my parents, and then she would take the remaining slice for herself. My parents would save the two slices they got from my second sister, for my eldest sister. By the time the watermelon was all gone, no one even noticed me. No one remembered I was there. Do you see what I’m getting at? Don’t you think I felt like an extra one, uninvited, in the family?

I was the extra, unnecessary person in my family. Once, my eldest sister and I were watering the vegetable garden, and I accidentally stepped on some seedlings and broke them. My parents yelled at me without holding back but didn’t say a single word to my sister. Then in middle school, my grades were better than my younger brother’s, but my parents told me they couldn’t afford to keep both my brother and I in school, so they had to make me drop out. All the while my brother got to keep going in the school.

Q: Did you ever talk to your parents about how unfair that was?

A: I’ve argued with them about it many many times, but it never helped. Nothing changed. They always thought they were being the fairer judge. They said listening to me is going to school to an ignorant girl who never went to high school herself.

Q: I’m really sorry to hear that. That unfairness you had to go through really hurts to hear. Maybe there’s some misunderstanding that hasn’t been cleared up. I’ve had misunderstandings with my own parents too. For a while, I thought they favored my brother. But after talking to them, I realized it wasn’t like that at all. They love us both equally.

A: [Sigh] You don’t understand. It’s just the way things are in rural families. In the countryside, boys are always more valued by their parents. The firstborn, too. They are always given more importance, more attention.

Q: I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. But I truly believe that everyone who comes into this world is unique and deserving of love. Like you—you’re unique, there’s only one of you in this world, and you belong here. You’re a part of it, and there are people who love you, even if you don’t know it yet.

A: Thank you, little brother.

At this moment, Sister Mann suddenly lifted her head, and for the first time, I think I saw in her tear-filled, reddened eyes a faint glimmer of light.

I handed her a tissue.