The Chinese factory workers who write poetry on their phones
June 4, 2017 12:11 AM   Subscribe

Lithub carries a heartbreaking story about the poetry that has been coming out of the Chinese special economic zones where migrant workers flock in search of work. The poetry captures the pain behind Eric Fromm’s warning in 1965 that, “the danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.” These poets make time outside their 14 hour shifts to type poems out on their cell phones and post them online. You can find a huge collection at www.laborpoetry.com
Via

‘I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That’ ~ Xu Lizhi

The paper before my eyes fades yellow
With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black
Full of working words
Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages…
They've trained me to become docile
Don’t know how to shout or rebel
How to complain or denounce
Only how to silently suffer exhaustion
When I first set foot in this place
I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month
To grant me some belated solace
For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words
Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons
Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early
By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,
How many days, how many nights
Did I – just like that – standing fall asleep?
posted by infini (23 comments total) 64 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thank you for this post--it was a fascinating article that reminded me about a documentary I saw in 2006 called China Blue about the terrible working conditions of jeans manufacturing plants in China that sell to companies like Walmart that insist on razor thin margins that encourage factory owners to pay workers less and less and make the working conditions worse and worse. It was filmed in secret without permission from the Chinese government and is well worth watching.

(By the way, I tried clicking on laborpoetry.com to find the other poems but couldn't navigate it since it's all in Chinese...I tried clicking randomly on links but several led to pages with photos of scantily clad young women which was not what I was looking for....just a heads up.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:39 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


“the danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.”

This seems less insightful and more redundant, no? The word Robot itself is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.”
posted by Borborygmus at 4:15 AM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


That's an example of the etymological fallacy. The English word "robot" has a different meaning than "slave," because etymology is not the same as meaning.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:52 AM on June 4, 2017 [20 favorites]


Find me a robot, Kutsuwamushi, that was not designed and created for work.
posted by scruss at 5:40 AM on June 4, 2017


The Etymogical Fallacy is one of my least favorite, because it instantly cuts off any further discussion about how semantic drift and changing historical circumstances have affected the meanings and uses of words and ideas over time, and personally, I think there are a lot of interesting and revealing observations to be made thinking about how the meanings of words shift and mutate through contact with reality and practical use. It's true etymology isn't "meaning" (unless you're some kind of linguistic originalist) or hold some magical belief about the sounds of words having intrinsic meaning, but analysis of word etymology is part of how we reflect on meaning, so this particular fallacy seems too easily abused to cut off that sort of deeper thinking about word meanings and how they evolve and adapt.
posted by saulgoodman at 5:56 AM on June 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


Thank heavens TFA is so lacking in content that we have the opportunity to discuss the possible meanings of the word "robot" and if they were appropriately used in the pull quote. I mean, we could be talking about the brutality and beauty of the migrant poets, the role of poetry in Chinese literature, the enormous downsides of the Chinese shift from communism to capitalism, or the globalist horrors of electronics manufacturing, but, by all means, let's complain about an analogy.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:12 AM on June 4, 2017 [33 favorites]


I have to confess to being confused by the site, as every line of the postings on the landing page is filled with links to other pages wallpapered with ads featuring young women. Any thoughts before I break out my Han-Ying zidian?
posted by the sobsister at 6:44 AM on June 4, 2017


Mod note: One deleted. Can we re-rail, please?
posted by taz (staff) at 6:52 AM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I love you all.

metafiltered, and we're only 8 comments in
posted by infini at 7:21 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


“My finest five years went into the input feeder of a machine,” Xie adds. “I watched those five youthful years come out of the machine’s / asshole—each formed into an elliptical plastic toy.”
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:42 AM on June 4, 2017 [13 favorites]


Let's rerail.

Ok, so here's me the Chinese-speaking translator FRESH OFF a conversation about labor relations with one of my subcontrated translator minions because I mean, look, that's what I do. I subcontract white collar labor to translators, Chinese ones, who quit their full-time jobs to work for me, in China. Now I pay right, you ain't gonna find no $500 USD a month people under my auspices, no sir I'm 2k USD a month and more for under 20 hours a week or I don't recruit you and you don't exercise your labor under me. End of story. I have this much of a conscience (look I'm drunk because project fatigue but I saw this post on mefi and I DON'T talk? This comment is me preaching about my church so)

So you pay to get the people you want. So you pay to create the corporate culture you want. You readers have little frame of reference for my experience right now, but you see, I'm editing a document that was given to me by a Chinese company that makes 810 million USD a year, and this document? Well you see, it's from a translation agency that...god's sake they trust me, for whatever reason, but it's their Corporate Social Responsibility Report. In which they brag about how they create a fantastic working environment for their employees, who number in the 20 thousands. They do this in Chinese, and once I hand this document in, they will do so in English and Japanese as well. And as one of their vendors, I can speak to this - they try! They are not bullshitting when they say they pay a living wage, nor are they bullshitting when they say they want to make it possible for me, as a translating oursourcer, to pay my people 2k USD a month, to Chinese people that I as an American employ. Literally, this is a number and a goal that has been approved by their management, by the CEO, of a Chinese company that employs tens of thousands of people, and I feel comfortable about making a comment about it with numbers on a public internet forum in a place where I am easily identifiable. That should tell you something. I am posting this because these poets need to be taken seriously, their plight needs to be taken seriously, and the economics of work in China need to be taken seriously.

These factory workers are working for some greedy motherfuckers, and they have a point. They are trying to make a point, and we, we as Americans, we as global citizens, we as people who make a living wage or we as people who don't make a living wage, need to f**king listen, because this system has to change. It can change, it will change, I am doing my best to change it and showing you numbers, but the people writing these poems are making maybe $700 USD a month, if we're being optimistic, and here is me paying people barely more qualified than them quadruple that for simply speaking another language and helping me deliver a service to companies in literally, not even joking, not even having a geological difference because my clients are translation companies in Shenzhen that sell electronics and I do their advertising translation, four times as much as the people who make the shit, just out of the goodness of my own heart, because hey I believe in living wages, and I could get away with much much less. Really, I could.

My point here is, listen to these people. Listen to these poets. They mean it. I mean it too. It doesn't have to f**king be this way, but it is, and we all need to sit down and think about WHY. And then, within the power and range and ability that we have, we need to act, and I'm pointing at you, the reader of this comment, when I say act. You can boycott, you can buy, you can exercise your social media space, you can make all kinds of conscious acts, and fuck the geology. So what if it's China?!?! China contains 20% of people on earth and as they go you go. Join them, write your poems, organize your labor, and start making a difference. One world etc. We're in this thing together, and we need to start acting like we're in this together, because if we don't, the bad guys win.
posted by saysthis at 7:55 AM on June 4, 2017 [50 favorites]


just out of the goodness of my own heart, because hey I believe in living wages, and I could get away with much much less. Really, I could.

And I could explain market things, but I want to expand on this - people routinely get away with a quarter of what I pay. It's not even that I'm an altruist, my recruitment is focused on people who normally don't translate, that is actually my competitive advantage. My focus is artsy/film/cultural material. Ok, so how is this relevant to...anyone reading this? I have to pay a wage that stops people from working their jobs and doing freelance translation, and I have to provide it regularly. I do exactly that. In China. Factory workers included.

The translation market in China is dominated by people who underprice, and it is dominated by people who look at qualifications/degrees/experience/etc. Somehow, I have over the years broken through this. I'm not bragging here, I'm just saying that I saw what it was and my reaction was revulsion and somehow I succeeded in not being what they are. It is part and parcel and entirely economical to my business to pay vastly more, in China, than what is normally paid, and for fuck's sake, it doesn't have to be this way. If I can convince CEO's of companies that make hundreds of millions to NOT do this, it doesn't have to be this way. And I have, more than once, and sustainably. And I can post about this on the fricken public internet without any fear of retribution or what have you. I want every single person who reads these comments to understand - there is a wage scale, and if you're not up it, it's greed. This is China, the developing world, and I pay my parttime freelancers or whatever term we're employing $24k USD a year because I fucking can, which is 40% over the average wage level in Beijing and triple the average in China and twice the average wage level in Portual, and they don't work in an office, and there are 5-6 of them, and I still make obscene profits, and this is just off the books business. I'm not magic or especially talented, I'm ordinary in my field, with experience and whatnot, and I'll talk numbers with ya. I just can, and I do, because it makes sense to do so, and I normally don't go on this tirade, but I want people to do better, and all I do is I'm someone who knows bilingual people, that's literally my big secret.

I want to say that this is how a fair negotiation sounds. In China or anywhere else. If it's not this, if it's not my level of disclosure, then you need to renegotiate your deal, you need to re-look at your contracts, you need to reevaluate your capitalism, because it doesn't have to be this way.
posted by saysthis at 8:30 AM on June 4, 2017 [17 favorites]


Oh boy why am I still ranting on the internet? But it's happening. Here we go.

A good while ago I came to the idea that you have to look around your world, wherever it is, and find opportunities to make it more fair. I came to this idea precisely because of the circumstances described above. I competed in this unfair market that is freelance dominated. I served clients who were desperate, who were greedy, who were pushy, who were generous with me, who were downright evil with me, and I went through it all, and I came to the conclusion that there's basically no substitute for a god damn sense of fairness. So be that fair. Be that just. Be that source of change where you can.

And I feel that it's especially important to say these words in an American forum because I'm in China, and Chinese people get it. Like, no qualification or justification, they're people and they get it. They're you and me and they get it, no Orientalist bullcrap or cultural bullcrap. I voted Hillary like every normal person, I am aware of my privileges and my advantages and my responsibilities like every member of this site, and I can tell you with a clear conscience that Chinese people, 99% of them, straight up get it, especially the ones writing these poems. "If the system is broken, you have to fight to fix it. Do that, however and wherever and whenever you can, or you're part of the problem." Words fresh off a factory worker in Tianjin's mouth.

And I'm sorry for posting three comments in a row and I'll let it go in a minute, but this? I'm a believer. We can change the system. In my tiny but measurable ways I have. We can fight The Man and we must. So please, reader, within your sphere, do so. Otherwise what's it all for? What's Metafilter even for? Fight this battle, for all of us. For the randoms like me, for the factory poets, for the Americans, for China, for everybody with a pulse. Fight this fight, because we are the army we've been waiting for.
posted by saysthis at 8:58 AM on June 4, 2017 [19 favorites]




Thank heavens TFA is so lacking in content that we have the opportunity to discuss the possible meanings of the word "robot" and if they were appropriately used in the pull quote. I mean, we could be talking about the brutality and beauty of the migrant poets, the role of poetry in Chinese literature, the enormous downsides of the Chinese shift from communism to capitalism, or the globalist horrors of electronics manufacturing, but, by all means, let's complain about an analogy.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:12 PM on June 4 [13 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


And to this, the Chinese for "robot" is 机器人, literally "machine person", and for artificial intelligence 人造只能/人工智能, which is "person-fabricated/worked intelligence", which will be massaged so hard by the powers that be come job loss time...
posted by saysthis at 9:24 AM on June 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


Can we sidebar saysthis' comments please? With the plea to read them and listen to the poets?
posted by infini at 10:00 AM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I'm currently under deepest NDA but resonate with saysthis' plea for making that systems level change where and as you can. Flapping wings of a butterfly and all that jazz
posted by infini at 10:06 AM on June 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


why am I still ranting on the internet?

Because you have passion and interesting, relevant life experience? If you've got more rant in you don't stop now.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:18 AM on June 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


That was a cri de coeur, if ever I heard one.
posted by notoriety public at 11:46 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


When I load the page, I see three boxes side by side, each with a link of links. The leftmost box looks safe.

If Chrome offers to translate the page, accept, and avoid anything mentioning tea or delivery, as these are slang for outcall prostitution.

Hope this helps.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:55 PM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Oh, wait, "if I only read English." I'm sorry, this won't help you.
posted by d. z. wang at 9:55 PM on June 4, 2017


It seems that the poems are published in a literary journal, of which there are two issues:

http://www.laborpoetry.com/01/no1/index.htm
http://www.laborpoetry.com/01/no2/index.htm
posted by joethefob at 5:26 AM on June 5, 2017


d.z. wang beat me to it, but I can confirm it is possible to read the site with Chrome's auto translation.
posted by yoHighness at 6:48 AM on June 5, 2017


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