These ten-second videos of the plant are like passwords, and only migrant workers who have made a living in Dongguan can share the meaning of them.
On Dec. 29, 2020, Hou Guoan touched the wall in the Mulberry Park Industrial Zone in Dongcheng District, Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, and read word for word, “Wanshida LCD Co.” The company’s name was originally a few large blue letters pasted on the wall, but now it has been removed. Through the rust stains left on the white tile wall, Hou Guoan identified them.
Then, he took a few steps back, took out his phone, and shot up the “empty” wall. He judged that after a while, these traces may also be invisible.
Hou Guoan stood in front of the factory where he used to work, which has been split up and rented out, and the name of the original factory gate has been taken down.
Hou Guoan stands in front of the factory where he used to work, which is now split up for rent, and the name of the original factory gate has been taken down
Two and a half years ago, Hou Guoan took a video of the Wanshida factory at the same location. Since then, he has gradually become a short video broadcaster specializing in Dongguan factories, and for this reason opened a channel on Jitterbug, named “main shot Dongguan working life ~ outdoor live see Dongguan”, used to record the city’s mobile working and life stories. So far, his Shake audio channel has released 785 short videos, with more than 250,000 followers.
These short videos are generally controlled within 10 seconds – if it’s long, people who come in from “recommendations” don’t finish watching it and cross it over. “Finish watching rate” is low, the platform will not recommend, this is the experience he learned. Recently updated videos mainly have two categories, one is to shoot the factory plant, the other is a working man looking for people. Some of the factory videos with 200,000 plays and hundreds of comments, just use the camera to pan from left to right at the factory entrance, and then with 20 to 30 words of commentary.
These ten-second factory videos are like passwords, and only migrant workers who have made a living in Dongguan can share the meaning of them.
Becoming a broadcaster
Hou Guoan himself is a migrant worker, a native of Longlin County, Baise City, Guangxi.
His family’s village is near Guizhou, a mountainous area, which, in his own words, is a poor village in a poor county. In 2011, he went to Guangdong and became a workshop assembler. As he said, he demonstrated the action of making spare parts – shrugging his shoulders, lifting both hands like crab pincers, putting and taking out parts back and forth, and making 10,000 parts a day.
Hou Guoan is not tall, his face is tanned, his forehead and eye corners have grown some wrinkles, he was born in 1990, he is often laughed at by friends like 70 years later. Compared to a year ago, he has gained a lot of weight, his face has become round, there is a double chin. Hou Guoan said this is false fat, and is the result of playing shake, often stay up late.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. -He intended to record a video on legal literacy, talking about the legal knowledge related to labor rights. Before that, a small piece of flesh was crushed off his left finger by a machine at work. He studied law on his own and recovered some social security payments, and later volunteered with a public interest organization to help other workers.
But the law-prevention videos were not popular, with only about twenty people watching each one. At this time, it so happens that a friend of Hou Guoan is also shooting short video, accidentally shot the Dongguan South City bus station video response is very good. So, the two companions to shoot the old station.
“Here, send my girlfriend away” “is in the store across from here was cheated”, the comment section, the netizens speak of their memories about the station. “There is from here (station) into this city, there is from here to leave, so (video) shot after sending, the comments underneath especially more talk about how he came or how to go.” Hou Guoan told All Now.
A video taken by Hou Guoan in front of the bus station. Screenshot from his shake
A video taken by Hou Guoan in front of the bus station. Screenshot from its shake
Those attracted by the video are mostly migrant workers who have now left Dongguan, such as Wang Yonggen, a native of Hunan. He said frankly that his impression of Dongguan is not good, but when he saw the video of Chang’an station, his heart “trembled a little” – that is the station he must pass in Dongguan to catch a bus, but also sent his favorite female classmates there. Two years ago, Wang Yonggen paid attention to Hou Guoan’s channel and saw a video of an industrial park, which happened to be very close to where he lived when he was working in Dongguan. Then he brushed through the entire channel of more than a hundred short videos in one breath.
In Wang Yongen’s opinion, without the experience in this city, he could not understand the significance of these short videos.
Hou Guoan noticed that the station video got attention because it evoked the memories of migrant workers. However, the number of stations is limited, so it is impossible to keep shooting stations. He then thought that it seemed feasible to shoot old factories, after all, many people had worked in factories.
The first of Hou’s factory videos was taken of the Wanshida factory, which has been in operation since 1995, employing tens of thousands of people at its peak and mainly producing displays. In the era of the iPhone 4, it was also the main foundry of Apple, but foundry technology failed to keep up with the development of subsequent generations of cell phones, three consecutive years of losses, and finally stopped production in December 2014. To date, the bus stop near the factory is still named after “Wanshida”.
In 2015, Hou Guoan to work in Dongguan’s first stop, is the toy factory next to Wanshida, and he lives in the adjacent urban village.
He just shut down the Wanshida plant, there is no big change, just no more workers in and out. The row of stores built with tin opposite the factory gate, closed more and more, and finally the whole row of stores were shoveled away.
“From it slowly no one to take care of, to rust, the surrounding grass grows taller and taller, how to say it, there are still some feelings.” Three years later, in September 2018, when Hou Guoan returned to Wanshida to make a short video, the green belt plants originally used as decoration had grown up to his chest. The ground was under construction, piles of bricks and dirt surrounded the plant, and rusty steel bars were resting in bundles on the roadside.
The video is not clear enough, the camera shakes up and down, Hou Guoan gave it with a Wang Feng “Youth”.
The video of Nokia cell phone factory taken by Hou Guoan, which is one of the most liked videos in the channel. Image screenshot from his Shake
Hou Guoan’s video of Nokia cell phone factory, which is one of the most liked videos in the channel. Screenshot from his Shake
In the comment section, some people mentioned other factory names, and some asked the host if so-and-so factory was still around. After that, “is so-and-so factory still around” became a question Hou Guoan had to answer every day, and he also followed the factory names left in the comment section and took more and more factory videos, and the theme of the Shake Audio channel gradually became “working life and old memories”.
By the end of 2018, his Jitterbug fans had accumulated to 80,000.
The disappearing factory
“You have deviated from the route, we are re-planning for you, please confirm the direction of travel, head northeast, turn left after 50 meters.” This was the prompt sound from the navigation.
Hou Guoan was not used to using north and south to distinguish directions, he twisted his phone to try to understand the direction of the navigation pointer. His destination, “Quan You Furniture Factory”, is a factory that no longer exists on the map. After the video of the factory caught fire, some people started to give Hou Guoan gifts for his fare, inviting him to shoot the factory where he used to work. Such invitations come about twice a month, with fares ranging from a few tens to a hundred dollars.
This time, he asked him to shoot the netizen is a Chongqing native, once worked in the Quan You furniture factory. 2017 factory evacuated Dongguan, he also returned to his hometown. He wanted Hou Guoan to photograph the current situation of the factory, but could provide only four clues: in the industrial area of Nange; over a bridge on the left; security booths on the right side of the gate; and a supermarket diagonally opposite. At the same time, he drew a red circle on the map.
Hou Guoan could only locate the map to the South Court Industrial Zone – a place more than 32 kilometers from his home, requiring one bus transfer. To save money, he usually only takes the bus or walks, the farthest he changed buses four times, a trip will take four hours.
Hou Guoan shooting a video
Hou Guoan shooting video
To the South Court Industrial Zone, he took two hours to get off the bus, only to find that the industrial zone is too large, the location of the bus from the factory may be positioned nearly two kilometers. Following the clues of netizens, Hou Guoan changed the positioning to a nearby bridge and began to walk back, however, the bridge is under construction, near only a green space and ruins.
Dongguan at the end of December, the sun is fierce, the noon temperature is still 25 degrees, the construction of the bridge around the dust from time to time. Hou Guoan took his cell phone, repeatedly comparing the schematic map sent by the netizens, around to the other side, and walked for a while, finally found the supermarket in the mouth of the netizens.
At this point, an hour had passed from the drop-off.
According to the nearby factory workers, Hou Guoan finally found the Quan You furniture factory, its plant is still there, now used by another factory. He stood in front of the plant, hands picked up the phone, raised to parallel to the line of sight, pursed his lips, the upper body turned a semicircle – this is Hou Guoan shooting video “standard posture. Subsequently, he found two or three more positions to shoot, the whole process is only 10 minutes.
Another commissioned shooting spot that day also did not go well. That is a paper mill, the original site in Dongguan Houjie town’s most prosperous area, next to Wanda Plaza and 29-storey business apartments. The destination of the navigation has become a construction site, which, according to the plan, will be turned into a business apartment building in seven months.
Hou Guoan shooting outside the construction site
Hou Guoan shooting outside the construction site
This is a situation Hou Guoan often encounters. Factories that are no longer in business disappear from the map, and the memories of workers are blurred, so he can only piece together a little clue. After a factory moves or closes down, it is not uncommon for the factory to be demolished, so he can only shoot with a “salvage” mentality. The bus passed a “factory”, which he shot two or three months ago. Now, it has been bulldozed, two excavators are working.
Finally shot a netizen to look for the whole friend furniture factory, Hou Guoan a sigh of relief – after charging the road fee, he was always worried about not shooting. But he was not satisfied with the results of this day’s shooting, because there were too few shots. Now he works for a charity organization that does worker services, with two days off a week, and his time off is almost entirely spent on shooting videos: he needs to get enough videos so that he can update them one after another in the following week.
Youth is gone, and Dongguan has changed
The factory videos themselves have no story and almost no people are visible.
Most of the factories are inaccessible, and Hou Guoan is afraid of getting into trouble, so he will only use his phone to sweep around the factory gate and do some special effects at the factory name or road name. Some of them are still in business, some are rusting empty plants, and some are moving to demolish.
However, people who are concerned about Hou Guoan can see the “story” in the video. According to his speculation, the fans are mainly concentrated in the post-80s, they came to Dongguan around 2000 and stayed here for three or four years to ten years – that was the highlight of Dongguan industry, known as the “world factory”; at the same time is the moment of youth of these workers. Most of them were not yet 25 years old when they left.
Hou Guoan thinks that the boring video of the factory is like a reminder, and people who have lived here will naturally think of the previous clips when they see the reminder. Sometimes it is not even necessary to shoot a specific factory or a particular street, as long as the name of the place like “Houjie”, it is enough.
All these “stories” are added in the comment section: temporary residence permit, introduction fee, public telephone, radio program, ice rink, etc. have become the key words for migrant workers’ nostalgia, and they always find their former workers in the comment section.
“Seeing that road, plant row after row, I thought I was in that place back then, and all the scenes came out …… video up to ten or twenty seconds, I feel that the experience in Dongguan, is a lifetime at home can not experience.” Henan netizen Lime Xi is Hou Guoan shake video followers. She was only 16 years old when she arrived in Dongguan, and initially worked in a factory, and later worked as a cashier in Internet cafes and supermarkets.
In 1997, he dropped out of junior high school and went to work in a factory in Dongguan for more than 10 years, and once he brushed up on the short video of the Dongguan factory, he was filled with memories. 2002, Liu Fangping entered a large and famous toy factory with a monthly salary of only 600 yuan, but the introduction fee for entering the factory was 1,000 yuan. For a long time after that, he went out to play with his work tag hanging on his chest, “afraid that others do not know which factory you are.
In the best recruitment period, workers who wanted to enter the big factory had to pay the introduction fee, but after just a few years, the “big factory” where Liu Fangping worked was reversed – old employees could get 200 yuan bonus for introducing new people to the factory. Now the factory has closed, leaving only empty plants.
At the end of 2020, the recruitment notice around Dongguan industrial zone
A recruitment notice around Dongguan industrial zone at the end of 2020
According to Hou Guoan, young workers nowadays love to go to Guangzhou and Shenzhen because the factories there can pay higher wages. In Dongguan, some factories with tens of thousands of workers around 2008 have closed down or become small factories with less than 1,000 workers. With the decline, there are industries derived from the factory – in the urban village next to Wanshida factory, the rent is nearly 100 yuan lower than five years ago. As for workers who used to love to go to Chiling Entertainment Park in Houjie Town, there used to be an ice skating rink inside and many nail salons and snack stores opened around it, and around 2008, the store rent was already as high as 5,000 yuan, but now it is cold and empty, with most stores vacant.
Data from the Dongguan Bureau of Statistics for the past five years show that the city’s non-domestic population has been declining, while the volume of processed exports has also been on a downward trend. In terms of production, Dongguan’s once famous furniture and garment industries are experiencing negative growth. 2019 statistics show that the production growth of shoes is negative 14.8% and furniture is negative 18.3%. The change in data, related to industrial transformation, as early as around 2005, the Dongguan municipal government proposed to upgrade and eliminate industries, increase high-tech research and development, high energy and labor-consuming industries are to be eliminated. 2008, Guangdong Province also proposed to transfer the low-end manufacturing industry in the Pearl River Delta to less developed areas, “cage for birds” .
TIT Factory, Hetian Second Industrial Zone and Kisheng Shoe Factory are the names of the bus stops. More than two years of street photography, Hou Guoan is also familiar with the situation of factories in Dongguan, on the bus, he is as familiar with the production status of factories along the way – there is a furniture factory in front of the building are European-style, quite beautiful; this shoe factory is an old factory, many users say they have done there. These introductions are always followed by the phrase, “there are a lot fewer people now”.
For the workers, it makes no difference whether the factory is closed down or moved out. They only care that it is still in Dongguan or not.
A closed industrial park in Dongguan
A closed industrial park in Dongguan
“It has been quiet, which is the biggest change in Dongguan.” Liu Fangping left Dongguan in 2009 and went to Shenzhen to open a container truck, and still runs the freight of the Pearl River Delta, he obviously felt that the shipments of Dongguan factories are decreasing.
Lemonhill left Dongguan in 2007, after returning home to get married and have children, and now operates a restaurant with more than a dozen employees under her, has not been able to find the time to return to Dongguan to see. Watching Hou Guoan’s video, she felt that the phone in Dongguan, and her memory as two worlds, “that time more prosperous, the traffic, now feel like a dead city over there, the heart is very difficult.”
Youth is a word that people often mention. In their view, those days were characterized by overtime and lack of entertainment, but compared with middle-aged life today, those days were easy.
Liu remembers chatting on the factory lawn and buying 50 cents worth of sunflower seeds and 1.50 cents worth of fried rice noodles. Liu Shaoxin, who used to work at a garment factory in Dongguan, had asked Hou to film the factory where he had worked, and said Hou had helped him relive his youth. At that time, the workers’ entertainment was to listen to the radio station, each with a small radio in his pocket to listen to, Liu Shaoxin still remembers the program “the night sky is not lonely” host named Hu Xiaomei.
Now, Mr. Liu is the owner of a hotel in his hometown in Jiangxi province. He also wanted to find a female worker, want to know how she was, “it was very vague, there was no love. Anyway, together, she cares more about me, I care more about her.”
Liu left Dongguan in 2009 and the two lost contact shortly after the woman left, too. Four years ago, Liu began looking for a partner, asking about her fellow workers in the same town and searching for her name on the Internet, a behavior he described as “annoying.”
Hou Guoan posted a video of his “search” by Douyin. Image screenshot from its Douyin
Hou Guoan posted a video of his “search” by Douyin. Image screenshot from its Douyin
In Hou Guoan’s audio channel, there is a part of the video is “looking for people.”
Hou initially refused to post the videos, but after seeing many old photos sent by netizens, he was moved. “It’s not just about finding people,” he said. “These old photos are very historical and memorable, and can reflect the life of a group in an era.”
He would pair the videos with old photos of the seekers and their years of work. Some didn’t even have a photo, so Hou had to match the posters with images of factories and neighborhoods. Using photos from his old job, Liu Fangping has sent out a search and found 28 of his fellow workers to form a WeChat group. The old workers chatted happily, “Former friends are true friends”.
The flow
“In many people’s eyes, worker mobility is a very common thing. Even after more than 10 years, when the factory moves or closes, you have to leave. But after all the time and all the stories he’s been through, it’s hard to leave.” Hou Guoan believes that migrant workers to the city, always with a lot of good fantasy, such as want to buy a car, when a small boss, but the reality does not allow, many people can only have been drifting. For example, he himself, in Shenzhen, Dongguan, back between, has been in the flow.
In 2000, Luo Hui, a native of Hunan province, went to a toy factory in Daojiao, Dongguan, to work as a paint sprayer after graduating from junior high school. During his ten years in Dongguan, he worked in toy factories in four or five towns and became the youngest group leader from a general laborer. In the first few years, I had to work overtime until about 1 a.m. every day. But by 2010, toy factory orders were low enough to eliminate overtime. Luo Hui quit to work at an auto parts factory in Guangzhou. Less than a year after he left, the toy factory closed down.
“In other cities, migrant workers are called migrant workers, migrant workers. Dongguan has long called these people ‘Xinguan people’.” Luo Hui has deep feelings for Dongguan. In recent years, when he bought a car, he always visited Dongguan when he was free. On Douyin, he also followed several Dongguan broadcasters, including Hou Guoan, and often watched their videos of Dongguan.
In the closed industrial park, job boards still bear signs
In the closed industrial park, job boards still bear signs
Given a choice, Hou prefers to stay in his hometown. Twice he has failed to return to farming, with volatile prices and meagre returns that are not enough to support his family of four. Hou also has no specific plans for his future work and life. He and his wife live in a room of less than 20 square meters, which rents 300 yuan a month. Because “the economy does not allow”, the two young daughters can only stay in their hometown, it seems that there is no possibility of receiving dongguan.
Hou Guoan felt that this kind of flow is universal, most people have become accustomed to.
But he wanted to write it down. He has always had a desire to “record”, initially in words. In 2015, he submitted his work story to a website and received his first payment — 300 yuan. For the next two or three years, he continued to post stories about himself and his relatives on an online forum. He won an essay contest on Jianjiao Tribe, an information platform, and the certificates flowed from one apartment to another.
The desire to record comes from two deaths. One was his uncle, who was building railways but was cheated into a black brick kiln and soon died of illness. Another was his cousin, who was killed by a flying rock while building a hydropower station in Yunnan province.
A strange combination of circumstances is, after cousin’s affairs are done, he and cousin are also taken to the same hydropower station construction site by relatives. He and his cousin slept in their cousin’s bunk because there were not enough beds. “All day long we faced the rock wall where he was killed,” Hou said. A year later, like his dead uncle, he went to Shanxi to build railways.
Hou Guo ‘an realized that this was not the experience of a few people, but the experience of the majority of the entire village. They died in silence, and the stories of their lives are unknown.
“This kind of story, trying to record it.” Hou Guoan said.
After the factory closed, the surrounding business district became deserted
After the factory closed, the surrounding business district became deserted
The current factory video doesn’t meet that goal. Hou Guoan said that it would be boring to shoot only the factory building. He preferred the content with life atmosphere. He tried to shoot the scene when the demobilized workers left the factory, but the workload was too heavy, so he failed to make it. Recently, he and his friends plan to make small theater videos, acting out the stories they collected from their co-workers, such as waiting in line for a public phone or having to hang up a leave pass to go to the bathroom.
This popular
While live-streaming and shooting from the streets, Hou sometimes meets fans.
“Are you the one who filmed the migrant life in Dongguan?” “A man in a plaid shirt approached, then bought him a sports drink and posed for a picture in front of the factory.
“I’m so dark.” “Hou said, looking at the photos after the fans left. Street snaps made him “darker” and his account “redder.” Although on Douyin, a short video with thousands of thumb up and 100,000 views is not “hot”, but for Hou Guoan who used to have more than 20 views while shooting with an 800-yuan Hongmi-phone, it is already a good achievement.
“I always wanted fire before, but after it became a fire, it didn’t help in real life.” In the past two years, he has received only three ads. The most expensive one came from a shipping company, which paid 1,500 yuan for a video. There are also labor dispatch companies want to advertise, but Hou Guoan worried that these companies are not reliable, refused, “can not pit workers.”
Starting in 2017, Hou Guoan did not return to the factory. Instead, he went to work for a public welfare organization that provides workers’ services. His salary was only 4,000 yuan, 1,000 yuan less than his wife, who works in the factory, but he liked the job — it was the longest he had held since migrating.
“It’s like helping another self.” The work gave him a sense of value. As for his own Douyin, he described it as “kind of a success” — he had more than 250,000 followers four hours after saying it.
Hou always felt that his videos were “shaking” too much. After several shots, he murmured that he still needed a stabilizer, but he could not afford to spend the money. The 800 yuan mobile phone is often short of memory. Once the video is too much, it gets stuck so that WeChat cannot be opened. Sometimes the memory is full even when the video is half shot. The “live light” was a flashlight for a mobile phone, which he clipped on a shelf and shone the light into his face for two hours, making his eyes sore.
Hou Guoan in the rental room to do a live broadcast
Hou Guoan in the rental room to do a live broadcast
He has always wanted a camera. Every time he saw the workers washing the glass walls of the building with safety ropes, he had the impulse to take pictures, but the pictures were all paste. If you buy a camera, you have to make a big decision — it costs nearly a month’s salary.
The closest Mr. Hou ever came to a camera was when a friend borrowed it for him. At that time, Hou knew several workers suffering from occupational diseases, and he wanted to photograph their lives. One of them, he remembered, was a woman whose child was at school at home and whose husband was said to be in poor health, but who always smiled. Hou Guoan managed to borrow a camera, but it was broken. As for the maid, she was dead too.
In addition to shooting short videos, Hou also broadcasts live on Douyin from time to time. Sometimes, he can walk for eight hours outdoors from Dalingshan to Shijie with his mobile phone in hand, and wander around the industrial zone. At the other end of the broadcast room, netizens enthusiastically ask him to visit a nearby factory. Live always makes Hou Guoan feel embarrassed, he is afraid of no one to see, but also aware that there is no talent to perform, speech is slightly stuttering. These live streams are more like chatting with netizens about whether a particular factory is still there and how many workers are still there.
Regular audiences, usually only 20 to 30 people, can receive 7,000 to 10,000 thumb ups a night. In a way, this is Hou’s way of earning his traveling expenses — he spends nearly 30 yuan on a single trip, bus rides, mineral water and lunch. If he goes far, he also has to stay in a hotel, so he counts every expense carefully.
“I earned 10.80 yuan for 1.4 hours of live streaming.” Hou stretched out and closed the cellphone flashlight on his face. It was now past ten o ‘clock in the evening.
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