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 was taken off. 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.
Two and a half years ago, Hou Guoan took a video of the Wanshida factory in the same location. Since then, he gradually became a short video broadcasters specializing in Dongguan factory, and for this reason opened a channel on ShakeYin, named “main shot Dongguan working life ~ outdoor live see Dongguan “, used to record the city’s mobile working and life stories. Up to now, his Shake audio channel has released 785 short videos, with a following of more than 250,000 people.
These short videos are generally controlled within 10 seconds – if it’s long, people who come in from the “recommended” If it’s longer, people who come in from “recommendations” will cross over before they finish watching. “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.
In 2018, he felt he should do In 2018, when he felt he should do something “serious”, he thought of short videos again – he intended to record a video on legal literacy, talking about labor He planned to record a popular law video to talk about legal knowledge related to labor rights and interests. Before that, he had a small piece of flesh crushed off his left finger by a machine at work. He taught himself the law, recovered some social security benefits, 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”” It is in the store across from here was cheated”, the comment section, netizens speak of their memories about the station. “There is from here (station) into the city, there is from here to leave, so (video) shot after sending, the comments underneath especially a lot of talk about how he came or how to go. “Hou Guoan told All Now.
Attracted by the video, mostly migrant workers who have now left Dongguan, such as Hunan Wang Yonggen. He bluntly said that the impression of Dongguan is not good, but when he saw the video of Chang’an station, his heart “trembled a little” – that was his ride in Dongguan. -That is the station he must go through in Dongguan to catch a bus, and also sent his favorite female classmates there. Two years ago, Wang Yonggen followed Hou Guoan’s channel and saw a video of an industrial park, which happened to be 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 can I say it, there are still some feelings. “Three years later in September 2018, Hou Guoan returned to Wanshida to shoot short videos when the green belt plants originally used as decoration had grown to his chest. The ground was under construction, piles of bricks and dirt enclosed the plant, and rusty steel bars were resting in bundles on the roadside.
The video was not shot clearly enough, the camera shaking up and down, Hou Guoan gave it a song with Wang Feng’s “Youth”.
In the comment section, some people mentioned other factory names, and some asked the host if a certain factory was still around. After that, “is so-and-so factory still around” became a question that Hou Guoan had to answer every day, and he also followed the names of factories left in the comment section and took more and more factory videos, shaking the audio channel. The theme of the video 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, go northeast, turn left after 50 meters. “This is the prompt sound from the navigation.
Hou Guoan is not used to using north and south to distinguish the direction, he twisted the phone, trying to figure out 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 public transportation or walks, and at the farthest point, he changed buses four times, which took four hours.
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 half circle – this is Hou Guoan shooting video “standard pose “. Subsequently, he found two or three more positions to shoot, the whole process but 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-story high business apartments. The destination of the navigation has become a construction site, according to the plan, seven months later, it will become a business apartment building.
This is a situation Hou Guoan often encounters. Factories that are no longer in business disappear from the map, and workers’ memories are blurred, so he can only piece together little clues. After the factory moved or closed down, the plant was demolished is also a common thing, can only hold the “salvage” mentality to shoot. 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 that he could not shoot. 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 one is visible.
Most of the factories are inaccessible and Hou Guoan is afraid of getting into trouble, he will only use his cell 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 being demolished.
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 to ten years – that was the high moment of Dongguan industry, known as the “world factory “; at the same time, it is also the moment of youth for these workers, most of whom were not yet 25 years old when they left.
Hou Guoan feels that the boring video of the factory is like a reminder that 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, factory row after row, I think I was in that place, and all the scenes came out …… video for at most ten or twenty seconds, I feel that the experience in Dongguan is a lifetime at home. Experienced. “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 the factory, and later worked as a cashier in the Internet cafe and supermarket.
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 factories had to pay the introduction fee, but after just a few years, the “big factories” where Liu Fangping worked were reversed –The old staff could get 200 yuan bonus for introducing new people into the factory. Now the factory has closed, leaving only empty plants.
According to Hou Guoan, now young workers love to go to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, because the factories there can give higher wages. In Dongguan, some of the factories around 2008 there are tens of thousands of workers, some have closed, or become a small factory of less than 1,000 people. 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, the “vacating cages for birds”.
The dense factories of the past still remain in the bus stop signs. tit factory, hetian second industrial zone, qisheng shoe factory, these are the names of the bus stops. More than two years of street photography, Hou Guoan is also familiar with the situation of Dongguan factories, in 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.
“It has gone quiet, which is the biggest change in Dongguan. “Liu Fangping left Dongguan in 2009, went to Shenzhen to open a container truck, still running the Pearl River Delta freight, he obviously felt that the Dongguan factory shipments are decreasing.
Lemonhill left Dongguan in 2007, went back home to get married and have children, and now runs a restaurant with a dozen employees under him, has not been able to find the time to go back to Dongguan to see. Watching Hou Guoan’s video, she felt that the phone in Dongguan, and her memory of the same as two worlds, “that time more prosperous, the traffic, now feel like a dead city over there, the heart is very difficult. “
Youth, is the word often mentioned by the lemons. In their view, those days often work overtime, entertainment is scarce, but compared with the current middle-aged life, those days are rather relaxed.
Liu Fangping remembers the days of chatting on the factory lawn, buying a 50-cent pile of melon seeds and a dollar and a half of fried rice noodles. Liu Shaoxin, who used to work in a Dongguan garment factory, had previously asked Hou Guoan to film the factory where he had worked, and he said the Hou announcer let him relive his youthful past. At that time, the workers’ entertainment is to listen to the radio, a small radio, put in the pocket to listen, Liu Shaoxin still remember the host of the program “night sky is not lonely” Name is Hu Xiaomei.
Today, Liu Shaoxin in his hometown in Jiangxi became the boss, operating a hotel. He also thought about finding a female worker, want to know her recent situation, “very vague at the time, and did not deliberately fall in love. Anyway, together, she is more concerned about me, I am also more concerned about her. “
In 2009, Liu Shaoxin left Dongguan, soon after the female worker also went away, the two broke off contact. Four years ago, Liu Shaoxin began to find each other, and her hometown workers to inquire, but also on the Internet search her name, he used “God” to describe the behavior.
In Hou Guoan’s shake audio channel, there is a part of the video is in the “search for people”.
Initially, Hou Guoan is refused to send a search video, but after watching more old photos sent by netizens, he was moved, “(video) is not just looking for people, this kind of old photos are very old, but also very monumental, can reflect the living conditions of a group of the times. “
He would use the video with the old photos of the finder, the year of work, some people did not even save photos, Hou Guoan can only use the picture of the factory and neighborhood to match the search notice. Liu Fangping has sent a search with his previous work photos and has recovered 28 contemporaneous workers and formed a WeChat group. The old workers chatted very opportunistically, “the former friends are the real friends”.
Mobility
“In the eyes of many people, worker mobility is a very common thing. Even if you have been doing it for more than a decade, you have to leave once the factory moves or closes down. But he has given so much time here, experienced a lot of stories, the moment of leaving, there will still be reluctant. “Hou Guoan believes that migrant workers to the city, always with a lot of good fantasies, such as want to buy a car, as a small boss, but the reality does not allow, many people can only keep drifting. For example, he himself, bouncing between Shenzhen, Dongguan and back to his hometown, has been on the move.
In 2000, Hunan Luo Hui graduated from junior high school to a toy factory in Dongguan Daojiao as a spray painter. Ten years in Dongguan, he worked in four or five towns in the toy factory, from the general workers to the youngest team leader. Just a few years of work, every day to work overtime until about 1:00 am. However, by 2010, the orders of the toy factory were so low that no overtime was needed. Luo Hui resigned to work in an auto parts factory in Guangzhou, he left less than a year, the toy factory closed down.
“Other cities are called migrant workers to do wage earners, migrant workers, Dongguan early called these people do ‘new Guanren’. “Luo Hui has deep feelings for Dongguan. Over the years, he bought a car, free to always go to Dongguan to see, in the shake, he also paid attention to a few Dongguan broadcasters, including Hou Guoan, often watch them shoot Dongguan video.
If you can choose, Hou Guoan still prefer to stay in his hometown. He has twice returned to farming, but both ended in failure, the price of agricultural products is unstable, and the income is meager, not enough to maintain the life of a family of four. About the future work and life, Hou Guoan also has no specific plans. He and his wife live in an open room with a monthly rent of 300 yuan, an area of less than 20 square meters. 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 feels that this flow is common and most people have taken it for granted.
But he wanted to write it down. He has always had the desire to “record”, initially in words, and in 2015, he submitted his story about his part-time job to a website and received his first fee in his life –300 yuan. For the next two to three years, he continued to post some of his own and his relatives’ labor stories in online forums, and also won the essay contest award of the information platform “Pepper Tribe”, with a certificate. As he moved from one rental house to another.
The desire to record originated from two deaths. One was his uncle, who was working on a railroad, but was cheated into a black brick kiln and died soon afterwards; the other was his cousin, who was killed by a flying rock while building a hydropower station in Yunnan.
By mistake, after his cousin’s funeral, he and his cousin were also taken to the same hydroelectric site by relatives. Because there were not enough beds, he and his cousin slept on his cousin’s bunk. “We spent the whole day facing the stone wall that killed him,” Hou Guoan said, adding that a year later, he went to Shanxi to build a railroad, just like his dead uncle.
Hou Guoan realized that this was not the experience of a few people, but of most people in the whole village. They died without a sound, and the story of their lives was unknown.
“This kind of story, want to record it. “Hou Guoan said.
The video of the factory now shot does not meet this goal. Hou Guoan said frankly that it is boring to shoot only the factory, and he prefers content with a sense of life. He tried to shoot scenes of workers leaving the factory after being laid off, but the workload was too heavy to make it. Recently, he and his friends are planning to make small theater-style videos to perform the collected stories of workers, such as the previous queue for public phones and the need to hang up the departure pass for the toilet.
After becoming popular
When live-streaming and filming on the street, Hou Guoan sometimes met fans.
“Are you the one filming Dongguan working life? ” a man in a plaid shirt came up to him and asked, then bought him a sports drink and posed for a photo in front of the factory.
“I’m so dark. After the fan left, Hou Guoan looked at the photo and said. Street photography made him “darker” and made his account “become red”. Although in the entire Shake Sound, a short video with a few thousand likes and 100,000 plays is not “fire”, but for the 800 yuan red rice phone shot, previously only 20 The video was shot with an 800 yuan red rice mobile phone and had only 20 plays before, but it was a good result.
Before always want to fire, but after the fire, not much help to real life. “Over the past two years, he has only received three ads, the highest advertising costs a from a freight company, 1500 yuan to send an advertising video. There are also labor dispatch companies that want to send out recruitment ads, but Hou Guoan is worried that these companies are unreliable and refused, “I can’t always pit the workers”.
Since 2017, Hou Guoan did not return to the factory, but went to work for a charity organization that does worker services. His paycheck is only 4,000 yuan, 1,000 yuan less than his wife who works in a factory, but he likes the job – it is the longest job he has done since he went out to work.
“It’s like helping his other self. “This job gives him a sense of value. His assessment of his audio shake is that he is “pretty successful” – and four hours after he said that Four hours later, he had more than 250,000 ShakeYin followers.
Hou Guoan always feels that his videos are too “shaky”, and several times after shooting, he murmured that he still needed a stabilizer, but he could not afford to spend the money. 800 yuan phone also often memory shortage, the video stock is a lot, it will be stuck WeChat can not open, sometimes out to half of the memory is full. The “live light” is a cell phone flashlight, he clamped the phone on the shelf, the flashlight beam shining on the face, two hours live down, the light shot eyes sore.
He always wanted a camera. Every time he saw workers hanging from safety ropes washing the glass facade of the building, he had the urge to shoot, but the cell phone shot is all paste. And if you want to buy a camera, it must be very determined – spend nearly a month’s salary.
The closest Hou Guoan got to a camera was when a friend borrowed it for him. At that time, Hou Guoan met several workers suffering from occupational diseases, and he wanted to photograph their lives. He remembered that one of the female workers, children in the home school, her husband was said to be in poor health, but no matter what time, she was smiling. Hou Guoan had a hard time borrowing the camera, but the camera was broken. As for the woman worker, she has also passed away.
In addition to shooting short videos, Hou Guoan from time to time will also open live in Shake. Sometimes, he can hold the phone in the outdoor hiking for eight hours, from Dalingshan to Shijie, in the industrial zone around, the other end of the live broadcast, netizens enthusiastically let him go to the surrounding so-and-so factory to see. The live broadcast always makes Hou Guoan feel awkward, he is afraid that no one will come to see, but also feel that there is nothing to perform the talent, and slightly stammering speech. These live broadcasts are more like chats with netizens, talking about whether a factory is still there and how many workers are still there.
The resident audience is usually only 20 to 30 people, and can receive 7,000 to 10,000 likes a night. In a way, this is how Hou Guoan earns his way to the outside world – an outside shoot, taking public transportation, buying mineral water, eating lunch, always cost nearly 30 yuan, if you go far, you also have to stay in a hotel, every expense he carefully calculated.
“Live 1.4 hours, earned 10 yuan 80 cents. “Hou Guoan stretched, shutting off the phone torch shining on his face. At this point, it was already past 10 p.m.
(If not otherwise specified, the pictures in the text are taken by the author)
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