The nanny went Home for New Year’s Eve, and my heart was empty, I felt like I had lost my love, occasionally sweeping a glance at the empty house would somehow feel uncomfortable. She has only been here for two months, and she is not treating me well. In the morning, she would steam buns, a meat bun and a vegetable bun, and she would eat the meat bun and leave the vegetable bun for me. When I called out to her to take the baby away, I always pretended not to hear her. But the afternoon she left, the child woke up looking for her, babbling “Aunt”, but I was a little teary-eyed.
It was the first Time I had spent two months with a stranger. In a way, she was my savior. After she arrived, the mother-in-law-daughter-in-law relationship, the problem of the century, I can finally abandon the test. Auntie Wu is from Sichuan. Beijing is looking for a nanny, according to the cuisine to be divided. The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are looking for. What taste do you like, where to find the aunt. The southern aunts are more popular than the northern provinces, and the price is higher.
Auntie Wu’s image and temperament is also very outstanding in the nanny world. 45 years old, her skin is still fair and her body is plump, but she has lost some hair on top of her head. She has been in Beijing for twenty years and has travelled through all kinds of families, like a protagonist in the folded Beijing, spying on the secrets of the city.
I love to hear her talk about how rich people live their lives, and this is the topic she enjoys the most. Strangely enough, many of the high-end families that Auntie Wu has served do not work or do not need to work, and are truly the idle people of Beijing. According to her observation, the vast majority of the time, they are lying around. There was a Family of wives who did not get up until 12:00 noon every day, ate and slept until 5:00 p.m., took a bath and skin care at night, and went to bed again at 10:00. Auntie Wu has been curious, “sleep so long, the back does not hurt?” It is said that the wife’s health is not a problem, but not very active, hired four nannies, even the water is poured nannies, fruit to cut into small pieces with a toothpick fork to eat.
Later, when her husband went in for corruption, the wife had to move out of the mansion and into a two-bedroom apartment, leaving behind one of the cheapest aunts. Her husband was not a government official, but an executive of a head Internet company. According to the name given by the aunt, it turned out to be a news figure. The outside world was speculating why this man was embezzling when he obviously made several million a year and had a bright future.
When she first went to that house, she dialed some dishes out, intending to bring them into the room to eat. In such families, it is the professional habit of the aunt to eat in the nanny’s room, not at the same table with the host family. The executive suddenly poked out half his head from behind her, “Auntie Wu, what are you doing?” She shivered in fear. He reiterated the rules of this house, “Usually Bao-mom and I eat first, don’t worry, we both use communal chopsticks too, no spit.” There is also a rule that the nanny is not allowed to use hot water, saying that “hot water will leave water marks when washing dishes”. The most unacceptable thing is that she is not allowed to use toilet paper. When I saw her using toilet paper to wrap her hair on the bathroom floor, I picked up a cotton swab from the trash and told her, “You’ll be like this from now on, roll it up, roll it up. She said it was really disgusting, so she bought her own packet of paper.
There is also a young couple, the family had two children, and do not have to work. Their home is a mansion worth more than 20 million, even the lights in the nanny’s room, are worth more than 100,000 crystal lamps. The market price of a live-in nanny is 7,000 yuan per month, but their family will give 6,500 yuan. It was later learned that the child’s grandparents gave the nanny fee, the young couple privately retained part of it. Auntie Wu is not able to see them, “is a parasite”. But and I talk about his family that small car, and reveal a sense of honor, “so long as an aunt, I have not seen anyone’s car keys have a pound, he said that car to 11 million”.
Sometimes passing by some upscale communities, what are the types of homes here, how light, how the green space, she knows it like the back of her hand. The magic is that it is the same for urban villages. Which properties used to be urban villages, which urban villages in the house cheap, she also know all.
She used to live in Feijia Village, an urban village outside Beijing’s Northern Fifth Ring Road, where tens of thousands of laborers like her lived. In 2017, the rent doubled from 500 yuan to 1,000 yuan after the “11-18” fire in Daxing, and went up again in 2019, when the city was cleared of foreign renters. Recently, it has gone up some more, and a room costs 1,500 yuan. Beijing announced the flow of transfer, continuous work for 17 hours of online taxi drivers, a day to work three jobs of the couple, become the epitome of Beijing labor sorrows. This group of people all live in Shunyi, further north than Feijia Village. Shunyi is the closest suburb to the main city in the north, with a rent of about 1,000 yuan and access to the subway, making it the best place for the laborers to settle down.
Auntie Wu also recently moved here, and the rent is only 500 yuan. It takes more than an hour to come to my house by car, so she simply lives in my house and goes back on weekends. In addition to taking care of the children for me, she also has to go to an old patron’s house to cook at noon.
This family is old Beijing, demolished six houses, living a privileged Life on rent, also full time at home with children. Auntie Wu is definitely a Gold-collar worker in the labor force, going in and out of upscale communities, earning tens of thousands of dollars a month, and working easily and respectfully. The net car drivers and couriers in Beijing are the white-collar workers in the labor force. Repairers, masons, dishwashers, and other laborers with individual skills are the working class. Older people are the bottom of the barrel, and they can only find jobs such as garbage pickers and gatekeepers.
I often see old men and women in the neighborhood wearing green or orange undershirts with the word “garbage collector” printed on them. They stand in front of the garbage cans, pull out the garbage bags from the bins with their bare hands, and after tearing them one by one, the foul-smelling Food waste is dumped into the food waste bins with a clatter.
The grade line of laborers, almost parallel to age. Auntie Wu is only 45 years old and already has a sense of crisis. After the age of 50, wages will be difficult to break through 6,000 yuan. 55 years old and onward, only to collect garbage. Auntie Wu plans to work for another seven or eight years to save some retirement capital. Her son is married, bought a house in the city of millions, the old couple took out 900,000 down payment, this year also plans to pay off the rest of the loan. This is even to give an account of the son, the money earned in the future to save their retirement.
A few days ago, Auntie Wu’s husband found a polyp in his throat. When she heard that it might be a cancer, she was so scared that she broke two glasses. Her husband, also in Beijing, is a mason, specializing in installing marble facades for mansions. She has been to those mansions, “not a villa, more senior than a villa, called the public house”, an area of several thousand square meters, walking in it makes people a little scared, “too big, eerie like a temple”.
Every day at 6:30, Auntie Wu woke up on time and went to bed at 12:00 at night. She never spends money herself, even bank cards are not, monthly wages directly to the son’s account. The bottom sweater has been worn for more than ten years, and is densely packed with balls. Every night, I could hear her on the phone with her family, talking late into the night. In the past, I also complained in my heart that some of them were too noisy, but now I always feel that the house is a little too quiet.
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