One summer when I was still in Shanghai – that was almost ten years ago – a young man moved in next door.
He was 5’3″, red-faced, his hair shaved like a board brush, and he had a modified bicycle parked down the block. He spoke with a slight accent and was very simple.
“I deliver water.” He said.
On his bicycle, he could hang an unimaginable number of buckets of drinking water, which at first glance looked like a basket of apples on a chopstick.
He blushes easily, gets on his bike, puffs hard, puffs away, and moves.
A month after his arrival, there were two more people in the house: a woman and a child. He used to leave the door open in his house. As a result, the cries of his children and the comforting sounds of his women could be heard in the hallway.
Of course, he would attract criticism. The old aunt and neighbor, who usually lived idly at home and had a lot of firepower, naturally had to be admonished. The old auntie speaks Shanghainese, the neighbor women speak their native language, and they can’t get along with each other, so they just stare at each other.
Some of the neighbors, who were not too friendly, took it out on my neighbor’s bicycle, which was parked in the corridor.
I advised him: “It’s better to keep the door closed in general”.
I added a few words of explanation: living in my hometown, you may be used to leaving the door open, bright and airy, but in the city, the neighbors will not be too happy when the sound of children crying comes out; in the summer, if the door is always open, the smell of powdered milk will also float outside.
If you want ventilation, open the back window and keep the door closed.
When you first move in, it is easy to attract gossip, so it is better to be a little accommodating to your neighbors. You don’t have to be on good terms with your neighbors, but you don’t want to be a nuisance.
He did as I suggested, and, sure enough, he was better off.
The family next door thanked me and sent me a plate of peaches from their hometown, which they cleaned and sent to me. Since we became neighbors, we inevitably chatted a few words. Later on, they also became acquainted to this point.
“I’m going shopping and stopping by to pick up a few things for you?” “Good!”
So I would occasionally chat with him.
The brother next door said he used to be a brick maker in the countryside, and he asked his aunt and uncle, who was a distant brother, to let him come to Shanghai and work as a water delivery man.
He was tired, but he earned more money; he came for a month to see for himself, and then shipped his children and daughter-in-law to Shanghai.
About three months after we met, I was helping a friend with a project, so that day I asked the youngest brother in passing.
“Will you fit in in Shanghai?”
He looked at me, stunned. I realized I had spoken a written sentence, so I mulled over another one.
“Besides good money, where else do you like about Shanghai?”
“Watching TV,” he said with enthusiasm, “you can watch TV everywhere, on the bus, in restaurants. He said enthusiastically, “You can watch TV anywhere, on the bus, in a restaurant, you have something to watch; I watch TV at home, but I don’t get as many channels as in Shanghai; and oh, a small park.”
The so-called small park is a public green space in the back of the neighborhood, with a few exercise machines. The family next door used to play there, and the neighbor’s brother was happily swinging like a child, while his daughter-in-law held the child in her arms and smiled at him.
“Strolling around the small park, watching TV, eating take-out, quite happy.”
I have been to his house several times. It wasn’t a small house, but with all the buckets piled up, the space available was narrow. There was only one chair in the room and a table that could be folded – probably for a dining table. The child and his daughter-in-law were often sitting on the bed.
I told him that he could put the empty buckets in an inconspicuous shed somewhere in the neighborhood, where no one would go anyway, and that the room would be more spacious. He was a little concerned that it might be stolen; I told him that no one would steal the bucket, and that it wasn’t very expensive. He wasn’t convinced.
“The boss says they’re expensive, and I’ll be fined for stealing a bucket.”
I convinced him that the buckets were not expensive, and that no one really stole them; the boss was blackmailing you by saying, “If they are stolen, I’ll buy you a new one.”
The next time I went to his house, his kids were sitting on the floor playing with the blocks. ……
The old aunts in the neighborhood would call him a “working-class friend”; but he would mostly say his job, “I’m a water delivery guy.
Later, his daughter-in-law went to work as a watermelon seller across the street – in summer, some melon farmers in Nanhui would rent a front door for a month and sell melons on the spot – and she became a “watermelon seller”.
I don’t know if my observation is correct, but many people who really work seldom say they work for a living, but seriously report their occupation, “I work in a construction team” or “I help out in a hotpot restaurant”.
Zhao Benshan, Tianwa and Liu Xiaoguang are all migrant workers, but they never mention the word “part-time job” in their dialogues. They only say “go to the construction site” and “I won’t take you there next year”.
As everyone on the Internet likes to say to themselves, “I have to move bricks tomorrow.
When some distant relatives in my hometown wanted to build a house, some masons from the hometown came to help; some young masons who moved bricks would not say that they moved the bricks themselves, but “I helped Master so-and-so (a famous local mason)”.
Probably those who really work would like to have a regular job.
On the other hand, many people who say they are part-time workers can laugh at themselves because they are not really part-time workers, but they feel that their jobs are just as hard and uncertain as manual laborers.
Of course, there are also those who say, “It is impossible to work a part-time job and you will never work a part-time job”, probably because they really don’t like part-time jobs.
As for the real workers, only a few of them have the time to go to the Internet to make fun of themselves and inspire others.
As I’ve written before, my mom enjoys dealing with the people in her neighborhood.
In 2017, my mom had a lot of free time to help tutor elementary school students who are the children of migrant workers in the neighborhood. One of them was a pair of brothers, the older one in third grade and the younger one in first grade. Both parents are migrant workers, not low income, just busy. During the New Year, they were especially busy: as we all know, the week after the Spring Festival, everyone is off, so they had to stock up on food from dusk to dusk on the 30th day of the Lunar New Year. The parents were so busy that they couldn’t arrange a New Year’s dinner for their children. My mother took it upon herself to.
“Let’s go to my house!”
So New Year’s Eve dinner was me, my parents, and the two kids together.
The two children were neatly dressed and tidy, but still a little shy when they sat down to the table. My mother ladled chicken soup for them, coaxed them to eat soy beans with shredded lotus root, and dined them on goose, and put a stuffed meat and oil gluten in each bowl.
The two children, the younger one is more eloquent than the older one, began to talk about the older one being criticized for not doing well on the exam a few days ago; the older one was embarrassed and said a few words to the younger one; the younger one said in my ear that the older one was not allowed to say anything, but in fact, after being criticized by the teacher, he secretly cried his nose; the older one was ashamed and said that the younger one wet the bed a few days ago and was scolded by his mother …… The two children revealed their shortcomings to each other, heatedly, my father was happy to see, my mother had to do her duty to teach, while laughing, while criticizing in a serious manner.
“Don’t talk about people’s shortcomings! Be sure to eat well!”
I thought it was very sweet at the time, but in hindsight, I thought that getting together for New Year’s Eve dinner was something that was rare, but for them, it was something else.
It’s probably just a really busy time for them.
When I think of it, those who would describe their experiences at length on the Internet are the survivor deviations among wage earners, and their experiences are written for people who don’t really work – some of them even have a sense of curiosity.
The vast majority of wage earners should have neither the time nor the interest to read this.
A year and a half ago, in a home-style restaurant owned by a Shanghai aunt in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, I heard this from a woman at the next table, on and off.
“You’re 24? You’re young …… I’m 27 …… My son is 9 …… I wasn’t married at the time, so I left my son with his father in the country… …I work in Xiamen, and I go back to see him four days a month …… and he plays with his cell phone every day and ignores me …… I’m working in France, but he uses his cell phone to video me every day, and I’m quite happy, and the cell phone is fine. …… You’re young, you can work more jobs, I can’t run away from some of them …… I’m not in a hurry to go back yet, I can still work for two years …… It’s freer and I can earn money to take care of my family. …… This is a picture of my child …… I’m done eating or back to work, you see nice shoes take a picture of me …… It’s a holiday today, I’ll buy another soy milk! “
I can’t guess at the lady’s life, but I think the ups and downs of hearing these bits and pieces, put together, make up for a long novel.
Well, there is no theme to this article. If I had to say something, it would be something like this.
Many of those who can mock themselves as bricklayers and hitters on the Internet are not real workers, but only take the situation of working as a reflection of their own situation.
In this world, there are indeed many real wage earners, but their voices are not always heard.
Ms. Zhao Lirong’s classic “The Adventure of Working” is a comedy, which is refreshing to watch, but it is also an idealized story.
Because the image of Ms. Zhao in it is not short of money, she wants to learn from advanced experience.
The real fighter can’t be so dashing as to say, “Actually, it’s just a plate of dahlrabi,” or “It’s just a cup of water.
It’s more likely that they really have to pretend to be a meal tray.
“Others eat and I watch, others sit and I stand.”
Watching the boss sell palace jade liquor and groupies, not a word is uttered.
The world is different between a real worker beater and an imaginary worker beater.
Of course, think the other way around.
People who are not wage earners will also use part-time jobs to laugh at themselves, and subconsciously know how hard it is to work.
Probably it’s hard for everyone, whether they work or not.
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