The occupations you see in Sidulan Village are closely related to the functioning of the city – courier loaders and unloaders, delivery workers, cleaning workers, cell phone accessory salesmen, airport ground staff, movers, most of whom have no choice but to be in intensive contact with the mobile population, delivering take-aways and deliveries to all corners of the city, carrying passengers to various destinations. They have contributed to the mobility of the city and now have to bear the cost of mobility. The work is not always permanent, and many people will rush to two jobs a day, or even more.
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You have to keep working like a machine Xidulan Village in Shunyi is not big, so if you try to walk, you can walk around it in half an hour. In those brick or cement-colored houses, there are more than 4,600 residents, most of whom are migrant workers. Every morning at 6 a.m., they come out of the village one after another. One of his roommates works the night shift at the logistics park, and they hardly meet – he goes to work in the morning, his roommate returns from work, and when he closes at night, his roommate has already left.
In the last six months, these two occupations have been in the news in a special way: appearing in the itinerary of confirmed cases announced by the Beijing CDC. in the June 2020 outbreak that spread from Xinfaodi, a delivery worker was diagnosed, and the flow survey showed that he worked from 0700 to 2100 daily, receiving an average of about 50 orders per day and picking up his wife from work on his electric bike. in the Shunyi outbreak in late December, a The patient, surnamed Wang, worked at a trading company during the day from the 12th to the 19th, and went to the Shunfeng bulk transfer yard at night to drive a forklift part-time. on December 20, at 10 a.m., he accompanied his wife, who had been discharged from the hospital for a follow-up visit, and went to the transfer yard part-time again that evening. on the 21st, his wife also joined the part-time job, working from 22 p.m. to 2 a.m. The announcement in a few short lines reveals an exhaustion that is hard to breathe.
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Residents line up to participate in a nucleic acid test at a sampling site in Shunyi District, Beijing, in the afternoon of January 3, 2021 © Vision China
At 3 a.m. on Dec. 26, the village was sealed – four people in Xidulan had tested positive for nucleic acid the day before, including the couple who worked the night shift at Shunyi – Bai Xiaoguang and roommates were in the rare position of having nothing to do. The same was true for the other 10 workers in the house, who shared a 120-square-meter rental house. Bai Xiaoguang sleeps on a 1.5-meter bed with a wall on one side, surrounded by screens on two sides, and a table with a plug and kettle on the other. The room was dark, and his personal belongings were only some portable clothes and a quilt.
Because of his frequent job changes, he basically has to move to a place closer to his workplace every other year. His roommates came and went in the same way, said another part-time worker in Sidulan village, “Some of them left just as soon as they got acquainted, and they didn’t know where they went.” The epidemic made life even less secure – because of the village closure, Bai and her roommates had time to talk, and when they did, they found out that they hadn’t earned much money in 2020. Return to work will be later than in previous years, “afraid to go out after the danger, but also to the country trouble,” back to Beijing, isolation, looking for a new job, “maybe people are not recruiting, or did not resume work, on this place to work two days, that place to work two days.” Every job needs to be re-adapted, “it is not good to change jobs, temporary workers usually have to nucleic acid testing and other proof, anyway, this year is more difficult.” The end of the year has just settled down, we have saved up a lot of energy to do a good job, closed the rent to go home to see the children, the virus swept back, and is isolated, can not resume work.
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Xidulan village after the closure
In Xidulan Village, the occupations you see are all closely related to where the city runs – courier loaders and unloaders, pancake fruit vendors, janitors, cell phone accessory salesmen, airport attendants, moving workers – they have no choice, most of them need intensive contact with mobile people, they have contributed to the mobility of the city, but now they have to bear the mobile The cost. Many of them have to work two jobs a day, or even more. The patient surnamed Wang, who works two jobs, would not be a surprise to Sidulan Village.
Many people on Zhihu have asked whether they should work the night shift at the transit center because they are in debt or will not be able to pay the next semester’s tuition. The responses at the bottom were all “no”, “this is not something you can afford if you are mentally prepared.” This is a job that needs to be “done one day off three days”, but the patient surnamed Wang once worked 10 days in a row.
Courier industry daytime work is to receive and dispatch, every day at 5, 6 o’clock in the afternoon, the truck from the business office, arriving at the transit site is usually 6, 7 o’clock in the evening, or even later. The next morning before 6 o’clock, the truck has to set off again to the next station. What happens in between is the work of those night shift workers: scanning, sorting, loading and unloading. There is silence during the day and lights at night. The loud roar of the conveyor belt, the voice of the team leader or captain yelling at the employees, and the sound of the trucks backing up make up the hustle and bustle of the transfer yard. In summer, the temperature reached over 30 degrees, the ventilation fan was better than nothing, the water drank turned into sweat, and the unpleasant smell wafted in the air. In winter, Xiaohong, who had worked part-time for a day, remembers the transit yard as empty and leaky, “very cold and had to work in a down jacket.”
No matter which specific job you are engaged in, it is essentially repetitive and you have to keep working like a machine. The forklift work of the patient surnamed Wang is more technical and will pay 8-10 yuan per hour higher. The loading and unloading Bai’s roommate does, on the other hand, is purely physical work: people are trapped in a few square meters of van, setting up items delivered by conveyor belt as space-efficient as possible. (In the large transit yard, more than 30 kilograms of express is very common) If you want to be lazy for a while to go to the toilet, when you return, the express will be piled up like a mountain, even forcing the conveyor belt to stop running and the captain began to scold loudly. People here come and go in non-stop rotation. Winter is a Beijing courier company transit yard outsourcing labor company with the shift captain, even if bad temper, he also kept in mind not to easily say heavy words to familiar face this guideline, “try to stay on it.” And Zhang Qiang, who has done management in Chengdu transit yard, remembers, “a group of part-time workers, see today, see tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, all raw faces.”
At midnight there would be a meal, 10 minutes to eat, come back and continue to work. The second half of the night was the hardest, the darkness seemed to never end, hands were cut by the edge of the sack or box, shoulders were sore, waist like to break, thighs lost consciousness, the will of the person would be broken. Zhang Qiang remembers that early in the morning when the work was finished, the workers’ faces looked like schoolchildren who had just finished school. After the agency took away about 30%, a night of exhaustion was worth more than two hundred dollars.
The next day, he went out to work as usual
For many workers in Shunyi, it is not uncommon to engage in a part-time job in addition to the original job for more income. Bai had worked as a security guard for two companies at the same time – the first from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. as a regular employee, leaving an hour to eat and change after work, and working part-time from 9 p.m. to 12 p.m. in another building. The two jobs together can earn 7,000 to 8,000 a month, leaving 1,000 for himself and the rest to his wife in Hengshui, Hebei.
The company asked its employees to be on duty for seven days a month and paid half salary. In order to subsidize his family, he found a part-time job in a mask factory for 160 yuan a day.
He is 30 years old, has a simple face, and his wife rents a room of about 15 square meters with a monthly rent of 1,000. 6:30 a.m. at the mask factory, the bus is not yet running, so he gets up at 4:30 a.m. and leaves at 5:00 a.m., walking for an hour to work. As he walked along the road at dawn, with large trucks passing behind him, he recorded a video and said to himself, “The early bird gets the worm, and a good day starts with refueling!”
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Zheng Xia Peng on his way to work in a mask factory
On the first day, he was responsible for cutting off the raw edges of the masks, and after two hours, his right hand with the scissors was already red and swollen, and two large blisters had appeared on the hands of other workers. At lunchtime, he picked up his phone with his painful hand and always felt as if it was crooked. When he finished work at 2:30 p.m., he had cut 1,310 masks, which did not meet the performance requirements, and some skilled workers were able to cut more than 4,000 masks. The supervisor warned him that he had cut a lot of masks and that he would have to pay a lot of money if it was reported. The next day, he was assigned to put logos on the masks and box them. Again, the work was repeated over and over again. He and the rest of the group packed more than 200 boxes a day and was finally told that each person had to be counted separately. That night, he was informed in the WeChat group that he was fired and the factory gave him a settlement of 320 yuan in wages.
He went back to interview the Jingdong wine sorting work, piecework counting money, a piece of 8 cents 5, if broken liquor, but also compensation, he thought about it, did not go. In June, the company resumed full work, but no wages have been paid so far.
He is a young man full of optimism about life, talking about the “seven months without pay” in a relaxed tone on the phone, but his wife’s study abroad company is also doing poorly and has not paid her for two months. They took out a loan to buy a house in Tianjin last year to plan for their future child, “to try to raise the child’s starting point a little.” The mortgage is about 10,000 a month, and this year it will be paid off mainly by borrowing money, “We overestimated our ability at the time.” He went to university and was ambitious about his future life. After graduation, he only asked his family for 2,000 yuan, and he used to be a skilled construction worker, but he thought the ceiling for skilled workers was very low. -Although he can’t say exactly what the use is yet.
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Bai Xiaoguang
In October, he quit his first job as a security guard on the evening shift when he stopped hiring part-timers. When he saw that some workers could earn 9,000 yuan a month, he also set his goal at that number. The company’s main goal is to provide a solution to the problem of the problem. I don’t think I’ll ever send it again, yes, I feel like I should never send it, it’s too tiring.” But the next day, he went to work as usual.
So far, the two months’ income from delivery did not meet his expectations. After eight years in Beijing, he has worked as a restaurant waiter, lobby manager, traffic warden, and pieceworker in a hot rolling mill, and 9,000 yuan still seems so far away. He recently heard someone say that there is a job called ancient building decoration, that is, in the park for the antique building paste paste brick and tile, income can reach 9,000 yuan, he thought after the unblocked may be able to try. I found him on a short video application, during the sealing of the village, friends around him told him, shoot short video conversion rate is high, you can have some income, he registered an account occasionally pat, “there is not much money, ten or two cents.”
Part-time worker Li Zhibo is lucky in a way. He is a temporary worker for moving, the main business is to pack furniture for people who want to emigrate abroad, the pay is relatively more, 8 hours can earn 300 yuan, overtime 40 yuan per hour, a month can be eight or nine thousand. This year, such work is rare, he can only take some office relocation work, only about 7,000 a month. But the biggest benefit of moving for this group of people is that the employer will give them a decent takeaway order after the job is done, and he remembers the best one, with red meat to eat.
He sent two boxes of instant noodles to a security guard at the entrance of the village
As of today, six villages in Shunyi District have been assessed as medium risk areas by the city’s CDC. Searching for the names of these villages on short video software, you can see many working people taking pictures of their houses that are a few square meters square and the background is usually cluttered. One man from Dongma Gezhuang likes to lie on his bed and face the camera for a while, he writes, “I did a year for nothing this year, luckily people are alive, I don’t know if I earn money or not.” A lady from East Haihong village filmed the scene of nucleic acid testing and said she was homesick, “It’s too hard this year, let people earn some money to buy buns to eat.” In the group purchase group of nearly 500 people in Xidulan village for living supplies, people would lament two sentences in between buying food, “It’s easy to live, it’s easy to live, life is not easy,” and someone replied below, “Difficult brother we will all be better, we have experienced the same, cheer up. “
People have repeatedly lowered their expectations of life, “now this year you see what is not easy, stable, safe and sound is good, there is no need for so much”, said Li Zhibo. Zheng Xia Peng has always wanted a child, this year’s conditions made him retreat, his parents are old, wages can not be paid, mortgage repayment, in July his wife was also hospitalized to remove a teratoma in the ovary, due to the epidemic, the hospital does not allow bedside, he could only let his wife go to the hospital alone.
They recorded on video the night before admission, respectively, his wife put toilet paper, water cups and a change of clothes into a black backpack, Zheng Xia Peng to the camera, some uneasiness, “Since the doctor does not allow a bed with him, that means the risk of surgery must be very small.” He asked his wife, scared, his wife shook his head, with a joke to resolve the tension, “to that old man no use hahaha” that time, his most profound feeling is, “in this city inside can support each other to go on is also the two of us.”
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“A person to a person back, what mood?”
November holidays, he returned home to Zhangjiakou to help his parents harvest corn, the family more than twenty acres of land, most of the machine to collect, there are seven or eight acres of loose land to rely on manual break. The other day, his father called, saying that the price of corn this year is good, more than 90 cents out of the sale, sold more than 30,000, asked him, to give him some money? He refused, even though he hadn’t received a paycheck for seven months.
Trapped at home at the moment, their wish is even simpler: to fill their stomachs. Zheng Xia Peng and his wife stocked up on onions, winter squash, sweet potatoes and cabbage before the village supermarket closed, “No meat?” I asked, “We’re both okay with meat, we don’t like it too much,” he replied. Bai’s roommate bought three boxes of instant noodles at the supermarket, which constituted their meals during the quarantine period and had to be carefully calculated, “If you eat only one meal a day, you cook three bags, and if you eat two meals, you eat two bags each.” His home heating temperature at about ten degrees, electric mattresses consume a lot of electricity, he rarely spared to open.
The night of December 31, Li Zhibo decided that the New Year’s Eve has to eat something good, he group purchase some pork, stewed with potatoes, and scrambled an egg, the whole one or two old villagers, “not drunk.” After eating, he casually found a party on the video site to watch, and played a video to his wife, playing and tired, and fell asleep. Zheng Xia Peng hoarded food is almost finished, the thermometer at home shows 16.3 degrees, he and his wife are wearing down jackets. Zheng Xia Peng hoarded food is almost finished, the thermometer at home shows 16.3 degrees, he and his wife are wearing down jackets. At noon on the last day of the year, the two cooked noodles in clear soup to eat, without vegetables or eggs.
In the midst of hardship, they can still be considerate of others. 58 Tongcheng on a part-time worker in Nanfaxin town refused our invitation for further interviews, but he wrote in his reply, “Our test results are negative okay, is positive or close contacts, but also an innocent.” Zheng Xia Peng ordered 5 pounds of bananas and 3 pounds of oranges, and the bananas were dark when they were delivered, and he stressed, “The staff worked pretty hard, and maybe there was just too much of a backlog of goods.”
Li Zhibo hopes we can help him inquire about how he can donate some money to the security guards who help them guard the village, “We still have heating in the house, comfortable when people are still on duty outside for us. It’s not easy for us to work outside, and I feel that they (also) work hard. Do you have a phone number? Or just donate in cash, or buy some supplies.” The next day, he sent two boxes of instant noodles to a security guard at the entrance of the village.
In any case, the new year has finally arrived, and early in the morning of the 1st, Xidulan Village sent dumplings and dumplings to every household, “Finally there is meat to eat,” Zheng Xia Peng lamented, he cooked two bags of pork and caper dumplings, feeling like the Lunar New Year, “this dumpling eaten than any time Feeling.” On the 3rd, the village issued another 300 yuan voucher to each person, which can be unsealed to receive cash at the designated place. Previously, every New Year’s Day, Zheng Xia Peng and his wife will go to the Yonghe Palace to pray for blessings, this year they can only stay at home, his wife’s New Year’s wish is the company’s arrears of wages can be issued as soon as possible, he hopes to earn more in the New Year, life has stabilized, to a child.
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Zheng Xia Peng and his wife eating dumplings sent by the village
The 8-year-old son is Li Zhibo’s spiritual support. In the past, when he called, his son always asked noisily, when will dad come back? Slowly, the question became, “Is Dad done working? “It feels like the kid just grew up,” he says. He tells of the summer vacation in 2018 when his wife brought his son to visit him in Beijing and they went to the oceanarium to see a dolphin show, and his son was excited to take lots of pictures with the dolphins. That night they didn’t go back to Xidulan Village, but found a 200 yuan hotel nearby to stay. The next day, they went boating in the Summer Palace, and my son happily played in the water again, and these constitute the shining memories he has in Beijing.
Li’s New Year’s wish is for his wife and children to be safe and sound and (for the world) to stop the New Crown virus. Bai released his year-end summary through a short video: “This year is also rather miserable, except for the epidemic, which is an epidemic, and there is no serious work every day. In fact, I’m thinking of not being in Beijing next year, either to find a job in my hometown, or to do something on my own.” Then he thought that the salary in his hometown is not high, and the traffic of small business is not good, “more headache”. Finally, he encouraged himself, “next year, once the epidemic, go!”
The afternoon of January 1, the municipal government Information Office held a conference on the prevention and control of the epidemic, calling on the residents of Shunyi non-essential not out of Shunyi, in Shunyi for the New Year, see this message, Zheng Xia Peng still with a characteristic humor, said he wanted to give himself a “cool”. And Li Zhibo is full of sentimentality, he is clear, if you really go home, it is not good to go to the hotel quarantine, thousands of dollars and lost, he is willing to respond to the government’s call, but “my heart is sour, I do not know how to say to the wife and children”.
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