Today Supervisor Xu assigned me to the processing department.

Processing is slightly smaller than sorting. Its main job is clipping the nails of long-legged capacitors, and bending certain legs until they resemble frogs. Boxes and boxes, tens of thousands of red frogs.

My job is to check whether every small capacitor has had its nails clipped. Sometimes the machine misses one. Sometimes the cut is not standard. I also need to keep feeding the machine with queues of small capacitors waiting for a trim, and deal with those already finished. When one batch is complete, the angle must be adjusted again and everything wiped with alcohol. In short, wiping the machine's arse.

My coworker today is handsome, like a slightly shorter Huang Xiaoming. But he is introverted and does not say much.

I ask his name. He makes no sound. Merely takes his employee badge from his pocket and shows me. His name is Xiguang.

I say I guess he is roughly my age.

Probably six or seven years older than you, he says. Then adds: If you're in your twenties.

This makes it extremely difficult to guess.

Xiguang tells me that our processing department can cut three hundred thousand capacitors each day. Unfortunately, we are not paid by the piece, only a basic wage.

Three hundred thousand makes me think of the old barber near our home. His shop is shabbier than anyone's, but his skill is famous. He makes a bold claim: no one in the area cuts hair faster. Ten minutes a head, thirty heads a day, for thirty years. We make a rough calculation for him. Then you've already cut three hundred thousand heads! He smiles. Haven't seen any money left over.

Xiguang says he is from Yiyang, Hunan, and has worked away from home for ten years.

Don't tell me you also came out at fifteen?

Sixteen, he says.

Then you're twenty-six! I say. Born in 1989.

He nods and smiles.

Xiguang has a younger brother, two years below him, also working in a Dongguan factory. They usually live together. Xiguang has no girlfriend.

He comes from around Dongting Lake. “A land of fish and rice,” he says proudly. His own family does not raise fish, but grows rice. Afraid I will not believe the place is a land of fish and rice, he says the family in front of theirs has a fishpond.

Small lakes everywhere, he says. As a child, he often played in the water.

Do you miss home? I ask.

No, he says. Now there is high-speed rail. Four and a half hours, very close. He can return two or three times a year. The train used to take twelve or thirteen hours.

Going home for National Day?

We get three days off for National Day. The first, second, third. How could I go?

—

The old order is complete. We need to change to a new one.

While the machine breathes, Xiguang comes over, adjusts the angle of the steel plate, and tightens screws. Turn the upper wrench clockwise to shorten the blade, he tells me, counterclockwise to lengthen it.

How do you know what angle to use? I ask. You look so practiced. You don't even look.

Just adjust the width to match the mold of the small capacitor. Otherwise, two go through at once and the little capacitors fight.

I say I need to write it down.

No need. Stay here one day and you'll know.

But if one day is enough to know everything, how does he face every remaining day on which he can grow no more skillful?

What meaning is there in life? I ask them during our dormitory lunch break.

Brother Hu, on the lower bunk, says life has no meaning to begin with. You live in order to remain alive.

Yu Hua likes saying things like this. Hearing Brother Hu say it has another taste.

—

Brother Hu is my roommate. Chengcheng brought me to this dormitory.

On the day I arrived at the factory, riding behind a goods truck that clanged and battered along, Chengcheng met me.

So the company sent you as an intern for practical training? Chengcheng asked.

Yes.

Your résumé says you attend a university abroad, Chengcheng said. I want to ask you something. Do you think China's best universities, Tsinghua and Peking, are not as good as foreign universities?

I don't think that, I said. But Tsinghua and Peking aren't places you can enter simply because you want to.

Chengcheng considered this. Then suddenly pointed a finger. I understand. Your parents thought, rather than muddle through some third-rate university in China, better to go abroad and see the world. Right?

Yes. That is exactly what they thought.

Chengcheng works in the factory's administration department. He originally intended to put me in the supervisors' room, but someone there snored, and every other room contained either a snorer or a smoker. Sleep in ours, then!

Brother Hu and A-Lei were both half naked and playing on their phones when we entered. Brother Hu was strong and powerfully built. A-Lei was fair and tender. In another setting, he would be the typical tall, rich, handsome man.

Chengcheng introduced me. We have a new roommate today. He studies overseas. We should learn from him. If you want to go abroad in the future, you can ask him any question!

Abroad? Brother Hu smiled. Impossible for us.

Impossible. A-Lei shook his head too.

Chengcheng, Brother Hu, and A-Lei were all from Hunan and all twenty-four. More coincidentally, all three entered the factory on the same day. Brother Hu and A-Lei came from Chenzhou and knew each other before, but Chengcheng was unrelated. They had been here only twenty days.

Brother Hu and A-Lei worked the night shift in Quality Control, eight in the evening until eight in the morning. Every two weeks, the day and night shifts switched.

Can you endure it?

Have to even if you can't, Brother Hu said. Only the beginning was unbearable. We fell asleep at work.

The beginning was unbearable, A-Lei said with a smile. The first few days were hard. Then it was fine.

Brother Hu and A-Lei were both honest and decent people. On my first day, Brother Hu told me to rest properly and not hurry to buy daily necessities. Since they worked nights anyway, he told me to sleep in his bed. Later, Brother Hu taught me how to scrub a straw mat quickly and gave me access to his Wi-Fi account, yet became embarrassed when I bought him one bottle of Coke. Before I came to the factory, everyone warned me to be careful. Brother Hu and A-Lei were not the people they imagined.

Chengcheng said Brother Hu and A-Lei were both too innocent and did not even think much about women. With A-Lei's face, he said, all he needed to do was pierce the sheet of paper, but even that he would not do. Brother Hu had a few ideas, but unfortunately lacked A-Lei's face. If A-Lei needed only to break through a sheet of paper, Brother Hu had to climb a wall.

Perhaps they simply like mobile games? I said.

Do you genuinely think they have any other option? Still the same word: money. If they had money, who wouldn't go out and play more?

On my first day, I asked why they chose this factory.

Submitted résumés online, Brother Hu said. The previous factory was too boring, so they changed to this one.

How often do you change jobs?

Once every half year or so. Brother Hu smiled.

Half a year. A-Lei nodded.

During his interview one month earlier, Brother Hu said, he spouted all kinds of impossible nonsense. How long do you intend to work here? the interviewer asked. For a very, very long time! he answered without changing expression. (Until New Year's Day.) What expectations do you have for this position in the future? the interviewer asked. Many, many expectations, he said. I will work hard to complete my tasks! (When the supervisor is watching.)

The same old routine, he said.

The interviewer actually asked whether he had an ideal. At this, he and A-Lei both laughed, as though it were a remarkably absurd thing. What ideal could I have? Brother Hu said. Work here is work. What ideal is there to discuss?

Ideals, dreams, things like that. He and A-Lei laughed. We've never had them.

Smiling, A-Lei put on his work uniform and went to the door. Seven fifty, he called to Brother Hu. If we don't clock in, we'll be late.

Outside, the sky was already dark. Sitting on Brother Hu's bed, I watched him put on the blue uniform with his head lowered and drag his feet step by step outside. We had only just met. Already my heart ached.

—

In the afternoon, a girl came over in a desperate hurry.

Quick! They're dying for this order! she said.

Then poured out a whole basket of yellow capacitors.

Why pour them out? I asked.

Need to see if the machine missed clipping any legs.

No need. These were all—

Here. Like this one. She picked one out and showed me.

While she searched, I asked her a question. What is Type J? What is Type K?

I expected Xiao Li's answer, so that I could say the workers had all been alienated. Unexpectedly, she knew.

Oh, the tolerances are different, she said. J is plus or minus five percent. K is plus or minus ten.

As she finished speaking, she happened to finish the last basket, then pushed her cart away.

But I am wicked. I go ask Xiguang too.

What is J? What is K?

Xiguang tells me earnestly: Type J is the kind that needs cutting. Most are J. Type K doesn't need cutting.

—

Why didn't you attend high school? I ask Xiguang.

Back then, he says, I finished junior high in June 1999 and came out to work.

Wait. I remember you said you were born in 1989. When I was ten, I hadn't even finished primary school. Shame you didn't go to high school.

You're lying to me! I say.

Xiguang smiles.

So you are? I press.

And you?

Born in 1993. He lied to me; I lie to him.

Ninety-three or ninety-two? He did not hear.

Ninety-two. Though really ninety-one, since I was born right at the beginning of January 1992.

Then I am older by… He calculates. Eight and a half years. July 1983.

You don't look it, I say. So handsome. You look born in 1993.

Where have you been all these years? I ask.

He graduated in 1999, then went first to Wuhan for a month and a half, then Foshan, then Shenzhen, and only finally Dongguan.

In 2000, he says, he went to Foshan and worked for a boss from Zhejiang. The boss was both boss and master, teaching him to make molds. All four members of the boss's family helped: one daughter, one son. The daughter had finished high school and was one year older than him.

Like a small workshop?

Yes.

Do you prefer a small workshop or a big factory like this?

A small workshop is no good, he says. Only one storefront. In 2000, the wage was 350 yuan a month. One meal cost two yuan, breakfast one. Five yuan fed you for a day.

Food costs more than ten times as much now, I say, and your salary is only just over three thousand. Honestly, did you prefer life in the workshop, or in the factory?

All the same, he says.

Naturally, I hoped he would say life in the small workshop was more nourishing. An intimate relationship with the boss, one happy family. The product belonged to you, the production gained interaction and a sense of achievement. Then I could say Marx was right and modernity was terrible. But that was not remotely how life really looked. It was only terrible in changing ways. Everything Marx said made perfect sense. It simply was not correct.

You came here in 2000. Has Guangdong changed greatly for you?

Yes.

Where?

When I first came, there were hardly any factories in all of Foshan. Now it is packed.

And the city? How has the city changed?

0737?

0737 is our city code. Yiyang.

In more than ten years here, has factory treatment of workers improved?

About the same. The food here has always been quite bad. Really, factories are all about the same.

What is your ideal life, then?

Stay at home for half the year, come out and work for half. Home is still better. The food is good. Cantonese food is all terrible.

When do you plan to begin living that way?

I don't know.

—

“I don't know.”

At dinner, I meet Xiao Li again.

I am eating alone. Xiao Li sees me, carries his tray over, and sits opposite without speaking, head lowered over his food.

You're still growing. Is that little food enough? I ask.

Still going to leave some, he says.

What do you usually do after the shift?

Play on my phone.

Then we have nothing to say.

I finish first. As I go, I say, Xiao Li, I'm leaving!

He does not answer or even raise his head, as if he heard nothing. Just as each time I see him from far away outside the workshop and raise a hand in greeting, he pauses for one second, then walks inside. Leaving only a long, narrow, black corridor.

—

Dinner lasts half an hour. Overtime begins at six and continues until eight.

You're working overtime too? Xiguang asks. Don't new factory workers get their first week without overtime?

The supervisor said to, I say. If overtime is compulsory, do you receive overtime pay?

Yes, Xiguang says. Thirteen yuan fifty an hour.

While Xiguang operates the machine, another coworker, Huang Yang, sieves molds.

Huang Yang is from Guizhou. When I ask his name, he too says nothing and takes out his badge. I guess this is a processing-department cult.

Huang Yang resembles the neighbor across the hall when I was in primary school. A classmate in the next building and I often joined forces to bully him. Once he could endure no more and gave me two black eyes outside his home. The next day, I attended a concert wearing sunglasses. So when I see Huang Yang, a certain childhood shadow refuses to disperse.

Huang Yang is twenty-three, born in 1992, but has already spent four years at this factory.

Wow, four years, I say. Everyone I've met these two days has been here one month or half a month. You've actually stayed four years.

The supervisor arrived even earlier, Huang Yang says. Since the factory was built.

When I return from lunch, the workshop is dark. Walking in, I see Huang Yang lying on the floor. Not only Huang Yang. The whole workshop is full of people lying down. Because it has air-conditioning and makes it difficult to be late, the workers all sleep on the floor beside the machines.

Shall I help? I ask Huang Yang.

No need.

Busy lately?

Not now. February to July was busy. The auntie operating the first two machines left. I had to watch five machines alone! Completely impossible.

Because workers are hard to find? I heard fewer people do factory work now.

Not hard to find. They simply didn't assign anyone.

Did you object?

No use. Though they did raise my pay. Several hundred yuan.

Has the factory developed for the better over these years?

Better. Of course. Before we moved here in 2013, the entire factory was not as large as this one floor. If it had not improved, if there were no money, how could they build a new building?

And this year? The whole industry is in a slump.

This year is even better! Several new machines. They run day and night without stopping.

The factory improved. Did your treatment improve?

Monthly pay rises one hundred each year.

Is that a large or small raise?

This factory is pretty good. My old factory raised it fifty a year!

Huang Yang is extroverted. Though he has an unruly look, he answers every question. When the machine is idle, he always leans against it reading romance novels on his phone. The entire workshop's lights are off. Only his phone screen shines.

He seems happy, always rewarding himself with experiences from the past. “At my old factory, fifty a year!” “In Shenzhen in 2011, I quit and went home for Spring Festival. When I returned they were full. Fine. Back then I was poor and tired. Life is much better now!” I suppose it is such comparison that has supported his cheerful passage through four years.

Most people lack this capacity for happiness. They drift, always believing the next stop will be better. Whatever happens, it cannot be worse than the present.

—

Zhang Fenzhu brings me a stool. I watched her sit polishing at the table all day and thought she had no time for me.

It's fine. You're not disturbing me. Sit, sit! Her Teochew accent, combined with the machine noise, makes her difficult for me to understand.

She has been here three years, she says. Before, she worked upstairs arranging type. Dense rows of it. After more than two years of looking, her eyes nearly stopped working.

I heard every job upstairs is hard. What about the other people? I ask.

Younger than me, they're all right. Older, no.

How old are you?

How old do I look?

She looks sixty. Having learned from yesterday, I guess forty.

Forty-one, she says.

Old, old. Women age quickly in factories.

She wanted to come downstairs too. Work here is much easier. But she cannot read.

The supervisor upstairs said the first floor requires filling out forms. If you cannot read, you cannot go.

She coaxed and pestered for a year before the supervisor relented. She could fill out forms, she said. Let someone else complete one row, then copy the shape of the gourd. Proudly, she says, I've been here a month and every form was correct.

Can't you ask other people for help? I say.

Once is fine. Ask every time and people form opinions. She murmurs to herself. I just can't read.

But now, she says, she has brought both sons to school in Dongguan. The older is eighteen, the younger fifteen. Together their living expenses are three thousand yuan a month. This year's tuition is fully paid. She asks whether it is good that the older son studies computing at a vocational college.

Excellent, I say. It is the most popular subject now. You have a wonderful eye.

She smiles in embarrassment. Mainly, he likes it.

As we talk, the shift is about to end. The machines stop. Everyone begins cleaning and handing over to the next shift. I return to the table to find her, but she is gone. I still do not know her name. She told me her husband's and sons' names, but forgot to tell me her own.

Fortunately, her form and employee badge lie on the table. The form is pressed beneath the badge. On every row marked “Operator,” the crooked characters read “Zhang Fenzhu.”

—

Looking through Brother Hu's QQ Space, I find what I wanted.

On May 15 one year ago, he posted: Any classmates in Chenzhou now? Or anyone with contact information for a classmate in Chenzhou? Urgent across a hundred thousand miles…

“Pretending” replied: Going home to build a career?

That is the plan, Brother Hu said.

On May 29 one year ago, he posted again: Any classmate able to lend me some money, for use in a business? If so, please contact me to discuss. Thank you.

“The Pèrfect Dìstance” replied: Anything else is easy to discuss. Money is difficult to lend.

Brother Hu said: If you have none, then don't lend. If you have it and are unwilling, is there any need to associate with a person who does not trust me?

I think this proves that Brother Hu lied to me, and I am extremely happy to have been deceived. It means some things were not absent from the beginning. The Brother Hu I watched dragging his feet into the night was not always that person. I do not know what happened in between. Perhaps he failed to borrow the money. Perhaps someone said it was only a fool talking of dreams. In the end, he still walks through the drifting life of factories. But if there is a story, it means things are not quite so bad.

During today's lunch break, I woke Brother Hu. Since he was awake, I might as well become the interviewer.

Brother Hu, you don't intend to keep doing factory work forever, do you?

Not exactly, he says. For now, I'm accumulating capital.

For what?

Small business in the future. A stationery shop, a milk-tea shop, either would be good.

Yes.

Might not make this much money, but at least you're free. Open when you want. Go when you want.

Yes, I say.

I tell him it will happen.