Blue Gold (14 page)

“That's exactly what I said to my cousin!” she told him. “My cousin is sick, but the company won't give her time off.”

Kai's eyes darted about, as though he was looking for company spies, then he focused his intense gaze on Laiping. “If you're serious about changing things,” he whispered, “you and your cousin should come to our next meeting.”

“What meeting?” she asked.

“A group of us is getting organized. If the union won't help us, then we'll have to help ourselves.”

Laiping thought about the first time she saw Kai, at the employment office, and how the security guards chased him.
Birds sticking their heads out
. Yesterday, she had wanted to be brave like him, but today…today she saw that talking about this group was making him nervous, and that made her nervous, too. “How many are going to be at this meeting?” she wanted to know. “Who are they?”

It was the wrong thing to say. She could see Kai assessing her—something shifting in his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, away from her, suddenly cold and distant. “You ask a lot of questions,” he observed, “like your nosy friend.”

He looked around—anywhere but at her. Laiping wanted him to look at her again.

“Do you live on campus?” she asked, then kicked herself—another question! She'd do anything to make him like her again. “I'll be here again next Sunday,” she told him. “Will you?”

He glanced at her and said, “Don't tell anybody.”

“About the meeting?”

He got to his feet, with half of his coffee left in the cup. “What meeting?” he asked, and walked away.

He thinks I'm a spy!
Laiping realized. Or, worse, stupid. People were waiting for her table, giving her impatient stares. She got up and left the café, feeling lonelier still.

 

MONDAY MORNING
in the factory following exercises, the loudspeaker lady made a special announcement.

“Our leader, Mr. Chen, has very exciting news for us!” she trilled. “As of today, we will be making a new mobile phone—so new and cutting edge that its construction must be kept very secret. Customers all over the world are waiting to purchase this phone, so we will have to work extra hard to meet our shipping deadline so that there are enough for everyone to buy.”

A low murmur started among the workers.

“Be silent and listen, pig-brains!” shouted Mr. Wu.

Laiping could hear supervisors in other aisles giving similar commands. She kept her eyes forward, resisting the urge to exchange glances with Fen, who was standing at attention beside her.

The loudspeaker lady continued in her pleasant tone. “Starting today, everyone will be working overtime with extra pay!” Laiping thought,
What good is extra pay if the company won't give it to me?
But she kept her face blank as the loudspeaker lady went on to explain, “Mr. Chen has generously authorized this factory to work in shifts around the clock, and on Saturdays and Sundays. Your shift today will be eleven and a half hours.”

“Eleven and a half hours!” Fen whispered to Laiping as they took their seats at their work stations. “I can barely see straight after eight!”

Mr. Wu explained to the workers that they would find a new kind of circuit board and a new kind of capacitor in their bins. These components were even tinier than the old ones, and two capacitors instead of one had to be fixed onto each board to make the new product operate faster. Laiping had trouble picking up the tiny new capacitor with her tweezers. She managed to solder one in place—but there was too much solder on the iron for these smaller components. It balled up in an unsightly blob—just when Mr. Wu, strutting up and down the aisle, happened to glance over her shoulder.

“Sloppy idiot!” he yelled so that everyone could hear. “If you can't learn to keep up with the latest product, somebody else is waiting to take your job!”

“Sorry, Mr. Wu,” breathed Laiping, head bowed. “It won't happen again.”

“Sorry doesn't lead to success,” he said, and moved on down the line.

Fen, to Laiping's left, stole a glance her way. “Still think he's nice?”

Hot tears formed in Laiping's eyes, but she willed them away. She took a circuit board and a capacitor and tried again, this time melting half the amount of solder she would normally have used onto her iron, and managed to make a perfect joint. She grew accustomed to a new rhythm:
Circuit board-capacitor-solder-capacitor-solder; circuit board-capacitor-solder-capacitor-solder.
Working slowly and carefully, by the end of an hour she had mastered the new components.

At lunch, all the girls on Laiping and Fen's line complained that focusing on the smaller capacitors was making their eyes hurt and their shoulders stiff from hunching over the mat.“You're working too slowly!” complained Mr. Wu as he paraded the aisle after the lunch break. “Pick up the pace!”

At five thirty they had another half-hour meal break, then they hurried back from the cafeteria and worked until eight to finish their eleven-and-a-half-hour shift. Laiping's shoulders and hands were numb by the time the end of shift buzzer sounded. But before they were allowed to leave the factory, the loudspeaker lady spoke.

“Well done!” she said. “You have made a good start. But in order to deliver on time, we must double our production. As of now, half of you will begin working the night shift and the other half will work the day shift. It will be up to the night shift to help train new workers who will join you shortly.”

Laiping and Fen exchanged ominous looks.

“The night shift starts
now
?” whispered Laiping. “But we've been working all day!”

“I'm not working the night shift!” replied Fen. “I'm going home to bed.”

“You will start counting from the head of each line,” instructed the loudspeaker lady. “One, two. One, two. Ones will be night shift. Twos will be day shift.”

At the head of each line, the workers began counting. One, two. One, two. Laiping's heart raced as the count came closer to her and Fen. The fifth girl ahead of her said “two”—and then Laiping knew. One, two. One, two. One…

“Two,” said Fen when her turn came.

“One,” said Laiping, her heart sinking.

Fen gave Laiping a pitying look as she headed away from her work station, mouthing,
Sorry
.

 

AFTER FEN
and the other day-shift workers left the factory floor, a crew of new workers came in to take their places. Some had been transferred from other parts of the factory and others were fresh out of training—just like Laiping had been only a few weeks ago. Before they started the shift, a voice over the loudspeaker—a man's voice this time—made them line up in the aisles and do marching exercises.
Fit body, fit mind—fit for work!
For once, it was a relief to Laiping to march on the spot. She cranked her neck as she lifted her knees, trying to loosen her stiff shoulders.

A guy of about twenty took Fen's place. He said his name was Bohai, and he told Laiping that her line had it easy, compared to where he used to work in the metal processing department.

“Look,” he said, pushing up a sleeve of his smock. Laiping saw scratches all over his arm. “That's from the machines we use to polish laptop cases.”

“No talking! Get to work!” called Mr. Wu from up the line.

“She's showing me what to do,” replied the guy.

With Mr. Wu watching, Laiping demonstrated for her new workmate where to solder the dual capacitors onto the circuit board. He leaned close to watch her work, making her gag at the smell of his greasy hair. She was already queasy enough with fatigue.

Despite the pain in her shoulders, Laiping fell into the now-familiar rhythm—
circuit board-capacitor-solder-
capacitor-solder
. Long stretches of time went by before she snapped awake and realized she'd been working half-asleep. She prayed that her hands knew what they were doing, even if her brain did not. Otherwise, the inspectors would complain about her work.

At ten p.m. they got a washroom break. At midnight they took their first meal break. Laiping was astounded that the cafeteria line was as long in the middle of the night as it was at noon. She found a spot at a table and ate ravenously, envying Fen, sound asleep in her bunk.

By four a.m. Laiping's head was pounding. The midnight meal sat like a dead weight in her stomach. At five a.m. the workers were given another half-hour meal break, but Laiping felt too ill to eat. Her headache was worse and her shoulders were so stiff that she could no longer feel them.

At seven a.m., the sun started to seep through the high narrow windows that rimmed the factory, lifting Laiping's spirits a little. Just one more hour and she could go back to the dorm and sleep.
Circuit board-capacitor-solder
-capacitor-solder; circuit board-capacitor-solder-capacitor-
solder
. It seemed to Laiping that this had always been her body's rhythm, more natural than her own heartbeat.

At eight a.m. the factory whistle blew. Laiping sat back, waking from a sleepless dream. The guy beside her pulled off his mask.

“I take it back about the metal processing plant,” he said. “This is worse. My head hurts from concentrating so hard.”

Laiping stood up, staggering on stiff legs. She rotated her head to stretch her throbbing neck muscles, and saw Fen coming in with the day-shift workers.

Over the loudspeaker, the pleasant lady was back. “Good morning, everyone!”

“Good morning,” mumbled the workers around Laiping. She moved her lips, but no sound came out.

“Night-shift workers, please leave the factory floor promptly,” said the loudspeaker lady. “Your next shift begins today at eight p.m.”

“How was it?” asked Fen as Laiping passed her.

“Very hard,” replied Laiping. “I feel sick.”

“No talking!” shouted a supervisor. “Move along!”

Fen and Laiping exchanged fleeting looks from their respective streams of workers, one flowing in and the other out.

 

MANY OF THE WORKERS
from Laiping's shift headed immediately to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, but Laiping wanted only her bed. The day was already hot and the air was humid, adding to her drowsiness. She stepped off the elevator at the seventh floor and was hit by a wall of stale, hot air. The sun glared through the common room window and glanced off the stark white surfaces of tables and chairs, raising the pungent odor of a thousand girls who had sat and chatted with their friends and roommates, mingled with the chemical smell of cleansers used to scrub away all trace of those girls, thousands of times.

Laiping swiped her pass card through the magnetic lock on the door to her room. Inside, it wasn't so bad. Someone had left the window open and the hint of a breeze brought in a sweet smell from outside. The curtains on the bunks were all pulled closed, so Laiping couldn't tell whether they were occupied—but she sensed that she was alone in the room. How heavenly. She went to the toilet, peed, washed her face—and later would have no memory of climbing up the ladder to her middle bunk.

When Laiping woke up nine hours later and opened her curtain, dusk was falling. She had a moment of panic that she'd be late for her shift and checked the clock on the wall: 6:33. She had just enough time to shower and eat and get back to the factory for eight.

 

THE WEEK WENT BY
with dual rhythms:
work-sleep-eat, work-sleep-eat;
circuit board-capacitor- solder-capacitor-solder, circuit board-capacitor-solder-capacitor-solder.
The shifts were long, but after working twenty-four hours straight, they didn't seem so bad. She went for whole days without saying more than a few words to anyone, seeing Fen only when they crossed paths at shift changes. She missed her parents and wished she had time to go to the café and call them.

On Sunday, Laiping thought of Kai and wondered if he was at the café. She wanted to tell him that she was working like a slave on the new product, just as he had warned her would happen. But the way they left things, who knew if he would ever speak to her again?

On Wednesday, Laiping got up early so she had time to meet Min for dinner before her shift. Min's health was no better—her hands still trembled and her cough was getting worse.

“Some people think it isn't the flu,” Min said, keeping her voice low. “They think it's the new cleaner they're making us use on the laptops. It dries faster on the screens, so we're more productive—but it stinks.”

“Do
you
think it's the cleaner?” Laiping asked.

Min nodded. “I think it might be. One of the guys even went to the union, but they take months to do anything.”

“You should ask for a transfer.”

“Everybody's asking for transfers! That takes months, too.” She leaned closer and asked Laiping in a whisper, “Some of the workers on my line were talking about doing something about it, maybe protesting somehow. Do you know how to get in touch with that guy, the one who was handing out the flyers?”

“Not really,” Laiping had to admit. She couldn't resist adding, “I thought you said I should stay away from Kai.”

Min's chin dimpled. She wiped budding tears away from her eyes. “I don't know what else to do. Somebody has to make the bosses listen!”

Alarmed, Laiping glanced around and saw a security guard watching them intently from a few paces away. She remembered one of the first rules she learned when she started at the company—
Avoid the attention of the security guards.

“Don't cry, Min,” she told her cousin. “They're watching.”

Min took in a deep breath and got up from the table, being careful to keep her back to the guard. “I'd better go,” she said.

Laiping hadn't finished her meal, but she followed Min outside, happy to leave the swampy heat of the cafeteria behind. It was past seven thirty, almost time for her to go to work. The last rays of the sun sifted through brown haze, creating a rosy hue that almost made the white-tiled factory buildings look pretty.