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I went to Shenzhen and worked for Egoman, a Chinese company that made the first batch of Raspberry Pis, before that manufacturing got moved to Wales. The dormi

I went to Shenzhen and worked for Egoman, a Chinese company that made the first batch of Raspberry Pis, before that manufacturing got moved to Wales. The dormitories look typical. I arranged to stay in one through a different friend; mine wasn't arranged by the company. Now I'm in Taiwan, and life is better here. Factories are newer and cleaner, and working hours are more sane. Chinese factories often set long shifts because there's nothing to do in the local area except work. Kaohsiung has much more local culture than Shenzhen, so the workers are more interested in time off, and happier for it. I've been here for 3 years to get the necessary work experience for future visas. I'm now considering other options, particularly New Zealand or Australia, where my girlfriend and I both want to go. Please ask me if you have any other questions, I'm willing to share my experiences.

breakbread 9y ago
Where are you from originally? What people usually do after their shift ends? Just return to their respective dorms? Are their any public spaces in or around the factory where people gather?
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  I grew up in Geneva (born in Switzerland, parents live at France but work at CERN). But my passport is British by descent. I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation. First I went to Xingda Hongye in Fushazhen, near Zhongshan, China. It's a long way outside the city, and there is seriously nothing to do nearby. There's a small café on-site, and people sometimes go for a walk down to the (polluted) river. Otherwise they hang out in the (male/female segregated) dorms, playing card games and watching videos online. A few people have laptops and play computer games. Some people also hang out in the cafeteria, or play some sports (ping pong is popular). There isn't a single social room though, so people just kind of scatter throughout the campus when they're off work. In Shenzhen, I stayed in a factory dormitory in Longgang, but was working in an office. It would take 20 minutes by bus to the nearest metro station (Universiade), which made it difficult to see my girlfriend at the time, because the bus would no longer run so late. I would go out to nearby restaurants to eat instead of staying in the company. There was a nice park nearby where I'd eat a bendon lunchbox. There was also a school, and some of the school kids were picking mangos from the trees on the side of the road to eat, for fun. They all wanted to take pictures with the handsome foreign boy, haha. All the people in Shenzhen are not local though - the city was purpose-built for electronics manufacturing, and people speak Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese because they come from all over. I made friends with a guy from Xinjiang (the Muslim separatist state) at a noodle shop, and he made some delicious noodles. The lack of Facebook and church made it hard for me to make many local friends though. QQ and WeChat are fine for one-on-one chatting, but hard to make Groups and Events. Another interesting thing to note is that many business owners (including my boss there) are Taiwanese. Despite the political tension, there are a few ways that Taiwanese can invest in the Special Economic Zone areas, and they do. Meanwhile in Taiwan, the workers mostly come from SE Asia (Philippines, Vietnam). That means the managers can speak much better English. The factory is inside a special compound (Nanzi Export Processing Zone), and does not include accommodation. There's 2 universities nearby, history going back about 400 years, and plenty of genuinely local people who are there to live, not just to work. After I leave work, I visit kids in the hospital with a Christian group, or study Chinese, or go to the CouchSurfing meetup. On weekends I go hiking, to music concerts (lots of indie rock here), hot springs, waterfalls, or church. There's a lot more happening here than in China, in my opinion.
  - icu 9y ago
    "I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation." Are you talking about passing on your British citizenship to a child born abroad? I'm interested to know how getting a New Zealand permanent residency helps?
    - peterburkimsher 9y ago
      Everywhere is "abroad". I have no connection to the UK. My girlfriend is from Taiwan. It's easier for me and her to go together to NZ than for me to take her to the UK. NZ PR is permanent - I can leave and go back any time. It also allows children born in NZ to get citizenship. Taiwanese or Canadian PR is not permanent - if you leave for a few years, you lose it. Therefore I would need to get citizenship before having a "home". Citizenship takes 4 years, NZ PR takes only 2 years. I just want to earn the right to live in a country with the woman I love and have children together, without always worrying that one of us will have a visa denied and be forced to move.
      - icu 9y ago
        Yeah New Zealand is a fantastic country for raising a family... but I'm biased as someone who grew up there. Having said that I personally think it is a low horizon trap for many entrepreneurs which is why I left. In NZ there is a saying along the lines of, "entrepreneurs don't go further than the 3 B's: the Batch, the Beamer, and the Boat."
pm90 9y ago
Why do people agree to work in such conditions? Please don't be offended by my question, but my impression was that literacy is very high in China, and everyone gets basic education. Are the workers not aware of how they're being exploited? Are they happy with what they do? What's the turnover like?
- jdietrich 9y ago
  A very large proportion of workers in technology factories are internal migrants. Many of them will have grown up on subsistence farms in the poorer regions of China. Like most migrant workers, they're working hard and saving money towards a planned future. They overwhelmingly prefer factories with dormitories, because it keeps their living costs down and allows them to save more money. "Exploitation" is a subjective and loaded term, but the labour market in Shenzhen and the broader Guangdong region is extremely competitive. There is a general shortage of labour and those workers are highly mobile; as a result, wages are increasing rapidly in all major cities. Low-skilled, low-margin industries like textiles have been largely priced out of the Chinese labour market, with all but the most sophisticated production moving to lower-wage economies. I won't pretend that China is a utopia, but it's doing a very good job of improving the living standards of ordinary people.
  - pm90 9y ago
    Ah that makes sense. So what you're saying is that these laborers put up with the harsh working conditions in order to retire to a better life back home in their "native" province/village?
    - extrapickles 9y ago
      Also, the harsh conditions in the factories are much better than the much harsher conditions they faced back home (eg: living in mud huts , starving if the harvest is slightly poor, doing heavy manual labor for >12hrs a day).
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      They have the same hopes and ambitions as any of us. Some of them want to move back home and build a house, some of them want to start a business, some of them just want the chance to put their kids through college. Cities like San Francisco and London are full of people who live in cramped shared apartments and work ridiculously long hours. Some of them are graduates working for a startup, some of them are immigrant labourers working in construction. They're not planning on staying there forever, but they've chosen the best opportunity available to them.
oliv__ 9y ago
I'm sorry this adds nothing to the conversation, but god damn the audience on this site will never cease to amaze me! HN has it all.
devrandomguy 9y ago
Based on your name, I assume that you are not ethnically Asian. Do you find racism / xenophobia to be a significant issue for you in either Shenzhen or Taiwan? As a very white Canadian, if I wanted to explore, work and travel for years on end, and was willing to live at the same financial level as the locals, would that be offensive to them?
- mc32 9y ago
  TW are pretty easy going. Take a short 4mo course (up to you to take more) of mandarin so you can go out and about without a translator. You will not likely face any racism at all, unless you go into strange places. But you won't get it from everyday people. If anything they'll more than likely assume you're educated and have good manners. They pretty much give you the benefit of the doubt. Knowing (even basic) mandarin goes a long way.
- davidzweig 9y ago
  China seemed to me like a pretty down-to-earth place, people are pragmatic and generally accepting of foreigners. There are many different ethnic groups. If you stick around a while and work on your Mandarin, I think you can find your place quite ok. Kunming is a nice city, and the surrounding area is very pretty. Some photos from a trip here: https://goo.gl/photos/FawpURbZweNNQt288 https://goo.gl/photos/FawpURbZweNNQt288 I am working on some electronics and will be back in Shenzhen sometime this year, although I'm not sure if I will stay on much longer afterwards, I don't know if it's that much fun to live there.
  - Zaheer 9y ago
    Awesome shots!
  - archagon 9y ago
    OMG, those mountains! If I lived there, I would wake up every day in awe.
- woutr_be 9y ago
  As someone who lived in Shenzhen for a bit I can kinda give you my opinions. You'll always feel like an outsider, but people are extremely friendly towards you. If you make the effort to learn some Mandarin, people will greatly appreciate that. For me, as an introvert, I felt quite uncomfortable sometimes, people will randomly walk up to you and start a conversation, or they'll try to sneak a picture of you. And then you have the usual people who just stare you down. But I assume that's more because they don't see many Western faces. (Although Shenzhen has quite a large expat population) But I never had anyone being racist to me.
cdibona 9y ago
You mean k-tv wasn't culture enough for you? edit: I enjoyed k-tv on my visits to Shenzhen.

breakbread 9y ago

Where are you from originally? What people usually do after their shift ends? Just return to their respective dorms? Are their any public spaces in or around the factory where people gather?

peterburkimsher 9y ago
I grew up in Geneva (born in Switzerland, parents live at France but work at CERN). But my passport is British by descent. I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation. First I went to Xingda Hongye in Fushazhen, near Zhongshan, China. It's a long way outside the city, and there is seriously nothing to do nearby. There's a small café on-site, and people sometimes go for a walk down to the (polluted) river. Otherwise they hang out in the (male/female segregated) dorms, playing card games and watching videos online. A few people have laptops and play computer games. Some people also hang out in the cafeteria, or play some sports (ping pong is popular). There isn't a single social room though, so people just kind of scatter throughout the campus when they're off work. In Shenzhen, I stayed in a factory dormitory in Longgang, but was working in an office. It would take 20 minutes by bus to the nearest metro station (Universiade), which made it difficult to see my girlfriend at the time, because the bus would no longer run so late. I would go out to nearby restaurants to eat instead of staying in the company. There was a nice park nearby where I'd eat a bendon lunchbox. There was also a school, and some of the school kids were picking mangos from the trees on the side of the road to eat, for fun. They all wanted to take pictures with the handsome foreign boy, haha. All the people in Shenzhen are not local though - the city was purpose-built for electronics manufacturing, and people speak Mandarin instead of the local Cantonese because they come from all over. I made friends with a guy from Xinjiang (the Muslim separatist state) at a noodle shop, and he made some delicious noodles. The lack of Facebook and church made it hard for me to make many local friends though. QQ and WeChat are fine for one-on-one chatting, but hard to make Groups and Events. Another interesting thing to note is that many business owners (including my boss there) are Taiwanese. Despite the political tension, there are a few ways that Taiwanese can invest in the Special Economic Zone areas, and they do. Meanwhile in Taiwan, the workers mostly come from SE Asia (Philippines, Vietnam). That means the managers can speak much better English. The factory is inside a special compound (Nanzi Export Processing Zone), and does not include accommodation. There's 2 universities nearby, history going back about 400 years, and plenty of genuinely local people who are there to live, not just to work. After I leave work, I visit kids in the hospital with a Christian group, or study Chinese, or go to the CouchSurfing meetup. On weekends I go hiking, to music concerts (lots of indie rock here), hot springs, waterfalls, or church. There's a lot more happening here than in China, in my opinion.
- icu 9y ago
  "I'm trying to go to NZ because it's the fastest way for me to get Permanent Residency. I can't have kids until I get PR, because British-by-descent only goes one generation." Are you talking about passing on your British citizenship to a child born abroad? I'm interested to know how getting a New Zealand permanent residency helps?
  - peterburkimsher 9y ago
    Everywhere is "abroad". I have no connection to the UK. My girlfriend is from Taiwan. It's easier for me and her to go together to NZ than for me to take her to the UK. NZ PR is permanent - I can leave and go back any time. It also allows children born in NZ to get citizenship. Taiwanese or Canadian PR is not permanent - if you leave for a few years, you lose it. Therefore I would need to get citizenship before having a "home". Citizenship takes 4 years, NZ PR takes only 2 years. I just want to earn the right to live in a country with the woman I love and have children together, without always worrying that one of us will have a visa denied and be forced to move.
    - icu 9y ago
      Yeah New Zealand is a fantastic country for raising a family... but I'm biased as someone who grew up there. Having said that I personally think it is a low horizon trap for many entrepreneurs which is why I left. In NZ there is a saying along the lines of, "entrepreneurs don't go further than the 3 B's: the Batch, the Beamer, and the Boat."

pm90 9y ago

Why do people agree to work in such conditions? Please don't be offended by my question, but my impression was that literacy is very high in China, and everyone gets basic education. Are the workers not aware of how they're being exploited? Are they happy with what they do? What's the turnover like?

jdietrich 9y ago
A very large proportion of workers in technology factories are internal migrants. Many of them will have grown up on subsistence farms in the poorer regions of China. Like most migrant workers, they're working hard and saving money towards a planned future. They overwhelmingly prefer factories with dormitories, because it keeps their living costs down and allows them to save more money. "Exploitation" is a subjective and loaded term, but the labour market in Shenzhen and the broader Guangdong region is extremely competitive. There is a general shortage of labour and those workers are highly mobile; as a result, wages are increasing rapidly in all major cities. Low-skilled, low-margin industries like textiles have been largely priced out of the Chinese labour market, with all but the most sophisticated production moving to lower-wage economies. I won't pretend that China is a utopia, but it's doing a very good job of improving the living standards of ordinary people.
- pm90 9y ago
  Ah that makes sense. So what you're saying is that these laborers put up with the harsh working conditions in order to retire to a better life back home in their "native" province/village?
  - extrapickles 9y ago
    Also, the harsh conditions in the factories are much better than the much harsher conditions they faced back home (eg: living in mud huts , starving if the harvest is slightly poor, doing heavy manual labor for >12hrs a day).
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    They have the same hopes and ambitions as any of us. Some of them want to move back home and build a house, some of them want to start a business, some of them just want the chance to put their kids through college. Cities like San Francisco and London are full of people who live in cramped shared apartments and work ridiculously long hours. Some of them are graduates working for a startup, some of them are immigrant labourers working in construction. They're not planning on staying there forever, but they've chosen the best opportunity available to them.

oliv__ 9y ago

I'm sorry this adds nothing to the conversation, but god damn the audience on this site will never cease to amaze me! HN has it all.

devrandomguy 9y ago

Based on your name, I assume that you are not ethnically Asian. Do you find racism / xenophobia to be a significant issue for you in either Shenzhen or Taiwan? As a very white Canadian, if I wanted to explore, work and travel for years on end, and was willing to live at the same financial level as the locals, would that be offensive to them?

mc32 9y ago
TW are pretty easy going. Take a short 4mo course (up to you to take more) of mandarin so you can go out and about without a translator. You will not likely face any racism at all, unless you go into strange places. But you won't get it from everyday people. If anything they'll more than likely assume you're educated and have good manners. They pretty much give you the benefit of the doubt. Knowing (even basic) mandarin goes a long way.
davidzweig 9y ago
China seemed to me like a pretty down-to-earth place, people are pragmatic and generally accepting of foreigners. There are many different ethnic groups. If you stick around a while and work on your Mandarin, I think you can find your place quite ok. Kunming is a nice city, and the surrounding area is very pretty. Some photos from a trip here: https://goo.gl/photos/FawpURbZweNNQt288 https://goo.gl/photos/FawpURbZweNNQt288 I am working on some electronics and will be back in Shenzhen sometime this year, although I'm not sure if I will stay on much longer afterwards, I don't know if it's that much fun to live there.
- Zaheer 9y ago
  Awesome shots!
- archagon 9y ago
  OMG, those mountains! If I lived there, I would wake up every day in awe.
woutr_be 9y ago
As someone who lived in Shenzhen for a bit I can kinda give you my opinions. You'll always feel like an outsider, but people are extremely friendly towards you. If you make the effort to learn some Mandarin, people will greatly appreciate that. For me, as an introvert, I felt quite uncomfortable sometimes, people will randomly walk up to you and start a conversation, or they'll try to sneak a picture of you. And then you have the usual people who just stare you down. But I assume that's more because they don't see many Western faces. (Although Shenzhen has quite a large expat population) But I never had anyone being racist to me.

cdibona 9y ago

You mean k-tv wasn't culture enough for you? edit: I enjoyed k-tv on my visits to Shenzhen.