38 ms·

The poetry and brief life of a Foxconn worker

651 points by isomorph 8y ago

docbrown 8y ago
Reading through the poems, one in particular stood out to me, ‘A screw Fell to the Ground.’ While it was done eight months before his suicide, the context seems to be relatable to how he may have been feeling—mostly the sound of “someone” plunging and nobody hearing. — 《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 "A Screw Fell to the Ground" 一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw fell to the ground 在这个加班的夜晚 In this dark night of overtime 垂直降落，轻轻一响 Plunging vertically, lightly clinking 不会引起任何人的注意 It won’t attract anyone’s attention 就像在此之前 Just like last time 某个相同的夜晚 On a night like this 有个人掉在地上 When someone plunged to the ground -- 9 January 2014
- sovietmudkipz 8y ago
  Geez, that poem really hits me in the gut.
  - shortoncash 8y ago
    Same, but I wonder what we lost in translation given what the other commenters wrote. I wonder if it hits harder in the native language.
    - oh-kumudo 8y ago
      I think this translation did a great job in conveying of the emotion/expression of the original text. One thing that particularly gets me, while could be thought as somewhat lost in translation, is the expression of "掉在地上(fall on the ground)". It is rare to be used when the subject is a human, but rather when the subject is an object.
      - nemo44x 8y ago
        > It is rare to be used when the subject is a human, but rather when the subject is an object. Thank you for that. That really adds to the humanity of the poem that the translation just couldn't possibly.
      - guiltygatorade 8y ago
        Ha! Before I came back to reread it that's exactly what I was thinking. Usually it's "摔" for a person who fell. To use the verb "掉" on a person is unusual, but I think it's exactly the author's point -- that the person is treated like an object.
    - wbsun 8y ago
      I think the background story is needed in order to fully understand a poem like this, or maybe any poem. From that perspective, minor loss in translation doesn't hurt. Folks above may spend too much in translation, nitpicking a single word, maybe useful as academic, but reading the story which is ended with such a sorrowful poem already breaks people's heart, how accurate the translation is doesn't matter any more. I couldn't imagine such a miserable situation with desperate pressures that can drive people to commit to suicide. Xu in this story left with news report, poem and comments on HN, but many others left with nothing and forgotten by the world easily: feel so sad that a life is so meaningless when it becomes a number: see [1], [2]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
- guiltygatorade 8y ago
  I really liked that one as well, but I don't like the fact that the translator translated "掉在地上" differently between the first and final lines, which are meant to mirror each other exactly in order to juxtapose the fate of a screw with the fate of a man. Neither were to receive any embellishments. They both simply fell or dropped. Here's my take: A screw fell to the ground On a night of overtime Straight down, a gentle clink Nobody noticed Just like last time On a night not unlike this one A person fell to the ground
  - flippyhead 8y ago
    I like the first one because it's too easy to think someone just fell over instead of having committed suicide. Thanks for the insight though, interesting to see.
    - guiltygatorade 8y ago
      Yeah I didn't interpret it as having committed suicide. But his other poems hinted at him falling asleep at the line. So it could be exhaustion. Or, it could be metaphorical -- that a person's spirit fell to the ground and nobody cared.
      - aerovistae 8y ago
        Oh man, I'd really have to bend my perception pretty far to interpret this as anything but a reference to suicide, given how many there are among their workers.
        erikpukinskis 8y ago
        People collapse in industrial settings all the time. But a person jumping from a roof is more similar to a screw falling. I guess maybe if a person collapsed while working, others might stop working and help. But a suicide jump would be just another thing they can’t intervene in.
        guiltygatorade 8y ago
- cannabisceo 8y ago
  Poor soul had reached such of level of desperation that his digestion of self was like a duplicate object of industry. But as we may seem as copies of the same...we’re not. We are beings experiencing a reality through the scope of a subjective view. It’s all a matter of perspective.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- girzel 8y ago
  Here's my version! The only regret is the "man", which in Chinese should be "person", but "person" has always seemed so poetically dead, to my sense. 《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 A Screw Drops 一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw drops 在这个加班的夜晚 In this overtime night 垂直降落，轻轻一响 The straight fall, the light clink 不会引起任何人的注意 That draws no one's attention. 就像在此之前 Just as once before 某个相同的夜晚 On a similar night 有个人掉在地上 A man dropped.
  - girzel 8y ago
    Now I can't decide if 在地上 is really necessary to get in there. If so, the first line is: "A screw drops to the ground" And the last: "A man dropped to the ground"
    - guiltygatorade 8y ago
      I think there's a sense of conclusiveness when "to the ground" is added. Something drops or falls can still be caught, but the author didn't leave that ambiguous.
asianthrowaway 8y ago
> We hope that in the future, workers in Foxconn and elsewhere manage to find ways around such companies' military-style discipline and surveillance, come together, and forge collective paths out of this capitalist world of death, into a world worth living in. Are they aware that China is a communist country?
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  technically it's a socialist economy with mostly state capitalism. The party is communist but the idea in theory is they're in charge of transitioning towards communism as a vanguard party, just like the soviets. nonetheless, military-style discipline and surveillance have been very prominent in communist-led countries to date so I'm not sure why the author thinks that would change. Maoism and Stalinism aren't known for being cuddly and humanistic.
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    A few points here: From the orthodox Marxian perspective, it doesn't make sense to think of a "socialist economy", since the idea of economy is rooted in the law of value in the first place, and Socialism is supposed to abolish the value form. A "socialist economy" is an idea that has its roots in Lenin and only came to fruition with Stalin. >I'm not sure why the author thinks that would change The author, posting on libcom, is probably not a Stalinist or a Maoist, but rather an orthodox Marxist or left-Communist. Libcom is a website very much oriented away from Stalinist Communism.
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    It's state capitalism without the socialism: very little worker protection or freedom, no social safety nets, powerful large corporations and banks, military-style discipline and surveillance.
    - beaconstudios 8y ago
      Sounds like socialism to me.
sleazy_b 8y ago
These are some remarkable poems. I feel lucky that someone took the time to translate and share these poems on the internet where they can find a wider audience.
jrowley 8y ago
I hope this makes people reconsider if they really need a new laptop, iphone, etc. I think a lot of people would pay twice as much for their devices if they could guarantee the workers weren't being exploited.
- abricot 8y ago
  Unfortunately, like with clothes, paying 10ntimes as much would still not guarantee this.
- virmundi 8y ago
  Doubt it. Didn’t happen with rubber. Didn’t happen with chocolate. Didn’t happen with Californian tomatoes. Technology will press the exploitation out when you don’t need people.
- klenwell 8y ago
  > I think a lot of people would pay twice as much for their devices if they could guarantee the workers weren't being exploited. A lot of America has traded their old Main Street for a Walmart shopping complex the next town over. Now they're upgrading that to an Amazon distribution center in the next state over. On this board, I expect a lot of people will explain (unsympathetically but not completely unreasonably) that the benefits of these exploitative conditions outweigh the costs (this unfortunate soul's death included). I think you can have reasonably priced quality products and worker well-being, but good luck making your case to shareholders and their apologists.
  - adamc 8y ago
    What would need to rise is a collective consciousness of what a shitty system this is. Most people are too distracted to even pay attention, let alone do something about it.
    - asdff 8y ago
      > Most people are too distracted to even pay attention, let alone do something about it. This is by design. As long as it's profitable to exploit labor, nothing will change. It is far far easier to keep people distracted and blind to all of this than it is to make them 'wake up,' or make any changes to their lives.
ryanmercer 8y ago
This adequately describes my life and job, except I stare at invoices all day entering similar information day in, day out, submittimg electronic data to a handful of government agencies for twelve and a half years now. I'm basically a piece of OCR software that's told to sit there, be quiet, be perfect, if you call in sick we're holding it against you, no you can't take time off that month is blacked out, no you don't need a cost of living raise, produce produce produce! I'll regularly just zone out for who knows how long, usually snapping back to the world when my head starts to dip or my eyes go unfocused enough to start to cause discomfort. Realizing, this is my 'life' and likely will be until I die. -- 《我就那样站着入睡》 "I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That" and "My Life’s Journey is Still Far from Complete" hit way too close to home. You'd think my life would be drastically different in midwest America. I'm not standing at an assembly line, I didn't have to leave my home town to go far away to a factory, but I really am expected to be more machine than man. I'm expected to sit at a desk, not talk, limit my trips to the bathroom, limit getting up with the exception of the 2 daily parades of 2 laps around the office that are done as a group, if you're sick you're expected to be at work unless dying although every cold and flu season corporate stressed "if you're sick stay home" ha! Everything is about efficiency and production, merit-based increases rarely cover cost of living increases, I get 5 weeks of vacation a year but blocks of time get blacked out and we work any holiday that's on a weekday while local management (and most definitely corporate) is at home with their families. I saw Office Space in theaters when I was 14. I thought it was satire. Oh how wrong I was. It is life. Actually, it's better than life. While I enjoy the luxuries of sitting and, sometimes working HVAC (it was in the 80's in my office most of the summer), I do highly repetitive work that is effectively data entry that in 5, 10, 15 years OCR software will do the bulk of. Want to advance? Well, you better have a 4-6 year degree and be willing to move to other states multiple times to earn an extra 10-20%. Want to get sick? Do it on your own time. Want to take a vacation with your family? Ehhhh we'll see but don't count on it. Want to enjoy a holiday away from work? Hahahaha better be one of the few people that get drawn to have it off. Want a raise? Ok you can have a merit based increase once a year, if you were sick you get less, if you made a few errors each month while trying to make unrealistic production standards you get less, weren't cheerful enough based on your manager's arbitrary determination you get a little less... I come on sites like HN, Reddit, even Facebook. I hear people talk about their jobs. I hear people bitch that the company retreat wasn't at some place cool this year, I hear people complain they only get 2 months of maternity/paternity leave, I hear them whine how oh boo hoo they have to work 4 more years at their job to be able to be FIRE (ha, I will have to work until the day I die, cry me a river), I hear that tens of thousands had the luxury of walking out of work to protest sexual harassment policy when I can't call in without a doctor's note or it counts against me and even with a doctor's note I know it's going to shave several tenths of a percent off of my MAYBE 2.6% merit-based increase on my annual review. Damn Foxconn employees, I feel you. Oh how I feel you.
adamnemecek 8y ago
China is definitely extreme but you don't have to go too far to see overworked people, it's much more common in the US than people realize. Everyone is overworked. I think that Starbucks got popular partially due to this.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  > it's much more common in the US than people realize. Everyone is overworked. Indeed, Alexis Ohanian has been speaking out about this very recently too.
  - adamnemecek 8y ago
    Link? Is this it? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/reddit-hustle-porn-alexis-ohanian-tech-silicon-valley-web-summit-a8621696.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      Check his twitter and LinkedIn as I've seen him touch on it on both recently, but yeah that's one of the articles I've seen. I think this is the first one I saw https://qz.com/work/1458073/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-is-taking-a-stand-against-hustle-porn/ https://qz.com/work/1458073/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian...
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  The problem with this is that numerically we work far less than ever before. We work nearly 200 fewer hours per year today than we did just a few decades ago! [1] I think people's discontent is about something much more fundamental. People's lives are pretty pointless. In times past, I think war, overt inequity, and nationalism gave people things to fight for. That's not to say we live in a utopia now a days, of course far from it. But the causes for our problems today are far less clear and solutions even less so. And so what is the point of people's lives? This hypothesis I also think helps explain the explosive rise in things ranging from 'internet activism' which often results in little more than hurting mostly innocent individuals to the sharp increase in radicalism and division in US politics when actual differences, in spite of rhetoric, are little more than two sides of the same coin. People are trying to find meaning in their lives and its manifesting as it always has throughout humanity's history - division and conflict. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP
tianmingwu 8y ago
I think one lesson that be learnt from this sad story is that when you feel you are trapped in a depressing job or place, think of change, take the courage to pack up and leave for a new job or place. Don't be passive and endure the same depression over and over.
- bruceb 8y ago
  He did pack up and tried other things. They didnt work out so he had to come back to Foxconn.
- alvar0 8y ago
  He tried, and went back only when he had no other option
- draw_down 8y ago
  Victim-blaming dross
abvdasker 8y ago
These poems are heartbreaking to read. It seems to expose something fundamental about the working conditions for so many Chinese laborers. The science-fiction reader in me can't help but feel like these poems represent a certain kind of dystopia realized.
z2 8y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561326 Similar discussion from about 2 years earlier. I think that we react and reflect similarly is a good thing, though I've no clue how conditions changed overall in this time.
alexS 8y ago
A competing factory is using really hardcore AI to coerce people to do this kind of thing. Some people can see through worlds. I spotted this as soon as this made the front-page.
- Paperweight 8y ago
  Can you give more info?
matreyes 8y ago
Dear Apple or like, Please commemorate the life and death of this workers on your products, advertising and software. This could, maybe, change our reasoning about the supply chain.
paganel 8y ago
In a similar vein there’s also this book called “An Anthology of Chartist Poetry: Poetry of the British Working Class, 1830s-1850s” whose title says it all. It can be read online through Google Books at this link: https://books.google.ro/books/about/An_Anthology_of_Chartist_Poetry.html?id=hl_Ta-bYMOkC&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ro/books/about/An_Anthology_of_Chartist...
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  And in a similar vein there's also Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" which is an amazing story even for the modern labour movement.
peterburkimsher 8y ago
I "worked" at the Xingda Hongye PCB factory in Zhongshan for a month. They let me stay in the factory dormitory and eat in the cafeteria for free, but didn't pay me. It was good! Afterwards I got a job in Shenzhen that paid, so I moved. But the Xingda workers were from all over China, each with fascinating stories, and very happy to meet a foreigner. I wish I could go back there now. I just finished 4 years working at a microSD card company in Taiwan. I've been trying to find a job since March; unemployed since August. I've given up on my dreams, and I'll take anything. I don't even know how to apply for jobs now. The only two interviews I had were from people who already worked in the company telling their HR to talk to me. Recruiters are ignoring me. Prayer hasn't worked. Sharing side projects on HN hasn't worked. Please tell me the email address of someone who can give me food and shelter.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  > Please tell me the email address of someone who can give me food and shelter. In China or anywhere?
- gufle 8y ago
  Just looking at your website in your bio, you seem to have a good amount of experience, interests, side projects. However your resume looks awful. Remove all of the side images and links, remove the objective section, format your experience to make it cleaner and more readable (at least put blank lines in between jobs). Start your resume with a section summarizing your skills. Remove the 2 month or less duration jobs and round the other ones to fill the gaps. Good luck.
  - r_singh 8y ago
    I feel like the bigger issue could be that the most recent work experience listed is from 2014
    - phs318u 8y ago
      Not sure why you’re being downvoted. A big resume hole is a huge red flag to recruiters.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
But other companies can build their phones without such appalling working conditions? Don't they? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...
- azernik 8y ago
  They accept much lower margins than Apple, in part because Apple is notorious for pushing its suppliers for lower prices to boost its margins.
  - browsercoin 8y ago
    damn that just makes me not buy Apple even more. I buy Samsung phones because I know they treat their workers very well for the most part both in Korea and abroad. In Vietnam, they built daycare, hospitals, school, park, housing for the entire workforce. In Korea, they give out huge bonuses to workers and will promote talented people. I also buy Samsung for the same reason I buy Hyundai, it's not that I can't afford the more expensive brands, I do it out of patriotism for the motherland and scream "TRAITOR!" with the windows up when I drive by a Korean person in a Subaru.
    - azernik 8y ago
      I'm an Israeli and have similar mixed motives for liking Mobileye more than Tesla Autopilot.
      - browsercoin 8y ago
        shalom...i was joking but yeah i do feel proud of what my people have achieved and you should be too. i love watching historical documentaries on israel, especially i feel a certain kinship towards both korea and israel because as underdogs surrounded by not so friendly countries historically have made it and fiercely protected by the people.
    - 8y ago
baybal2 8y ago
What can I tell as an industry insider. Foxconn was known for giving above market range remuneration, and in addition was very welcoming to "party crashers." Not only they gave high salaries, but also liveable dorms, on-site catering, campus hospital and etc. And they were eager to hire everybody who came to their doorsteps without ever asking for guy's papers (In China, your resume is an official document.) Downside: zero progression beyond a team lead after few years, unless the worker would have be super duper lucky to be selected for training in on-site college. Foxconn fortunes turned south few years ago, when it became obvious that domestic companies surpassed them on salary scale. A salary for a machinist with 5 years experience begins at net 10000 CNY a month, and 15k is closer to the median. Foxconn would've never ever gave anybody on the production line 10k a month. Foxconn is now the "rubber sandals factory" of the electronics world — they can't move up the value chain because anybody with brains run away from them the moment they save enough cash to move up.
skizm 8y ago
According to some initial Googling, it looks like Foxconn had one year where 14 people committed suicide out of nearly one million workers (2010, their worst year for suicides). The general suicide rate in China is about 22 in 100,000. Seems like the Foxconn suicide rate is significantly lower, right? Or am I looking at the numbers wrong?
- nostrebored 8y ago
  I think you'd need to look at these adjusted by population, for instance well employed people in a certain area
- intro-b 8y ago
  My reasoning is that it's similar to student suicides that occur on university campuses - although the overall suicide rate by percentage is often much lower than the regional/national average, the topic of conversation is situated on what environmental conditions may be significant causes or factors for those suicides, whether it be student stress/mental health or hostile overwork.
- pcpcpc 8y ago
  Maybe the emphasis is too much on the suicides. It seems like the concern is not just about the suicide rate, but the general working conditions and lack of freedom in China, in Shenzhen, and at Foxconn. Here's a pro-labor take on the challenges workers are facing on China and efforts to suppress reporting about these challenges [1]. The suicides (at Foxconn, in China, and around the world) are exacerbated by poor economic conditions [2]. China also has a lower suicide rate than the US even [3] although I'd be skeptical of underreporting, given China's low press freedom ranking (176 out of 180 [4]) and low "human freedom" ranking [5]. It's speculation but worth considering that things may be worse on the ground than what's being reported. [1] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/condition-working-class-shenzhen-peasant-workers-authoritarian-consumerism https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/condition-working-cl... [2] https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health/suicides-during-great-recession-united-states-canada-europe https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-healt... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... [4] https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking [5] https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index
typon 8y ago
This has depressed me...not just because of this guy's brilliant poems and the potential within, but because there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for any of this suffering. Even if you don't personally buy laptops or phones, companies like Google/Amazon etc. are buying them on your behalf to put in the "cloud". There's really not much average people can do to stop this.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  China at one time tried to move towards a social economic system. It was optimistically labeled their 'Great Leap Forward.' We can debate whether it was socialism or communism, but it's irrelevant. And indeed during this time there was little to nothing in the way of lingering and emotional poetry being widely shared bemoaning the conditions of work and the lesser relevance of the individual. And that's because people had more pressing matters. Some 30,000,000 - 50,000,000 Chinese starved, to death, in a period of about 4 years. That is upwards of 5% of the country. To put a face to those numbers, imagine every individual you've ever seen or known. And now imagine 1 out of every 20 of them starving to death in the next 4 years. The current huge progress in China has been because they've become a capitalist nation in every way except name. Capitalism does not create utopias. It results in massive inequality, and there will always be a demand for the worldwide lowest common denominator of labor costs. But at the same time it creates a system where individuals can achieve immense success through their own merit and one where you don't have people dying of starvation. The point of this is that you can't compare what we have to utopia. It's almost certainly literally impossible to achieve utopia with our current resources and technology. Instead you need to compare what we have to what else we could realistically have. And the current system is pretty bad. It just happens to be better, by a pretty wide margin, than every other system we've been able to consider and trial.
factsaresacred 8y ago
I have like 30 tabs open from things I promised I'd return and read (until an accidental closing of the browser saves me from these obligations). But as I began to read through this, I could not stop. Xu's poems are remarkable. A creative soul trapped inside, and eventually swallowed by, the meaningless pit of capitalism. 我被它们治得服服贴贴 They've trained me to become docile 我不会呐喊，不会反抗 Don't know how to shout or rebel 不会控诉，不会埋怨 How to complain or denounce 只默默地承受着疲惫 Only how to silently suffer exhaustion While being a peasant is in no way desirable, at least you don't have to sell your soul pretending that a life spent serving a gigantic corporation in return for scraps is desirable. Most work is simply absurd - a place of drudgery and despair. We can say that while still accepting that it beats poverty.
almostdeadguy 8y ago
Shocked, but pleasantly so to see this on HN.
- isomorph 8y ago
  Thanks. I try to post things that are the intersection of tech and ethics. I now see that it had been posted before.
golergka 8y ago
Foxconn employs almost a million people. When you compare the rate of suicides among it's employees to rate of suicide in China as a whole, there's no significant difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis May be this statistic is forged somehow, of course - but all the media pieces I read about Foxconn suicides don't even try to gather up meaningful analysis, blaming all suicides on the company instead.
marcazu 8y ago
nice
0x262d 8y ago
this sort of suffering is unfortunately necessary and endemic to capitalism, conscientious consumerism or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
hi41 8y ago
The poetry is so beautiful. One day I was in a park and stopped at a spot that had so many trees and the sunlight was streaking through the leaves and the tree branches. It was extremely beautiful. I felt a strong urge to hug the tree and weep. I left all this for a life in a gray cubicle and the human ant hill.

651 points by isomorph 8y ago

Reading through the poems, one in particular stood out to me, ‘A screw Fell to the Ground.’ While it was done eight months before his suicide, the context seems to be relatable to how he may have been feeling—mostly the sound of “someone” plunging and nobody hearing. — 《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 "A Screw Fell to the Ground" 一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw fell to the ground 在这个加班的夜晚 In this dark night of overtime 垂直降落，轻轻一响 Plunging vertically, lightly clinking 不会引起任何人的注意 It won’t attract anyone’s attention 就像在此之前 Just like last time 某个相同的夜晚 On a night like this 有个人掉在地上 When someone plunged to the ground -- 9 January 2014

sovietmudkipz 8y ago
Geez, that poem really hits me in the gut.
- shortoncash 8y ago
  Same, but I wonder what we lost in translation given what the other commenters wrote. I wonder if it hits harder in the native language.
  - oh-kumudo 8y ago
    I think this translation did a great job in conveying of the emotion/expression of the original text. One thing that particularly gets me, while could be thought as somewhat lost in translation, is the expression of "掉在地上(fall on the ground)". It is rare to be used when the subject is a human, but rather when the subject is an object.
    - nemo44x 8y ago
      > It is rare to be used when the subject is a human, but rather when the subject is an object. Thank you for that. That really adds to the humanity of the poem that the translation just couldn't possibly.
    - guiltygatorade 8y ago
      Ha! Before I came back to reread it that's exactly what I was thinking. Usually it's "摔" for a person who fell. To use the verb "掉" on a person is unusual, but I think it's exactly the author's point -- that the person is treated like an object.
  - wbsun 8y ago
    I think the background story is needed in order to fully understand a poem like this, or maybe any poem. From that perspective, minor loss in translation doesn't hurt. Folks above may spend too much in translation, nitpicking a single word, maybe useful as academic, but reading the story which is ended with such a sorrowful poem already breaks people's heart, how accurate the translation is doesn't matter any more. I couldn't imagine such a miserable situation with desperate pressures that can drive people to commit to suicide. Xu in this story left with news report, poem and comments on HN, but many others left with nothing and forgotten by the world easily: feel so sad that a life is so meaningless when it becomes a number: see [1], [2]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
guiltygatorade 8y ago
I really liked that one as well, but I don't like the fact that the translator translated "掉在地上" differently between the first and final lines, which are meant to mirror each other exactly in order to juxtapose the fate of a screw with the fate of a man. Neither were to receive any embellishments. They both simply fell or dropped. Here's my take: A screw fell to the ground On a night of overtime Straight down, a gentle clink Nobody noticed Just like last time On a night not unlike this one A person fell to the ground
- flippyhead 8y ago
  I like the first one because it's too easy to think someone just fell over instead of having committed suicide. Thanks for the insight though, interesting to see.
  - guiltygatorade 8y ago
    Yeah I didn't interpret it as having committed suicide. But his other poems hinted at him falling asleep at the line. So it could be exhaustion. Or, it could be metaphorical -- that a person's spirit fell to the ground and nobody cared.
    - aerovistae 8y ago
      Oh man, I'd really have to bend my perception pretty far to interpret this as anything but a reference to suicide, given how many there are among their workers.
      - erikpukinskis 8y ago
        People collapse in industrial settings all the time. But a person jumping from a roof is more similar to a screw falling. I guess maybe if a person collapsed while working, others might stop working and help. But a suicide jump would be just another thing they can’t intervene in.
      - guiltygatorade 8y ago
cannabisceo 8y ago
Poor soul had reached such of level of desperation that his digestion of self was like a duplicate object of industry. But as we may seem as copies of the same...we’re not. We are beings experiencing a reality through the scope of a subjective view. It’s all a matter of perspective.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
girzel 8y ago
Here's my version! The only regret is the "man", which in Chinese should be "person", but "person" has always seemed so poetically dead, to my sense. 《一颗螺丝掉在地上》 A Screw Drops 一颗螺丝掉在地上 A screw drops 在这个加班的夜晚 In this overtime night 垂直降落，轻轻一响 The straight fall, the light clink 不会引起任何人的注意 That draws no one's attention. 就像在此之前 Just as once before 某个相同的夜晚 On a similar night 有个人掉在地上 A man dropped.
- girzel 8y ago
  Now I can't decide if 在地上 is really necessary to get in there. If so, the first line is: "A screw drops to the ground" And the last: "A man dropped to the ground"
  - guiltygatorade 8y ago
    I think there's a sense of conclusiveness when "to the ground" is added. Something drops or falls can still be caught, but the author didn't leave that ambiguous.

asianthrowaway 8y ago

> We hope that in the future, workers in Foxconn and elsewhere manage to find ways around such companies' military-style discipline and surveillance, come together, and forge collective paths out of this capitalist world of death, into a world worth living in. Are they aware that China is a communist country?

beaconstudios 8y ago
technically it's a socialist economy with mostly state capitalism. The party is communist but the idea in theory is they're in charge of transitioning towards communism as a vanguard party, just like the soviets. nonetheless, military-style discipline and surveillance have been very prominent in communist-led countries to date so I'm not sure why the author thinks that would change. Maoism and Stalinism aren't known for being cuddly and humanistic.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  A few points here: From the orthodox Marxian perspective, it doesn't make sense to think of a "socialist economy", since the idea of economy is rooted in the law of value in the first place, and Socialism is supposed to abolish the value form. A "socialist economy" is an idea that has its roots in Lenin and only came to fruition with Stalin. >I'm not sure why the author thinks that would change The author, posting on libcom, is probably not a Stalinist or a Maoist, but rather an orthodox Marxist or left-Communist. Libcom is a website very much oriented away from Stalinist Communism.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  It's state capitalism without the socialism: very little worker protection or freedom, no social safety nets, powerful large corporations and banks, military-style discipline and surveillance.
  - beaconstudios 8y ago
    Sounds like socialism to me.

sleazy_b 8y ago

These are some remarkable poems. I feel lucky that someone took the time to translate and share these poems on the internet where they can find a wider audience.

jrowley 8y ago

I hope this makes people reconsider if they really need a new laptop, iphone, etc. I think a lot of people would pay twice as much for their devices if they could guarantee the workers weren't being exploited.

abricot 8y ago
Unfortunately, like with clothes, paying 10ntimes as much would still not guarantee this.
virmundi 8y ago
Doubt it. Didn’t happen with rubber. Didn’t happen with chocolate. Didn’t happen with Californian tomatoes. Technology will press the exploitation out when you don’t need people.
klenwell 8y ago
> I think a lot of people would pay twice as much for their devices if they could guarantee the workers weren't being exploited. A lot of America has traded their old Main Street for a Walmart shopping complex the next town over. Now they're upgrading that to an Amazon distribution center in the next state over. On this board, I expect a lot of people will explain (unsympathetically but not completely unreasonably) that the benefits of these exploitative conditions outweigh the costs (this unfortunate soul's death included). I think you can have reasonably priced quality products and worker well-being, but good luck making your case to shareholders and their apologists.
- adamc 8y ago
  What would need to rise is a collective consciousness of what a shitty system this is. Most people are too distracted to even pay attention, let alone do something about it.
  - asdff 8y ago
    > Most people are too distracted to even pay attention, let alone do something about it. This is by design. As long as it's profitable to exploit labor, nothing will change. It is far far easier to keep people distracted and blind to all of this than it is to make them 'wake up,' or make any changes to their lives.

ryanmercer 8y ago

This adequately describes my life and job, except I stare at invoices all day entering similar information day in, day out, submittimg electronic data to a handful of government agencies for twelve and a half years now. I'm basically a piece of OCR software that's told to sit there, be quiet, be perfect, if you call in sick we're holding it against you, no you can't take time off that month is blacked out, no you don't need a cost of living raise, produce produce produce! I'll regularly just zone out for who knows how long, usually snapping back to the world when my head starts to dip or my eyes go unfocused enough to start to cause discomfort. Realizing, this is my 'life' and likely will be until I die. -- 《我就那样站着入睡》 "I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That" and "My Life’s Journey is Still Far from Complete" hit way too close to home. You'd think my life would be drastically different in midwest America. I'm not standing at an assembly line, I didn't have to leave my home town to go far away to a factory, but I really am expected to be more machine than man. I'm expected to sit at a desk, not talk, limit my trips to the bathroom, limit getting up with the exception of the 2 daily parades of 2 laps around the office that are done as a group, if you're sick you're expected to be at work unless dying although every cold and flu season corporate stressed "if you're sick stay home" ha! Everything is about efficiency and production, merit-based increases rarely cover cost of living increases, I get 5 weeks of vacation a year but blocks of time get blacked out and we work any holiday that's on a weekday while local management (and most definitely corporate) is at home with their families. I saw Office Space in theaters when I was 14. I thought it was satire. Oh how wrong I was. It is life. Actually, it's better than life. While I enjoy the luxuries of sitting and, sometimes working HVAC (it was in the 80's in my office most of the summer), I do highly repetitive work that is effectively data entry that in 5, 10, 15 years OCR software will do the bulk of. Want to advance? Well, you better have a 4-6 year degree and be willing to move to other states multiple times to earn an extra 10-20%. Want to get sick? Do it on your own time. Want to take a vacation with your family? Ehhhh we'll see but don't count on it. Want to enjoy a holiday away from work? Hahahaha better be one of the few people that get drawn to have it off. Want a raise? Ok you can have a merit based increase once a year, if you were sick you get less, if you made a few errors each month while trying to make unrealistic production standards you get less, weren't cheerful enough based on your manager's arbitrary determination you get a little less... I come on sites like HN, Reddit, even Facebook. I hear people talk about their jobs. I hear people bitch that the company retreat wasn't at some place cool this year, I hear people complain they only get 2 months of maternity/paternity leave, I hear them whine how oh boo hoo they have to work 4 more years at their job to be able to be FIRE (ha, I will have to work until the day I die, cry me a river), I hear that tens of thousands had the luxury of walking out of work to protest sexual harassment policy when I can't call in without a doctor's note or it counts against me and even with a doctor's note I know it's going to shave several tenths of a percent off of my MAYBE 2.6% merit-based increase on my annual review. Damn Foxconn employees, I feel you. Oh how I feel you.

adamnemecek 8y ago

China is definitely extreme but you don't have to go too far to see overworked people, it's much more common in the US than people realize. Everyone is overworked. I think that Starbucks got popular partially due to this.

ryanmercer 8y ago
> it's much more common in the US than people realize. Everyone is overworked. Indeed, Alexis Ohanian has been speaking out about this very recently too.
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  Link? Is this it? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/reddit-hustle-porn-alexis-ohanian-tech-silicon-valley-web-summit-a8621696.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    Check his twitter and LinkedIn as I've seen him touch on it on both recently, but yeah that's one of the articles I've seen. I think this is the first one I saw https://qz.com/work/1458073/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-is-taking-a-stand-against-hustle-porn/ https://qz.com/work/1458073/reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian...
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
The problem with this is that numerically we work far less than ever before. We work nearly 200 fewer hours per year today than we did just a few decades ago! [1] I think people's discontent is about something much more fundamental. People's lives are pretty pointless. In times past, I think war, overt inequity, and nationalism gave people things to fight for. That's not to say we live in a utopia now a days, of course far from it. But the causes for our problems today are far less clear and solutions even less so. And so what is the point of people's lives? This hypothesis I also think helps explain the explosive rise in things ranging from 'internet activism' which often results in little more than hurting mostly innocent individuals to the sharp increase in radicalism and division in US politics when actual differences, in spite of rhetoric, are little more than two sides of the same coin. People are trying to find meaning in their lives and its manifesting as it always has throughout humanity's history - division and conflict. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USAAHWEP

tianmingwu 8y ago

I think one lesson that be learnt from this sad story is that when you feel you are trapped in a depressing job or place, think of change, take the courage to pack up and leave for a new job or place. Don't be passive and endure the same depression over and over.

bruceb 8y ago
He did pack up and tried other things. They didnt work out so he had to come back to Foxconn.
alvar0 8y ago
He tried, and went back only when he had no other option
draw_down 8y ago
Victim-blaming dross

abvdasker 8y ago

These poems are heartbreaking to read. It seems to expose something fundamental about the working conditions for so many Chinese laborers. The science-fiction reader in me can't help but feel like these poems represent a certain kind of dystopia realized.

z2 8y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8561326 Similar discussion from about 2 years earlier. I think that we react and reflect similarly is a good thing, though I've no clue how conditions changed overall in this time.

alexS 8y ago

A competing factory is using really hardcore AI to coerce people to do this kind of thing. Some people can see through worlds. I spotted this as soon as this made the front-page.

Paperweight 8y ago
Can you give more info?

matreyes 8y ago

Dear Apple or like, Please commemorate the life and death of this workers on your products, advertising and software. This could, maybe, change our reasoning about the supply chain.

paganel 8y ago

In a similar vein there’s also this book called “An Anthology of Chartist Poetry: Poetry of the British Working Class, 1830s-1850s” whose title says it all. It can be read online through Google Books at this link: https://books.google.ro/books/about/An_Anthology_of_Chartist_Poetry.html?id=hl_Ta-bYMOkC&redir_esc=y https://books.google.ro/books/about/An_Anthology_of_Chartist...

claudiawerner 8y ago
And in a similar vein there's also Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" which is an amazing story even for the modern labour movement.

peterburkimsher 8y ago

I "worked" at the Xingda Hongye PCB factory in Zhongshan for a month. They let me stay in the factory dormitory and eat in the cafeteria for free, but didn't pay me. It was good! Afterwards I got a job in Shenzhen that paid, so I moved. But the Xingda workers were from all over China, each with fascinating stories, and very happy to meet a foreigner. I wish I could go back there now. I just finished 4 years working at a microSD card company in Taiwan. I've been trying to find a job since March; unemployed since August. I've given up on my dreams, and I'll take anything. I don't even know how to apply for jobs now. The only two interviews I had were from people who already worked in the company telling their HR to talk to me. Recruiters are ignoring me. Prayer hasn't worked. Sharing side projects on HN hasn't worked. Please tell me the email address of someone who can give me food and shelter.

jacquesm 8y ago
> Please tell me the email address of someone who can give me food and shelter. In China or anywhere?
gufle 8y ago
Just looking at your website in your bio, you seem to have a good amount of experience, interests, side projects. However your resume looks awful. Remove all of the side images and links, remove the objective section, format your experience to make it cleaner and more readable (at least put blank lines in between jobs). Start your resume with a section summarizing your skills. Remove the 2 month or less duration jobs and round the other ones to fill the gaps. Good luck.
- r_singh 8y ago
  I feel like the bigger issue could be that the most recent work experience listed is from 2014
  - phs318u 8y ago
    Not sure why you’re being downvoted. A big resume hole is a huge red flag to recruiters.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

But other companies can build their phones without such appalling working conditions? Don't they? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...

azernik 8y ago
They accept much lower margins than Apple, in part because Apple is notorious for pushing its suppliers for lower prices to boost its margins.
- browsercoin 8y ago
  damn that just makes me not buy Apple even more. I buy Samsung phones because I know they treat their workers very well for the most part both in Korea and abroad. In Vietnam, they built daycare, hospitals, school, park, housing for the entire workforce. In Korea, they give out huge bonuses to workers and will promote talented people. I also buy Samsung for the same reason I buy Hyundai, it's not that I can't afford the more expensive brands, I do it out of patriotism for the motherland and scream "TRAITOR!" with the windows up when I drive by a Korean person in a Subaru.
  - azernik 8y ago
    I'm an Israeli and have similar mixed motives for liking Mobileye more than Tesla Autopilot.
    - browsercoin 8y ago
      shalom...i was joking but yeah i do feel proud of what my people have achieved and you should be too. i love watching historical documentaries on israel, especially i feel a certain kinship towards both korea and israel because as underdogs surrounded by not so friendly countries historically have made it and fiercely protected by the people.
  - 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago

What can I tell as an industry insider. Foxconn was known for giving above market range remuneration, and in addition was very welcoming to "party crashers." Not only they gave high salaries, but also liveable dorms, on-site catering, campus hospital and etc. And they were eager to hire everybody who came to their doorsteps without ever asking for guy's papers (In China, your resume is an official document.) Downside: zero progression beyond a team lead after few years, unless the worker would have be super duper lucky to be selected for training in on-site college. Foxconn fortunes turned south few years ago, when it became obvious that domestic companies surpassed them on salary scale. A salary for a machinist with 5 years experience begins at net 10000 CNY a month, and 15k is closer to the median. Foxconn would've never ever gave anybody on the production line 10k a month. Foxconn is now the "rubber sandals factory" of the electronics world — they can't move up the value chain because anybody with brains run away from them the moment they save enough cash to move up.

skizm 8y ago

According to some initial Googling, it looks like Foxconn had one year where 14 people committed suicide out of nearly one million workers (2010, their worst year for suicides). The general suicide rate in China is about 22 in 100,000. Seems like the Foxconn suicide rate is significantly lower, right? Or am I looking at the numbers wrong?

nostrebored 8y ago
I think you'd need to look at these adjusted by population, for instance well employed people in a certain area
intro-b 8y ago
My reasoning is that it's similar to student suicides that occur on university campuses - although the overall suicide rate by percentage is often much lower than the regional/national average, the topic of conversation is situated on what environmental conditions may be significant causes or factors for those suicides, whether it be student stress/mental health or hostile overwork.
pcpcpc 8y ago
Maybe the emphasis is too much on the suicides. It seems like the concern is not just about the suicide rate, but the general working conditions and lack of freedom in China, in Shenzhen, and at Foxconn. Here's a pro-labor take on the challenges workers are facing on China and efforts to suppress reporting about these challenges [1]. The suicides (at Foxconn, in China, and around the world) are exacerbated by poor economic conditions [2]. China also has a lower suicide rate than the US even [3] although I'd be skeptical of underreporting, given China's low press freedom ranking (176 out of 180 [4]) and low "human freedom" ranking [5]. It's speculation but worth considering that things may be worse on the ground than what's being reported. [1] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/condition-working-class-shenzhen-peasant-workers-authoritarian-consumerism https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/condition-working-cl... [2] https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health/suicides-during-great-recession-united-states-canada-europe https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-healt... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r... [4] https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking [5] https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index

typon 8y ago

This has depressed me...not just because of this guy's brilliant poems and the potential within, but because there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for any of this suffering. Even if you don't personally buy laptops or phones, companies like Google/Amazon etc. are buying them on your behalf to put in the "cloud". There's really not much average people can do to stop this.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
China at one time tried to move towards a social economic system. It was optimistically labeled their 'Great Leap Forward.' We can debate whether it was socialism or communism, but it's irrelevant. And indeed during this time there was little to nothing in the way of lingering and emotional poetry being widely shared bemoaning the conditions of work and the lesser relevance of the individual. And that's because people had more pressing matters. Some 30,000,000 - 50,000,000 Chinese starved, to death, in a period of about 4 years. That is upwards of 5% of the country. To put a face to those numbers, imagine every individual you've ever seen or known. And now imagine 1 out of every 20 of them starving to death in the next 4 years. The current huge progress in China has been because they've become a capitalist nation in every way except name. Capitalism does not create utopias. It results in massive inequality, and there will always be a demand for the worldwide lowest common denominator of labor costs. But at the same time it creates a system where individuals can achieve immense success through their own merit and one where you don't have people dying of starvation. The point of this is that you can't compare what we have to utopia. It's almost certainly literally impossible to achieve utopia with our current resources and technology. Instead you need to compare what we have to what else we could realistically have. And the current system is pretty bad. It just happens to be better, by a pretty wide margin, than every other system we've been able to consider and trial.

factsaresacred 8y ago

I have like 30 tabs open from things I promised I'd return and read (until an accidental closing of the browser saves me from these obligations). But as I began to read through this, I could not stop. Xu's poems are remarkable. A creative soul trapped inside, and eventually swallowed by, the meaningless pit of capitalism. 我被它们治得服服贴贴 They've trained me to become docile 我不会呐喊，不会反抗 Don't know how to shout or rebel 不会控诉，不会埋怨 How to complain or denounce 只默默地承受着疲惫 Only how to silently suffer exhaustion While being a peasant is in no way desirable, at least you don't have to sell your soul pretending that a life spent serving a gigantic corporation in return for scraps is desirable. Most work is simply absurd - a place of drudgery and despair. We can say that while still accepting that it beats poverty.

almostdeadguy 8y ago

Shocked, but pleasantly so to see this on HN.

isomorph 8y ago
Thanks. I try to post things that are the intersection of tech and ethics. I now see that it had been posted before.

golergka 8y ago

Foxconn employs almost a million people. When you compare the rate of suicides among it's employees to rate of suicide in China as a whole, there's no significant difference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides#Analysis May be this statistic is forged somehow, of course - but all the media pieces I read about Foxconn suicides don't even try to gather up meaningful analysis, blaming all suicides on the company instead.

marcazu 8y ago

nice

0x262d 8y ago

this sort of suffering is unfortunately necessary and endemic to capitalism, conscientious consumerism or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

hi41 8y ago

The poetry is so beautiful. One day I was in a park and stopped at a spot that had so many trees and the sunlight was streaking through the leaves and the tree branches. It was extremely beautiful. I felt a strong urge to hug the tree and weep. I left all this for a life in a gray cubicle and the human ant hill.