The Worker by Sandy Foster
I don’t remember much about my young life. All I have ever remembered is endless gears, needles, presses and fabric.
I was very rarely outside of the building that the men said was my home. It is where I would eat my food, drink my water and rest. Well, I was not meant to rest, rest was permitted roughly 6 hours a week. But sometimes I couldn’t stay awake no matter how hard I tried, and I would fall asleep. I would never sleep for long as almost immediately one of the men would approach me and show me the penalty of sleep by striking me on the back with a bamboo cane until I bled.
All I knew was that my name was Haoyu Zhang and this was my life, endlessly using the big metal needles, heavy metal machinery and coarse fabric to create items of clothing.
Although I probably made at least 5000 tops a month in my never-ending struggle, we boys and girls at the factory never had luxuries like this ourselves. We all were wearing the same clothes we were 3 or even 4 years ago and if these items of clothing didn’t fit anymore, it didn’t matter, you would have to rip them even further to be able to fit them on our thin starving bodies. Speaking about food, if you could call it that, all we got was a handful of rice at dawn and then another handful of rice along with about a tablespoon of corn gruel that was often mouldy at dusk. I learned to accept this cruel life as it was all I knew.
Once I made a friend, secretly, a fellow worker, we communicated in code with our hands. One day the bad men caught us and were furious. I thought that they were going to beat us to death like some other children who had disobeyed the men’s rules, but my friend said that it was his idea, that he had forced me to communicate with him and I had nothing to do with it. That was the last time I saw my friend. They took him away and never brought him back.
But everything changed when one day I was working at my machine, and I noticed there were no guards standing around, they had all left. Just at that moment a fellow worker slumped against his machine, exhausted.
I expected the men to come back and beat him, but nothing happened. But then a man came in. He looked nice, unlike the horrible looking factory men. He explained to us that the bad men were now gone, and we were free. I later found out he was a human rights activist and I thank him with all my heart for saving me from that hell.
I now live on the banks of the Yangtze River, a fisherman, with my wife and kids where I can forget about that factory and live a happy life.