Today's China and Reading/Writing
The Guardian view on Chinese workers picking up the pen: poetry in motion
The hundreds of millions who have built modern China from the ground up – sweeping its streets, labouring in its factories and ferrying its goods – are often overlooked. But they refuse to go unheard.
The individual scrabble to get by has replaced paeans to collective toil, and the sense of hope has given way to numbness or despair. The image of the screw once represented workers’ pride in their small contribution to a greater cause. But in the poetry of Xu Lizhi, a Foxconn worker who killed himself in 2014, it reflects their insignificance and replaceability.
In the pandemic, some began to notice the low-paid workers who were keeping the country running. A growing sense of precarity among the middle classes may have contributed. Labourers have been at the sharpest end of China’s breakneck development, but others share their concerns about the country’s path – and fear what happens if their status slips.