In Shenzhen City, just as there are rows of factory buildings, so too are there row after row of company dormitories, which are drab concrete buildings seven or eight stories high. With heavy iron grates or bars covering the windows, the dorms resemble prisons.
The workers use the grates to hang up their clothing to dry.
We went into one of the dorms. The building super assumed that we were working for a North American company and were looking for dorm space to house our workers, so we received the grand tour.
It was explained that in a 10-by-20-foot room, it would be easy for us to fit 9 to 12 people. He showed us plenty of such rooms, demonstrating how they had arranged the two-level bunk beds lined up against every inch of wall space, leaving a narrow corridor down the center of the room. The bunk beds had hard wooden surfaces covered with paper thin straw mats. Some workers had been able to secure thin mattresses, while others slept on folded up blankets.
The few possessions the workers owned were hung up inside their tiny bunk space-for example, two shirts hanging from a nail, with some pictures torn from magazines taped on the wall.
The workers hung blankets or sheets or strips of torn plastic over the outside part of their bunks in order to provide a little privacy.
The walls were cinderblock, the floors concrete and the one fluorescent light was affixed to the ceiling. The rooms were damp and drab.
One of the workers with whom we spoke worked in a plastics factory, 16 hours a day he said, from 8:00 a.m. to midnight. He received two Sundays off each month. For working over 90 hours a week, he earned $27.87.