When Foxconn workers became internet celebrities: While tightening screws, they took pictures of life on the assembly line

As the iPhone 14 continues to be hotly debated, Foxconn’s large-scale recruitment has begun to be put on the agenda. However, the hustle and bustle online has nothing to do with the workers. They only care about how much overtime they work and how much their hourly wages are.

For many years, Foxconn, a place once known as "Terry Gou's Forbidden City", has always maintained a certain mystery.

With the popularity and popularity of short videos, more and more Foxconn workers have become self-media people and are active on various short video platforms, including many well-known ones, such as the UP host of Bilibili "Tang Ren Discovery" "Ordinary", "Twenty-one Lone Ranger", "Old True Blind Beep", "Xia Qiuhan vlog", "The Story of a Heroic Son", etc...

They recorded it with rough but real images My own assembly line life was revealed along the way, and the mysterious corner of Foxconn was revealed.

In this Internet era where everyone is a director, through these videos, some people lamented seeing their past selves, some joked about seeing their future selves, and more people were just curious and immersed in Foxconn life. , peeking into all kinds of life on the assembly line.

O1

Foxconn is always short of people

Walking near Qinghu Lake in Longhua, you can see this scene every day: buses parked on the roadside , people dragging suitcases and buckets looked around.

Young people from all over the country were brought by buses and poured into various electronics factories in Longhua District, Shenzhen. The “good factory” in the eyes of most people was Foxconn.

The first step in entering the factory is the intermediary.

Station B’s UP host “Tang Ren Discovers Ordinary” (hereinafter referred to as “Tang Ren”) once joked in a video: “At Foxconn, what wakes you up is not the desire to make money, nor the alarm sound. It’s the agency downstairs.”

July and August are the peak recruitment seasons for Foxconn. The young people who were brought here would gather in a crowd downstairs of the dormitory and line up in the square like a square formation during school military training.

In the eyes of intermediaries, these surging heads are just pieces of RMB. If an agency hires ten people and each of them works for a full month, they can get a remuneration of about 3,500 yuan - higher than the basic salary of 2,460 yuan for ordinary workers in the factory.

There are countless intermediaries and human resources agencies around Foxconn, which can be called a mixed bag. Large and small, first-hand and second-hand, regular and shady, "introduction fee", "increase in wages", "make up for the difference", these rather "routine" words are their common rhetoric. For the same job, different agencies will give different hourly wages.

Some young people are inexperienced and are deceived on the roadside into factories. They do the same work and receive lower wages than others.

Foxconn is always short of people and always recruiting.

According to people familiar with the matter, more than 500 people at Fujifilm go through resignation procedures every day.

"Tang Ren" once said in a video that two of his eight roommates left after three days at work: some resigned voluntarily, some were dissatisfied with their positions and had a quarrel with the line leader, and some left. Not even a salary is required. "Xiongzi Ji" mentioned in the video that a colleague in the workshop said that he went to the toilet and never came back. He once complained to the worker next door, "This job is too detailed, I can't do it."

Compared with other factories, what is special is that at Foxconn, "seven in and seven out" is not uncommon. Some people run home after receiving their wages, and return to the factory when they have no money. Others I wanted to go out and try for better opportunities, so I ended up going back to Foxconn in a roundabout way.

In the dormitory corridors, abandoned mats, beddings, wash basins... these insignificant things often appear. Taking them away will become a burden when running away, because when you get to the next electronics factory, There are new alternatives. There are people in the factory who specialize in picking up things that others have thrown away after leaving their jobs. They can always find some gadgets, even worn clothes, and re-sterilize them before wearing them again.

In the factory discourse system, "bucket" has long become a special symbol. "Enter the blackest factory and carry the reddest bucket." This joke is like a slogan sworn by workers who travel to factories in various places and struggle to move forward in a mobile life.

Buckets are portable and practical, and everyone can tell what’s inside at a glance. Its open space is like the unknown and wandering life of many people.

O2

More than three months is considered a person who can endure it

The Foxconn factory area is large and is generally divided into four doors: "south, east and northwest".

The management here is strict, and few people except customers and factory personnel can get involved. People need to pass a series of inspections: face scanning at the entrance, security check of the whole body, wearing uniforms...

In order not to affect the cleanliness of the workshop, some departments in the factory need to wear "dust-free clothes" , clothes of different colors divide workers into different grades. There is a saying in the factory: the purple ones work, the pink ones look, the yellow ones move around, and the blue ones have the final say.

This implies that Foxconn is like a small society.

The monthly final salary in the factory is directly proportional to the overtime hours. Therefore, when meeting and greeting people in the factory, they always say "Did you work overtime today?" Good relationships are also an essential course at Foxconn.

During every shift change, the flow of people is divided into several teams, and people gather in front of the lockers: some are coming out of the production line, and some are "dressed up" and ready to go in.

After changing into uniform clothes and putting mobile phones and other personal belongings into the cabinet, they remained silent and skillfully performed the uniformly customized movements.

UP master "Twenty-One" repeatedly made 400 small parts every hour and earned 23 yuan in income. Sitting around her workstation were deaf-mute, introverted boys who didn't need to speak to each other but occasionally made eye contact. Therefore, on "Twenty-One", the hands are often at work, but the mind is wandering.

Every day at 3:15 pm, brisk music comes from the factory: this is the unified time for the production line workers to relax. Workers walked out of the building in groups, picked up their mobile phones and cigarettes, and squatted on the stairs and in the park. For them, this is the best way to relax.

Strict management, boring and repetitive life, some people stay for three days, some stay for three months.

"Anyone who can stay at Foxconn for five or eight years must have no ideas." UP owner "Jiuzhen" lamented his ten years at Foxconn.

At Foxconn, about half of the people still work at night.

At five o'clock in the evening, "Tang Ren" walked out of the park restaurant after dinner, changed his clothes and prepared to start a new day of work.

Ten hours later, "Tang Ren" walked out of the workshop with a haggard face: "My body is sitting there, my heart has long fallen asleep, and I feel like my life is meaningless."

Compared to the night shift on the assembly line, it was relatively easy to work the night shift in the department where "Jiu Zhen" worked. There was no supervisor to watch all the time, and they only had to watch the machines run regularly.

When they are tired, colleagues will go to the woods downstairs to fish, smoke, and play games. There are also some brave people who go back to the dormitory to sleep after 12 o'clock, risking being caught and expelled, and then come back to clock in at five or six in the morning.

The workers made it through the night shift.

At three or four o'clock in the morning, when hunger and sleepiness strike at the same time, some workers drink hormone drinks to refresh themselves. Some will secretly squint for a few minutes, but they have to worry about it. They are afraid of surveillance and even more afraid. He was caught red-handed by the leader.

In the factory, those who do not work night shift are either leaders or those who need to prepare for pregnancy - they need to run at night to ensure the quality of sperm.

Once the baby was born, the night shift resumed.

This "anti-human" work and rest forcefully separates people's bodies and souls.

O3

Longhua "City That Never Sleeps"

There are many urban villages and food streets scattered around Foxconn. There are Internet cafes every few steps. They are connected with hair salons, Together, the small hotel lights up the night of Longhua.

"Old True" entered Foxconn in 2010. The biggest pleasure every day is walking through a wasteland (now built into Longhua Galaxy ICO) with co-workers to go to the Internet cafe after get off work.

As before, the major Internet cafes around Foxconn are still full at night.

Compared to returning to a crowded dormitory, the 32-inch display screen, comfortable ergonomic chair, and hearty games in the Internet cafe are more tempting.

Young people who have not yet found a job can find a comfortable place to stay at just one-tenth the price of a hotel.

At eleven o'clock in the evening, outside the Foxconn factory, migrant workers squatted on the streets.

Some people have just finished working overtime, and some are preparing to work the night shift. Before entering the factory and having their mobile phones confiscated, their biggest interest is to squat down or find a stone bench to lie down, smoke a cigarette, and browse their mobile phones aimlessly. ,daze.

Longhua Cultural Square at night is also the hunting ground for Foxconn people. Sensational disco music was playing in the square, and men and women swayed to the rhythm.

The ratio of men to women in electronics factories is seriously imbalanced. For men, it is even harder to find a partner in the factory. "Brother 7", a colleague of "Jiu Zhen", found his partner while dancing in Longhua Square. He fell in love with the girl who was leading the dance and bought the girl a whole box of water every time. After buying for several months, he asked for her contact information.

Eating a big meal, recharging network card balance, playing games all night, releasing hormones at the dance hall... these timely pastimes bring satisfaction to the workers after leaving the assembly line.

It wasn’t until the early morning that the night at Foxconn gradually became quiet. Life on the production lines in the park is repetitive and boring, and the nights outside the park are stretched infinitely.

O4

Foxconn is like a besieged city

The Longhua factory covers an area of ??about 2.3 square kilometers and has more than 100 factory buildings. It takes 50 minutes to ride around the factory. The number of employees here once peaked at more than 300,000.

But now, according to the owners of barber shops in surrounding urban villages, 80% of the people who used to come to get haircuts were from Foxconn, but now only 20% of them come.

Foxconn is like a besieged city. People inside want to get out, and people outside want to get in.

After leaving Foxconn, "Jiuzhen" worked full-time in self-media and came into contact with people from all walks of life. Looking back on his time at Foxconn, he said: "I still feel that the feelings between people in the factory are the purest. "

In the video, he expressed hesitation and entanglement many times, "Should I return to Foxconn?"

In the past two years, "Jiuzhen" has listened to He said that many of his colleagues at Foxconn had received promotions and salary increases. Some people originally worked at Foxconn with a basic salary of 6,000 to 7,000, but now they go to Huawei, with a basic salary of 13,000. This worker has been working on a niche machine for more than ten years, and it is estimated that less than 100 people in the country can use it. Some people went to other small factories, and some became senior engineers...

"They have the ability, and they got through it."

More Some of the workers just left Foxconn and went to another factory without much change in their lives. There are also workers who started their own businesses and opened milk tea shops and barbecue restaurants. Some lost money, and some were barely able to make ends meet.

When talking about the changes in these colleagues, the "old truth" is inevitably a bit sad.

Compared with them, I seem to be a "loser".

He only has a resume working at Foxconn, and during the ten years he spent in the factory, in his words, "I did not devote myself wholeheartedly to the manufacturing industry," so he was "less than those above and more than those below."

“It’s rare to get promoted to a management level at Foxconn, but you can really make money if you do well in technology.”

It’s not easy to do self-media now, and the “old truth” is a bit I want to leave Shenzhen. He has not left Longhua for more than ten years. Like him, there are many workers who have not left Longhua for many years. The infrastructure inside the factory is complete and the prices outside the factory are affordable. Workers can "live like this for thirty years" in Longhua.

"Where is our future?"

On a quiet lane, there is a small door of Foxconn. The rows of tall coconut trees inside the wall are very eye-catching. At three o'clock in the afternoon, the workers habitually came to squat under the tree, playing with their mobile phones and fishing.

Not far outside the park, there was a queue of 100 meters long, and a new group of young people carrying suitcases were coming from afar.

Some of the pictures in this article are from

"Old True Blind Beep" and "The Lone Ranger Twenty-One"

"Tang Ren "Discovering the Ordinary", "The Story of a Hero" and "Xia Qiuhan vlog"

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