Image source @ Visual China
Text | Microscopic story, author | Yang Jia, Editor | Outstanding
When he decided to go to work in the factory, Shen Guodong was a little hesitant in his heart.
He looked at the address of the factory where he was training, nearly 700 kilometers away from his school in Chuzhou, Anhui Province, and the place of work was another 650 kilometers away from himself, Zhaoqing, Guangdong.
Shen Guodong, who had never been out of the far door independently, made a lot of question marks for the factory hundreds of kilometers away, "Will it be a sweatshop?" What if you are cheated so far away? Even worried about whether he would be tricked into doing pyramid schemes? ”
After all, when it comes to factories, red brick factories, blue uniforms... And the sweatshop that lingers all over the mind is the appearance of sweatshops.
When he got the plane ticket bought by the company, Shen Guodong's question added another layer, the address written on the ticket was clearly written from Changsha to Nanjing, but his heart was still not steady, and he couldn't help but think, "Will this be another new scam?"
With the stereotype of the traditional factory "thick smoke billowing" and the repeated operation of assembly line workers, Shen Guodong came all the way to the Yuanqi Forest Anhui Chuzhou factory.
During his several months of internship experience, he was moved by everything he saw and felt in front of him. Not only did he choose to join, but he also introduced his friends and girlfriends into the factory.
Shen Guodong is just one of the million young people who choose to work in the factory at the moment. Unlike fleeing the factory, more and more young people are choosing to go into the factory today, and they may be able to get some answers about the future and correct some of the stereotypes and prejudices.
Here are the true stories about them:
In the factory, you can also live differently
Shen Guodong, who was born in 2000, has many ideas about his future, such as "continue to study and learn more things", but he has never thought of working in a factory after graduation.
"In fact, the new factory is completely different from the previous sweatshop", Shen Guodong had been working in the Yuanqi Forest Zhaoqing factory for 1 year when he said this.
Unlike the stereotypes of young people who are desperate to enter the factory, Shen Guodong was born in a hunan teacher family with a good family, and choosing to enter the factory is not a last resort.
Shen Guodong entered the Yuanqi Forest Factory to work, just because of the internship to find a job when the senior strongly recommended, briefly introduced the appearance of the Yuanqi Forest Factory, "the environment is good, providing accommodation, canteen meals, good working atmosphere, and gym", said the senior also sent out some photos of the working environment.
Figure | Working environment inside the factory
Shen Guodong, who first saw the photo, was suspicious, "Can the factory be so good?" ”
In his impression, the factory seems to have a chimney, which is billowing smoke, and then there are people standing next to the assembly line of the workshop, and the work in their hands cannot be stopped, "even to go to the toilet, you have to call a report and run." ”
But looking at the factory in the picture, he was moved, "If you don't try it, you will resign and come back if you are not happy."
He was even mentally prepared to go to the assembly line to work with his uncles in their forties.
But he did not expect that not long after submitting his resume, after several rounds of interviews with the senior, he received the employment notice and air ticket of Yuanqi Forest - after the hiring, the company purchased a unified air ticket to send them to the factory in Anhui for practical training.
"Is this still a factory?" With a huge surprise, Shen Guodong sent his ticket to the group of classmates, which attracted the envy of the classmates, and he thought, "It seems that the new factory is a little different? ”
After entering the factory, Shen Guodong found that the new factory in Yuanqi Forest was completely different from what he imagined: the factory had no chimney, the appearance was black, and it was "very cool"; when he walked into the factory, he saw a spacious and modern layout, and then went inside, and the workshop was mechanized.
Figure | Genki Forest Factory exterior
In addition, colleagues are also the same age as themselves, neat and polite.
What surprised him even more was the salary in hand. At first, he thought that he only had an internship salary of 3,000 yuan, but he did not expect to have a few thousand yuan more than he imagined, so he excitedly transferred 5,000 yuan to his mother and bought himself a new pair of sneakers.
Until now, when a student asks about his job, he will recall the joy of receiving his first salary, "There is no big cake here, I get a graduation certificate and I turn it regular, there are five insurances and one gold, the income is good, the large company is stable and the civil servants are almost the same." ”
In addition, there are opportunities for salary increases every year, transparent promotion space, no overtime culture (overtime needs to be applied), humanized management, and a group of friends who meet after work to go to the gym, eat supper, and talk about life, so that Shen Guodong has a different feeling for this job.
Figure | On-site gym
When the girlfriend complained that the internship was not smooth and the future was confused, Shen Guodong did not hesitate to introduce his girlfriend into the factory to "reunite", because the restaurant and gym were readily available here, and the two often met together to eat in the canteen, or go to the gym together after work.
The work of Yuanqi Forest changed Shen Guodong. After entering the factory of the big brand, he became the envy of his friends around him, and the product that everyone around him drank came from the factory where he worked, which brought him a great sense of accomplishment.
This sense of accomplishment is also spurring Shen Guodong forward.
Shen Guodong changed his attitude of going with the flow before graduation, began to examine his life, and had a new goal, he hopes to appreciate through his own efforts, "not to lose to the hard-working colleagues in the factory."
He plans to save some money with his girlfriend, buy a car, take his girlfriend out for a walk when he rests, and also plan to get married and have children, and take on the responsibilities of a man...
For him, "entering the Yuanqi Forest Factory is not lying flat, it is a life choice."
Poetry and faraway places, not only in the CBD
The post-00s represented by Shen Guodong are not a case of young people entering the factory, and Mu Qiuran after 95 also made the same choice.
After graduating with a master's degree in overseas advertising, Mou Qiuran chose to work in Beijing with a dream. In her imagination, Beijing is a collection of various cultural industries, advertising industry giants, must be a city that can give her all-round exercise.
After many challenges, Mou Qiuran successfully entered a well-known advertising agency located in beijing's second ring road. But for the next year, she was wondering every day if she had made the wrong choice.
In Beijing, Mu Qiuran contributes half of his income to the landlord every month, in exchange for a 10-square-meter room in a shared house, and every morning he has to set an alarm clock and his roommates to grab the bathroom, and then pinch the door, and the salary saved in a year cannot buy a square meter in the city.
Nor was the work as glamorous as she thought. When colleagues tacitly began to work overtime and compete for attendance time, Mou Qiuran also had to join the "inner volume", and then dragged his tired body on a business trip and woke up in different city hotels.
Figure | Outside the car on the way to work, Mu Qiuran had the idea of escaping
Long-term business trips and gatherings have also led to Mu Qiuran's desire to find a boyfriend has not been realized, and when watching her former friends enter a new stage of life, she is more skeptical about the meaning of her choice.
Friends scattered in all corners of the city, every time you meet and live in the South Fifth Ring Road outside yizhuang friends after the appointment, from the North Fifth Ring Road wangjing, everyone gathered a few times after the lack of enthusiasm, entertainment activities into lying at home to play mobile phones, the dialog box stays in "hahahahahaha, next time must be" on, but no one knows which time is next time.
Gradually, all she had to do was work. She is proficient in the language of the Internet, but she does not know the name of the little girl at the desk opposite; she knows the trend of the industry, but she does not know the price of the food downstairs.
She felt like a screw, the work was like a huge pressure, smashing her deep into the city, in order to change back to the possibility of a little foothold, but the screw was smashed deeply, it could not take root, and it also exhausted the vitality of the heart.
Figure | Mu Qiuran casually photographed the city, and she did not feel a sense of belonging
When the epidemic broke out last year, Mou Qiuran was trapped in his hometown and spent the longest period of adult vacation with his parents. Looking at the gray hair on his mother's head, he decided to return to Chengdu and find a job in a garment factory that was building its own IP.
When my mother heard the news, she wondered, "What are you going to do, stepping on the sewing machine?" "Mother's impression is that the garment factory is a group of female workers stepping on the sewing machine, but the new garment factory that Mou Qiuran chose is not like this.
Mou Qiuran chose a factory designing national fashion clothing, many of the factory's products have been exported overseas, and even appeared in the fashion weekly, which caused many foreigners to lament Chinese design. In addition to wanting to go back to his hometown to accompany his parents, the new garment factory also made Mu Qiuran feel a sense of belonging and achievement that he did not have in Beijing.
In order to reassure her mother, Mu Qiuran also took her to the manufacturing workshop.
The mother found that most of the original garment factory was young people, and the designed clothes were also very distinctive, and more importantly, most of the young people working here were smiling—that is, the expression she had not seen on her daughter's face for a long time, and she supported her choice.
Figure | The office conditions in the factory are similar to those in the office building
With the experience he had accumulated in the industry before, Mou Qiuran was quickly promoted to brand leader. On the other hand, Mu Qiuran also ushered in her ideal life, under the introduction of friends, she found a partner, the two people have a stable relationship, are renovating a new house, and have a dog together, and she will also ask her friends to pace on Yulin Road in her leisure time.
Sometimes she also thinks of staying up late in Beijing, but she does not regret her choice: "I have not experienced the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and I can't feel the beauty of the small town factory."
Abandoning the fast pace of the city, Wang Zong became The King "Worker"
There are not a few people like Mou Qiuran who are willing to give up their "glamorous" jobs, and Wang Sufeng after the 80s is also one of them.
In 2020, 35-year-old Wang Sufeng gave himself a special birthday gift - he quit his job in Shenzhen and decided to return to his hometown to work.
This seems strange to friends, why did Wang Sufeng give up the middle management position of the Shenzhen company and run back to the broken hardware factory in his hometown?
Wang Sufeng's subordinates did not understand either. At the department's farewell dinner, a young subordinate asked him, "Why don't you go to other big cities and large enterprises and go back to your hometown factory?" ”
In fact, the idea of returning to his hometown, Wang Sufeng has been brewing for nearly 10 years.
In 2008, after graduating from Huazhong University of Science and Technology majoring in marketing, Wang Sufeng went to Shenzhen with his girlfriend who was with him in high school to work hard, he has worked in foreign companies and Internet companies, and became a middle-level leader of an Internet company at the age of 30, with an annual salary of nearly one million yuan.
However, with the increase of age and the disappearance of the Internet demographic dividend, Wang Sufeng also felt the unique bottleneck from the Internet industry.
Coupled with the four olds on the top and two small on the bottom, Wang Sufeng has changed from a young man who dares to think and dare to do it, and suddenly becomes a middle-aged man who is very hesitant about any choice, he does not dare to resign easily to start a business, nor does he dare to rush to the front line in the work, any choice needs to balance family and life, making him tired.
The real determination for Wang Sufeng to return to his hometown came from a phone call from his hometown some time ago.
The father fell at home and was taken to the hospital for surgery, while the mother panicked, could not understand the doctor's surgical instructions, and cried and called Wang Sufeng to ask if he could sign. The regret of not being able to accompany the elderly parents, the high cost of living in Shenzhen, the workplace dilemma that cannot be seen... A series of contradictions burst forth at this moment.
Wang Sufeng immediately decided to return to his hometown.
However, returning to his hometown from Shenzhen is not an overnight affair. After all, there are few job opportunities in his hometown, let alone other high-tech industries, so why did Wang Sufeng go back?
He spent several months collecting recruitment information online and asking his elderly family to help inquire, and finally found a hardware factory not far from his parents' residence, which helped major domestic computer brands produce energy-saving and emission-reducing materials. With his academic qualifications and many years of work experience, he entered the factory to take up a management position.
Figure | The factory that Wang Sufeng chose had many young people
But before Wang Sufeng returned home, he still encountered a lot of resistance, the biggest of which came from his father.
My father was a workshop worker, his hands were covered with thick calluses, and the long three shifts caused him to have a disordered work and rest, and also left the root of various chronic diseases. The father couldn't understand why after reading for so many years, his son had to go back to the factory.
Wang Sufeng said frankly, "Now high-end factories are the trend, I am not into the workshop as an assembly line worker, should no longer look at the factory with colored glasses." ”
In order to reassure his father, Wang Sufeng also searched for environmental photos of the factory to show him. When my father saw the automated production workshops and the orderly working environment, he found that the factory is very different from that of that time.
Many PhDs who have returned from studying abroad also work in it, "and everyone is very enthusiastic and hopes to let Chinese manufacturing go out."
The hot-blooded environment of the new factory has also rekindled Wang Sufeng's enthusiasm, "Many times, anxiety is brought about by the same environment, if you leave everything behind and give yourself a chance to start over, many problems will be solved." ”
Under the persuasion of Wang Sufeng, his wife also entered a large local factory to do finance. Although the monthly income is not as high as shenzhen, the cost of living in small cities is not high, on the contrary, it also makes Wang Sufeng feel that he can save a lot of money than before.
"Working in a big city, although the income is high, the consumption is also high, and one wants to take it home," Wang Sufeng said, after returning to his hometown, by saving unnecessary expenses, it still does not affect the original quality of life, and at the same time, he can plan his life more calmly.
Today's Wang Sufeng drives his wife to and from work every day, travels home on non-congested city roads, and then cooks together, and the family of four eats hot meals, telling the joys and sorrows of the day, and taking care of the elderly in their leisure time.
Returning home and entering the factory, Wang Sufeng felt that survival had finally become life.
postscript
Shen Guodong still remembers the experience of growing up with the Zhaoqing factory in his heart, and sees the shock of the building being pulled up in place, "the transparent glass on the fourth floor of the office building, standing on the fourth floor can see Dinghu Mountain, you can walk into the gym after work, when everyone has time, you can also make a basketball game."
It is a huge contrast with the factories he saw in the movies in the movies and the factories more than a decade ago in the news.
And these surprises also happened when Wang Sufeng and Mou Qiuran entered the factory, and their stereotypes of the factory were subverted by mechanization, precision instruments, and products.
There are many more young people like them who choose to enter the factory. At a time when "post-80s, 90s, and 00s choose to enter a new factory" is becoming more and more common, the deeper reason behind it is not just a change in lifestyle.
Relying on the upgrading of China's industry, The Chinese factory has long been not the assembly line in the media reports in previous years, and the 3.0 factory that has completed the Manufacturing in China to the Intelligent Manufacturing in China has the same bright office space, rising space and vitality as the CBD, attracting a large number of outstanding young people to devote themselves to the Chinese manufacturing industry.
These choices are also the dividends brought about by the continuous evolution of Chinese factories.
And in these three people born in different eras, we see another possibility of life: entering the factory is just a profession, and everyone is looking for a sense of identity.
Maybe we should also ask ourselves what kind of life we want to live.