Behind a long panel of glass windows, row on row of young Chinese women sit at the Nam Tai Electronics factory, their bodies and faces covered by blue smocks, matching gauze caps and surgical masks.
The building hums with the whir of machinery, the women's eyes lit up by a flood of fluorescent light.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The soft but steady noise lies at the heart of an industry powering China into the 21st century, as the Asian nation supplies much of the world with billions of dollars' worth of electronics, from toys to televisions to cellular phones.
But the buzz also hides serious social problems, ranging from sexual harassment to stress, as thousands of often poor, young girls move from the countryside to Pearl River Delta boomtowns like Shenzhen to seek their fortunes.
Called "dagong mei", or little-sister labourers, the new generation of young women powering China's factories often stay for about three years in the city before returning to faraway places like Sichuan and Hunan to marry in their home villages.
The trend is typical of developing societies in Asia, and mirrors Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, said Pun Ngai, a professor at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology.
"They imagine young Chinese girls are more hard-working, more obedient and easier to control," said Pun, who spent six months at one such factory as part of her research.
Factory managers say women are more patient and attentive to detail than many men.
The women, meanwhile, say they are just looking for a chance to make some money and have a little fun.
"The character of women is to do things very carefully, from assembly to checking monitors," said Bonnie Yu, a spokeswoman at a Nokia joint venture factory making mobile phones in Dongguan.
At a factory run by VTech Holdings, the largest supplier of cordless phones to the US, about 80 percent of the production line workers are women, said Simon Lau, manager of operations.
The average worker earns about 700 yuan (US$84.50) per month, and the number of workers at the factory ranges from 11,000 at low season to 20,000 at the peak, Lau said.
"We provide them with free dorms, free meals as well as entertainment, karaoke and a disco in the factory," said Lau, leading a group of reporters on a recent tour of the factory.
On a Friday afternoon at the VTech plant, rows of women in yellow smocks stood before chest-high work stations, each taking printed circuit boards as they passed by on a conveyor belt, soldering a few points and then putting them back.
One slight woman, Xu Jin, was from the town of Wudanshan in Hubei Province. She said she would earn about 500 yuan a month in her hometown, or about half of what she makes in the Dongguan plant.
"I came here with friends," she said, adding that she planned to stay three to four years. "The pace of life here is much faster than in Hubei.
But factory work in the big city also creates a number of physical and social problems for young women not used to the fast pace of urban life and rigorous working conditions, said Pun from the University of Science and Technology.
Long working hours and absence from home can produce a lot of stress.
"I like working here, but I sometimes miss my family," said 21-year-old Wei Weiyan.
She said she had come to the factory with some friends three years ago, and would like to stay on if possible.
"There are huge differences between city life and rural life," Pun said. "There's a lot of hardship for them, especially when they have to work long hours and learn work skills by themselves."
Apart from the physical stresses, women from the countryside must also cope with social problems like sexual harassment, in a world where about 70 percent of supervisors are male, Pun said.
"The kind of harassment is quite subtle, but is almost everywhere," she said.
"There's a lot of verbal abuse, as well as behavioural abuse. For example, when the supervisors do interviews, they will touch the women's hands. They will also give lots of comments on their bodies."
In such cases, Pun said, hometown bonds that many of the women share also function as support networks.
"Most of these women will form some sort of ethnic or kinship enclave to cope with the industrialised network," Pun said. "This kind of kinship network helps them to cope with life in the workplace."
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique