Chapter 8 I am a migrant worker

After I resigned from my job as a bodyguard, I didn't return to Guangzhou directly, but I suddenly had a fever and decided to go wandering.So I took the train directly from Shenzhen to Guizhou and Yunnan. I wandered around the Guizhou plateau for more than two months and met an immature love. I didn't return to Yangcheng until I spent my last penny. I temporarily stayed at the house of a homeless journalist friend, and then started looking for a job again.In the meantime, although I also worked as a reporter for a small newspaper for more than a month, it was not a formal newspaper at all. Besides writing some lace news, it also forced you to advertise everywhere, especially, the salary was always not available.I'm leaving soon.Although it is difficult to find journalists and editors in regular newspapers, I am not discouraged. I believe that everything has a process, and this process may be full of twists and turns.

You can't learn much from those informal tabloids, and good newspapers are difficult to enter, and the threshold is too high.Do other things, I don't have any specialties, continue to be a security guard, but I'm tired of that job at this time.Yes, there are thousands of paths in life, but which one belongs to me?When I was bored, I read books with hunger and hunger, hoping to find the true meaning of life from books, find the truth that can comfort the soul, and make the wandering heart have a quiet place to live.I am a young man with great ambitions, but my dream is always so difficult to reach the other side.Hungry in the stomach and tired in the body, maybe a solution can be found, but the hunger in the heart and the emptiness in the mind are the most terrifying for a young man who is looking for dreams everywhere.When I was depressed, I decided to change to a unique way of living.

I decided to go back to the lowest level of life, to temper myself with a kind of suffering, to baptize my confused soul - of course, this is also the helplessness brought about by real life.I learned from newspapers that in Guangzhou, there are millions of migrant workers working as coolies on construction sites alone.Those migrant workers who are not very literate can survive in Guangzhou. Does it mean that I cannot survive?Didn't many migrant workers become successful people through hard work?I don't believe in this evil!Although I have never entered the threshold of university, I served as a soldier in the special forces, did cultural propaganda work in the military-level political department, and published many articles in many newspapers and periodicals in the military and local areas. Most importantly, I am With the dream of being a reporter and a writer, he ran out to break into the world.I can neither be worldly nor discouraged.Even if I really have nothing, I still have strength and dreams.What else can a young man with strength in his body and a dream in his heart fail to accomplish?The current unsatisfactory situation may be temporary, and you have to go forward bravely on the path you have identified.

Just like I suddenly wanted to go out to wander not long ago, I decided not to look for a newspaper office for the time being, but to work hard in the construction team first.Yes, I'm going to work as a coolie on a construction site!I want a unique way to temper my will, and use a unique way to read and think about life. I got through the pager of a friend who was working at a construction site in Yangcheng. When he learned that I wanted to go to work with him on the construction site, he laughed happily on the other end: "I said Shi Ye, you are working What a joke, you are a cultural person, and you are from the special forces. Although you can’t find a reporter for a while, you can find any job in Guangzhou that is much better than a construction site? Don’t eat this It’s hard work, don’t you know what migrant workers are? Migrant workers are the most despised, hardest, most tiring and dangerous profession! If it’s not out of helplessness, I don’t think anyone in this world would really be willing to do it Migrant workers... How about this, I still have a few hundred yuan on hand, you spend it first, and then return it to me when you make money as a reporter."

Of course my friend couldn't understand my mood.I declined his offer.I'm looking for a job at a construction site right now.I don't believe that a migrant worker on a construction site needs to find any acquaintances.Carrying simple luggage and a few favorite books, I took a car to the new town of Baiyun District.At that time, Xinshi was not as prosperous as it is now, and it was in the stage of construction.There are towering stilts everywhere, and there are vigorous construction scenes everywhere.It was September at this time, and the weather in the southern country was still hot.After getting out of the car, I randomly turned into a construction site not far from the road with machines rumbling.Dust is flying everywhere here, and the choking dust is blowing in the hot wind.Half of the buildings on the construction site have been built, and hundreds of workers wearing hard hats are busily busy under the scorching sun.I heard that I was looking for a job. Several dusty migrant workers said in a Sichuan accent: "The one with the wooden sign at the front door is the boss's office." I came to the simple house built with bricks and wood. Several people were talking, and one of them, a young man with short hair, saw me coming in, straightened up and asked me why I came.He was not tall, with a good-natured face, wearing a novelty shirt, the collar was covered with black dust, and even so, he had a red tie on the front.When he learned that I came here to find a job, he seemed a little surprised, because although I was also well-built and muscular, I was also tanned by the southern sun at this time, but anyone with a discerning eye could tell that I was not The kind that work on construction sites.

Seeing his kind attitude, I immediately introduced my experience and current situation.After looking through my relevant documents, he said, "Look at your strong muscles. You don't have to doubt your strength. It's just that the work on this construction site is the hardest, and it's not something ordinary people can bear..." I smiled and said: "I also came from the countryside, and now I have been a soldier for several years. I have done all kinds of hard work. I was an apprentice to a mason before. I can do any kind of hard work." Seeing my determination, I couldn't say anything more, so I handed me a cigarette and started chatting with me.During the conversation, I found out that the little boss was surnamed Luo. He was from rural Sichuan. The foreman and the boss have become small bosses themselves.Investing in construction costs tens of millions. Ronaldinho certainly doesn’t have that much money to invest, but he contracts some jobs from those big bosses to do them, and then finds people from his hometown or outside to do them. Money is far more than working hard.

I also learned that there are more than a dozen bosses, large and small, in this construction site, and he is only one of them who is responsible for painting the interior and exterior walls. Compared with the masons who stand on high scaffolding to make walls, the work here is still relatively light.If you do a small job here, it costs 15 yuan a day. The main work is to sieve sand, transport sand, mix mud, and lift ash buckets.Work at least 10 hours a day, and sometimes work overtime at night.I asked: "What kind of work is the most tiring here, and what kind of work pays the most?" Boss Luo scratched his scalp and said, "In a place like ours, there is nowhere to be found. Some coolie money! If you want to talk about the most tiring work, I think it is only carrying cement, and a bag of cement is a full 100 catties?" I quickly asked: "Are you a part-time worker or a piecework worker here? Carrying a bag How much is it?" "This kind of work is too tiring, and it is all piecework, and a bag of cement is 5 cents." 1 bag is 5 cents, 10 bags is 5 yuan, and 100 bags is 50 yuan.If I can carry it for a month, I can earn more than 1,000 yuan.Although I am a little tired, I can earn a lot of money by doing this, which is much better than the 15 yuan per day hourly worker.Although I am not just here to make money at this time, it is a good thing for a poor man like me to earn an extra penny.I patted my chest and said to Boss Luo, "Just let me carry the cement. Don't worry, I can carry as much as others can carry."

In this way, I have been carrying cement on this construction site since that afternoon.After being a soldier for a few years, I went from a security guard to a clerk, from a clerk to a bodyguard, and now I have transformed into a migrant worker who sells his sweat and coolies. I was originally a farmer, and my ancestors lived in the poor village of Shiyinggao in Daye, Dayepu, southeastern Hubei for generations.They are honest, hardworking, diligent, and work in the countryside in obscurity.From the time I was sensible, I began to roll on the ground with my parents.My background and the environment I live in have long determined that I have to bear hardships and stand hard work since I was a child.Not to mention the hard work of being exposed to the sun and rain, not to mention the labor facing the loess and the back to the sky, in fact, I have been doing farm work since I was more than ten years old; I was so poor and owed a lot of debts, I had to drop out of school to work to pay off the debts, and had to sell my coolies like the peasants in the village to make a living.

In order to repair the burned house, my family owed a large amount of debt, so I had to drop out of school and go home, working part-time around to pay off the debt.That is, in the winter of this year, together with more than 100 young men and women in the township, I came to a large farm in Jinhu Township near Liangzi Lake in Daye with luggage on my back.Here is the junction of Daye and Ezhou City, surrounded by water on three sides, the lake is endless; the air is fresh, the fish is plump and beautiful, and there are plenty of rice to eat.Just like what Han Ying sang in the movie "Honghu Self-Defense Force": "There are wild ducks and lotus roots everywhere, and the autumn harvest is full of rice and rice."Although the water and soil resources are abundant here and the environment is quiet, the roads are far away, the transportation is remote, the economy is underdeveloped, and a lot of labor is needed to cultivate.There is a large state farm here with more than 10,000 workers.Later, in order to make full use of the resources here, the relevant local departments used local materials to set up a large red brick factory covering an area of ​​nearly 1,000 mu.The county recruited a group of middle and high school graduates from our town to develop land here.At the beginning, according to the relevant departments in the town, this brick factory was state-owned and could be converted from farming to non-agricultural. I heard that there were fixed monthly wages and labor insurance benefits, just like the workers in our county at that time. All covered by the state.At that time, those of us young people who were not deeply involved in the world were looking for dreams to be able to eat commercial food and become regular workers.

When several cars pulled us here, it was like the educated youth in the city came to a remote village.As soon as we arrived at the farm, we strong young people were warmly welcomed by the leaders and staff.When a party secretary at the sub-field knew that I could write and draw, and had published several articles in newspapers, he was very happy to talk to me and appointed me as the secretary of the Youth League branch of the Red Brick Factory; Although I am not tall and big, but I have a dark face and muscular body, which is a good material for physical labor. I was appointed as the director of the billet workshop on the spot. The salary is 30 yuan more than other employees per month, which is not bad. Sleep in a separate room.

The soil here is very good, most of it is red, and at a glance, it is full of red soil, which is very beautiful.There are two workshops in this red brick factory, one is called billet making workshop and the other is called firing workshop. The red bricks are made into pieces, and then these bricks are manually stacked into stacks, covered with thick straw, and after the wind dries, they are sent to the firing workshop; the firing workshop is responsible for watching the fire burn For bricks, we sent the air-dried adobes to the coal kiln for firing. After 3 days and 3 nights (depending on the temperature of course), the earth-colored adobes became knocking red bricks.The production process seems simple, but it is not an easy task to make a qualified red brick from a lump of mud.Under the scorching sun every day, I directed my group of fellow villagers to dig, pump water, step on the mud, drag the carts of good red clay to the hoist to process it into uniform mud, and then process it into pieces. red bricks.After the bricks are formed, they should be pulled outside immediately on the soil mounds that have been prepared for a long time. The space between the bricks should neither be too tight nor too loose. Too tight will make the bricks not easy to dry; If it is too loose, the undried bricks will collapse.Rows of yards are raised several meters high, and then covered with straw to prevent direct sunlight, cracks and become waste products. Who knows, the reality will soon break our dreams.After working hard for more than a month, the farm did not pay us wages on time.The food we ate was poor, and the cook was a relative of the factory manager, who often tampered with cooking and buying vegetables, which made us complain a lot, and then the matter went all the way to the farm leader.Because the work here is too hard, the so-called "conversion from agriculture to non-agriculture" was originally non-existent.After receiving their wages, everyone didn't think about any urban household registration any more, and they all dispersed and returned to their respective villages. Since my family had a large debt waiting to be repaid, I hurriedly joined the private mines in Tonglushan, Longjiaoshan, Fengjiashan and other places, and became a coolie picking ore at the bottom of the kiln.Most people who have studied Chinese geography know that Daye, located in the southeast of Hubei Province, is rich in mineral deposits. Copper and iron mines rank among the top in the country, and there are scattered minerals of all sizes, mainly including gold mines, silver mines, and iron mines. , copper ore and aluminum ore, among which copper and iron ore are the most.The discovery and excavation of the Tonglushan ancient copper mine site in Tonglushan Town, Daye is an unprecedented event in the history of metallurgy in the world.Daye's mining and smelting technology is early, large in scale and high in technology, which is also unique in the world.Therefore, large and small mining areas can be seen everywhere here.At that time, in addition to the state-owned copper and iron mines in Daye, there were more small private copper and iron mines.Just like the large and small coal mines in Henan and Shanxi seized the state-owned coal mines, many farmers here invested in mining by themselves or in the name of townships. Therefore, in the 1980s, scenes of vigorous mining could be seen everywhere in the mountains in southeastern Hubei. Destroyed ore can be seen everywhere.Because the price of copper-iron ore is much higher than that of coal mines, if the opportunity is good to encounter high-grade rich ore, then the boss will become a millionaire or multi-millionaire overnight.Because of the huge profits of mining, many mercenary bosses often disregard the life and death of workers. As long as they detect copper and iron ore, they will immediately open up the entire mountain range and directly load the golden ore inside to the big mine. in the car.In a hurry, they often hire young and middle-aged laborers from far and near rural areas to blast rocks, mine ore, and pull the mine out desperately.Of course, the real high-grade ore is not so easy to obtain. Sometimes it takes a lot of stones to be excavated horizontally and vertically, and sometimes it takes several months to dig in vain.This requires a lot of labor to complete this huge project. For those stones or ores excavated from the ground, they must be transported from the deep underground to the ground.For those bosses who invest heavily, even using machines is not an easy task; for most small bosses who do not have much money and are unwilling to invest, it is even more of a headache, and this huge Most of the projects are often manually moved out of the ground like ants moving house.This also provides opportunities for those surplus laborers in nearby rural areas to earn money.But because it is extremely dangerous to go underground to pull mines, life is like hanging on a thread. If you are not careful, you will die underground and become an underground ghost. Therefore, if you don’t need money, the average farmer will not Willing to risk his life. But in order to pay off the debt as soon as possible, I still chose to go down the mine.We used a garden bag made of wire under the ground of more than 3,000 meters, carrying seventy to eighty catties of ore, and walked along the wet gravel road with stinky water, step by step, and step by step. , Climb up slowly like an old cow with a heavy load.Sometimes I can pick more than a ton of ore a day. Even so, I can only earn twenty or thirty yuan a day after exhausting myself.Every night, my legs were as heavy as lead, and my whole body ached, especially my shoulders, which were soaked in sweat, were worn out and blood oozes out.Sometimes the wound would wake me up from my sleep in pain, so I could only grin my teeth and rub a piece of ginger on it, and then fell asleep with a wet pillow in the numbness and pain.Because this life-threatening work was too hard and tiring, I couldn't compare with those strong adults who were growing up at the time, so I usually took a day off.I don't dare to let my family know about such a life-threatening hard work. If my mother finds out, she will never let me do it. People often die in coal mines, and more people die in kilns digging ore.The workers who went down the mine with us often walked down standing up and were carried out while lying down.Fortunately, although I have been in danger a few times, for example, I almost fell into the abyss under the cave due to wandering thoughts, slippery roads, and slipped loads, but I managed to save myself every time. Otherwise, my gorgeous youth and Dreams may have long since turned into half-wisps of smoke and become real ghosts in hell. It is precisely because of these unique experiences of scribbling with sweat and blood, coupled with my years of training in the army, that I have never taken the difficulties and dangers of wandering in the rivers and lakes seriously.Of course, I did not expect that after a few years in the revolutionary ranks, I would return to the coolie ranks without making a name for myself. In this construction site, after the packaged cement is transported to the gate of the construction site by car, manpower is required to carry the bags from the car, put them aside and stack them, and then carry them to the construction site one by one to the warehouse.After the rear door of the car was opened, two thick wooden planks were placed along the trailer, and four people stood in the car, in groups of two, lifted a solid package of cement from above and threw it on the back of the car, and then carried it on the back. Walk down the wooden plank with 100 kilograms of cement, and carry it to the destination for yarding.The round trip is several hundred meters away.Although the weather is very hot, those of us who carry cement have to wear a coat or put a thick towel on our shoulders. This will not only prevent the sweat on our bodies from soaking the cement bag, but also protect the flesh on our shoulders from being wet. subject to wear and tear.For me, it's okay to carry a hundred catties on my shoulders. The most uncomfortable thing is that when my two guys lifted the cement from the car and threw it on their shoulders, the weight at that moment was not 100 catties. It’s a catty, but it’s 150 catties, it’s 200 catties!It hits you so hard that you can see stars in your eyes, and every pore in your body trembles.If the physical strength is not good, people who have no strength on the soles of their feet or weak backs, it is really too much.At the beginning, I could bear it, but after carrying twenty or thirty bags in a row, my legs were stiff, my whole body was sore, and every bone in my body was as uncomfortable as being eaten by insects.At night, my feet were stiff and my whole body was sore. I was so tired that I fell on the bed without even eating dinner, and soon fell asleep. The thing I crave most is to be able to go to bed right away. The next day, I was so tired that I almost couldn't get up.Boss Luo also saw that I was very tired, so he advised me not to carry it anymore, in case I was exhausted.But I couldn't just lose the battle like this, so I gritted my teeth and went to work again.After a few days, my waist was no longer sore like the first day, and I quickly adapted to the heavy work.After all, I used to do heavy manual labor before! Although our kind of work is very tiring, we do not do it every day. Sometimes the progress of the construction site needs to be accelerated, and large trucks will keep coming in with cement. At this time, the few of us will be exhausted and out of breath. Sweating.At the most time, I carried more than 260 bags a day.If there is no goods, we will carry bags of cement from the warehouse to places where small carts cannot go.When there is no cement to carry, we can also rest, and we can also help other groups to do part-time labor for 15 yuan a day.After adapting to the hard life here, whenever I have free time, I immerse myself in reading; at night, instead of going to bed early, I turn on the lamp to read and write at night. Later, the kind boss Luo saw that I loved reading so much, so he took special care of me and allocated me a separate small room with electric lights and a small fan.In this way, I can no longer hear the thunderous grunting of the workers at night, and I can no longer hear the piercing grinding of teeth and dreaming voices of those workers in the middle of the night in response to the squeaking of mice .I work hard during the day, and I bury my head in reading at night.Lao She's "Two Horses", Dostoevsky's "Idiot", "The Brothers Karamazov" and other masterpieces were all read at this time. Due to sweating a lot and expending a lot of physical strength, my appetite also increased sharply like the recruit company did during the "sea training" in the Beibu Gulf. I could eat five or six large steamed buns and several large bowls of rice for a meal.I will swallow the dish without oil and soup, or the extra meal with big fat floating in it without blinking an eye.Soon, my skin was tanned again.At this time, how can I look like a soldier who once played with a pen in a major military institution?I became an out-and-out farmer again, and became a migrant worker who sold his coolies. After working in this construction site for more than a month, I returned to Yangcheng with more than 2,000 yuan earned through hard work and sweat.I rented a small house in Shibei Village, and every day I went to various talent markets, bought several newspapers, and looked for job advertisements on them. I started weaving my reporter dream again. At this time, I had been wandering in Yangcheng for more than a year, and I didn't want to be a security guard anymore, let alone any other job. I only had one thought at that time: to become a reporter in a newspaper office.My state of mind is just like the Spanish poet Vincent Alexandre who won the Nobel Prize in Literature said: either I am a poet or I am nothing.At this time, I was nothing but a migrant worker.However, I, a demobilized soldier who has never entered the university threshold, has long had a whimsical dream, that is to become a journalist and writer through my own hard work. At this time, my greatest ideal is: I want to become a journalist.Yes, either I'll be a reporter, or I'll be nothing. More than a year later, the kind Sichuan Boss Luo also came to a construction site in Tianheyuan Village from Xinshi.One day he saw my name on that day's Southern Metropolis Daily.Ronaldinho made a specious call to the newspaper office, and finally found my phone number. When he asked me, "Excuse me, is this your real name or a pseudonym?" I replied, "It doesn't matter whether it's a real name or a pseudonym, anyway. I'm Shi Ye." "Oh, I used to have a friend named Shi Ye, when he was working with us on the construction site in Xinshi, he was very eager to learn, and he wanted to be a reporter the most..." When I heard it, it wasn't that kindness Who is Boss Luo?I couldn't help but yelled at Huajian: "Boss Luo, I'm the Shi Ye you know!" Have you become a reporter?! I have a court case and I have to ask you to help me..." He immediately drove a motorcycle and flew to the Nanfang Daily Building in the middle of Guangzhou Avenue to meet me.The two of us immediately hugged into a ball. After more than a year of hard work, Ronaldinho not only moved from the suburbs to the city, but also rented a two-bedroom house in Yuancun, and brought his wife and children from his hometown in Sichuan.For the convenience of commuting, he also specially bought a new motorcycle.Unexpectedly, not long after Ronaldinho arrived at the construction site in Yuancun, he had an economic dispute with a rich local contractor because of the project payment.If you ask for money, people will not give it; if you go to court, you are afraid that you will not be able to beat them.Just when he was at a loss, he read the news about "Eating Overlord's Rice and Beating Innocent People" that I published on the front page of "Southern Metropolis Daily". At noon, I took Boss Luo to a nearby small hotel, drinking and saying goodbye.Later, after I had a deep understanding of the customs situation, I helped him write an indictment, suing the contractor of the company who deliberately defaulted on the wages of more than 100 Sichuan migrant workers to the Tianhe District Court, and got them back due wages.