The girl and the other neighborhood kids watched in awe as the intimidatingly strong men handled impossibly heavy objects with ease, their gruff exchanges to each other harmonizing with the background noise of shovels, trowels, and hammers. A new dormitory was being built two meters behind the girl’s home, meant for workers at a nearby textile manufacturing plant. Migrant workers were hired for the job — impoverished individuals who had come from the countryside in search of better opportunities. Barred from official citizenship, these 农名工 were uneducated, inexperienced, and marginalized workers. Several of the 农名工 weathered chemical burns and tissue scars on their skin. Sometimes a worker would stumble and fall to his death.
The girl found the construction all very exciting — the loud noises, the adult tools, the constant sense of perpetual chaos and danger that mixed with the dust in the air. She loved watching cement mixing. As the liquid plasticizer touched the cement powder, it would begin to bubble and froth, angrily reacting to the dry mixture. It was the closest thing the girl had to a real-life science experiment and she would observe intently, each time more mesmerized than the last.
Summertime in Nanjing was synonymous with unbearable humidity and raging thunderstorms. One evening, after returning from dance rehearsal, the girl bathed herself, standing inside a wooden basin placed inside the living room. The downpour outside was relentless. Rainfall cascaded loudly down onto the roof of the family’s 1-bedroom residence as sporadic flashes of lightning briefly lit up the world outside, accompanied by thunderclaps that reverberated throughout the entire house. On the other side of the living room, the girl’s mother sat at the table, simultaneously attempting to calm the frightened wails of her 1-year-old son and ordering her 6-year-old daughter to bed. The girl fixed her gaze on two large thermoses standing on a table in front of her. With each thunderclap, they wobbled unsteadily for a few seconds before settling back into equilibrium. The girl watched their pendulum-like motions as she poured soap water on herself.
A creaking noise began to sound from the back of the house in the bedroom, the only other room in the house. The girl’s father went to investigate the source. Suddenly, an ear-splitting thunderclap ripped through the house, a violent boom that tingled down the girl’s spine. The girl’s body moved before her mind did: without registering why, she leapt out of the wooden basin. Outside, the half-finished, five-story, structurally unsound dormitory toppled onto the girl’s home. The roof of the bedroom disappeared before her eyes. Beside her, the two thermoses plummeted from the table into the wooden basin that she had been standing in mere seconds ago. The inner glass wall of the thermos’ shattered, causing them to rupture. Boiling hot water sprayed all over the girl’s torso, angry red welts quickly blossoming on her skin. She stood paralyzed. Her mother distantly yelled at her to run outside. A primal fear overcame her body and she shivered. She was scared, but unsure of what: she had not yet been introduced to the concepts of death or dying. But she knew that she was in danger, that something very bad was happening. Someone yanked her hand and she felt her legs move beneath her, propelling her outside.
The girl and her family ran to the neighbor’s house. She ran as furiously as her legs would allow, inhaling rainwater with every heavy breath. When they arrived and waited on the neighbor’s doorstep, the girl remembered that she was naked. The neighbor’s ten-year-old son answered. He and the girl frequently watched the construction workers after school together. They locked eyes. A new fear bubbled inside her; she steeled herself for the embarrassing comment that was to be expected from boys her age. Instead, he said nothing.
This was a story about my mother, who was eight when her house was destroyed in a thunderstorm. Miraculously, her father survived. He had run fast enough alongside the support beams to exit the house with only a few scratches. Afterwards, the workers offered to rebuild the house.
An article on Chinese migrant workers: Why Are China’s Migrant Workers Miserable?
