Speaker 1: Welcome back to part two of our series on Chinese
Speaker 1: migrant work of poetry. If you haven't listened to part
Speaker 1: one yet, I suggest you go back. I listened to
Speaker 1: that one first.
Speaker 2: You got twenty ladders, Shobo can Dolos, Young Dollar Dods.
Speaker 3: Before we get started, just a quick reminder that our
Speaker 3: podcast is brought to you by our Patreon supporters. Our
Speaker 3: supports fund our work and in return get exclusive early
Speaker 3: access to podcast episodes, add three episodes, bonus episodes, free
Speaker 3: and discounted merchandise, and other content. For example, our Patroon
Speaker 3: supporters can listen to all three parts of this series now,
Speaker 3: as well as an exclusive Patreon only bonus episode that
Speaker 3: goes into more detail about the migrant work at home.
Speaker 3: Some of the writers that we discuss and their influences
Speaker 3: join us or find out more at patreon dot com
Speaker 3: slash working class history link in the show notes A
Speaker 3: quick content note that this episode includes some mention of
Speaker 3: suicide and self harm. You might remember that this series
Speaker 3: is being produced and presented with the help of friend
Speaker 3: of the podcast, Jack Franco, so at this point we'll
Speaker 3: hand back over to him.
Speaker 2: One Zone Maka.
Speaker 1: In our first episode, we discussed some of the difficulties
Speaker 1: in classifying Chinese migrant worker poetry as writing that balances
Speaker 1: personal history with political activism and social critique. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how poetry in China is a social
Speaker 1: practice and what that means, looking at a number of
Speaker 1: migrant worker poets, including the life and work of shuley Jo,
Speaker 1: one of the most significant in recent years. We'll also
Speaker 1: take a trip to the Migrant Workers Home, a self
Speaker 1: organized space run by in four migrant work is living
Speaker 1: in the urban village of Piezsun on the outskirts of Beijing.
Speaker 1: All of this relates to how poetry is an art
Speaker 1: form has been historically conceived in China, which Migheil Vancravelle,
Speaker 1: professor of Chinese literature at Biden University in the Netherlands, explains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what can we expect of a Chinese poet through
Speaker 2: the ages? That's a fantastic question you on the importance
Speaker 2: of poetry in Chinese culture and society, and so, you know,
Speaker 2: my first very cheeky answer would be, we can expect
Speaker 2: everything from them. Why is this because poetry as a
Speaker 2: social practice in China was basically, especially in an antiquity
Speaker 2: and sort of you know, the Imperial time set up
Speaker 2: to the twentieth century, but continuing today in fact, is
Speaker 2: a very occasional art, right, And this is not in
Speaker 2: any sense a pejorative thing, to say, parting with a friend,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write a poem, you know, visiting a
Speaker 2: far away friend, I'm going to write a poem. Getting
Speaker 2: a new job, I might write a poem. My daughter
Speaker 2: graduating from high school, I might write a poem, and
Speaker 2: so on and so forth. And so this is a
Speaker 2: way of perhaps indicating how ubiquitous poetry is in Chinese society.
Speaker 2: It's entirely normal for Chinese children, and yes we're talking
Speaker 2: about a cultural elite, but are fairly large also in
Speaker 2: percentage numbers cultural elite for their children to learn by
Speaker 2: heart several hundreds of famous poems from the Imperial era.
Speaker 1: Magill is clear the poetry plays a far wider role
Speaker 1: in Chinese society than we might be used to in
Speaker 1: other countries. But China's poetic tradition also goes far beyond
Speaker 1: just being an occasional art.
Speaker 2: You know, poetry is an industry. Poetry is a sort
Speaker 2: of very thriving, bubbly thing in China. Culturally hugely important,
Speaker 2: and then the notion of industry and sort of appropriating
Speaker 2: that to reflect on migrant worker poetry, even though it
Speaker 2: holds for the larger picture. That is a very instructive
Speaker 2: way of looking at it. Now, going back to the
Speaker 2: more set of culturally specific Chinese situation, what can we
Speaker 2: expect of a Chinese poet if I'm going to try
Speaker 2: and be less universal about that, I might say things
Speaker 2: like speaking truth to power. I might say things like
Speaker 2: lament for the suffering of the common folk, to which
Speaker 2: the poet very definitely doesn't belong because they're part of
Speaker 2: a cultural elite. So, you know, some of China's most
Speaker 2: famous poets, Douful among them, are famous for just that right,
Speaker 2: are famous for their ability to write about the horrors
Speaker 2: of war, even as or perhaps especially as they found
Speaker 2: themselves in a relatively privileged position in that they survived,
Speaker 2: in that they had the wherewithal to survive, to move
Speaker 2: around when that was necessary, et cetera, speaking truth to power.
Speaker 2: So were, as an age old tradition, probably going back
Speaker 2: to the person who's commonly seen as seat of the
Speaker 2: first archetypal.
Speaker 1: Chinese poet, the poet Mcgil mentioned dufour is perhaps China's
Speaker 1: most important classical poet during the Golden Age of the
Speaker 1: Tungu dynasty in the eighth century. He was a civil servant,
Speaker 1: as was expected of his social class, but spent much
Speaker 1: of his life on the road unsettled by war. But
Speaker 1: China's poetic tradition was just as rich in the twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Then you've got People's Republic of China, orthodox high socialist
Speaker 2: poets like Ujinshu, who wrote the Song of Lei Fung,
Speaker 2: which is basically a totally utopian Maoist ideal of the
Speaker 2: new Chinese person who consists mostly of self sacrifice, you know.
Speaker 2: But then you might also find people in Guiyang and
Speaker 2: in Beijing in the late seventies, when underground literature were
Speaker 2: sort of about to surface after the Cultural Revolution, posting
Speaker 2: their poetry, pasting it actually literally the Guyang Troop in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, just after you know, when the mausoleam
Speaker 2: for Maltzadum was being erected in the same Tieneman Square
Speaker 2: that we've seen rica in Chinese history, pasting their poetry
Speaker 2: on the walls of the building site there. A couple
Speaker 2: of months later, the group in Beijing, pasting their poetry
Speaker 2: on you know, city walls in various places in Beijing.
Speaker 2: So that is still a very political undertaking, even as
Speaker 2: these people were saying, we are reclaiming poetry to be
Speaker 2: an individual thing, to be a cultural thing, to not
Speaker 2: just be politics. Then you could move on to Yindi
Speaker 2: Twan and the Lower Body Poetry group around the year
Speaker 2: two thousand, totally irreverent, fearless, you know, not interested in politics,
Speaker 2: writing about heroin junkies in Beijing, right, sex workers, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing, crashing through all kinds of taboos on
Speaker 2: the cultural scene, being hated and misunderstood by everybody and
Speaker 2: their brother. And then you could turn to migrant worker
Speaker 2: poetry and still talk about poetry as a social practice
Speaker 2: in China. So that really drives it home. Right, You
Speaker 2: see this, the muchness of it, the complexity of it,
Speaker 2: the diversity of it. And that's why I'm not ashamed
Speaker 2: of that metaphor of poetry being part of the cultural
Speaker 2: DNA of China.
Speaker 1: This idea of poetry that speaks truth to power, that
Speaker 1: depicts experiences of exploitation and justice are themes that link
Speaker 1: today's migrant work is to China's poetic tradition, such as
Speaker 1: the Book of Songs, whose earliest works are as much
Speaker 1: as three thousand years old.
Speaker 2: Now, if you're going to situate this migrant work of
Speaker 2: poetry going back into Chinese cultural history, then I've seen
Speaker 2: people and people that I respect who will claim with
Speaker 2: some justification that there is in fact, very direct linkage
Speaker 2: to the Book of Songs, the Book of Odes, this collection,
Speaker 2: this anthology of songs that are allegedly come from the
Speaker 2: common folk. Of course, you need to sort of think about, well,
Speaker 2: how exactly did they come from the common folk? If
Speaker 2: the common folk at that particular time probably was illiterate, right,
Speaker 2: so how did that happen? And then very interestingly we
Speaker 2: find the notion of poem gatherers who were officials at
Speaker 2: the court, who would go sort of among the people
Speaker 2: to gather these texts, to find out what people were
Speaker 2: talking about, and perhaps also to actually gather these folk songs.
Speaker 2: And then you know, this linkage is established between that
Speaker 2: poetry of the common folk lamenting the horrors of war,
Speaker 2: lamenting the horrors of you know, famished existence, the lamenting poverty, sadness, sorrow,
Speaker 2: impotence in the face of greater powers than yourself, be
Speaker 2: they political, be they natural, be they whatever. And I
Speaker 2: can see why. And at the same time, what I
Speaker 2: see is that that linkage is being romanticized, right so
Speaker 2: great here today we have an incarnation of something that
Speaker 2: is part and parcel of our culture and that now
Speaker 2: speaks back to us about the post socialist era. Well, yes,
Speaker 2: it's debatable, to say the least, but I can see
Speaker 2: the connection, and yeah, I think it is justified. But
Speaker 2: it comes with a couple of question marks.
Speaker 1: What mcguil mentions here in relation to famished existences, sorrow
Speaker 1: and impotence in the face of greater powers is evident
Speaker 1: in the lives of many migrant worker poets and migrant
Speaker 1: workers more generally. Shuli Ju is one such poet who
Speaker 1: dealt with these themes. Like Juan Xiao, cheng Chu was
Speaker 1: also a worker from a rural family who went to
Speaker 1: work on the assembly lines. Conditions at Fox Gone in Shunjun,
Speaker 1: where she worked, were so grueling that they led to
Speaker 1: a space of suicides in the twenty tens, with a
Speaker 1: dozen workers dying by suicide in twenty ten alone. In
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, just a few days after he had signed
Speaker 1: a new fox gone contract, Schu would join them, taking
Speaker 1: his own life by jumping off a building. Here Magueil
Speaker 1: reads his translation of I speak of blood by shulido, I.
Speaker 2: Speak of blood. I speak of blood, for I have
Speaker 2: no choice. I preferred to chat about the wind, the flowers,
Speaker 2: the snow, the moon, about dynasties of old and the
Speaker 2: classical poetry found in spirits. But reality means I can
Speaker 2: only speak of blood. Blood with its source in rented
Speaker 2: rooms like matchboxes, narrow, cramped, sunless, the year round, squeezing
Speaker 2: in the battler boys and battler girls, wives gone astray,
Speaker 2: and husbands far from home, Guys from Setuan hawking spicy soup,
Speaker 2: old people from Hunan selling trinkets on street side, blankets,
Speaker 2: and then me toiling all day to survive and opening
Speaker 2: my eyes to write poetry. I speak to you of
Speaker 2: these people. I speak of us, ants struggling through the
Speaker 2: swamp of life, one by one, drops of blood walking
Speaker 2: the battler's road, one by one, blood chased away by
Speaker 2: city guards or wrung out by machines, scattering, insomnia, disease,
Speaker 2: job loss, suicide along the way, words exploding one by
Speaker 2: one in the pearl river delta in the belly of
Speaker 2: the Motherland, dissected by reams of paperwork like sebuku blades.
Speaker 2: I speak of all this to you, and even as
Speaker 2: my voice grows hoarse and my tongue breaks off, I
Speaker 2: will tear through the silence of this era. I speak
Speaker 2: of blood, and the sky will shadder. I speak of blood,
Speaker 2: and my mouth turns bright red.
Speaker 1: Truly do explicitly links and to China's literary heritage. But
Speaker 1: in contrast to the scholars that mcgil mentioned earlier who
Speaker 1: link migrant worker poets to their classical predecessors, Choo's reality
Speaker 1: means he is unable to speak in the terms of
Speaker 1: that poetry. He would prefer to draw more classical motifs
Speaker 1: of wind flowers in the moon, but as he says,
Speaker 1: he has no choice. He can only speak of blood,
Speaker 1: which itself symbolizes the struggles of migrant work of life.
Speaker 1: Not to mention that blood is not even just symbolic,
Speaker 1: but also a literal part of the violence they experience.
Speaker 2: So I'm sort of trying to play a trick on
Speaker 2: you here, because what I'm about to say about Hugh
Speaker 2: Leeds really somehow doesn't totally match this poem. What is
Speaker 2: this poem? This poem is an angry poem. It's a
Speaker 2: political poem. Not politically sensitive in the sense of saying,
Speaker 2: you know, I rise up and revolt and let's overthrow
Speaker 2: the government whatever, none of that. But it's political in
Speaker 2: the description of shall we call them asymmetrical power relations?
Speaker 2: Shall we call it inequality? That sort of thing. It's heartrending,
Speaker 2: it's angry, right, And the reason that I didn't want
Speaker 2: to read it, even though I have a picture of
Speaker 2: this poet she leads that is a bit more complex
Speaker 2: than a straightforward kind of you know, mapping of the
Speaker 2: experience onto the poetry, onto the literary representation is the
Speaker 2: way that he has been read, you know, the image
Speaker 2: of she leaves it has been taken by many people
Speaker 2: as a straightforward miniature for the story of migrant worker literature,
Speaker 2: migrant worker poetry in China, and I think that is
Speaker 2: just a little too easy. But I get it. I
Speaker 2: understand how this has happened, and for that, we need
Speaker 2: to look at his life, and we need to look
Speaker 2: at what people like to read about and good his life.
Speaker 2: We see a young man in Guangdong Province, So actually
Speaker 2: in the Pearl River Delta well more or less, you know,
Speaker 2: in that same province, already growing up in a rural area,
Speaker 2: being a kid that loved going to school from a
Speaker 2: very young age. His elder brother at one point said,
Speaker 2: you know, something to the effect of, she leads to
Speaker 2: really not being suited to rural life, to growing up
Speaker 2: as a farmer, trying to make his way to the city,
Speaker 2: having to make his way to the city. He completed
Speaker 2: high school, but then you know, needed to go out
Speaker 2: and sort of get out there and start making money,
Speaker 2: but also seeing this as an opportunity because what he
Speaker 2: wanted was a job in a library. What he wanted
Speaker 2: was to be a writer, was to you know, somehow
Speaker 2: have a connection with literature, a bookstore perhaps, But what
Speaker 2: he got was an assembly line job at Foxcn, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturing company, Taiwanese headquartered with
Speaker 2: most of its plan manufacturing plants in mainland China, and
Speaker 2: fox Conn has become sort of the epitome of the
Speaker 2: cruel labor regime that comes with that kind of organization,
Speaker 2: including the well known fox Conn suicides. And this is when,
Speaker 2: especially in the twenty tens, employees at fox Conn started
Speaker 2: killing themselves in large enough numbers to be noticed, and
Speaker 2: doing this in ways that were noticed as embodied protest,
Speaker 2: if you will. That's a very academic way of putting it. Basically,
Speaker 2: sort of jumping off of a high building in order
Speaker 2: to make a point, right, even if that's the end
Speaker 2: of your life, and shooting true. Jumped off of the ledge,
Speaker 2: the ledge of a seventeenth floor window in a high
Speaker 2: rise close to the Fox Kong plant where he was
Speaker 2: employed at the tender age of twenty four. So he
Speaker 2: lived from nineteen ninety to twenty fourteen and that was it.
Speaker 2: And when he did this, there was this explosion of publicity.
Speaker 2: It was unimaginable. First in China, so the Sinton Evening
Speaker 2: News had a full page on this, otherwise totally nondescript,
Speaker 2: you know, regular run of the mill, powerless person. And yes,
Speaker 2: this was because he was a poet. The world over,
Speaker 2: in China, no different than anywhere else, people have been
Speaker 2: fascinated by the death of the capital p poet right
Speaker 2: or the artist capital a artist, preferably by their own hand,
Speaker 2: and preferably at a young age. Right. There's a romantic,
Speaker 2: romantic ideal that is incredibly powerful, that has not gone away.
Speaker 2: That that just makes us, and I mean a very
Speaker 2: diverse and varied audience, including you know, totally untrained readers,
Speaker 2: highly professional readers, and everything else, you know, get really
Speaker 2: excited about the death of the poet or the death
Speaker 2: of the artist. And I think in this case what
Speaker 2: happened because we've seen hullabaloo about the death of the
Speaker 2: poet in China in other cases, but this was way
Speaker 2: bigger also internationally, and that's because there was a third
Speaker 2: element that came in, and that is, we have a suicide,
Speaker 2: we have a poet slash artist, but we also have
Speaker 2: this figure of the migrant worker, of the subaltern subject,
Speaker 2: of the precarious worker, of the person who's at the
Speaker 2: very bottom of the global capitalist food chain. Of the
Speaker 2: romanticizable but also sort of scarily feel good image of
Speaker 2: these people wearing yellow helmets and they look like ants
Speaker 2: because the picture is one of a building site that
Speaker 2: is the size of you know, two railway stations, or
Speaker 2: these people again quote unquote shackled but actually sometimes almost
Speaker 2: physically shackled to the assembly line, wearing these uniformizing sterile suits, right,
Speaker 2: the anti dust stuff because the iPhones and the iPads
Speaker 2: that you're putting together in the fox confactory, we kind
Speaker 2: of any dust in there, so that the workshop's probably
Speaker 2: been conditioned, etc. And so these three things together, A
Speaker 2: suicide by a young person who was a poet or artist.
Speaker 2: He had a blog, right, he publishes poetry on a blog,
Speaker 2: wasn't widely recognized during his lifetime. And then third, this
Speaker 2: increasingly visible person, increasingly visible in China but also in
Speaker 2: the world at large, of the migrant worker.
Speaker 1: Mcgeil sees his poem as a challenge to the mainstream
Speaker 1: image that has been created of Shuleja after his death
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. That goes beyond both the romantic ideal
Speaker 1: of the suffering poet or a simple look into the
Speaker 1: life of three hundred million migrant workers.
Speaker 2: What I find noteworthy and in a way tragic, is that,
Speaker 2: you know, his story has been turned into this straightforward
Speaker 2: miniature of the migrant worker story. But actually, if you
Speaker 2: read the collected works right, which were put together after
Speaker 2: his death, if he hadn't killed them, this wouldn't have happened. Right.
Speaker 2: It's not a cynical comment, it's just an observation. So
Speaker 2: you know, I read the collected works, what about two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pages of poetry a young man, and
Speaker 2: you see that there is a very large component in
Speaker 2: this poetry that is not at all to do with
Speaker 2: socio political issues, That is not to do with activism,
Speaker 2: not to do with anger over the way society treats
Speaker 2: the migrant workers. But that is pretty straightforward, you know,
Speaker 2: good clean, existential angst. He has a poem about self
Speaker 2: harm that is totally grueling, and the external forces, so
Speaker 2: to speak, that we might want to mobilize to explain
Speaker 2: his bit of fate. And nowhere in sight in this poem,
Speaker 2: whereas in the poem by johnsil Chool or in this
Speaker 2: poem I speak of blood by Sue leads to himself. Yes,
Speaker 2: they are insight, these things are visible. We can see
Speaker 2: that this is about power relations in society, that it's
Speaker 2: about inequality. And that makes it a bit hard for
Speaker 2: me to accept that shoe leavesa has become this sort
Speaker 2: of token, this emblem of the migrant workers' story, because
Speaker 2: I think it doesn't do him justice as a poet
Speaker 2: or as a human being, and it risks kind of
Speaker 2: homogenizing that picture to the point where it doesn't really
Speaker 2: teaches anything, and it actually essentializes these people.
Speaker 1: Despite the intrinsically isolating nature of precarious migrant labor and
Speaker 1: their risky legal status, migrant workers are still able to
Speaker 1: self organize and forge networks of solidarity. Jung Siau Chong
Speaker 1: dedicated a poem to a twenty sixteen protest when one
Speaker 1: hundred migrant workers camped out in Abaging underpass to demand
Speaker 1: unpaid wages. You can find a mini documentary about the
Speaker 1: protest with a reading of Jung's poem Needing Workers demanding
Speaker 1: their pay in the show notes. In the poem, Jung
Speaker 1: writes about the workers. They're constantly put together arranged into
Speaker 1: an electronics factory ants nest, a toy factory honeycluon the
Speaker 1: existence of these high concentrations of work is in these
Speaker 1: ants Nest and honeyclumbs also creates a possibility for bonds
Speaker 1: of solidarity. Migrant workers are far from passive victims, and
Speaker 1: one example of this resistance is that migrant work is
Speaker 1: home in Pizson Beiching.
Speaker 2: If we're looking at migrant worker poetry and at the
Speaker 2: community building that happens around it, then the migrant worker
Speaker 2: home in Piton, which is a village on the outskirts
Speaker 2: of Beijing to the northeast. It's actually an example of
Speaker 2: this quote unquote village in the city phenomenon where people
Speaker 2: started living because the rents were affordable and they could
Speaker 2: commute into the city to do their work. And the
Speaker 2: population in a small number of years grew from something
Speaker 2: like two thousand to thirty thousand or thereabouts, so you know,
Speaker 2: a factor ten or fifteen something like that. Now, the
Speaker 2: Migrant Workers' Home in Pieton is an NGO that makes
Speaker 2: it its business to emancipate precarious workers, many of them
Speaker 2: migrant workers, but it also includes people who sort of
Speaker 2: you know, were laid off from state factories whatever. It's
Speaker 2: not necessarily just migrant workers, but many of them are
Speaker 2: migrant workers. And it was founded by a small number
Speaker 2: of people who were actually migrant workers that came to
Speaker 2: Beijing in the late nineteen nineties with high hopes of
Speaker 2: making it as artists, as musicians, as stand up comedians
Speaker 2: in the Chinese variety of a Chinese variety of that
Speaker 2: particular art form, and like many other people, they found
Speaker 2: their hopes frustrated and they didn't quite make it as
Speaker 2: artists and entertainers and found themselves doing precarious labor, but
Speaker 2: stuck together and ended up working together through connections with
Speaker 2: a bunch of people sometimes referred to as the new Lets,
Speaker 2: especially academics and other authors who have a particular political positions.
Speaker 2: So now we're talking about, you know, two decades ago,
Speaker 2: when China was more or less clearly heading in the
Speaker 2: direction of a much more capitalist and open vision of
Speaker 2: the world than it has today under Shijimping. So these
Speaker 2: new left intellectuals kind of teamed up with these migrant
Speaker 2: workers and with other organizations that were emerging, for example,
Speaker 2: for the protection of the rights of female migrant workers
Speaker 2: at the time, and founded this ango. And the thing
Speaker 2: that distinguishes them from many other organizations that work for
Speaker 2: the emancipation of precarious workers and sometimes specifically migrant workers
Speaker 2: is that they try to do this through what they
Speaker 2: call cultural education. Are you in Chinese? And that is
Speaker 2: actually clear in the background of its founding members, who
Speaker 2: were musicians and comedians.
Speaker 1: The Migrant Workers Home provides concrete material helped to its population,
Speaker 1: such as free libraries, workers rights classes, or schooling for
Speaker 1: the children of migrant workers who as we mentioned in
Speaker 1: part one, aren't allowed to attend local state schools as
Speaker 1: they don't have the correct urban household registration status. But
Speaker 1: its main mission is developing a rich cultural life for
Speaker 1: migrant workers. As it says in the Homes mission statement,
Speaker 1: Without our culture, we have no history. Without a history,
Speaker 1: we have no future. So, for instance, the intro song
Speaker 1: you've been hearing in this series is why the Migrant
Speaker 1: Work at Homes New Labor Art Troupe far from being
Speaker 1: a Blairite tribute band, its members are all former migrant workers,
Speaker 1: like the singer Lulan, who came from Shandong Province to
Speaker 1: work in the coal mines. You can find a link
Speaker 1: to a short documentary about the art troup on the
Speaker 1: web page for this episode. The link is in the
Speaker 1: show notes. In twenty fourteen, the Migrant Workers' Home set
Speaker 1: up the Pizzon Literature Group and began publishing its own
Speaker 1: literary journal.
Speaker 2: How this group works is one of the you know,
Speaker 2: core people at the home. The manager called Chalfour or
Speaker 2: for cho Un. She realized that people wanted this, that
Speaker 2: people were interested in literature and wanted to try and
Speaker 2: write themselves, and just you know, wanted to learn. Basically
Speaker 2: wanted some sort of education to happen in that particular realm.
Speaker 2: So she advertised this on social media, and you know,
Speaker 2: people got in touch with her. One person in particular,
Speaker 2: Dan Hui You, an academic who's now professor at Peaking University,
Speaker 2: who started going to Piton once weekly, I think, basically
Speaker 2: to lecture on literature, on culture, on anything that these
Speaker 2: people wanted to know about. And to combine this actually
Speaker 2: with a work shop type of approach. And this is
Speaker 2: something that happens in other places as well, writing workshops
Speaker 2: as part of a social movement, as part of political movements,
Speaker 2: and so on and so forth. It's not necessarily a
Speaker 2: political movement here. I'm quite ready to say that it
Speaker 2: was not, because people work careful of the red lines
Speaker 2: and you know, have to tread carefully because of censorship
Speaker 2: and political sensitivity. How this group works and it's been ongoing,
Speaker 2: it's almost a decade. Can you imagine that roughly once
Speaker 2: a week an academic or a cultural official. You know,
Speaker 2: it's going to include people representing the Communist Party to
Speaker 2: talk about the party congress and what was the most
Speaker 2: important message that we need to work on. It could
Speaker 2: include practitioners like famous writers and you know, movie makers.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it should also be pointed out, however, that the
Speaker 1: relationship the Migrant Works Home has with local government is
Speaker 1: far from straightforward.
Speaker 2: These people are expert at working with the municipal government
Speaker 2: with whom they're going to have to work because the
Speaker 2: municipal government is going to be in charge of that area.
Speaker 2: And there have been very sort of precarious moments where
Speaker 2: the village was about to be bulldozed didn't happen, you know,
Speaker 2: over the last decade or so, and just recently, for example,
Speaker 2: one of the cultural places of pride in that community
Speaker 2: that was the Museum of Migrant Worker or really Battler
Speaker 2: Literature and Art that they had set up on a
Speaker 2: shoe string budget in twenty oh eight and that was
Speaker 2: there for fifteen years and is an incredibly impressive a
Speaker 2: moving place. Well, it's been shut down because the city
Speaker 2: is expanding and there was no more room for the museum,
Speaker 2: and so they're thinking about, you know, rebuilding the exhibition
Speaker 2: farther away from Beijing in other places where they are active.
Speaker 2: But you know, that is the sort of environment that
Speaker 2: you're working in.
Speaker 1: Mcguil has worked extensively with and on the Pizsun Literature
Speaker 1: Group and one of its poets, Siauhai. Siaohai is a
Speaker 1: moderately successful poet who has received official scholarships and recognition.
Speaker 1: In Miguil's essay I and We in Pizsun, which you
Speaker 1: can find linked in the show notes, mcguil quotes Siao,
Speaker 1: who claims that in Pizsun he had finally found proof
Speaker 1: that a your revolutionary era of friendship still exists. Solidarity
Speaker 1: of material stability created by cultural education and exchange for
Speaker 1: free and for their own sake. Literature is seen as salvation,
Speaker 1: but not as an escape from work, as a way
Speaker 1: of making sense of life as a migrant worker and
Speaker 1: reclaiming affirming their personal identity by putting their work at
Speaker 1: the center of their poetry. Some of these themes are
Speaker 1: present in Siao's twenty and eighteen poem When I Watched
Speaker 1: the World Cup? What Did I See? Translated and read
Speaker 1: by mcgiw so.
Speaker 2: Here is a poem by Shahai called When I Watched
Speaker 2: the World Cup? What did I See? When I watched
Speaker 2: the World Cup? What did I See? The first time
Speaker 2: I stayed up to watch the World Cup? It was
Speaker 2: Columbia against England. Truth be told, I don't even know
Speaker 2: where Colombia is on this earth, but I do know
Speaker 2: that in don guin Holmann, in the England football outfit factory,
Speaker 2: my workmates work year round, day shifts and night shifts,
Speaker 2: racing to make those jerseys. A couple millions for every batch.
Speaker 2: They make em by the hundreds, thousands, millions, and before
Speaker 2: they know it, they've been at it for many, many years.
Speaker 2: As for the Columbia jerseys, I've made those two in
Speaker 2: Sudor Wadul. But the Pearl River Delta and the Yanzi
Speaker 2: Delta as the work shop of the world. I only
Speaker 2: heard about that a couple years ago. Wonder and Adidas
Speaker 2: and Coca Cola and their million dollar moving ads on
Speaker 2: the pitch have nothing to do with me. Youth slipped
Speaker 2: away is the only thing that's mine. I looked up
Speaker 2: and out the window. Two breakfast stalls had set up shop.
Speaker 2: As darkness lifted, A sleepless bachelor was on a treasure
Speaker 2: hunt near the trash. The losing team left the pitch,
Speaker 2: the winners kept doing Victor three laps. All that was
Speaker 2: left was the workers making those jerseys year upon year,
Speaker 2: day upon day, silent and voiceless, slogging on with no breaks.
Speaker 1: Like in all Sia's poem Sundress, which we discussed in
Speaker 1: the previous episode, Siao's poem here brings together the consumer's
Speaker 1: experience of the product, in this case, the multi billion
Speaker 1: dollars a year football industry, and the workers who make
Speaker 1: it possible. The poem tells a story of Siao's first
Speaker 1: experience of anticipation for a World Cup game, Yet he
Speaker 1: can't avoid seeing in the victory laps and TV ads
Speaker 1: a thing he knows intimately, the football shirts Chinese migrant
Speaker 1: workers make themselves. His poem puts his workers back on
Speaker 1: football's biggest stage. For Seao, the shirts are a work
Speaker 1: mates above all, no longer Colombian or English. When the
Speaker 1: ninety minutes are over, the losing team left the pitch,
Speaker 1: the winners kept doing victory laps. All that was left
Speaker 1: was the workers making those jerseys. Upon year, day up,
Speaker 1: one day, silent and voiceless, slogging on with no breaks.
Speaker 1: The feeling of friendship and solidarity see how found in
Speaker 1: Pizzu and Magi argues can help us read and support
Speaker 1: working class literature more generally across languages and traditions.
Speaker 2: This is really what came home to me, I guess
Speaker 2: the most powerfully, you know, like a ton of bricks
Speaker 2: in this research over the years, what has come out
Speaker 2: to me is that this is about identification. It is
Speaker 2: it is a way to secure your place in the sun,
Speaker 2: even if that's just two minutes a day. It is
Speaker 2: a way to be a person that is identifiable with
Speaker 2: other persons in different ways than being the next person
Speaker 2: in line on the assembly line. Yeah, it is a
Speaker 2: way of identifying actively and sharing that and exchanging that,
Speaker 2: also connecting, if only in spirit, and sometimes actually very
Speaker 2: practically using translation software whatnot. With other movements across the
Speaker 2: border write other poetry movements set up out of social movements.
Speaker 2: What they have in common these poetry right, social concern
Speaker 2: and social aspiration. So it's not just identification per sae,
Speaker 2: full stop. It is identification that comes with social concern
Speaker 2: on issues that you see in front of your eyes
Speaker 2: in the society that you're a part of, and with
Speaker 2: the aspiration of emancipating marginal wised groups, vulnerable groups, subaltern groups.
Speaker 3: That's all we have time for in today's episode. Join
Speaker 3: us in part three, where we'll look at the underground
Speaker 3: world of China's unofficial poetry journals, questions of censorship, and
Speaker 3: the work of another Chinese microworker poet, Would Sell, whose
Speaker 3: work asks questions about who gets to be included within
Speaker 3: the field of working class literature and who doesn't. We
Speaker 3: also have a bonus episode where we go into more
Speaker 3: detail about some of the topics we discussed in the
Speaker 3: main episode, like the relationship between market worker poetry and
Speaker 3: the Chinese state, the new labor art troup whose music
Speaker 3: we're using for these episodes, and the international reception of
Speaker 3: Chinese mirgant worker poets like Chiungshao Chong and shule Jur.
Speaker 3: That bonus episode will be available soon exclusively for our
Speaker 3: supporters on Patreon. It is only support from you, our listeners,
Speaker 3: which allows us to make these podcasts, So if you
Speaker 3: appreciate our work, please do think about joining us at
Speaker 3: patreon dot com slash working Class History link in the
Speaker 3: show notes. In return for your support, you get early
Speaker 3: access to content, as well as ad free episodes, exclusive
Speaker 3: bonus content, discounted merch and more. And if you can't
Speaker 3: spare the cash, absolutely no problem. Please just tell your
Speaker 3: friends about this podcast and give us a five star
Speaker 3: review on your favorite podcast apps. If you'd like to
Speaker 3: learn more about Markerot Worker poetry in China, then check
Speaker 3: out the web page for this series, where you'll find images,
Speaker 3: a full list of sources, further reading, and more. We've
Speaker 3: also got a great selection of books available about Chinese
Speaker 3: history in our online store, and you can get ten
Speaker 3: percent off them and anything else using the discount code
Speaker 3: wh podcast link in the show notes. Thanks also to
Speaker 3: our Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks
Speaker 3: go to Jameson D. Saltzman, Jazz Hands, Fernando Lopez Ojeda,
Speaker 3: and Jeremy Kuzimano. Our theme tune for these episodes is
Speaker 3: a young Man from the Village by the New Labor
Speaker 3: Art Troup from the Migrant Worker Home on the outskirts
Speaker 3: of Beijing. Thanks to them for letting us use it.
Speaker 3: You can buy it or stream it on the links
Speaker 3: in the show notes. This episode was edited by Jesse French. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's it for today and I hope you enjoyed the
Speaker 3: episode and thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Go hold Lie.
Speaker 3: Young listener ching bingbos Ya.
Speaker 2: Jing Jing Kool galayin you on the comn to do
Speaker 2: the a cold do