A SHORT WORD FOR XU LIZHVI AND THOUSANDS OF OTHERS by Sujato Datta

                     

 

                               "Another screw comes loose,
                                Another migrant worker brother jumps
                                You die in place of me,
                                And I keep writing in place of you."
                                                                                             Zhou Qizao's tribute to Xu

I want to begin with an apology. I'm sorry because, I, sitting in my comfortable residence in a metropolis, getting a good college education, can never understand how Xu Lizhvi felt, but still I write this.

For all the chest-thumping of its Communist Revolution, the standard of living and working of Chinese workers remain miserable, to say the least.The advocates of capitalism and free market talk loftily about its credentials of competence,meritocracy and welfare fail to take notice of what is happening in the factories of the world. Workers are cramped into dingy complexes with little light or air. They work for long hours in dull works for pitiable amounts. it kills all. Some go on to kill themselves, while others die everyday. This story is that of a Chinese boy called Xu Lizhvi who was a migrant worker but more importantly, happened to be a poet. He is one of the many, who claim their lives at Foxconn Technology Group quarters. Emily Rauhala reported his death at time.com under the title, 'The poet who died for your phone' and I borrow the incidental details from there.

Xu joined the assembly line at Foxconn in 2011. During the day, he worked and at night he wrote, to make sense of the mechanical bustle that otherwise surrounded him. His conditions did not let him write about beautiful things. This is the truth about literature that we must realize. He wrote in poetic language about the mundane and min-numbing toil of the factory. In 2013, he was quoted saying, "This reality only lets me speak of blood" . He was getting entangled in a web from where there was no escape. Like many industrial complexes around the world, Foxconn has a disastrous record on workers standard of living. In 2010, 17 workers at the working complex had attempted suicide. 14 of them had died.The impact of factory life was obvious. To the mind of a poet, the sensitivities are heightened. The grinding wheels of the factory had crushed the paper-boats of the young mind. Yet, Xu had acquired a following among the community of migrant workers in the city of Shenzen. It tells us how precarious the situation of the migrant workers is and how no one looks behind for them. One finds themselves confused by displacement and homesickness. They suffer a continuous and intense process of alienation and eventually lapse into a loss of identity.

On September 30, 2014, Xu jumped from the top floor of his favourite bookstore. The sad part is that with their brilliant bunch of lawyers, Foxconn will suppress the news over time. But how long can a poet be suppressed? One of Xu's last poems was , ' A Screw Fell to the Ground', the sound of which should reverberate in all ears across the world and spring people to action. It reads,

" A screw fell to the ground
  In this dark night of overtime
  Plunging vertically, lightly clinking
  It won't attract anyone's attention
  Just like last time,
  On a night like this,
  When someone plunged to the ground"