The waste collector

Yuan Laifen has lived in Hangzhou for 11 years. Her job is collecting used newspapers, paper boxes and other waste door to door and selling them to recycling factories.

Living in a suburban area where rent is low, Yuan gets up at 4:30 am every day to catch the earliest bus to downtown Hangzhou. She picks an area, walking into office buildings and apartment blocks, knocking on doors to collect waste paper. She is not home until more than 17 hours later, at 10 pm.

Her meals are steamed buns or bread that she takes with her, because eating in restaurants is too expensive.

It is still spring, but Yuan, 41, carries a towel with her to wipe off sweat.

"When papers get thicker and heavier, you sweat even in winter when you carry them."

Waste paper is very heavy and she collects at least 100 kg every day, she says. It may be partly due to this onerous workload that she looks older than her 41 years.

"Strength is all I have," she says.

Yuan pays 1 yuan ($0.16; 0.12 euros) for 1 kg of waste, and sells it to a recycling factory for 1.6 yuan. Sometimes people will let her have the waste free of charge.

"Some people are very nice, especially the elderly, but some just slam the door in my face."

But having done the job for five years, she says, she is used to the treatment, good or bad.

"They don't treat me well, but that's OK. After all, they're from the city and I come from a poor village," she says, looking down at her stained overcoat, which seems to be her refuge in moments of embarrassment. She rubs it with her left hand.

"Perhaps that's why people don't talk to me - because of my dirty coat," she says.

It is 10 years since she bought any clothes for herself, she says. The clothes she does obtain usually come from rubbish bins, but not having new clothes does not seem to bother her.

"Some of them are really in good condition. I don't know why they have to throw them away. Back in my hometown, people would do anything for those clothes."

Yuan's hometown is more than 1,500 kilometers away in a village in Guizhou province.

"The village is surrounded by mountains, water is scarce and the soil is not very fertile. Even today, most people earn less than 3,000 yuan a year."

To make a living, Yuan and her sisters left the village for the city in 1992.

"The first time I arrived at Guangzhou railway station, I was struck by the fact that buildings were more than one story high," she says.

Her formal schooling ended when her family could not afford to pay when she was in third grade.

"I have four older sisters and two younger brothers. My father felt that girls did not need to know much as long as we could write our names. So we had few education opportunities."

It is something she resents her father for, she says.

When she came to Hangzhou, she aspired to work as a maid for rich families but her education was not up to scratch, she says.

"I never dreamed that to be a maid you would need to have graduated from junior high school. Otherwise, I would not have quit my job to come to Hangzhou."

In that previous job Yuan worked in a textile factory in Zhaoqing, Guangdong province.

A relative put her on to the idea of being a maid, telling her there were many in Hangzhou and that they were better paid than textile workers. So she and her sister immediately headed for the bright lights.

Yuan says that for migrant workers like her what city you live in is unimportant, so long as you have work.

"But I like it in Hangzhou, and hope one day my children can live in those fancy apartments."

She has three children, the eldest of whom is 20. As she talks of them, there is desolation in her eyes.

"We did not have time to look after them so we gave them to their grandmother to look after."

Yuan says that over the past 22 years she has been home no more than 10 times.

"Tickets are expensive. I need to save money for my sons to get married."

Her daughter, 17, and younger son, 13, live with their grandparents in her hometown.

The eldest son works on construction sites in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, with her husband.

"They're there because construction workers are paid more highly than they are here," she says.

Yuan says she opted to stay in Hangzhou because her pay is satisfactory.

"To collect waste paper you need to know everything about office buildings and apartment complexes in your area. I have built up that knowledge in Hangzhou, and it would take up too much time to start from scratch in another city."

Being separated from her family is no big deal, she says, because the long work hours leave her little time to think about loneliness.

"Making money is more important."

Yuan hopes her husband and herself can make enough money to build a house in their hometown.

"We cannot afford an apartment in the city, but we should have our own house back home," she says, staring at a nearby high-rise apartment block.

As night falls and the rush hour is in full swing, Yuan takes care of her last batch of work for the day. She flattens cardboard cartons, piles them together and then fastens them with string.

Nearby is the city's largest shopping center, teeming with shoppers decked in the latest fashion, many carrying swish shopping bags stuffed with their expensive purchases.

It is something Yuan can only dream of - something she will have ample time to do on the two-hour bus ride home.

yanyiqi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 04/25/2014 page15)