Migrant factory worker becomes national lawmaker representing grassroots
By Li Anlan |
April 15, 2013, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ZHU Xueqin from Putuo District, Shanghai, has been re-elected as a delegate to the National People's Congress - China's lawmaker, and just traveled back from Beijing last month from attending the conferences for the fifth year.
She was one of the three migrant worker delegates elected in 2008, a breakthrough because no migrant workers had been members of the delegation before.
Together with Kang Houming from Chongqing Municipality and Hu Xiaoyan from Guangdong Province, the three delegates were there to let the voice of migrant workers to be heard at the national congress.
"The first time as a delegate was a lot of pressure," she said, "and many people are not familiar with how the delegates fulfill their duties."
In her five years as a delegate, many migrant workers have come to Zhu with their varied problems.
Volunteer workshop
In 2009, she started the Zhu Xueqin Workshop with volunteers helping migrant workers with problems from legal advice and psychological support.
The workshop has four groups - a volunteer window service team, a labor rights volunteer team, a branch of Putuo's youth volunteer service center and a psychological counseling room.
Volunteers include lawyers as well as students from East China University of Political Science and Law, Fudan University and East China Normal University.
"The volunteer team working on safeguarding labor rights provides legal and policy consultation as well as legal aid," Zhu said.
The team is located at the Huxi Worker's Cultural Palace and people from other provinces and regions of China also go there for help.
"It means we have certain influence on the grass roots, and we ask the team to do their very best," she said.
"We also hope more law experts can join us to help the migrant workers."
When the news got out that there was a workshop dedicated to helping migrant workers, many came for help. In 2009 the workshop received over 500 people, in 2010 it was more than 300, and in 2011 and 2012 it was around 200 per year.
Zhu said that at one point there were people calling in the middle of night.
The number of people coming for help is dropping every year, because the law has more regulations and there are more ways for workers to get help, not only from this workshop but through other organizations that are rising up in recent years, Zhu said.
For Zhu, the journey from a migrant worker to national delegate was not easy.
She left her home in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province when she was about 18 years old and came to Shanghai to work at the Sino-Japanese joint venture Huari Clothing Company.
"My parents are farmers and I have brothers and sisters, I wanted to go out to work and earn money to support my family and pay for my brother's tuition," she said.
At first it was hard. She not only needed to learn the skills, but also adapt to a city life very different from her home town. Through hard work, her progress was recognized and in 1998 Zhu was sent to Japan with two other co-workers for a three-year training program.
It was a major transition, she said.
In Japan, the first obstacle was the language barrier and Zhu needed to learn Japanese as fast as she could.
"We had a 20-day training including language and Japanese manners, but that's far from enough," she recalled.
"One day a factory director was talking to me. I understood him calling my name and the greetings, but I didn't know he was talking to me the whole time, which made him think I was impolite and not listening to him. But it was because I couldn't understand what he said."
To learn Japanese, Zhu came up with the idea of talking to children.
"The older generation talks differently. The dialects were also hard to understand. So I went to the school across the street from my factory to talk with young children, asking them to be my teachers," she said.
Learning language
She became friends with the children. She would invite them for lunch and cook Chinese food, and they met once or twice a week just to talk.
When Zhu was too busy with work, she would record her reading Japanese on cassette tapes so her "teachers" could listen and point out her mistakes.
When she was leaving Japan three years later, the president of the company offered her a position paying over 100,000 yuan a year, much more than she could earn in China.
But Zhu turned down the offer, not without hesitation, but she missed her family.
"I love my country, and I also thought there are more opportunities in China as it's developing rapidly," she said.
Now Zhu has been settled in Shanghai for more than a decade.
She was one of the three migrant worker delegates elected in 2008, a breakthrough because no migrant workers had been members of the delegation before.
Together with Kang Houming from Chongqing Municipality and Hu Xiaoyan from Guangdong Province, the three delegates were there to let the voice of migrant workers to be heard at the national congress.
"The first time as a delegate was a lot of pressure," she said, "and many people are not familiar with how the delegates fulfill their duties."
In her five years as a delegate, many migrant workers have come to Zhu with their varied problems.
Volunteer workshop
In 2009, she started the Zhu Xueqin Workshop with volunteers helping migrant workers with problems from legal advice and psychological support.
The workshop has four groups - a volunteer window service team, a labor rights volunteer team, a branch of Putuo's youth volunteer service center and a psychological counseling room.
Volunteers include lawyers as well as students from East China University of Political Science and Law, Fudan University and East China Normal University.
"The volunteer team working on safeguarding labor rights provides legal and policy consultation as well as legal aid," Zhu said.
The team is located at the Huxi Worker's Cultural Palace and people from other provinces and regions of China also go there for help.
"It means we have certain influence on the grass roots, and we ask the team to do their very best," she said.
"We also hope more law experts can join us to help the migrant workers."
When the news got out that there was a workshop dedicated to helping migrant workers, many came for help. In 2009 the workshop received over 500 people, in 2010 it was more than 300, and in 2011 and 2012 it was around 200 per year.
Zhu said that at one point there were people calling in the middle of night.
The number of people coming for help is dropping every year, because the law has more regulations and there are more ways for workers to get help, not only from this workshop but through other organizations that are rising up in recent years, Zhu said.
For Zhu, the journey from a migrant worker to national delegate was not easy.
She left her home in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province when she was about 18 years old and came to Shanghai to work at the Sino-Japanese joint venture Huari Clothing Company.
"My parents are farmers and I have brothers and sisters, I wanted to go out to work and earn money to support my family and pay for my brother's tuition," she said.
At first it was hard. She not only needed to learn the skills, but also adapt to a city life very different from her home town. Through hard work, her progress was recognized and in 1998 Zhu was sent to Japan with two other co-workers for a three-year training program.
It was a major transition, she said.
In Japan, the first obstacle was the language barrier and Zhu needed to learn Japanese as fast as she could.
"We had a 20-day training including language and Japanese manners, but that's far from enough," she recalled.
"One day a factory director was talking to me. I understood him calling my name and the greetings, but I didn't know he was talking to me the whole time, which made him think I was impolite and not listening to him. But it was because I couldn't understand what he said."
To learn Japanese, Zhu came up with the idea of talking to children.
"The older generation talks differently. The dialects were also hard to understand. So I went to the school across the street from my factory to talk with young children, asking them to be my teachers," she said.
Learning language
She became friends with the children. She would invite them for lunch and cook Chinese food, and they met once or twice a week just to talk.
When Zhu was too busy with work, she would record her reading Japanese on cassette tapes so her "teachers" could listen and point out her mistakes.
When she was leaving Japan three years later, the president of the company offered her a position paying over 100,000 yuan a year, much more than she could earn in China.
But Zhu turned down the offer, not without hesitation, but she missed her family.
"I love my country, and I also thought there are more opportunities in China as it's developing rapidly," she said.
Now Zhu has been settled in Shanghai for more than a decade.
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