NR | 3h 32m | Documentary | 2023
At least these cramped garment factories do not use Uyghur slave labor. Nevertheless, their employment practices would trouble many Americans. The young workers, largely in their late teens are only paid pennies according to the factories’ piecemeal terms. Yet, they rarely consider themselves victims, because such work represents the best available option for China’s young and unemployed rural poor. From 2014 to 2019, independent Chinese documentarian Wang Bing followed a large group of these college-aged factory workers for a prospective trilogy, the first of which, “Youth (Spring).”
Zhili is about 100 miles from Shanghai, but most of the youthful factory workers hail from rural Anhui and Henan provinces. Most of them are illegal migrant workers in their own country, because of China’s strict work-residency regulations. Of course, that makes the young workers easy to exploit. Never in the film (recorded over a five-year span) does a government inspector darken any of the factories’ doors, so it is likely safe to assume the authorities are looking the other way.
Yet, the employees Wang follows are mostly happy to do whatever work they can get. The youngest is 16-year-old Du Meng (who really looks too youthful for factory life) and the oldest are a pair of 32-year-olds, but most fall into the 18-to-22 range. Not surprisingly, they often act like Western kids, living away from home for the first time, at college. Throughout the film, they joke, carouse, flirt, fight, drink, party, and pair up romantically.
Sometimes, they also try to band together to negotiate for better payment for certain jobs, but this film is still a far cry from “Norma Rae,” a film about speaking up about poor factory conditions. The kids (and they mostly are kids) never directly challenge the piecemeal system. They only ask for a little more on especially complex jobs. In most cases, the managers and owners just nickel-and-dime them, throwing them an additional extra cent here and there. (For those wondering, piece-rate compensation is technically legal in the United States, but in practice, effective remuneration must always encompass the local and federal hourly minimum wage.)
No ‘Happiness Road’
Regardless, the Zhili factories are still crowded and cramped (ironically, two of them are literally located on “Happiness Road”) and the company dorms still look less hygienic than the average American frat house. However, “Youth (Spring)” is much less exposé-like in tone than many of Wang’s previous films. To some extent, he might have been charmed by the vitality of his youthful subjects.
There are still plenty of scenes that should trouble viewers of good conscience. Any principled pro-choicer should be outraged when a factory manager refuses to allow a worker time off for an abortion, until she finishes her quota. Likewise, pro-life viewers should be just as disgusted when he casually jokes to her “abortion is like you got bitten by a dog and you bite back.”
The professionally woke should be similarly outraged when another manager calls a group of workers asking for higher piecemeal rates “retards,” as translated by the English subtitles. Plus, the Disney company also has some cause for concern, because we can see one batch of Mickey Mouse pajamas coming off the line in Zhili and there is reference to another. Either their brand is getting bootlegged or they are importing product produced under questionable labor conditions. (Most of the Zhili factories produce clothes for the domestic market, but they also take orders intended for export.)
Wang’s previous labor-themed documentary “Bitter Money” does much more muckraking into the conditions of Chinese sweatshops. His oral history films, like “Fengming: A Chinese Memoir,” do far more to challenge the moral authority of the CCP regime by recording the oral history of Cultural Revolution survivors. However, “Youth (Spring)” certainly shares one commonality with many of his films: its length, running over three and a half hours.
It is an undeniable fact Wang’s films can be grueling. Ironically, “Youth (Spring)” is all about young people struggling to get by. It is similar to a Chinese version of a teen reality TV show, with less wokeness, less glamor, and more genuine reality.
You can always learn a lot about life as it is really lived in today’s Mainland China from Wang’s documentaries. “Youth (Spring)” is no exception, even if it is less revealing than his other previous films, like “Bitter Money.” It is intended to be the first in a three-film series, so subsequent installments might add a more enlightening context.
Recommended for Wang’s cineaste admirers and labor rights advocates.
