What’s it like battling poverty and being unable to retire as a migrant worker in China today?
You can call me Sister He. I’m from Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. I’m over the age of 60 and still working as a housekeeper.
Decades ago, when I was young, I saw my older relatives living in apartment buildings with cash to spare and no real cares. I thought I’d also have that kind of life when I got old.
Back then, I felt that even though I didn’t have much education, as long as I worked hard I wouldn’t do so badly for myself. But now I feel those dreams were only illusions.
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With no pension, I can’t stop working
I started working around 1978, in Qingshan village in Chifeng. It was a very remote place. They were hiring laborers for a new factory and an orchard. I dug holes for fruit trees, dug irrigation ditches, spread fertilizer. It was exhausting.
How harsh were the conditions? That spring, I had to go without cooking oil for a whole month.
At the time I wished every day to get hired on as a regular worker. If they’d done that back then, I’d be getting a pension of around 3,000 RMB a month by now.
But after working there for about a year, they suddenly announced there was a limited quota for hiring full-time workers, so they were going to take on the children and dependents of the factory manager and party secretary first. The rest of us couldn’t get hired, and that was how they drove me away.
At the time I felt like a deflating ball with all the air going out of me—I had worked so hard, but there was nothing you could do.
They told me, you’re still young, if you don’t like it you can go home. It was easier to hoodwink people back then; there’s no way you could get away with something like this today.
That incident changed my whole life. From that moment on, I had to support myself. I have never stopped working, because there was no way I could ever stop.
Lots of people still work even though they’re collecting a pension, so they have 8,000 or 10,000 RMB left over each month. I can only save about 2,000 each month. I’ve gone to the social insurance office in my hometown many times due to my money issues. I said, is it possible to get a supplement to the money I’m making now? Could they give me just 1,200 to 1,500 RMB a month? Just so I don’t have to keep working to feed myself when I’m old.
The people at the social insurance office refused me three times. I asked them why other provinces allowed this, and they just said it wasn’t part of their policy. I regret that I didn’t record the conversation. All I could do was swallow my tears and go back to Beijing.
Founded in 2017 by Kou Aizhe, Story FM is one of the most renowned podcast in China. Each episode focuses on ordinary people’s lives and viewpoints, including the difficulties of marginalized people. Through intimate and private interviews, Story FM digs out first-person experiences and lets listeners immerse themselves in another person’s voice and feelings. You can listen to their podcast in Chinese on Ximalaya, Qingting FM, Apple Podcasts, and the 故事FM mini-app on WeChat.
