

Leswing:And by this point, you've worked six hours.

Zeng: After two more hours — and about eight hours total — working, then it depends on whether you need to do overtime or not.

If you don't need to, you're off. Everybody is off.

But generally, if you need to do overtime, it depends on if it's Monday to Thursday or it's Friday.

Friday, only work two hours overtime. Monday to Thursday is 2.5 hours overtime work.

And then you do one whole day, eight hours, on Saturday also.

So total, the time workers spent in the factory is 12 hours, generally including the breaking times and lunchtime.

Leswing: Does that also include you waiting in line to go through a metal detector and that kind of stuff?

Zeng: Doesn't include. If you included those, you should include 30 minutes more.

Leswing: All right. So you're done. It's 7:30 in the morning. What do you do?

Zeng: I would generally go have another meal afterward. Then you take the shuttle bus, go back to your dorm, take a shower — if you're lucky, there is hot water. Sometimes there's no hot water or there's no water at all.

After a shower ... people either go to internet cafe, play video games, watch videos, something like that, or you lay down, watch videos on your phone.

Leswing: Pretty much everyone has a phone?

Zeng: You have a phone. The dorms provide Wi-Fi. But to access the Wi-Fi, you need to do something. You need to either download some apps for them or click something — comments or something — to earn some virtual coins.

You use the coins to get on the Wi-Fi. Twenty-four hours is 20 coins. And then downloading apps sometimes are like 20 to 30 coins or something. So is it you can buy coins — like I remember it's like 100 coins about 5 yuan, something like that. But a lot of people just keep downloading. It's like a business. You need to need to do that to get access to Wi-Fi.

In that same platform that you earn coins, there are free videos still available. So I think there's something good, that workers can watch videos for free.

I would like to go to bed about 10. You don't have a lot of time. You get very tired. And then most you can watch is one movie and then you really need to go to bed. And then the other day, you wake up at 6:30 again. And that's just a routine.

Leswing: Did you have any friends?

Zeng: I made friends with my roommates and also my coworkers on the same assembly line, but it's like the station around me, so we're sitting together. So those are very good friends.

And I also made some friends at the first couple of days, when we do some training. But during the training, you are together. Later, you get distributed.

Leswing: Your dorm roommates aren't going to be the same people.

Zeng: No, we don't work on the same assembly or nearby, and sometimes we work on different shifts. So sometimes I never see my roommates for a month because we are on a different shift, and they shift it every month.

Leswing: Do you know anyone there with a family?

Zeng: Yeah, they are with their girlfriends or their wives.

Sometimes they rent an apartment outside the campus. You can choose to do that, but it's very pricey. But if you have to, that's the only way. There are no dorm rooms there for a couple.

Leswing: So when you were on the assembly line with you with your mates, what did you talk about?

Zeng: That's where I find that the stereotypes about workers is not right. I had thought they [would be] uneducated. Wrong. They are talking about a lot of things. They talk about the China-US relationship, foreign relations in the South China Sea, because at that point there is news on that.

Most talk about movies, horror movies, and then sometimes they talk about their lives. They need to support their families back in the rural area. They want to send their kids to do some dancing classes. So it's like being a parent kind of thing. And sometimes entertainment news, celebrities, all the things that young people talk about. And they know other things, they even talk about American history sometimes.

Leswing: Did your coworkers like their jobs?

Zeng: So I would say we don't like it and we don't hate it.

We just consider it a job that can give us money. Nobody enjoys the process, because the purpose of getting to work is waiting to get out.

The only thing that we're thinking about is really money, money, money. I need to get some money from my family, I need to support my life, support my kids.

That's the only thing in their mind. Sometimes they don't even care how tired they are.

Some workers have worked at different factories and think Pegatron has stricter management. You can't use your phone in their factory. You can't listen to music. Sometimes there are people walking around that don't allow you talk too loud.

So some workers have a comparison and think Pegatron has stricter controls. That's something that gets them annoyed.

Leswing: Is it a respected job? Is it a job that people go, "Oh, that's a decent way to earn a living"?

Zeng: I don't think so. People working the factories are also working on becoming a security guard, deliveryman, housekeeper. So it's the same kind of level of position. You don't see it as better.

I think the only way to look at the factory job is that you really keep people from being homeless. Because you need no skills, you just get into the factories. They don't even ask you any questions. During the interview, you can just get in that day. And then they take care of your meals and your dorm.

So it's like if you really have nowhere to go, if you're in the city alone and have no relatives to support you, go to the factory. You might earn some money, a little bit, and then gradually you can get your life together.

Leswing: Did anyone see it as a career?

Zeng: I don't think people really see it as a career.

The turnover rate is very high. It's very normal for workers to leave after two weeks or a month. Some workers get there and if they don't like it, they quit very quick.

But some people can stick there longer. And after one year, you can get promoted to become the line manager.

There are different structures. At the lowest level, you're an operator, and then you get into the multitask worker [position]. The third level is group leader, and then it's line manager. Then above is section manager, and then there's the division manager, and then there is the factory director.

There are workers that can really move up this chain. But we think that, at most, you can become a line manager.

But there are people who could get promoted by that chain, but not a lot of people can sustain that kind of life for that long time.

And then the pattern of Chinese migrant workers is that they go out to the city and do jobs for a year, and then they quit, then they go back home to stay one month for a new year or something like that, and then go out or find another job.

Leswing: Did your coworkers use Apple products?

Zeng: Some workers have iPhones, but not very many because of the monthly wage.

If they are affordable for workers, then they will buy Apple. But they are saying, "I really want that?" Can they save two months' wages to get an iPhone? They won't do that. The phones they generally use are Chinese productions like Oppo or something like that.

Leswing: Do the people working there at Pegatron know they're assembling Apple products?

Zeng: They know. We all know that we are assembling Apple products. We even know "this is the iPhone 6" or "this is the iPhone 7 that's coming out." Everybody knows.

Leswing: So what did you know when production switched from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 7? Did people know that this was an unreleased product? Was there additional security around it?

Zeng: The controls gets more strict. They increased the sensitivity of the metal detectors.

So you know some girls, they have bras? And so they couldn't pass the door because they had the metal in the bra. And so a lot of the girls had to change all of the sudden that day because they increased the sensitivity.

And then you passed two security checks. There's a lot of security checks.

Here's how it works: Our factory, when we got to working, they are already assembling the infrastructure of the assembly line. They have this curtain circling it so you can't even see how the infrastructure is, right?

We were working at the same workshop, but there are people doing construction there.

And then after they've finished construction and need to move people in, we were moved out and working in another building of the factories. And then they prepare everything, and everybody moved back in.

And then producing iPhone 7 — at that point it was a trial production. That kind of experience is totally different from when we produced iPhone 6S because that's a whole day, and I consider it as torture.

Because one day for 12 hours, you only produce five phones. You sit there and have nothing to do, waiting for two hours. Sometimes they don't allow you to speak. You just sit there quietly and have nothing to do, and wait until the next phone comes in. You're trying to assemble it, and then you put it back and you wait for another few hours for the next one to come in.

When we were producing the iPhone 7, they have Apple staff there every single day to monitor the process. Because it's a new product, they want to see if there are new problems.

The management of the factory becomes very, very careful. It needs to be very, very clean. All the case-holders need to be in the exact position of where they should be. The process changed a lot because it used to be just an assembly line. They made it a clean room — like they want to keep the dust out.

So every time you get in, you need to have a roller to clean all the dust, and then you get it, and all of these procedures, you need to do that. Management is very careful, constantly walking around. You're not allowed to talk or sleep.

When you don't talk and are just sitting there for a couple of hours, you get sleepy. I was falling asleep three times one day, and every time when the multitask workers, the assistants of the line manager, would walk out and would spot me sleeping, they would say, "No, no, no," and wake me up. The third time he caught me sleeping, he said, "You, stand up." And so I was standing next to the assembly line, not even allowed to sit.

Leswing: Were you doing the same screw for the iPhone 7?

Zeng: No. At the later part of producing the iPhone 6S, I was switched to another station called camera cowling. So they have a protector on top of the camera, and I need to have the cowling fastened. It also was putting in two screws so the camera would be where it is.

Leswing: Cowling. That is a word I've never heard before!

Zeng: There's a lot of terms. There's a lot of terms.

Leswing: Do the factory workers — they obviously work for Pegatron — but do they think they work for Apple at some level?

Zeng: They definitely know they are producing Apple products and consider themselves a part of that process.