Between 2014 and 2019, celebrated documentarian Wang Bing and his crew followed migrant garment workers slogging away in the workshops of Zhili, a district of Huzhou located close to Shanghai and one of the main hubs of the Chinese garment industry. Zhili is home to more than 18,000 privately-owned workshops producing children’s clothes and employing around 300,000 migrant workers. For seven years, three cameras synchronously followed young workers laboring in the local sweatshops, providing a striking example of the class struggle in post-socialist China.
In the many years it took to film this documentary (which premiered at Locarno this year), Bing accumulated 2,600 hours of footage, forcing him to cut into three parts what is in reality one long, nearly 10-hour documentary (footage of which he also used to make his 2016 feature “Bitter Money“). The second chapter in the trilogy, “Youth: Hard Times” is also the longest of the three at 226 minutes, and, as the title promises, the darkest.
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The film simply picks up where the previous installment left off, but there is no real need to have seen it to understand what is going on here. In all three parts, Wang regularly switches from one worker to another and from one workshop to another, implicitly stressing how interchangeable they all are in the giant, grinding capitalist machine that Zhili has become. All are seasonal workers who come from all over China hoping to make as much money as possible before they head back home to their poor families in rural China. Wang very much films the underbelly of the Chinese economic miracle, offering an unvarnished, comment-free description of the working and living conditions of people who are otherwise rarely seen or heard about in mainstream society.
Most scenes take place inside the cramped sweatshops, as teenagers and twenty-something youth (they are so fresh-faced it is hard to call them men and women) are hunched over their sewing machines. All work as fast as they can on 12-hour shifts and are paid on piece-work rates. Yet there is little sense of miserabilism in their behavior or in the way they are filmed – one of the great strengths of the documentary. They all work in messy, cluttered and run-down workshops, but many goof around while sewing, smoking, talking about girls or goodhumoredly teasing each other.
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At other times, the unobtrusive camera follows them in long tracking shots down the narrow hallways and staircases of the derelict buildings where they both work and live, sleeping in makeshift dormitories just a few floors above or below the workshops. As spring (the season during which the first part, “Youth: Spring“, was set) and summer slowly give way to autumn and winter, it is obvious they are often cold, but they are only occasionally heard complaining, clearly being used to such living and working conditions (some of them have been doing this work since they were sixteen). In many ways, “Youth” is a story of human resilience and solidarity, where workshop workers stick together and help each other – most of the time – in the hope of making it through yet another season of hard times.
Incidents and difficulties soon occur and break the monotony of repetitive work that Wang and his crew otherwise like to convey. A worker, for instance, has lost his notebook and his boss refuses to pay him. Other laborers are stranded after their boss has run away with the money (apparently a common occurrence in Zhili), and they are soon seen prying open the doors to the workshops and trying to sell the machinery left behind in the slim hope of recouping some of their lost wages. Meanwhile, the landlord cuts off the electricity, leaving them to sleep in the dark and cold. This, in essence, is the class struggle in Zhili today.
More frequently still, the laborers find themselves bitterly negotiating with their employers over the exact rate at which they will be paid – after having completed their hard work. None of them, it emerges, has an actual contract, putting them at the mercy of unscrupulous bosses who can always renege on their initial promises. This is where both the relative helplessness of the workers and their solidarity emerge most clearly, as they band together to confront the employer and convince him to pay them their dues.
It is remarkable that both the workers and their managers have left Wang and his crew film them so freely, including at such tense moments when they were not always shown at their best (only occasionally is someone heard asking not to be filmed). The “Youth” films are the epitome of observational documentaries, and rarely have filmmakers managed to give such a strong impression of becoming, as it were, invisible and delivering a raw testimony of life-as-it-is.
The only wide shots are images of the garbage-strewn streets filmed from high up the tenement buildings housing the workshops, and only occasionally does the camera venture outside to follow its subjects. Also eschewing close-ups, the film mostly relies on medium shots, keeping distant enough that it remains discreetly in the background while staying close enough to record the events, or non-events, of everyday life. It often does so in long takes that seem to promise that no editing is hiding aspects of reality from audiences (in 2017 Bing released “15 Hours“, a single-shot museum installation showing the same workshops for 15 uncut hours).
At all times, the camera remains steadfastly focused on the workers – and sometimes their work at the sewing machine – and the human dimension of work and life in Zhili. When a brutal fight emerges in the street below between the boss and a supplier, the camera films the workers watching the fight rather than the fight itself. Rather than trying to be spectacular or sensationalistic, “Youth” is more interested in the workers’ reactions to this violent aggression, their sense of despair at being employed by such a ruthless thug, or simply their confusion at what exactly happened (contradictory rumors soon swirl, illustrating how difficult it can be to be properly informed).
Finally, although it is only addressed tangentially, a clear picture of official apathy – if not complicity with the bosses – slowly emerges. As the workers often complain that the authorities are no help, the police (never seen on screen for obvious reasons) is regularly criticized for its sheer violence against the migrant workers. Detention conditions in freezing temperatures are described, while chilling accounts of beatings and torture are provided on camera by the migrant workers, who are treated like the trash littering the streets.
The climax of such testimonies is surely that of Hu Siwen, talking to the camera (a rare departure from the observational approach) and telling the story of the 2011 Zhili riots. He describes dead bodies in the streets and vicious beatings of protesters by the police forces, suddenly making “Youth: Hard Times” a highly charged political documentary. This might at least partly explain why the “Youth” trilogy has recently disappeared from Douban among other Chinese social media platforms.
In the end, the young laborers are seen starting on their long journeys home to reunite with their families for the Chinese New Year, paving the way for the third installment in the trilogy, “Youth: Homecoming“, perhaps the best one in the series. “Hard Times”, like Wang’s entire trilogy, may not always be easy viewing, but it should absolutely be seen by anyone interested in learning about the dark side of the Chinese economic miracle.
