The suicide of Xu Lizhi (许立志)

The nets installed to catch workers leaping from factory roofs at Foxconn’s Longhua Science and Technology Park didn’t prevent Xu Lizhi from killing himself on 30 September. Whether he jumped or did it another way is not so clear from afar.

The gargantuan plant, located in China’s Pearl River Delta, employs hundreds of thousands who assemble gadgets for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and other tech giants. Xu worked at the factory from 2010 to February this year. After failing to establish himself in Suzhou, just outside of Shanghai, he returned to Foxconn on 29 September, lasting just one day.

His poetry, some of which has been posthumously translated by friends of the Nào* project and published at libcom.org, is aptly described as “cold and pensive” by Li Fei and Zhang Xiaoqi, in an obituary published at Shenzhen Evening News. “His poems trace a trajectory in which the scent of death becomes more and more pronounced”, they write.

In Xu’s work, life slips beneath a monotonous assembly line where “even the machine is nodding off”. At times, it seems impossible to distinguish between human being and instrument. “Youth stooped at machines die before their time … life covered in rust”.

At just 24 years of age, Xu Lizhi was world-weary, pushed to obvious despair by an inhospitable environment characterised by repetition and compliance: “Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages … / They’ve trained me to become docile / Don’t know how to shout or rebel / How to complain or denounce / Only how to silently suffer exhaustion”.

Some claim that this is a capitalism particular to the Chinese, or the “developing world”, special economic zones. Perhaps. But Xu’s voice speaks to a universal and recognisable inner ache and longing.

“We hope that in the future”, write the friends of Nào, “workers in Foxconn and elsewhere … come together, and forge collective paths out of this capitalist world of death, into a world worth living in. Don’t give up!”

[* "Nào (闹) is unrest, noise, uproar. It stands for the proletarian troublemakers, for the revolts of peasants, workers and the unemployed against expropriation, exploitation and exclusion."]

Selected Poems by Xu Lizhi

我就那样站着入睡
“I Fall Asleep, Just Standing Like That” – 20 August 2011

眼前的纸张微微发黄
The paper before my eyes fades yellow

我用钢笔在上面凿下深浅不一的黑
With a steel pen I chisel on it uneven black

里面盛满打工的词汇
Full of working words

车间，流水线，机台，上岗证，加班，薪水……
Workshop, assembly line, machine, work card, overtime, wages...

我被它们治得服服贴贴
They’ve trained me to become docile

我不会呐喊，不会反抗
Don’t know how to shout or rebel

不会控诉，不会埋怨
How to complain or denounce

只默默地承受着疲惫
Only how to silently suffer exhaustion

驻足时光之初
When I first set foot in this place

我只盼望每月十号那张灰色的薪资单
I hoped only for that grey pay slip on the tenth of each month

赐我以迟到的安慰
To grant me some belated solace

为此我必须磨去棱角，磨去语言
For this I had to grind away my corners, grind away my words

拒绝旷工，拒绝病假，拒绝事假
Refuse to skip work, refuse sick leave, refuse leave for private reasons

拒绝迟到，拒绝早退
Refuse to be late, refuse to leave early

流水线旁我站立如铁，双手如飞
By the assembly line I stood straight like iron, hands like flight,

多少白天，多少黑夜
How many days, how many nights

我就那样，站着入睡
Did I - just like that - standing fall asleep?

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一颗螺丝掉在地上
“A Screw Fell to the Ground” – 9 January 2014

一颗螺丝掉在地上
A screw fell to the ground

在这个加班的夜晚
In this dark night of overtime

垂直降落，轻轻一响
Plunging vertically, lightly clinking

不会引起任何人的注意
It won’t attract anyone’s attention

就像在此之前
Just like last time

某个相同的夜晚
On a night like this

有个人掉在地上
When someone plunged to the ground

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最后的墓地
“The Last Graveyard” – 21 December 2011

机台的鸣叫也打着瞌睡
Even the machine is nodding off

密封的车间贮藏疾病的铁
Sealed workshops store diseased iron

薪资隐藏在窗帘后面
Wages concealed behind curtains

仿似年轻打工者深埋于心底的爱情
Like the love that young workers bury at the bottom of their hearts

没有时间开口，情感徒留灰尘
With no time for expression, emotion crumbles into dust

他们有着铁打的胃
They have stomachs forged of iron

盛满浓稠的硫酸，硝酸
Full of thick acid, sulfuric and nitric

工业向他们收缴来不及流出的泪
Industry captures their tears before they have the chance to fall

时辰走过，他们清醒全无
Time flows by, their heads lost in fog

产量压低了年龄，疼痛在日夜加班
Output weighs down their age, pain works overtime day and night

还未老去的头晕潜伏生命
In their lives, dizziness before their time is latent

皮肤被治具强迫褪去
The jig forces the skin to peel

顺手镀上一层铝合金
And while it’s at it, plates on a layer of aluminum alloy

有人还在坚持着，有人含病离去
Some still endure, while others are taken by illness

我在他们中间打盹，留守青春的
I am dozing between them, guarding

最后一块墓地
The last graveyard of our youth.

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我咽下一枚铁做的月亮
“I Swallowed a Moon Made of Iron” – 19 December 2013

我咽下一枚铁做的月亮
I swallowed a moon made of iron

他们把它叫做螺丝
They refer to it as a nail

我咽下这工业的废水，失业的订单
I swallowed this industrial sewage, these unemployment documents

那些低于机台的青春早早夭亡
Youth stooped at machines die before their time

我咽下奔波，咽下流离失所
I swallowed the hustle and the destitution

咽下人行天桥，咽下长满水锈的生活
Swallowed pedestrian bridges, life covered in rust

我再咽不下了
I can’t swallow any more

所有我曾经咽下的现在都从喉咙汹涌而出
All that I’ve swallowed is now gushing out of my throat

在祖国的领土上铺成一首
Unfurling on the land of my ancestors

耻辱的诗
Into a disgraceful poem.

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出租屋
“Rented Room” – 2 December 2013

十平米左右的空间
A space of ten square meters

局促，潮湿，终年不见天日
Cramped and damp, no sunlight all year

我在这里吃饭，睡觉，拉屎，思考
Here I eat, sleep, shit, and think

咳嗽，偏头痛，生老，病不死
Cough, get headaches, grow old, get sick but still fail to die

昏黄的灯光下我一再发呆，傻笑
Under the dull yellow light again I stare blankly, chuckling like an idiot

来回踱步，低声唱歌，阅读，写诗
I pace back and forth, singing softly, reading, writing poems

每当我打开窗户或者柴门
Every time I open the window or the wicker gate

我都像一位死者
I seem like a dead man

把棺材盖，缓缓推开
Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin.

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PROTECTING THE BRAND

The Wall Street Journal hastened to add, in italicised urgency, to its 7 November report of Xu Lizhi’s death:

UPDATE: Foxconn has had professional counsellors and a 24-hour hotline for employees in place at the Shenzhen campus where employee Xu Lizhi worked since 2010. A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Foxconn arranged for these services after his suicide.

Thank goodness that journalistic error was promptly identified and corrected. Company lawyers are clearly taking care of business. Revenues are up 13 percent month on month and, with the release of the iPhone 6, the markets are expecting only more good news for the company.