A Day in the Life of a Chinese Factory Worker: Xiaolan, Age 22

Xiaolan is from a rural village in Hunan Province. Her parents are rice farmers, and she is the oldest of three siblings.

After finishing junior high school at 15, she left to work in a local textile mill, but the pay was low and the work sporadic.

Three years later at 18, she took a long-distance bus to Shenzhen to try and earn enough to send money home and help pay for her youngest brother’s schooling.

She doesn’t have a high school diploma, so her options are limited.

Through a job recruiter in her village, she is hired at a factory that produces fast fashion garments.

This is a typical day in her life

6:20am Xiaolan’s alarm rings. She wakes up on the top bunk in a dorm room she shares with seven other women. The air is humid and smells faintly of detergent cleaner and sweat. She grabs her toothbrush from the bucket next to her bed and lines up at the communal bathroom.

6:50am: She ties her hair back, puts on her factory uniform, and eats a steamed bun from the canteen. No time for much else; her shift starts at 7am sharp.

7:00am – 12:00pm: She sits at a sewing station in a long row of others. Her job is to sew tags onto blouses. Her quota is 500 pieces per hour. The supervisor patrols the rows silently. If she slows down, she risks being yelled at, or worse—getting her wages docked.

She barely looks up. She’s allowed one bathroom break in the morning, but it's rushed.

12:00pm – 1:00pm: Lunch break. Rice, cabbage, and some tofu. She eats quickly. She chats with her friend Mei, asking her when she's going to travel home to see her sister. It's lighthearted chit chat, but it gives them something to talk about that isn't stitching errors or wrist pain.

1:00pm – 7:30pm Back to the machine. The air is hot and stifling. Her back hurts but she has learned to ignore it. Music is forbidden, so she counts in her head to stay focused. Sometimes her hands cramp, or the needle stabs her finger. The noise of the machines is constant.

7:30pm – 8:00pm: Dinner. She feels nauseated from staring at fabric all day but forces herself to eat; she can’t afford to get sick.

8:00pm – 10:00pm: (Overtime) They’re behind on a shipment for a Western client. Everyone is required to stay and work. Her hands move on autopilot.

10:30pm: She gets back to the dorm, takes a quick shower in cold water, and collapses into bed. She scrolls briefly on her phone—watching videos of girls in different cities laughing in cafés or doing makeup tutorials.

She send her mother a quick message: “I’m okay. Tell grandma I miss her.” She doesn’t mention the sore wrist or the fire drill last night or the girl who fainted last week on the line.

Xiaolan hopes to send enough money home so her brother doesn’t have to drop out of school.

She hopes to rent her own room, where she can lock the door and sleep in privacy without noisy roommates.

She hopes to own something that’s hers; maybe a phone she didn’t buy second-hand.

Her dream is to eventually leave factory work behind and perhaps open a beauty salon, a noodle shop, even just a cashier job that lets her talk to people.

She knows the chances are slim. But she’s young, and for now, that’s enough to keep her going.