A fictionalized tale of 1 upper-class, 1 lower-class woman working in fashion in Shenzhen
Zoe Ho from Seeed has started a great series on Medium: a parable of two women from the extreme ends of the economic spectrum who both work in the fashion industry in Shenzhen:
CoCo… is always talked about, gossiped or admired with jealousy. Sometimes she cannot accept any imperfection, and would like to get use of technology to make herself look prettier, by Photoshop or plastic surgery. She is active on social media: sharing her various bags, shoes, dinner with good friends, with a lot of likes and attention from the internet. People follow her fashion style of the clothing and jewelry, and therefore, she started her own fashion studio with the advent of e-commerce . Shenzhen is a city with the best climate nationwide for the start-ups, and the local government has invested substantial resources in capital, talents, supply chain. With unique and flexible strengths, Shenzhen is the place where CoCo firstly built up her business.
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Fanny, 49-year-old, works in one of these factories. She has to handle the post-work of a new style jacket, from picking a jacket from the stack, laying on the operating desk, sewing the pocket, fixing the zip, checking each layer, cleaning up the sleeves, flatten the collar, double-checking the size number. These 7 procedures, need to be done by workers like Fanny less than 2 minutes.
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But none of them ended up as imagined. It does not make a big difference no matter it is your 1st day or 10th year work here, maybe just in the speed how fast you handle the jacket. Having worked for almost 10 years, Fanny was promoted to a team leader of 30 workers, and her base salary is 1000RMB (About $150)more than others. “Is this all what I get? For the perseverance all the years? Is this just the gap between those who work hard and those who do not?”
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