Why do I focus on young mingong (migrant worker) in China? 

Background 

In the context of globalization, China’s economic rise relied heavily on the export of cheap consumer goods to the global market, with workers at the bottom of the chain of exploitation, and the youth of these young workers seldom widely known. Factories usually require that the average worker be under 45, capital’s youthful selection of laborers has made young people in their 20s the majority of assembly line workers.

These young workers are squeezed with every consumer purchase. In 2023, Chinese director Wang Bing’s documentary YOUTH:SPRING was selected for the Official Competition of the 76th Cannes Film Festival, and before that, few Chinese films had devoted so many sections to the lives of young workers. As a student of film production, this documentary has given me a strong resonance and reflection.

Contemporary young migrant workers repeat the work of the assembly line day in and day out. The average age of these young people is around 20 years old. Most of them belong to the Generaion Z Group (born between 1995 and 2009) and have graduated from middle school or dropped out.

Data 

Who: : A group of young workers from all over rural China.

Why: To earn a salary and open up their eyes

Where: A private children’s clothing factory in Zhili, Zhejiang Province. In addition to repetitive labor, the usual recreational life consists of playing around in the factory; men and women talking about their relationships, getting married and having children; workers arguing with each other and getting back to normal and singing songs on the sho floor while they work.

How much: more than 18,000 private garment factories and workshops, and more than 300,000 migrant workers.

Concern 

However, the relatively peaceful mood of the movie cannot weaken the harshness of the reality that behind the repetitive spending of youthful time by the young workers, there are still many problems that have not been solved.

Problem Problem

Endless work overtime for young workers. Factory salary arrears.

The assembly line undermines thinking, causing people to lose the concept of time, and they can only relieve their fatigue by seeking stimulation, falling into an endless cycle, and ultimately being reduced to meaningless cogs in an environment monopolized by capital.

Under such circumstances, rising up the ladder through hard work becomes a pipe dream.

In summary, I found that repetitive labor is in vain. In Chinese society, it is difficult for the bottom laborers to climb up the social ladder.

I want people to perceive the pointlessness of repetitive labor.

If Marx is right to underline the connection between work time and exchange value, then at the point where work is increasingly detached from the human ody, the economy is ased on floating signifiers that do not lead back to anything, unless a human body is forced into useless labour in order to provide the illusion of a signified, without which the whole system of signification including the economic, olitical and social structure threatens to collapse. It would seem that in some sense the condition of the modern human is, after all, that of Sisyphus. The human body/consciousness would be faced with its own dispersion as soon as it would be disconnected from labour, as soon as it would stop working... or playing...

Pippin Barr It is as if you were doing work (2017)

Game Design

Placing the player in a virtual factory, allowing the player to experience repetitive work.

Using Unreal Engine builds a virtual space game

Identity: This is a 3D experiential game designed to illustrate that repetitive labor is in vain. In Chinese society, it's challenging

for underclass workers to climb the social ladder. The player descends into an abstract virtual factory, where the player acts as an

underclass laborer who enters the clothing factory to work, experiencing the repression of class and the life of the underclass laborer

through the design of the mechanics within the game.

Design Pillars: Repetitively watching videos in a factory room - Salary goes up.

Watching camgirls in the dormitory; gaming in the amusement room - Salary goes down.

Math: Watch repeated video for 2 seconds, get 1 gold coin. Watch amuse video for 1 seconds, spend 2 gold coin.

According to the statistics of the payrolls collected, the average salary of a real-life worker is 4,500 CNY, based on an 8-hour period,

worker earns C er hour. he game length is aout minutes tentative.., watch one minute video to get gold

coins, 1.5 sec = 1 gold coin 2 sec = 1 gold coin.

Mechanism:

1. Players get gold coins through continuous stay in the labor room. During the stay, they are forced to watch the labor video.

2. Players experience the life experience of young laborers by spending the gold coins they acquire in other scenes.

if layers find the amusement nature and meaninglessness of several other rooms, and do not reenter the room within times of entering it, they will be able to open up the hidden path and see the other possibilities of life.

Driven by these, I edited four types of videos, distributed in four rooms in addition to the game hall.

1 Hall: Basic scene and interactive plots for narrative, no video.

2 Factory: In order to show the numbness and meaninglessness of repetitive labor, I used a repetitive montage editing technique to create a couple of videos that I forced the players entering this room to watch.

3 Dormitory: I edited an entertaining clips consisting of dozens of camgirls footage, with the aim of showing the emptiness of people seeking mental stimulation outside of work

4 Internet Cafe: I created a series of clips using post-production compositing and editing, which consisted of materialistic content such as video games, luxury jewelry, money, etc.

5 Hidden Path/Ending: This clip represents the dream in the hearts of those who are not willing to live a life of numbness, and who decide to get rid of this repetition and fly far away from it.

Interact with players through a montage of videos as game material.

Visual Form: Experimental Short Film

Inspiration: ontage is a secial form of eression in filmmaking, it insires the viewer to think and creates a uniue time and sace. eferences to adaist ilms Mechanical Ballet

Development