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It is terrible that Deng Xiaoping opened the PRC to the worst forms of Dickensian industrial sweatshop conditions. Mao would be horrified if he saw what was done. But it is easy to make excuses when you aren’t the one having to work under these conditions. For these poor people this is the only real option. Many of these women are young mothers who never see their children, slaving away so Americans can buy cheap goods, while American corporations make top dollar for shareholders in America, many of whom are bourgeois elites.LONG working hours, low pay and squalid accommodation — welcome to Santa’s real workshop where your Christmas presents are made.It is not nearly as glamorous as what you’d see in a Christmas movie.There are no bells and whistles, smiles or elves — the reality is grim and people work like slaves in Chinese sweatshops.China Labour Watch investigated four factories where people work 11 hours a day, six and sometimes seven days a week, often without a break, for minimum wage.An undercover investigation into Chinese toy sweatshops in southern China’s Guangdong Province discovered 10 workers were crammed in small dorm rooms and in winter could not even have warm showers.“The situation has lasted for many decades. Tragically, not much has changed so far,” China Labour Watch said.Inside the sweatshops, people are making Disney, Mattel, Fisher-Price and McDonald’s brand toys.Conveyor belts are filled with Thomas the Tank Engines, Barbies, DJ Suki Trolls, Hello Kitty merchandise, Hot Wheels cars and Disney princesses.China Labour Watch, a community-based organisation which fights for workers’ rights, went into the factories undercover in April and September.Workers at three of the four factories were only paid about $300 a month. At the other, workers were paid $400 a month. Workers from all the factories barely got to see their families.Factory workers sleep in squalid conditions. Picture: China Labour WatchSource:SuppliedFactory workers showered in a dirty cubicle. Picture: China Labour WatchSource:SuppliedAccording to Chinese Labour Law, labourers are not allowed to work more than eight hours a day but can work overtime in some circumstances. However, a labourer can't work more than 36 hours of overtime a month.“We found that the average working hours in these four factories was 11 hours a day, with more than 50 overtime hours a month, and at half of the factories, overtime hours had reached 100 hours,” a Chinese Labour Watch report said.“Moreover, the extremely high production requirements left workers with barely any time to rest. “During the 11 hours that workers put in within a day, all they had was a 40 to 60 minute lunch break. This is an obvious violation of the right of workers’ to have adequate rest.”The dirty bedrooms where factory workers sleep. Picture: China Labour WatchSource:SuppliedThe Chinese workers barely see their families and live in accommodation attached to sweatshops.They’re living in filth, with electrical wiring covering the floor.At least 14 people share a shower and toilet and there’s one cafeteria where they can buy food, which lacks nutrition.If workers aren’t given enough food and are still hungry, they are not allowed to have any more.“We can’t tolerate that children’s dreams are based on workers’ nightmares,” the report said.“Any toy that is manufactured in China is a process where workers’ rights have been infringed upon.“Workers in toy factories face heavy workloads every day, but only earn an extremely low wage. They have children as well. But after years of separation, when the workers finally return home with various illness or occupational injuries, who will protect the dream of their children?”Factory workers gather to eat their dinner. Picture: China Labour WatchSource:SuppliedMany workers stuck in the sweatshops celebrate their birthdays and some factories organise parties for them.They were “gifted” a lump of paper towel, according to China Labour Watch.New employees were also given a yoghurt as a present.Each factory had production targets and in the assembly department, workers must assemble 4000 toys a day.Workers said they could not stop at all during their shift in order to meet the target.They are exposed to dangerous chemicals daily and those who work in the spray painting department work with isoamyl acetate, also known as banana oil.The workers don’t have much protective equipment, and exposure to high concentrations of banana oil can cause headaches, drowsiness, dizziness and fatigue.Regular exposure to high concentrations of the chemical can even cause skin to crack.It can also damage the lungs and central nervous system. According to China Labour Watch, workers were never told about the dangers of being exposed to the chemical.Workers weren’t provided with gloves, glasses or masks to protect them.Toy Factory that makes toys for Mattel in Dongguan. Picture: China Labour WatchSource:SuppliedWorker Li Jintato told VOA News he left his home village when he was just 14 and got a job at a toy factory. His monthly wage covers two or three hours of overtime, but he is owed much more.“The wages are too low. My monthly salary is $360, but after deductions for social security, I make only a little more than $292 per month,” he said.McDonalds purchases its toys from Combine Will, a factory investigated by China Labour Watch, and the fast food giant told news.com.au — Australia’s #1 news site it took the allegations of poor working conditions very seriously.“We are committed to ensuring fair and ethical workplace standards in every corner of our supply chain. We are working closely with the International Council of Toy Industries in their investigation as well as overseeing a thorough review of these allegations and will swiftly and effectively address any issues that are identified,” a spokesperson said.Mattel and Disney did not respond to news.com.au — Australia’s #1 news site’s inquiries.Source: ‘Children’s dreams based on workers’ nightmares’Under the Christmas tree, some of us will hopefully find a great Iphone 4 32G, an amazing 9.7 inch Ipad 3G, a Dell netbook, a Sony PSP® or a Nokia N8 smartphone. On the user manual, it shall be written how to handle it but certainly not how it has been made. Today, La Vie French magazine publishes a long story (including side boxes here and here) about life at Foxconn, main Apple’s supplier. Sorry, it’s only in French but let me propose you my comment in English.Despite tragic suicides (14 officially – one last November, yet much lower than in others fims like France Telecom but when it comes to very young people in such a guarded area, it raises questions) and several promises for pay rises, Foxconn is still compared by Hong-kong ngo Sacom, as a “labour camp”. How come?So I went there in May and then back again lately, to check what really changed during this 6 months period of time. Salary is now high, better than any other factory around, but happiness is still not here, whatever swimming pool or tennis court you might have seen on tv, owing to Foxconn p.r. Is it due to Foxconn’s military discipline (typically taiwanese, i have been told) ? to a rather hostile environnement (huge dorms, huge factory) that doesn’t match with young workers expectations?Everyday, Xiao Li, 18 years old, wakes up at 6 in the morning in a room where she has be assigned by her manager, with 9 other people, coming from 9 different places. On 6h40, she leaves her room, walks down a long road and arrives at the South gate after a 20 minutes walk. She will buy noodles on her way, like every morning. If she eats at the canteen, she will waste time and sleep less. In this giant factory outside Shenzhen, Xiao Li and his 300 000 comrades get ready for a 13 hours a working day (excluding lunch break, including overtime), six days a week with a 10 minutes break every two hours. Six days a week is normal in China but it can easily turn to 7 days when sudden customers’ orders come up.At her production assembly line, which has always been relying on human labour more than sophisticated machines for cost reasons, she is not allowed to speak, listen to music or even look at her comrades while trying to achieve the christmas production targets. Her mobile is confiscated every morning too but insults from managers, she says, have disappeared. Instead, they just ignore her, after all the bad publicity they got last spring when 13 Foxconn suicides hit the headlines which blamed the company for harsh management.However, a noticeable improvement has been made after 30 glorious years of economic reforms in China: she is allowed to sit down while working. Well, it depends on her manager’s good mood.Compared to the toxic bluejeans factories in Xintang or swimwear factory in Dongyuan, what is striking here - although it is NOT child labour - is that all of the workers are 17, 18, 19 or in their early twenties. Foxconn doesn’t want older people to live in this 320 000 people city.The young foxconn workers are obedient, have almost no previous work experience and they don’t have a clue about what labor rights mean, according to Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a labour right group in Shenzhen. They would never complain, in such an unfriendly environnement where security guards, like those bloodcurling fluorescent lamps, are everywhere: at the dorms, at the canteen, at the recruitement center or at the workshop.Inside the factory, if you call the police number , you will have great chance to be transfered automatically to the guards phone number. As far as me and my cantonese interpreter were concerned, guards illegaly tried to check my passeport, her id card and even called the police when we asked them politely to call the Media department for us. For sure, Foxconn likes secrecy.(I took this picture last May, when a mother who was sitting at the main gate, was taken by the police. Her son died but no police investigation has been made so far. She believed the guards had beaten her child to death)These young workers are educated, are often the fruit of China’single child policy. They have moved from small towns in remote parts of China after their degree. They are the new generation of Mingong (=migrant workers) in China.Their parents are farmers or migrant workers themselves, from poverty-stricken provinces like Henan, Hunan, Sichuan. But these families hope their children will send them back some precious money, to build a concrete home or to cover health expenses. However, none of these parents have any idea about how difficult is their child’s job, how harsh is the military discipline, how hard is it to socialize when you have no time for it and how big is the pressure provoked by higher productivity objectives.Like many African migrants in my country, Foxconn kids only want their parents to believe they are successful. And the only thing that matters for these children is their salary, not even themselves.Bigger pressure? As westerners say: no pain, no gain. During a 3 months trial period and owing to Taiwanese consultants, Foxconn workers’ productivity has been gradually risen. This little 17 years old girl with a red heart (see below) checks the quality of the expansive HP ink cartridges… 28 0000 a day (!), 40% more than last Summer. While working, she doesn’t have to think nor to open her eyes, she just has to breathe and let her fingers feel the cartridges as fast as possible.Every single minute is now scientifically maximised. Because she has been trained for that and she has now much more value than any sophisticated machine in the eyes of Foxconn, she won’t be able to change position during her stay here. She will be doing the same movement for the next three years, 3 years being the average lenght for any worker in Foxconn, before they get worn out.We also met Ling Hui Ping on the way to the factory. He told us he was on the Iphone assembly line. He is coming from Hunan, his parents are crop farmers. At 20h30, after listening politely to his managers comments and criticisms, after cleaning his workshop perimeter, it’s time for this 18 years old boy to rush to his dorm, alone. Because Foxconn city is so big, it can easily take half an hour to get back home. At 21h30, he will only enjoy one hour to empty his head and get a life: calling his family, taking a shower before his dorm lights are turned off. Outside, famous brands like “Lining”, “Baleno”, “Nokia” have been inaugurating there shops for a few weeks and been playing electronic music like hell, in an attempt to attract workers and get the most out of their new purchasing power. Mc Donald is said to arrive soon. Tonight, our friend may be able to sleep, or not. He has one dream: to collect enough money and start a small business, in his home town. “Probably, a phone shop“.On Internet, young Chinese people in the cities enjoy making fun of these mingong life style: they love flashy clothes, fluffy hairstyle, cheesy pop songs, romantic films. On their day off, they are fresh, smiling and positive. At first sight, you would never guess what they endure. Foxconn kids have been assigned to packed dorms with people from different shifts, different workshops, different hometowns, giving them rare occasions to know each other.(below: guards never say goodbye. They just check women’s bags as they leave the workshop after the night shift)However, a friend at China Labour Bulletin recently told me that owing to the pay rise, it was actually the first time he could see a smile on Foxconn’s workers face during their day off.He is right. Once a week, on their day off, owing to their bigger salary, workers are able to treat themselves and enjoy simple pleasures like a funny haircut or a good candy. They like showing up on the bridge upon Foxconn main gate which now looks like a catwalk. Some workers get spiritual and spend their only day off praying together, with the risk of being evangelized by some foolish priest . Some are left alone. But lots of them were willing to talk to us and describe their everyday life… some would mention face-losing punishments : when something is missing on the assembly line, one has to stand up during 6 hours, nose to the wall.All right. Terry Gou, Foxconn CEO and Taiwanese billionaire, has delivered on his promise to increase salary at Longhua: workers now get 3200 yuans per month, including overtime. It’s a very good salary indeed, even better than the salary of graduate people in many cities. The strikes at Honda Foshan and the pressure from Shenzhen and Guangdong governements to prevent any threat to their sacred “Harmonious society” did help. But one have to take into account the sharp rise of food prices in China: +11.7% in November, +10.9% in October.Fragile Foxcoon workers are supposed to be offered psychological support through a hotline phone number. 1/ the calls are not anonymous at all as you must give your name and the number of your workshop BEFORE telling about your problem. 2/Franz Kafka may laugh as these psychologists are simply other workmates who have been offered this unusual position overnight after a quick book training. This leads to unsolvable situations. One worker that we met in a shop said “2 months ago, I mentioned a difficulty to the hotline. The week after, my manager knew about it and said it was no longer his responsibility any more since i had decided to deal with that with the assistants. He has lost his trust in me“.On the other side, a new recruitment center has been built to hire workers for the new factories in Henan or Sichuan where salaries and production costs will be lower. If Foxconn doesn’t change its practices, local governments might eventually do something. Chengdu, which is going to welcome hundred thousands of workers for Foxconn new plant has promised it will reduce hukou disparities between migrants workers and local urban people, given them and their relatives a access to education and health care.And in case any social protest happens, Foxconn will be able to rely on People’s Liberation Army’s support. The folks are setting up a small artillery regiment… just two blocks away from Longhua factory’s main gate. Merry Christmas !SolutionsSome of you will think that it’s always better to have a job than nothing, that these young people will be helpful for their whole family, that it’s worse in Bangladesh, Philippines or in some western suburbs. It’s a blog, it’s my opinion and i am seeing this from a different perspective. If i want to focus on Apple, it’s not for my glory but because i am using this brand which i appreciate very much, like more and more Chinese people here (I live in Beijing but i am always stunned to see the long queues at the Sanlitun village Apple store at 10 am, where a Iphone easily costs a 1 month salary).Apple’s prices are very high (and similar whether you’re Chinese or American), its products are all the same whatever the market and yet, this successful and trendy brand fails to have a global staff strategy. But when it comes to cost cutting, Apple doesn’t mind offering third world treatments.I can understand HP’s position since we all enjoy very cheap hp products (well, apart from cartridges) but for Apple, for all its fuss, its support from the media when the Ipad came out… no. We should make corporate social responsibility a rule and force Steve Jobs to find a supplier who would give visible exemplary working conditions to its production team (not 80 to 100 hours a week). Big companies which build their image through innovation should also innovate in terms of labour practices. Steve Jobs… are you a pioneer or not? Here, we’re back to the old Industrial revolution…(Iron bars on windows are part of Chinese cheap modern architecture to prevent theft. What is new since i first came last May are the extra steel wire (below), the nets and the fences on the roofs).On day off, outside the dorms, Foxconn seems so far away.Brands are now trying to attract Foxconn workers in front of their dormitories, after the 67% pay rises. In May, such events did not exist. These mingong make these phones too… but they won’t get a discount.Here is a fake Foxconn job offer that proposes only 5 working days, no unpaid overtime and bigger basic salary. When we call them they ask for a 500 rmb commission fee … only to bring you at the Foxconn job center.Below: an unregistered home church on the first floor of a gloomy dormitory. The priest is Taiwanese and is traveling from one factory to another to “evangelize” people. In China, religious activities are under the control of the Chinese government, obviously not here.Friends, these pictures are copyright. Please email me first in case you are interested in using/buying them.Here is my short video teaser with French subtitles, a short introduction of the La Viestory, that appears on their website You will note in the video how a underground home church looks like or that a 18 years old worker can make up to 3000 iphones a day. Not more, it’s only a teaser* the original title of my blog post was “Why I don’t want a Iphone for christmas” but i decided to change it on December 26th after receiving dozens of insults from Apple addicts. However, it is a personnal blog post, where i am free to express my opinion. I still believe Foxconn is definitely not a nice place for a Chinese educated teenagers to live and work. I have been working in China for 2 years and a half. Like ALL correspondents, I like traveling with an interpreter. No only when it comes to use cantonese or a dialect but because this person will help to establish friendship and confidence between me and the worker who has probably never met a “laowai” (= foreigner) before.* 2015 January. I changed the headline again, from “For Foxconn workers, money doesn’t buy happiness” which didn’t really make sense to “The hard life of a Chinese high-tech labour worker”. Since this post, I went 3 times again to Foxconn, in Shenzhen, Chongqing and Chengdu. And explain in it a book called “Le Tigre et le Moucheron: sur les traces de Chinois indociles” (Nov. 2014 – Les Arènes)Source: The hard life of a Chinese high-tech labour worker37 Facts about sweatshops worldwideNo one likes to pay too much for the things they need, but the desire to save money from a consumer perspective and the greed that is seen from a manufacturer’s perspective has led to the creation of the modern sweatshop. Sweatshops can be defined by three primary characteristics: low pay, long hours, and unhealthy working conditions.In the United States, a sweatshop is defined by the US Department of Labor as a factory that violates a minimum of two current labor laws.Facts You Didn’t Know About SweatshopsThe modern sweatshop does not have to be inside of a building. In the agricultural industry, where many immigrants are employed, working conditions include all day hours under hot sunshine with wages that may be below the minimum wage. The problem with sweatshops is this: those who work in them typically have no other option because of their current life circumstances.An estimated 250 million children ages 5 to 14 are forced to work in sweatshops in developing countries.Products that commonly come from sweatshops are clothing, coffee, shoes, toys, chocolate, rugs, and bananas.The price increase to the average consumer if sweatshop salaries were doubled: 1.8%.Consumers say that they would be willing to spend 15% more, on average, to guarantee workers wouldn’t need to work in sweatshop conditions.The people who are forced to work in sweatshops must usually spend the majority of their paycheck on food in order for their household to survive.Women sewing NBA jerseys make 24 cents per garment – an item that will eventually sell for $140 or more.In 2000, more than 11,000 sweatshops in the US violated the minimum wage and overtime laws.The percentage of sweatshop employees that are women: up to 90%.The issue with the modern sweatshop is that many people are not aware that they currently exist. There are tragic stories that hit the news every so often, but with the amount of violence that is also included in the news, this social injustice barely registers on the average person’s radar. That’s not to say that they have fault in the creation of a sweatshop. It just means that we all need to do a better job of being aware of poor working conditions and low pay so that everyone can have a chance to chase their own dreams.What Are The Average Wages of Workers?Numerous nations around the world are thought to have active sweatshops in the apparel industry that are currently operating.In Bangladesh, the average worker’s hourly wage is just US$0.13, which is the lowest in the world.The average worker’s hourly wage in Vietnam: $0.26.Only 4 out of the top 10 nations that have the highest number of suspected sweatshops have an hourly wage that exceeds $1 per hour.Costa Rica has the highest average hourly wages for apparel workers at $2.38 per hour.It takes an apparel worker in a sweatshop an average of working 70 hours per week to exceed the average income for their country.Apparel workers in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua earn 3 to 7 times the national average.Comparable wages only mean that someone has enough to get by. Although some nations have emphasized the removal of sweatshops and this has led to a natural increase in the amount of money that workers can make, there are still nations that barely provide their workers any money at all. If someone from the working poor in Bangladesh is only making $.13 an hour, then that is an effective life sentence. They can do nothing else because all of their money goes to support basic living conditions. In the United States, we have households who also make around the average and they need basic service supports just to make ends meet. Imagine not having any basic service supports available to you and that’s what the sweatshop worker faces every day.Why Do We Need to Support An End to Sweatshops?Children are as young as 6 or 7 years old when they start working at a sweatshop for up to 16 hours per day.In Asia, children as young as 5 were found to work from 6 in the morning until 7 at night for less than 20 cents per day.A shirt that sells in the United States for $60 can cost less than 10 cents in labor.In India, between 5% – 30% of the 340 million children under the age of 16 are estimated to fall under the definition of child labor.In Latin America, the proportion of children under the age of 16, working in sweatshops, is estimated to be between 10% – 25%.The Department of Labor indicates that 50% of garment factories in the U.S. violate two or more basic labor laws, establishing them as sweatshops.1 million jobs have been moved away from the US since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.Many Nike sweatshop workers die by the age of 15, which is acclaimed correct by the ASSL League.Clothing, shoes, coffee, chocolate, bananas, and toys are the most common commodities produced in sweatshops.Think about the clothing you have on right now. If you have a national brand name, then there’s a good chance that your garment was created in a sweatshop from overseas. For a child who can make four of those clothing items per hour at $.20 per hour, the stark reality is that the retail price of your clothing paid that child five cents. What can you do with five cents? Not a whole lot. Even in developing nations, five cents doesn’t do much. This is why we need to support an end to sweatshops everywhere they exist. It doesn’t matter that a majority of people make earn less than two dollars per day. By giving these workers fair opportunities, they can create more opportunities within their local communities. That is how we can build up our world economy.Can We Reach Those Who Need Help?It is estimated that 1.3 million children in Bangladesh are working full-time in order to help support their families.The number of children in Bangladesh who have never enrolled in school: 1.5 million.85% of sweatshop workers are young women between the ages of 15-25.Women are often fired from sweatshops if they become pregnant because maternity leave equates to an unproductive worker.A study in 2000 found that 98% of Los Angeles garment factories violated workplace health and safety standards.The average manufacturing wage in China is just $0.64 per hour.Sometimes workers are forced to be active for 48 hours straight and any breaks that are allowed are required sleep breaks.The problem of sweatshops isn’t just an international problem. It is something that happens in every country on the planet. This is the problem that capitalism represents. There are laws in place to prevent the exploitation of workers, but we must be able to reach those workers in order to improve conditions. When one out of every two factories is believed to be out of compliance in the United States and defined as a sweatshop, that’s a problem. When only 2% of garment factories in Los Angeles are in compliance with workplace health and safety standards, that’s a problem. This isn’t the 19th century anymore. There are no excuses. Taking advantage of people who are trying to earn a fair living, combined with our own needs to have cheap garments and other products, has created this problem. If the conditions of sweatshops are going to change, then the first change that may need to be made is within our own buying choices.How Bad Have Sweatshops Become?In 1999, the average American family of four spent $1,831 on apparel.The total amount of that $1,831 that went to the wages of workers who created the apparel: $55.The salaries of apparel workers between 1968-1999 had an inflation-adjusted 16% drop.There are about 12.3 million people annually who are subjected to forced slave labor at any given time.The Department of State reveals that 40% of workers in some fishing industries are under the age of 18.It isn’t up to everyone else take action. We need to take action. Some companies have been supporting sweatshops for over two decades and we still continue to purchase products from them. We are the ones who are creating a market for sweatshop products. If the average person is willing to spend at least 15% more on items so that workers can get a fair living wage, then we don’t have to wait to begin that process. We can start focusing our purchasing habits on materials and goods that have been created in conditions that are favorable to workers right now. If we all come together to do this, we can put the sweatshops of the business for good.Source: 37 Shocking Sweatshop Statistics - BrandonGaille.comChinese workers can face serious work hazards and abuse. In Hebei Province in northern China, a worker dragged a barrel in a chemical factory. CreditOded Balilty/Associated PressGUANGZHOU, China — Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world — often under considerable criticism and consumer pressure — began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labor conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labor rights groups.The groups say some Chinese companies routinely shortchange their employees on wages, withhold health benefits and expose their workers to dangerous machinery and harmful chemicals, like lead, cadmium and mercury.“If these things are so dangerous for the consumer, then how about the workers?” said Anita Chan, a labor rights advocate who teaches at the Australian National University. “We may be dealing with these things for a short time, but they deal with them every day.”And so while American and European consumers worry about exposing their children to Chinese-made toys coated in lead, Chinese workers, often as young as 16, face far more serious hazards. Here in the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong, for example, factory workers lose or break about 40,000 fingers on the job every year, according to a study published a few years ago by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.Pushing to keep big corporations honest, labor groups regularly smuggle photographs, videos, pay stubs, shipping records and other evidence out of factories that they say violate local law and international worker standards. In 2007, factories that supplied more than a dozen corporations, including Wal-Mart, Disney and Dell, were accused of unfair labor practices, including using child labor, forcing employees to work 16-hour days on fast-moving assembly lines, and paying workers less than minimum wage. (Minimum wage in this part of China is about 55 cents an hour.)In recent weeks, a flood of reports detailing labor abuse have been released, at a time when China is still coping with last year’s wave of product safety recalls of goods made in China, and as it tries to change workplace rules with a new labor law that took effect on Jan. 1.No company has come under as harsh a spotlight as Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, which sourced about $9 billion in goods from China in 2006, everything from hammers and toys to high-definition televisions.In December, two nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, documented what they said were abuse and labor violations at 15 factories that produce or supply goods for Wal-Mart — including the use of child labor at Huanya Gifts, a factory here in Guangzhou that makes Christmas tree ornaments.Wal-Mart officials say they are investigating the allegations, which were in a report issued three weeks ago by the National Labor Committee, a New York-based NGO.PhotoA dormitory at a steel company in the provinces.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York TimesGuangzhou labor bureau officials said they recently fined Huanya for wage violations, but also said they found no evidence of child labor.A spokesman for Huanya, which employs 8,000 workers, denied that the company broke any labor laws.But two workers interviewed outside Huanya’s huge complex in late December said that they were forced to work long hours to meet production quotas in harsh conditions.“I work on the plastic molding machine from 6 in the morning to 6 at night,” said Xu Wenquan, a tiny, baby-faced 16-year-old whose hands were covered with blisters. Asked what had happened to his hands, he replied, the machines are “quite hot, so I’ve burned my hands.”His brother, Xu Wenjie, 18, said the two young men left their small village in impoverished Guizhou Province four months ago and traveled more than 500 miles to find work at Huanya.The brothers said they worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, for $120 to $200 a month, far less than they are required to be paid by law.When government inspectors visit the factory, the young brothers are given the day off, they said.A former Huanya employee who was reached by telephone gave a similar account of working conditions, saying many workers suffered from skin rashes after working with gold powders and that others were forced to sign papers “volunteering” to work overtime.“It’s quite noisy, and you stand up all day, 12 hours, and there’s no air-conditioning,” he said. “We get paid by the piece we make but they never told us how much. Sometimes I got $110, sometimes I got $150 a month.”In its 58-page report, the National Labor Committee scolded Wal-Mart for not doing more to protect workers. The group charged that last July, Huanya recruited about 500 16-year-old high school students to work seven days a week, often 15 hours a day, during peak production months for holiday merchandise.Several students interviewed at the Guangzhou Technical School, less than two miles from Huanya, confirmed that classmates ages 16 to 18 had spent the summer working at the factory.PhotoA worker recycling batteries at a factory in Fuyang, China. A labor law that took effect on Jan. 1 has provisions to protect workers.CreditJianan Yu/ReutersSome high school students later went on strike to protest the harsh conditions, the report said. The students also told labor officials that at least seven children, as young as 12 years old, were working in the factory.“At Wal-Mart, Christmas ornaments are cheap, and so are the lives of the young workers in China who make them,” the National Labor Committee report said.Jonathan Dong, a Wal-Mart spokesman in Beijing, said the company would soon release details of its own investigation into working conditions at Huanya.Labor rights groups have also criticized Disney and Dell. Officials of Disney and Dell declined to comment on specific allegations, but both companies say they carefully monitor factories in China and take action when they find problems or unfair labor practices.“The Walt Disney Company and its affiliates take claims of unfair labor practices very seriously and investigates any such allegations thoroughly,” the company said in a statement. “We have a strong commitment to the safety and well-being of workers, and fair and just labor standards.”Many multinationals were harshly criticized in the 1990s for using suppliers that maintained sweatshop conditions. Iconic brand names, like Nike, Mattel and Gap, responded by forming corporate social responsibility operations and working with contractors to create a system of factory audits and inspections. Those changes have won praise in some quarters for improving worker conditions.But despite spending millions of dollars and hiring thousands of auditors, some companies acknowledge that many of the programs are flawed.“The factories have improved immeasurably over the past few years,” says Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of the toy maker Hasbro and co-chairman of Care, the ethical-manufacturing program of the International Council of Toy Industries. “But let me be honest: there are some bad factories. We have bribery and corruption occurring but we are doing our best.”Some factories are warned about audits beforehand and some factory owners or managers bribe auditors. Inexperienced inspectors may also be a problem.PhotoWorkers at a toy factory in Guangzhou. Although some companies have won praise for labor efforts begun after outcries against sweatshops in the 1990s, critics say more change in needed.CreditTimothy O’Rourke for The New York TimesSome major Western auditing firms working in China even hire college students from the United States to work during the summer as inspectors, an indication that they are not willing to invest in more expensive or sophisticated auditing programs, critics say.Chinese suppliers regularly outsource to other suppliers, who may in turn outsource to yet another operation, creating a supply chain that is hard to follow — let alone inspect.“The convoluted supply chain is probably one of the most underestimated and unrecognized risks in China,” says Dane Chamorro, general manager for Greater China at Control Risks, a risk-consulting firm. “You really have to have experienced people on the ground who know what they’re doing and know the language.”Many labor experts say part of the problem is cost: Western companies are constantly pressing their Chinese suppliers for lower prices while also insisting that factory owners spend more to upgrade operations, treat workers properly and improve product quality.At the same time, rising food, energy and raw material costs in China — as well as a shortage of labor in the biggest southern manufacturing zones — are hampering factory owners’ ability to make a profit.The situation may get worse before it improves. The labor law that took effect on Jan. 1 makes it more difficult to dismiss workers and creates a whole new set of laws that experts say will almost certainly increase labor costs. Yet it may become more difficult for human rights groups to investigate abuses. Concerned about the growing array of threats to profitability, as well as embarrassing exposés, factories are heightening security, harassing labor rights groups and calling the police when journalists show up at their gates.At the center of the problem is a labor system that relies on young migrant workers, who often leave small rural villages for two- or three-year stints at factories, where they hope to earn enough to return home to start families.As long as life in the cities promises more money than in rural areas, they will brave the harsh conditions in factories in this and other Chinese cities. And as long as China outlaws independent unions and proves unable to enforce its own labor rules, there is little hope for change.“This is a problem that has been difficult to solve,” Liu Kaiming, the director of the Institute on Contemporary Observation, which aids migrant workers in nearby Shenzhen, said of sweatshop labor. “China has too many factories. The workers’ bargaining position is weak and the government’s regulation is slack.”There is little that any Western company can do about those issues, no matter how seriously they take corporate social responsibility — other than leaving China.Source: In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low PayWhat China could have been: Deng Xiaoping, Mao, and building a socialist society by Alexander Finnegan on Posts

I love living in the United States. So here's what I don't like about it. I wanna throw the kitchen sink at this one.American food is nasty, unhealthy, and really screwing up the population.- Just walk through a typical grocery store. 80% of the food comes in boxes and cans, with way too much sodium, starch, and corn syrup (Unhealthiest Foods You Could Ever Buy At the Supermarket | Reader's Digest). Soda consumption is disastrously high (Amount of soda consumption in children is 'astounding,' CDC finds). The five most popular restaurants are McDonald's, Subway, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Wendy's (Most popular fast-food chains: 3. Subway 2. Starbucks 1. ?).- The predictable consequence is a massive obesity epidemic (America's obesity epidemic reaches record high, new report says). Diabetes is skyrocketing (CDC Press Releases), along with numerous other ailments, doing serious damage to the American health care system (The Healthcare Costs of Obesity).- Health care costs are being increasingly socialized, which isn't necessarily bad. But a lot of attempts to bring sanity to the American diet are quickly shot down (Chicago’s soda tax is repealed), even in very left-leaning areas. In other words, many millions of people fight for their freedom to eat terrible food, and then pass the costs of their decisions off to the rest of society.- Maybe I'm blaming the individual too much. Let's not forget there's a massive agricultural and food lobby that has coopted the government. Toxic food is subsidized by the federal government (How the Government Supports Your Junk Food Habit) to the tune of several billion a year (while people talk about "free markets" and "free choice").- Also, the federal government effectively pays people to eat this crap as well, by having few restrictions on SNAP (food stamp) benefits (Get the junk food out of SNAP). A lot of smaller stores set up in poor neighborhoods, sell absolute garbage food, and advertise that they take WIC benefits.- Finally, the amount of food that gets wasted, estimated at like 1/3 of total food produced. Makes me a little sick to my stomach. (USDA | OCE | U.S. Food Waste Challenge | FAQ's)Culture is very balkanized and tends to be lowbrow.- Most Americans live in narrow cultural bubbles, with minimal common cultural touch-points (Americans Are 'Living In Bubbles With Thicker And Thicker Walls,' Former NPR Chief Says). Probably even worse than it was 30 years ago. There are innumerable niches and corners of the internet that are basically total cesspools, empowering every point-of-view and hobby, for better or worse. I have a lot more access to different information and hobbies than I did when I was a kid, but at the same time, if I meet a random American person, the chances of us having many common touch-points are much lower than they used to be (Everybody's in a Bubble, and That's a Problem).- Vulgarity becomes more and more acceptable (https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-10-11/do-we-swear-too-much). Manners become more and more informal (Why American Workers Now Dress So Casually). I'm not that old and I've seen it happen year by year. Older people used to tell me to stand up straight and would correct my English when I was a kid. TV shows like The Simpsons were really pushing the envelope of decorum. Now, profanity, broken grammar, and informality proliferate from top (you know who I'm talking about...) to bottom (Why Your Kids Are Ruder Than You Were). I think this is more of a negative than a positive.- The gatekeepers have collapsed. First-person shooter games, Duck Dynasty-type TV shows, hard-core pornography, political extremism, and many other things become more and more out in the open. Churches used to be kind of a bulwark against such coarsening of the public sphere (I'm atheist btw), but Protestantism is increasingly associated with right-wing reactionary politics (How the Bible Belt lost God and found Trump, Mainline churches are emptying. The political effects could be huge.), and Catholicism is a punch line of pedophilia and cover-ups there of that go up to the Pope (The unbearable ugliness of the Catholic Church). Religion is completely losing its moral authority to the average person, with nothing stepping in to replace it.3-4 competing groups control the govt., all of them kind of suck- Trumpian right. Flagrant disregard for objective truth, political norms, upright behavior, or any human being outside of their insular and rabid bubble. Making a mockery of religion and social values they claim to uphold.- Neoconservative right. Constant push for more military spending (more on this later), along with cynical exploitation of social issues to form a voting coalition that will support massive budget deficits and handouts to the top 5% of society. Initiated biggest American disaster since Vietnam, and somehow learned nothing.- Corporate Democrat left. Acts extremely progressive and sanctimonious, until actual progressives come along. Elitist coastal insiders with little grasp on middle America. Ultimately, more-than-willing to give paid speeches to Goldman Sachs and align with neocons if it gives them a perceived tactical advantage.- Progressive grassroots left. Well-intentioned, wish list is the biggest example of scope creep I've ever seen in my life. Actual policies would mostly be counterproductive to stated intentions, although I can cut them some slack on the healthcare front. Almost as bad as the Trumpian right when it comes to "dog-whistling" on social issues, except in reverse. Any sphere of life that has too many men or white people is viewed with suspicion.- Overall, there is very little support for slight tax increases, slight spending cuts (especially to military), and trimming down regulation so that the American economy can continue to power forward, without the risk of being torpedoed by an enormous budget deficit. People either want to destroy critical programs that we already have, or create massive, unnecessary new ones. I feel like the last conservative Democrat (or liberal Republican?) left out here (What are the key points of the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan?).U.S. wastes enormous resources trying to be a world military power.- Iraq invasion cost about $72 quadrillion (not a real number… Financial cost of the Iraq War - Wikipedia). Overall military budget is basically equal to the rest of the word put together (U.S. Military Spending vs. the World). Why not just take that money and tell DARPA (How DARPA, The Secretive Agency That Invented The Internet, Is Working To Reinvent It) to improve solar power and self-driving cars? Surely it couldn't be worse than bombing children in Yemen (How the U.S. Is Making the War in Yemen Worse) and kowtowing to the worst dictatorship within 5,000 miles (Why is the USA allied with Saudi Arabia?) for the sake of shaving $0.50 a gallon off the price of gas.- NATO expansion another short-sighted move (NATO Expansion: Strategic Genius or Historic Mistake?). Just adds more countries to the list of client states who we have to financially support with our bloated military budget. I’m not saying pull out of our commitments now, but it was the typical Washington Consensus viewpoint that created them in the first place.- People always say that Israel is our best ally in the Middle East, but very unclear to me what they actually do for us (Why does the US support Israel? What benefit does the US get out of this alliance?). We basically give billions of dollars annually to other dictatorships to "thank" them for not destroying Israel (The U.S. gives Egypt $1.5 billion a year in aid. Here’s what it does., ).- Billions upon billions of dollars just vanish on overhead and inefficiency (Pentagon buried study that found $125 billion in wasteful spending:...). The military does ???? with them. Weapons programs focus on an increasingly obsolete form of warfare in any case. Cyber-warfare and robotics (The Rise Of The Robots: What The Future Holds For The World’s Armies) are really the future, not bigger battleships and better tanks.College administrators are robbing the country blind, have helped ruin a generation of naive students.- As government spending on education increases, administrators divert the proceeds to frivolous campus improvements (Are lazy rivers and climbing walls driving up the cost of college?) and overpaid, unnecessary administrative positions (U.S. Colleges: Where Does The Money Go?) -- many of them mandated by obscure government regulation. Actual education fails to improve (Our Colleges Are Getting Worse—Three Proposals to Help Save Them - Minding The Campus), and college affordability continues to get worse (The Cost of College Is Out Of Hand... And Getting Worse - The Finance Twins).- People act live it's a civil right to major in English, Women's Studies, Comparative Literature, and whatever other economically unviable crap that ultimately gets supported by the federal government's student loan program (Liberal Arts vs. Career Majors: What’s an Education For?). There’s little relationship between the aid that is given out and the quality of the school and content that it goes towards. Additionally, in the long term, it is women and minorities who suffer the most when student loans are given to attend marginal colleges, and/or to major in marginal programs (The White-Black Gap in Student Debt Grows Massively After Graduation).- It's now likely going to cost society a great deal of money to bail everyone out of this situation (Student Loan Debt Statistics In 2018: A $1.5 Trillion Crisis). Unfortunately, the federal government has assumed responsibility for most outstanding student loan debt, which of course has zero chance of blowing up into a debt crisis (The US government holds more than $875 billion in student loan debt). Not to mention, it's pretty unseemly for tens of millions of citizens to be in debt bondage to their own government (U.S. Government Officials Play Hardball On Student Loan Defaults).- The primary school system incentivizes people to create overpriced, over-manicured suburbs and enclaves (Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School). A lot of people forced to move to these places if they want decent education for their kids.- You basically can't live in any big city and send your kid to a decent public school. At the very least, it's difficult and very expensive (). School quality correlates greatly with wealth, home size, property tax rates, and general housing prices. Thus, you are forced to pay a lot in most cases to have your child go to a decent school.- Because only certain kinds of neighborhoods and houses exist in a lot of these towns, it basically drives a lot of other life decisions around this one thing (Just because some millennials are moving to the ‘burbs doesn’t mean they like it). A number of people I know who lived in Chicago moved out for basically this one reason -- they liked Chicago and would have been happy to stay, but school considerations make it impossible unless you're practically a millionaire.- Let's not even talk about the arms race to get your kid into college (How Big Data Makes Applying to College Tougher, Crueler, and Ever More Expensive, Colleges' own recruiting may push students to spread applications around). The number of high quality universities is the same as it was 50-100 years ago, but the number of kids trying to get in is drastically higher. I’m glad I’m not 17 right now.- Finally, a transit system has grown up around this geographic sorting that forces people into car ownership, at tremendous economic costs (Why the High Cost of Big-City Living Is Bad for Everyone). It's terrific that Americans can afford so many cars, but the amount of wealth squandered in this sector is enormous, and we could all be a lot richer now if this money had gone to more productive uses over the past 50 years (The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life).Best jobs are highly concentrated in a few specific cities. Second-tier cities are being cannibalized.- Don't want to live in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, or Houston? It's getting harder and harder for people in mid-sized cities to keep up. Result is a dangerous geographical concentration of wealth and income (Is Ronald Reagan to blame for the decline of St. Louis? Some experts think so., Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest).- True, there are some quite wealthy people in rural communities or small towns, but there is also more cronyism, and these places don't tend to be the nexus of economic growth. And on average, these places are not as prosperous.Americans tend to be financially illiterate.- I live in a working-class neighborhood. The kind of place that has bleh schools, okay paying jobs, etc. The kind of place that people love to champion as a neighborhood that's falling behind. Yet I see people blowing money on such dumb crap that it's hard to keep my head straight. Example is people spending thousands of dollars on fireworks for the 4th and setting them off for days at a time, basically lighting their own scarce money on fire. And then the same people are saying it's tough to make it in America these days.- The savings rate is incredibly low (Opinion | Why has the personal savings rate declined so dramatically?). Yet there are almost as many cars as people (List of countries by vehicles per capita - Wikipedia), the average square footage of a house has skyrocketed (Housing Trends Since 1950: The Difference Will Shock You), and people go out to eat drastically more often than they used to (90% of Americans don't like to cook—and it's costing them thousands each year). In other words, Americans spend much more money on luxuries than they used to, even if they cannot afford it.- Financial illiteracy caused the Great Recession, and is likely to cause a student debt crisis before long. Because of this, everyone has to suffer the consequences, including many of those people who do the right things. But there’s little effort to make things better (States Miss Opportunity On Teaching Financial Literacy).- Basically, a lot if not most Americans blow every dollar they come across. And I'm pretty sure a lot of people who dream about the glory days of [[insert year here when jobs were easy to find]] would get their ass handed to them if they actually had to go back and live in those days (Let's Not Kid Ourselves. There Were No "Good Ol' Days" of Retirement Saving.).American drug use is out of control.- Cocaine, heroin, narcotics, etc. are used way more here than in many places. (America leads the world in drug overdose deaths — by a lot, Compared with Europe, American teens have high rates of illicit drug use)- I know we're supposed to feel sorry for people who are addicted, but their actions are diving a marketplace that has destroyed the core of numerous American cities, bloats our health care and Social Security disability costs, and facilitates drug wars in Mexico that kill tens of thousands of people annually (Guns and Drugs: How US Policies Destroy Our Inner Cities and the Third World). I do have sympathy for drug addicts, but I also have sympathy for everyday working people, for people being tortured by cartels, and so on.- You also see this with the huge numbers of homeless people in large cities. By and large, I feel sorry for them and they don't affect me personally to the point where I sit around and complain about them. But it's not a great mood enhancer to walk past numerous homeless people on a daily basis as I head to work and back.Gangs have destroyed many large cities, exacerbating other problems of poor schools, forced car ownership and suburban lifestyle, etc.- I'm not here to blame people. A lot of people blame toxic cultural forces. A lot of people blame the legacy of racism and police brutality. In the meantime, cities are being destroyed, and in the case of the place like Detroit, it ultimately has tangible direct costs on the rest of society.- Many, if not most of murders in the United States are tied to gangs and the drug trade (The Single Best Anti-Gun-Death Policy? Ending the Drug War). Using common sense, I suspect the number is over 50%, but there really aren’t the best statistics on this (Are Chicago Murders All Gang-Related?).- More prosaically, millions of people in the U.S. commute an extra 10-20 miles to work on a daily basis because of this urban blight. They pay more for housing than they otherwise would, to avoid the terrible school districts that result. Carbon emissions are much higher because of the extra driving that transpires. Money is diverted from investment and innumerable other uses to prop up failing schools and neighborhoods, that are dragged down by neighborhoods that are too violent to prosper. There are not many aspects of society and the economy that are not seriously harmed by the drug and violence problems in the U.S.Media is kind of a joke, especially on TV.- If I see the word "BOMBSHELL!!!" one more time, I'm going to puke.- MSNBC and CNN basically exist to parrot the Democratic Party line. Fox News basically exists to parrot the Republican Party line. All of them use sensationalistic coverage and "shoot first, aim later" standards of coverage. It's little more than competing fountainheads of propaganda.- Forget about other channels. History Channel shows no history. The Learning Channel shows no learning. And so on.Everyone calls it "America" instead of the United States- Maybe it's just semantics, but the name of the country is the "U.S.", "United States", "U.S.A.", not "America". America is the name of two different continents.- "America" just encourages grandiose thinking about American exceptionalism and nationalism and is subtly very harmful on both fronts (The Tragedy of the American Military).- Also encourages nationalistic / federal-level thinking, and not thinking of the U.S. as a collection of 50 states with their own laws and values, governments, etc.Prison System is too hard on minor offenders, too lenient on violent criminals- People get ridiculous time for minor stuff (Too many laws, too many prisoners), and conversely people are getting like 10-20 years for murder, high-level drug trafficking, or serious sexual assault violations (Sentences for Violent Criminals Are Too Short, Thanks to Criminal Justice ‘Reform’). Priorities are completely backwards.- Having time on your record is a scarlet letter on the outside. Almost begging for recidivism (It’s Hard For People With Criminal Records To Get A Job–This New Job Site Can Help).- I don't really blame this for a lot of the other drug and gang problems, but it doesn't help. There is definitely a lot of public support and private profit to be gained from locking people up, that is wasteful in the long run.Immigration system is too hard on productive, skilled workers. Too easy on illegal migrants.- Wait time for highly educated immigrants from India and China to advance through the process is like 10 years (Indians applying for Green Card have 12-year waiting list). A lot of them have to leave the country after losing visa lotteries, even though they would be a clear benefit to the economy. Even if they can come, they are often restricted to a single company, which creates incentives to underpay them and use them to undercut American workers — basically corrupt all around and favors tech giants with political pull (Trump Is Right: Silicon Valley Is Using H-1B Visas To Pay Low Wages To Immigrants). Countries like Canada can then gain an edge by basing their immigration systems more directly on merit (Indian techies look to Canada as the American Dream turns into an H-1B nightmare).- I support argument for allowing unskilled, illegal workers to apply for legal status (not citizenship) if they have been in the country for many years and not committed crimes. But more and more, I see people attacking the very concept of immigration laws (“No human being is illegal” signs, etc.) and enforcement whatsoever ("Abolish ICE" shows how far left Democrats have moved on immigration). And enforcement measures that have been around for the longest, are suddenly being sensationalized because Donald Trump is the President (Obama Has Deported More People Than Any Other President).- The lottery system is the biggest joke to me. We randomly draw names out of a hat, based on almost nothing, and allow a few lucky people to immigrate to United States based on that. How does that help us build a 21st century economy in any way? (Opinion | Why the ‘Diversity Lottery’ Needs to End)The gross over-regimentation of the American childhood- Helicopter parenting, this activity, that activity, this club, that sport. Not for everyone, but for a large number of kids out there, everything is scheduled. Just to focus on soccer, for example, one reason the U.S. fails to produce world class soccer talent is because it's the kind of activity where a little league teams plays precisely between 4-5, running precisely these drills, which is counter to how kids really learn a sport.- The problem is, once a critical mass of kids are being signed up for all of these activities, it forces everyone else to go along. Once most kids aren't just randomly playing sandlot baseball or whatever -- it makes it that much harder for the remaining kids to live that kind of childhood. It's another one of those things where everybody does something because everybody else is doing it.- In extreme cases, letting your kid walk to the grocery store, or walk to school alone when they are deemed "too young", can attract phone calls and police attention.Medical and legal system force people to live final days in complete agony- Medical system wastes tremendous resources on hopeless care, that does more harm than good to the patients receiving it. Massive political pushback against attempts to rationalize this, from both sides of the political aisle, up to and including “death panels” fearmongering and so on. (How We Spend $3,400,000,000,000)- Very few places allow people to voluntary end their own lives (Death with Dignity Acts - States That Allow Assisted Death). Of course, there are always ways to do it, but the illegality of it definitely sets a tone.- Default option in the medical system is to prolong life, even if that life is miserable. For example, “Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation, or PMV, is a condition of permanent dependence on machines. It is much more common in the elderly, and as the population ages and more elderly patients are at risk for respiratory failure, more patients will be placed on breathing machines, unlikely ever to be freed from them.... These patients live permanently connected to life-prolonging machines by tubes surgically placed into their necks and stomachs. Most will never get out of bed again, eat independently, or talk. Their arms will be tied down in order to prevent tubes from becoming dislodged. This is how they will live until they die.” (Pricey Technology Is Keeping People Alive Who Don’t Want to Live)Sports championships come down to 90% luck, because playoff system in every sport gets bloated.- This is probably my least important complaint, but good God do American sports leagues love to have bloated playoff systems.- In baseball, the better team wins a game about 55-60% of the time. So basically, they spend 6 months playing a large number of games to figure out who the best team is. In the past, the two best teams would then play in the World Series. Now they have 10 teams in the playoffs, which given the nature of the sport, almost guarantees that the "champion" will be "whatever decent team got lucky a couple of times in the playoffs" and bears a pretty passing relationship to who is actually the best team. Same in football, hockey, soccer. They even ruined NASCAR a few years ago with this "Chase for the Cup" nonsense. (Why it’s so much harder to predict winners in hockey than basketball)

I was only nine years old when I became sick. I felt oddly, experienced anxiety, and took unnecessarily huge breaths. (Even as I type this, I am taking large breaths. I sometimes feel as though the air I breathe in doesn’t meet my lungs.) I was taken to the doctor, but that of course did me no good. My body was not sick, I had a sickness of the mind. The doctor diagnosed my with a urinary tract infection, and prescribed me cranberry juice. I still don’t know why I was diagnosed as such, but I was.From that point on in my life, I’ve been one mental struggle after another. When I was ten, I became obsessed with eyelashes. Specifically, I would pull out my own eyelashes and stick them in my eye. Later, I would pull them out of my eye, and put them back in again. It sounds creepy when I type it out, but trust me, it made a lot of sense at the time.When I was eleven, my obsessions shifted to choking - or rather, the fear of it. Anything with fiber was off-limits to me. I eliminated lettuce, oatmeal, and popcorn fairly early on. (To this day, I struggle to eat popcorn, and I have never swallowed even the smallest pill.) As the weeks turned into months, I ruled out mango in smoothies, blueberries, and even melted cheese - foods that used to bring me great joy.My mother was concerned, so she took me to another doctor. By now, we were living in Korea, and the doctor there decided I needed an endoscopy. I was reassured by my family that there was nothing to it, you just get put under and you wake up when the procedure is finished. I showed up to the hospital, had an IV put in, and dressed in a gown. As I waited, I saw into a room where someone else was receiving an endoscopy. I could see the camera’s view on a screen, and how the person’s throat moved when they coughed hoarsely. This was my first sign that something was amiss - the person was awake! The doctor came out to see us, and in his broken English, explained the procedure to my mother. I would be conscious the whole time, he explained, but I’d be fine. Mind you, I had a phobia of choking, and he was going to stick a camera down my conscious throat. I asked him how large the camera was, and he said not very large. About the size of his pinky finger. His pinky finger. His man -sized pinky finger, which must have been two inches long. At this point, I believe I began to cry. I begged my mother to not make me. I promised to eat. Please, mom, don’t make me have a camera go down my throat. I was so scared. God bless my mom. She, too, didn’t like the feel of the whole thing, and told the doctor we’d pass. My IV was removed, I got dressed again, and I went home. I kept trying to eat. Unbeknownst to any of us, I was already anorexic.Somewhere along the way, while I was eleven, anorexia set in for good. I have very few memories from this time. Weeks, maybe months, passed in a haze of sickness. I was afraid of choking. I was afraid of throwing up. I was close to death.I dipped below seventy pounds at one point, which for me was horrible. I had never been ‘fat’, only rosy-cheeked and fairly built. I was the poster child for healthy weight for my height, and I used to weigh somewhere around ninety pounds. Dipping below seventy pounds was a reality check for all of us.I didn’t eat much, and I drank even less. I seem to recall going almost three days without water at one point. I almost passed out twice. I couldn’t leave the apartment, because I was afraid I would throw up. I lived my life in fear.I was taken back to America for our annual summer vacation, in hopes that being back home would strengthen me. Surprise, surprise - it didn’t. I was taken to a hospital, where I believe I was diagnosed for the first time. Anorexia. In hindsight, no kidding. Of course I had anorexia.I was given my meals, which were actually pretty good. The granola was a little dry, and the tuna salad didn’t have enough mayo. Otherwise, it was good. I would have eaten it. Honest, I would have. But I had a sore in the back of my throat, a small bump that made swallowing painful. I wished for ice cream, but my doctor didn’t believe in sweets. I was given Boost as a meal replacement when I failed to finish my meals. The Boost tasted horrible, so I didn’t drink it. Big mistake. I had unwittingly earned myself the worst punishment of all - a feeding tube.I already had an IV in. My I had to receive a feeding tube was beyond me. I didn’t want it. I was afraid of how it would feel. I cried and begged and pleaded, screaming for my mother, my father, anyone. They were nowhere to be found. I was left screaming and hysterical in my hospital room, where several nurses pinned me to my bed. I was spoken harshly to by my doctor, as if it was all my fault. All my fault. (I admit, I am crying as I type this. I didn’t think I still cared so much.) The feeding tube was forced down my nose, and it was even worse than I ever could have imagined. I had a very, very sensitive gag reflex, and the tube felt like swallowing a straw. They inserted it improperly the first time, probably due to my thrashing around. They took it out to reinsert it, and I begged for them to leave it out. I would drink the Boost, I would eat the food, I would. Honestly, I would! Just don’t, please don’t - I was cut short by the reinsertion of the tube.The nurses left me gagging on my new enemy. My body fought to retch up the tube, to free its stomach and throat from this rubber invasion. The tube stayed. For a couple of days, I was hysterical. I wanted someone to hang out with me, so I screamed. i screamed for my mother, I screamed for my brother, I screamed for a nurse - for anyone. My screams woke every sick child in the children’s ward. Babies cried. Nurses scolded me. They said that my parents couldn’t visit me if I screamed any more. I screamed louder. The nurses said they would come visit me if I was quiet. I calmed down my hysteria enough to breathe, but no one came. I called for the nurses, softly at first, and then louder. I had been quiet. I was being quiet why didn’t they come? Hysteria set in once again.They drugged me down. The drugs were the best part of my day - they consisted of a small, yellow tablet that dissolved in my mouth. It tasted like feathery pineapple, and while I never did find out what it was, I loved it. The worst part of my day was the six a.m. bathroom break. They would unhook me from my tube, wheel me in a wheelchair to the bathroom two feet from my bed, and watch me pee. I was then required to stand on a scale for what felt like forever. To make time pass, I would mentally sing the only song my damaged brain could remember - a song from a Veggie Tales episode.I thank God for this day, for the sun in the sky, for my mom and my dad, and my piece of apple pie! For the love that He shares, ‘cause he listens to our prayers, that’s why I give thanks every day!Once I was weighed, my blood was drawn, and I was permitted to sleep until breakfast at nine a.m.I had far too many experiences to describe all of them, so I’ll summarize the remainder of my hospital stay. I became accustomed to my feeding tube, and it no longer bothered me. I stopped screaming, and watched a lot of TV. My parents and my brother would visit me. My brother brought me a Pearls Before Swine treasury, and I laughed at the comics. It hurt to laugh, as laughter caused my tube to grate against my throat. But I was grateful for the gaiety. I began eating my meals. Eventually, a day passed where I ate the entire day’s meals and snacks without receiving any Boost. Just like that, I was good to go. Never mind the fact that I was still afraid of throwing up, still afraid of choking, still damaged. I was ‘better’, so I was released to outpatient care. First, my tube was removed, which felt like throwing up a straw through your nose. My legs were weak, and I was largely un-bathed. I had been hospitalized for eighteen days.Outpatient care was no good. My leaders made me eat lunch directly before exercise, burned my toast at breakfast, and never really connected with me. I quickly left outpatient care and headed home instead. Home was, to put it lightly, hell. My well-meaning parents had been informed that anorexia was something I could control. That if I only tried hard enough, I would be better. I was still afraid of throwing up, and meals were miserable. I would sob as I tried to eat my food, while my father would yell at me. He would threaten to take me back to the hospital, so I could get another feeding tube. He knew that I feared feeding tubes above all else, and he deliberately played on my recent traumatic experiences in order to scare me into eating. Surprise, surprise - it didn’t work. Instead of a scared, well-fed child, he received a scared, malnourished child. I didn’t eat any better when he threatened me with hospitalization, I just got more scared. But I was better, the hospital had said so. Back to Korea we went.I must not have been in Korea more than a few weeks when I was hospitalized again. I had been running away from the dinner table, locking myself in my room, and threatening to kill myself. I threatened to kill my mother, and dreamed of it all stopping. I didn’t want to die, on the contrary, I wanted to live. I just didn’t want anorexia. I was dragged into the Korean hospital when I failed to finish my lunch one day, and my mother told the nurse to give me a feeding tube. I cried and begged, and of all people, the nurse took pity on me. Unlike the American nurses, she was moved by my wailing promises to eat, and she told my parents to give me another try.When I was finally hospitalized, I received an IV instead of a feeding tube. Unfortunately, by now my parents thought I ‘enjoyed’ the hospital. I did, but not for the reasons they thought. I enjoyed being where my parents couldn’t make me eat, where I could con kind-hearted nurses into letting me go hungry. My parents seemed to think I was doing it for attention. (Note: My parents were misinformed about the causes and treatments of anorexia. They were and still are kind-hearted people who love me very much, and they have apologized many times for their ignorance. They were trying to help me, in their own way. My story is from the perspective of a sick, hallucinating, borderline demonic eleven year-old. Please do not hate my parents.)I was taken back to America, this time for good. By this time, I was twelve. Once again I was admitted to the hospital, unfortunately, I had the same doctor. She also used feeding tubes as a scare tactic, going so far as to have nurses set a feeding tube in front of me while I ate as an ‘incentive’, as a threat. I would get so scared that I couldn’t eat, and they responded to that by threatening me with the feeding tube even more. I ultimately received the tube, and it was even worse than before. I was dry heaving for days, when suddenly, the doctor informed me that the tube would be taken out. They had meant to scare me into eating, and it hadn’t worked. the tube was superfluous, so they removed it. It was the greatest injustice that has ever been bestowed upon me - a tube for no reason. My greatest fear, my greatest pain, the thing that haunts me to this day - for no reason. (I still resent my doctor for that.)I was taken to a facility in another state. A lock-in mental facility for people with eating disorders. The windows were covered so you couldn’t see out. The doors were locked, and you weren’t allowed to leave. You couldn’t walk around too much, or stare at yourself in the mirror. I was sure I’d be in and out in two weeks, max. There was just one problem - my anorexia. I was not used to getting up at five-thirty a.m. in order to eat pee in a cup and get weighed before breakfast at eight. They served me chicken, even though I was a vegetarian. I was expected to walk around, interact with teens, eat in a mess hall, and do school. While I was now allowed sweets, which I loved, I was still sick. A few days after arriving, I was doing a Sudoku puzzle in the school classroom. My dietitian walked in and asked to come with her. She lead me into a doctor’s room, and closed the door. Several nurses and staff were crammed in the room, and in front of them all - it lay. The feeding tube. I began to get hysterical, and begged them to stop. They did. I begged them to let me catch my breath. They did. I made uneasy small talk until I could breathe again, and actually told them when they could give me the tube. They listened to me, and didn’t have to force me into anything. It was heavenly, while the tube was hellish as usual.I was expected to walk around, and still show up for snack in the mess hall. I was sick as a dog, and begged to be left in my bedroom. They complied, but only until snack. I drooled and drooled, unable to swallow without gagging and retching. They still made me show up for snack, where I grossed out the other patients with my incessant drooling. The nurses took me back to my room, where a rough-around-the-edges nurse gave my my lunch in Boost form. She squirted it into the end of my tube, a process called “bolusing’, if I’m remembering correctly. I begged her to go slowly, as I could feel the cool liquid shooting into my churning stomach. She insisted that she could go no slower. I threw up so violently, I almost ejected my tube. A different nurse came in to feed me a bit later, an angel with blond hair. Through my haze of sickness, I could read her tag: “Katy Perry”. I later found out that I had read her tag wrong, but I didn’t care. She was still an angel to me. She fed me slowly and spoke softly, and the Boost stayed down.My spitting grossed patients out, so I was out into the seclusion room. The seclusion room was a six-by-six room with a bare, cushy bed and a barred window into the staff area. That was it. I was in there from the time I got up until the time I went to bed in my bedroom. I was not allowed to speak to anyone on my way to and from my bedroom. I once got caught playing a game of Uno Spin with the security guard and my friend before bedtime. I was made to quit the game. In the seclusion room, I was not allowed to have anything. I was not allowed to have my bathrobe, a book, a stuffed animal, or paper. I was also not allowed to sleep. Whenever I would nod off, a staff member would knock on the window to the seclusion room to wake me up. I was in the seclusion room for about two weeks. Maybe more, maybe less -I don’t know. About halfway through my stay, they allowed me my Bible to read. Until then, I had nothing. I would play with my watch timer, seeing if I could pause the timer on exact millisecond amounts. I worked my patient bracelet until it could slip off my wrist, and played endless games with it. I would set it on the ground and flick lint balls into it. For nearly thirteen hours a day, I was stuck in that room. I earned my way out by eating ice cream.I got an ice cream sundae for one snack. If I ate half of it, I could watch a movie on my laptop. If I ate all of it, I could watch a movie outside the seclusion room - with my fellow patients. I eventually ate my whole sundae, and was allowed out of the room temporarily. Shortly thereafter, they let me out for good. I was no longer salivating. Things were looking up.Unfortunately, my feeding tube clogged. That meant I would have to have it taken out, and have a new one reinserted. Unless, of course, it could be unclogged. The same rough nurse who had caused me to vomit earlier on in my stay was the one assigned to unclogging my feeding tube. She took a syringe and sucked at the tube, pushed at the tube, squeezed the tube. Nothing worked. Then, the angel nurse came in. She was so positive, I almost stopped panicking. She put Coca-cola in my tube to dissolve the clog. That didn’t work either, so the tube was removed. My therapist and dietitian were willing to work with me. Could I eat on my own? Yes, I insisted, I did not need another tube. They believed me, and didn’t give me another tube.I got into an eating routine. I would eat roughly half my meals, and I would have the same food every day. Waffles for breakfast, grilled cheese for lunch, mac n’ cheese for dinner, ice cream for dessert, and juice for snacks. What I didn’t eat I would drink in Boost. Normally, patients were only allowed fifteen minutes to drink their Boost. However, I was allowed to take my Boost into a back room and drink it in peace. Whenever I finished drinking it, I would eat a Tums from the nurses station. I believed the Tums would keep me from throwing up, and I relied heavily on them. One nurse in particular was very supportive of me. She ran the nurse’s station, and would hand me my Tums, along with a high-five for finishing my Boost. Whenever I finished my Boost within the original fifteen minutes, she would grin broadly and praise me like I had done something amazing. I loved her.As time wore on, I ate more and more. my parents were also educated on what anorexia was and how they should treat it. I was eventually able to go home, and I haven’t relapsed since.Anorexia was a horrible experience for me. Doctors expected me to be ashamed of my weight, as most with anorexia are. When I wasn’t, they weren’t sure how to treat me. I had a sickness of the mind. To this day, I sometimes get scared of throwing up after a meal. I have dermatillomainia, and I spend hours in the bathroom picking at zits and scarring my skin. I am far from perfect.But screw you, anorexia. I’m done with you.I am done with you, anorexia.