Chinanews, Chengdu, Oct 19 – A college student from Tsinghua University spent a year and half working as a waitress in a restaurant in Chengdu. The work finanlly helped her to finish her doctoral thesis about the life of Chinese female migrant workers in cities, the Chengdu Evening News reported.

 

A year ago, He Ming, who was about to finish her doctoral study in the prestigious Tsinghua University, made up her mind to write a doctoral thesis about the life of Chinese female migrant workers who worked in the tertiary industry in cities. After she had chosen this topic, she decided to experience their life by working like them.

 

She had a really tiring day during her first day of work in a restaurant. “Actually I didn't do much work on my first working day. I merely followed my mentor to see how she did all her work,” she recalled.

 

He Ming's mentor was a village woman from Jianyang, a small city in Sichuan. When her mentor made the table, He Ming would assist her by handling her the saucers, bowls, chopsticks, etc.. When her mentor started to clean the table, He would hold a large basin in hand so that her mentor could put all the oily dishes into it for wash. He walked for ten hours on her first day and during these ten hours, she could hardly find time to take a short break.

 

After getting familiar with her work for three days, He Ming started to work on her own. In order to get a closer look of how her “workmates” lived, He even moved to live with them. The young people soon became her close freinds. It seemed that the different educational backgrounds didn't form any barrier in her communication with them. She chatted everything with the waitresses. When night fell, she would hear her five village roommates talking about their work and the interesting things they saw during the day.

 

Every evening when they went off from work, they would take off their work suits and put on their nice-looking clothes (at that time, they appeared even more fashionable than He Ming). They walked out of the restaurant, laughing and chatting by two and threes. At that time, He recalled, she would hardly recognize that they were migrant workers from rural areas – the group of people that she would cover in her doctoral dissertation. Only when she saw these people, many of whom were much older than her, doing the strenuous kitchen work during the day, and only when they complained of how their houses back home were damaged in a recent rainstorm, did He recognize that they were migrant workers. Their experiences had inspired He to give more thought to the life of Chinese migrant workers and helped her to complete her thesis.