[Photos] ‘I’m not pitiful’: A migrant woman’s voice from Beijing

(Photos: Zhou Na)

The first time I met Chen Enhua — Sister Chen — was in the winter of 2016. At the time, she was living with her eldest sister and niece in a rental house in Dongxindian village, located outside the Fifth Ring Road in the northeast of Beijing.

To save money and for the company, the three women rented a two-bedroom apartment of about 16 or 17 square metres at a monthly rent of 1,200 RMB (US$165). “I said, ‘Oh my, this looks so odd,’” Sister Chen recalled. The windows in the room were high and narrow, and it was only a long time after they moved in that they discovered a sign next to a cement-sealed door on the outside wall, which read, “Bathroom.”

It turned out that the apartment — the third one that Sister Chen had lived in within this village — was converted from the village’s kindergarten bathroom and the security guard’s room.

In the winter of 2023, when I found Sister Chen again in this urban village, she had already moved into her fifth rented apartment in the area — a seven-square-metre room with a rent of 730 RMB per month.

The district includes Dongxindian village and Feijia village, covering a total area of about two square kilometres. With the rapid development of the commercial centre several kilometres south in Wangjing district, a growing number of migrant workers have flocked to this area. Convenient transportation and low rent have attracted tens of thousands of young white-collar workers, delivery drivers, street vendors, ride-hailing drivers and domestic workers to live here. Housing prices in Wangjing are as high as tens of thousands to over 100,000 RMB per square metre, with rent easily reaching several thousand or even over 10,000 RMB, while rental prices for an apartment of the same size in Wangjing and Dongxindian can differ by several times.

Born in 1968, Sister Chen is about to celebrate her 57th birthday and is also about to earn her highest salary ever in the city: 12,000 RMB. This salary exceeds the median national recruitment wage and is considered high. This income comes from a domestic service job that lasts from around 7 am to 8 or 9 pm, during which she needs to travel between one company and two households.

Sister Chen’s day usually looks like this:

Around 7 am, she rides her electric bike out of the house. About 20 minutes later, she arrives at an interior decoration company four kilometres away, where she cleans the office space. Two hours later, before the office employees start work, she rides to a home, also four kilometres away, to prepare lunch for a domestic employer. At 2:30 pm, she enters another domestic employer’s home in the same neighbourhood. They are out, so she starts cleaning and tidying up the rooms. At 5 pm sharp, she heads to the nearby kindergarten to pick up the employer’s two-year-old daughter and bring her home for dinner; it is only after 8 pm when they get home after work that Sister Chen heads back to Dongxindian village.

On weekends, the company is closed and does not need cleaning, while the domestic employer does not need someone to look after the child, so Sister Chen enjoys a rare “two-day weekend” life. On weekdays, she usually returns to the village around 8 or 9 pm. If people are still dancing square dance (广场舞), she joins in. Otherwise, she waits for the weekend to meet friends during the day, and then dances for an hour or two with a few fellow Sichuan natives at the village entrance around 7 pm.

Sister Chen first came to Beijing from Sichuan in 1987, the ninth year of China’s reform and opening up. After dropping out of school in the second year of middle school, she stayed at home for some time, raising pigs and cattle, living a dull and gloomy life. Her parents thought their daughter would eventually get married, so they did not even want to spend 15 RMB to allow her to learn a trade. Before deciding to go to Beijing to work for a distant relative, her parents made her find a boyfriend and get engaged in her hometown. “They wouldn’t let me leave if I wasn’t engaged, they were afraid I wouldn’t go back once I was out there.”

Her first job in Beijing was as a domestic worker. As the youngest in her family, Sister Chen had no idea how to do housework at the time. “I didn’t do any of that at home, so I definitely couldn’t do it well.” It paid 35 RMB per month; she only lasted one month before she gave it up.

In the following years, Sister Chen moved around: she was a painter in Beijing, cooked at a brick factory in Shanxi, and worked in a shoe factory in Guangdong. In her twenties, she got married and had a child, and in 1995, she went to Beijing again. By then, her daughter was already four years old. Through her eldest sister’s introduction, Sister Chen started working as a domestic worker again. A few years of married life and motherhood had made her skilled at housework, and she remembers that her employer was very satisfied and praised her: “Who could tell? This girl is really capable.”

This employer is one that Sister Chen still remembers fondly. She was a graduate with a master’s degree from Tsinghua University, the same age as Sister Chen. “Unlike employers nowadays, back then they were really genuine.” At the time, Sister Chen’s relatives, friends, and even her husband could visit and stay at the employer’s home. The employer even “adopted” Sister Chen’s daughter as her goddaughter. Sister Chen’s salary of 500 RMB per month was considered a benchmark among local domestic workers.

She remembers the employer telling her, “You and your husband don’t have a pension, but my husband and I both have pensions. Now everyone is an only child, no one can take care of us. When we get old, the four of us can live together, and the pensions from me and my husband will support all of us.”

Sister Chen’s relationship with this perfect employer ended before the employer gave birth. Just 40 days after Sister Chen herself gave birth to her second child, she turned up at her employer’s home with her baby boy, continuing to do domestic work while taking care of him. But the child grew more restless, and the employer also needed more care. Sister Chen thus had no choice but to return to rural Sichuan to care for her son, who was less than a year old.

It was not until her son was two and a half years old that she returned to Beijing to work as a nanny, taking care of other people’s children. Most of the time after that, her son went to school in her hometown, while Sister Chen could only return during the Chinese New Year to visit. Sister Chen says that a lasting regret for her is that she did not spend enough time with her son; he is now not close to her.

After leaving her first employer’s home, they maintained frequent contact. However, after her last visit in 2009, Sister Chen felt like she was “approaching them to ask for money, so I was too embarrassed to go again”. Before that, “every time I bought a local speciality or gift, when I left, she would always give me some money, so the gift became something she bought at a high price.”

“I haven’t contacted them in the years since. I couldn’t take that step, I’m embarrassed. Actually, two years ago, I wanted to visit, but when my husband passed away, all the more I didn’t want to go. I was afraid she’d pity me even more.”

Sister Chen cannot stand being looked at with pity.

In 2016, Sister Chen’s husband was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Despite having spent all their savings on her husband’s medical treatment, she ended up losing both her husband and the money. “It felt like I had worked my whole life only to end up back in square one with everything gone — both my husband and the money.” The 20,000 RMB spent on the funeral was borrowed.

After her husband died, to the villagers, she “immediately became a pitiful person”.

“People looked at me with such pity and it was so hard to bear. I felt really terrible. ‘Your child is still in school, what will you do?’ I wondered how I ended up living such a failed life, for people to look at me with such pity. But I didn’t think I was as pitiful as they said. At the time, I thought that as long as I was able to go to Beijing and endure hardships, I would definitely be able to earn money.”

In the two years before her husband died, Sister Chen felt a heavy psychological burden. “My heart was unsettled.” When she went to the social security office to cancel her husband’s pension, she learned about the local pension “buyout” policy: she could pay off all unpaid social security fees in one lump sum. China has a basic pension insurance system, where individuals need to pay into pension insurance to receive pension benefits upon retirement. Urban employees’ pension insurance requires both the individual and the company to contribute, but Sister Chen had worked for years without ever paying pension insurance. This is a common situation for domestic workers in most cities.

The social security office staff advised her: “In your situation, after buying the pension insurance, it doesn’t matter whether or not you find a new partner. At least you will have financial security regardless.”

On her first day back in Beijing looking for work, Sister Chen said she “was blessed by heaven” and landed four jobs, working from 7:30 am to 8 pm. She earned more than 9,000 RMB in one month, “which was a lot.” She even saved 8,000 RMB after deducting her monthly expenses.

After taking on the jobs, “I started thinking about the pension issue.” She decided to focus on buying out her social security, putting aside paying off her debts for the time being. When her sister found out, she scolded her, saying that it was selfish of her to buy pension insurance for herself when her child was still in school and there was still debt. “She made me cry. I said as long as I bought the pension insurance, every penny I earned would go to my child, no fear. If I didn’t buy it, I’d be worried to death about what would happen when I get old.”

In 2017, Sister Chen paid off her pension buyout at the age of 49 and made up for one year’s worth of missed payments, totalling over 90,000 RMB.

After two years of filling every spare moment with work, Sister Chen developed problems with her cervical and lumbar vertebrae. “I couldn’t even pick up a mop.” When she went to the hospital for treatment, the doctor asked her, “You’re a domestic worker, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“This condition is the result of doing domestic worker work for too long. It’s an occupational disease.”

“Well, there’s nothing I can do about it. I still have to work.”

When the pain was at its worst, “I couldn’t sleep at night. My goodness, I’d wake up four or five times. How could I sleep? At that time, I just couldn’t sleep.” Sister Chen spent two years receiving massage therapy. “At least now my hands aren’t numb, and I can still work.”

Sister Chen’s fingers began to bend and twist two years ago, with lumps forming at the joints. “It’s because we use too much water,” she explained. She generally does not really feel it: “It hurt for a while, and then the lumps formed like that. Once it was over, it didn’t hurt any more.”

To Sister Chen, the physical toll on her body and health is just a normal transaction.

The delayed retirement policy in China officially took effect on 1 January 2025, but Sister Chen has been receiving a pension for seven years. Initially, it was just over 900 RMB per month, but now she gets about 1,400 RMB per month. She said that the people in her village now envy her for buying out her pension, because the policy has been suspended locally. Most of the people who work outside the village — including her eldest sister — have not paid into the urban employee pension insurance, and will only receive a monthly rural pension (known as the rural social endowment insurance) of just over 100 RMB when they get older. “What good is that?” Sister Chen lamented. “In any case, people in our village really envy me now.”

With all these years of hard work, Sister Chen also bought a house in her hometown of Langzhong City for 290,000 RMB, under the names of her son and herself. In May 2023, she finally paid off the debt for renovating the house. This was her last outstanding debt. “These past few years, it’s been like I’m living a real life. Compared to the people in the village, I’m not quite up there, but I’m almost at a middle level now.”

However, there is little time left for Sister Chen to earn money. In three years, she will turn 60, and with the remaining time, “It’d be better to save up 200,000 to 300,000 RMB.”

A few years ago, Sister Chen’s sister and niece were the people she was closest to. Her eldest sister (Chen Shuqiong, born in 1956) came to Beijing from rural Sichuan in the 1990s to work as a domestic worker. Later, she got Sister Chen to come to Beijing. Eventually, her niece (Chen Huirong, born in 1980) also followed them. Two generations of three women, with a 12-year age gap between them, lived, worked together, and relied on each other in Beijing, about 1,700 kilometres away from their hometown of Langzhong, Sichuan.

Sister Chen remembers those carefree days. After finishing their work each day, the three of them would return to their home in the village. As they were too tired to cook, they would take turns buying cold dishes and beer. “Each of us would have a bottle of beer, and every day it was just beer and cold dishes.” Sister Chen laughed, saying that those were the easiest and happiest times of their lives.

However, for urban domestic workers, age is an insurmountable barrier. After 50, domestic service companies are almost unwilling to introduce jobs, and 60 becomes a crucial point of no return. Once they cross it, those migrant female workers who have spent their lives working in the city are relegated to the ranks of retirement and are barely able to find even low-paying temporary jobs. Most end up returning to their hometowns.

In 2017, eldest sister Chen Shuqiong turned 60. She could only find a cleaning job that paid one or two thousand RMB per month. With no other options, she returned to her rural hometown in Sichuan, which she had left nearly 30 years ago.

In 2020, her niece Chen Huirong also left Beijing, primarily to allow her daughter to attend high school. The wages in her hometown were much lower than in Beijing, but the thing that ultimately made her decide to stay there was pension insurance — her company had begun providing Five Social Insurances and One Housing Fund (五险一金).

Sister Chen’s daughter is due to give birth in March this year. After much thought and talking it over with her daughter, Sister Chen will go home to take care of her daughter for two weeks during her postpartum confinement. For the rest of the time, her daughter will hire a local confinement nanny and a caregiver in Chengdu, as the nannies in Chengdu are much cheaper than in Beijing, and Sister Chen can continue earning money in Beijing.

Soon after I shadowed Sister Chen, the domestic employer for the lunchtime job she had been doing cancelled their contract early because they would be away, and Sister Chen’s salary instantly dropped by one-third to a little over 8,000 RMB. Before this, Sister Chen had been very satisfied with the tight scheduling and arrangements of her work.

As for the child of the other domestic employer, she is already more than two years old. “Who knows how long I can keep this job?” Normally, one would care for a child until they start elementary school, but this family rents their home, and based on Sister Chen’s past experience, this is one of the factors of instability. “You never know when they’ll move.” If they move far away, she’ll have to say goodbye to this job, which offers a relatively high hourly wage of about 50 RMB. Sister Chen needs to shuttle between several work sites every day — time equals money, and the distance between them determines how much she can earn. 

“I’ll stay on for a couple of years. Even if I do a little less work, ease off a bit and earn a bit less, I still want to earn money to maintain financial independence and security.”

On 25 January 2025, the 26th day of the 12th lunar month, Sister Chen returned to her hometown of Langzhong in Sichuan.

Returning home for the Spring Festival is a must every year. The journey home, which used to require a 36-hour ride on the green train, is much quicker now — she can get home in just eight hours on the high-speed train. The only time she did not return home for the holiday was the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the company she did cleaning for did not allow employees to go home for the New Year. That was the only time in nearly 30 years of being a migrant worker in Beijing that Sister Chen spent the Spring Festival in Beijing.

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