literature

Made in China: Girl and Box

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The young girl looks up from her work, pausing for a second, taking a look around herself. The factory is crowded, full of young girls and boys, all hard at work. Some assembling little boxes, others drawing basic patterns on the same little boxes. They do not know what the boxes will contain, none of them have a clue, but they all know that these boxes will contain foreign objects, and they will go to foreign countries. It will say that they are made in China, and they know this because they are Chinese, they are in China and they are making these boxes.


Or will it really say “Made in China”? She feels an old anger well up inside, boiling from the pit of her stomach, growing in strength until she feels like she needs to vomit. She suppresses the reflex, noticing that she has hunched slightly, and looks around her in panic to see if anyone noticed that she has stopped assembling her boxes. No one has noticed, no one else has stopped. No supervisor is currently looming over them like a dark cloud on the sky.


The boiling anger inside of her finds its footing once again, clawing its way up her throat until she wants to scream from the pain of holding it back. She has never seen the sky. The pollution in the air is so bad that even on a clear day it is still like living in a filthy, suffocating fog that consumes buildings, people and animals alike and obstructing clear sky completely from their views, running around like ants. All of them like cogs in a machinery, each one performing their duties for the greater good of the community. “There is no self in a community, each one of us must give up their individuality or we will all fail.”


She forces the anger down with a taste of bile at the back of her throat. It is more familiar to her than the flavor of food. She is prone to acid reflux from the strain of working sixteen hour days at such a fragile age. Exerting control over her feelings is such a show of force that she is left out of breath, and tears gather at the corners of her eyes. She swallows the sour, bitter liquid back down to the depths from which it sprung. She is dizzy, but goes back to assembling her boxes.


After work she runs back home. She feels something pointy in her clothes and stops, discovering that she must have hidden a box in them without realizing she did it. She smiles, feeling proud to have liberated this one box from such a crowded factory where it could never be free. Even if she cannot be free, she has given freedom to something else. Closer inspecting the box she sees writing in strange letters, letters she has never consciously noticed before. She figures that the box is meant to go far away, like a slave being sold without having a say in the matter. Suddenly aware once again of where she is, she runs as fast as her skinny legs will take her. She is afraid of the night, afraid of the adults that roam around in it.


Finally curling up on her tattered mattress on the floor, with a tattered pillow and a tattered blanket to keep her warm, she calls good night to her parents. The only adults she can trust, and for them she works long days, so that they can live together and eat together. At least sometimes. They call back to her to sleep well.


She puts the box next to her pillow, so that she can see her newfound friend. All of her old anger dissipates at seeing her companion. She whispers, “You and I are both made in China, little box. Maybe one day, together, we will see the sky together.” She smiles to herself, “Good night, little box. I am so glad to have met you. Sleep well."
Today I bought silicone muffin shapes, and it says "Made in China" on the box.

This piece is a complete work of fiction, possibly influenced by something I've read/heard/seen at some point or another but has no intentional connection to anything in real life.

Thank you for reading.
© 2014 - 2024 LupineDream
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