Offense at the bubble

From the book “My Mother is a Cleaning Lady” by Zhang Xiaoman

Journalist Zhang Xiaoman's book My Mother is a Cleaner offers a look at China's large, complex society through the eyes of an ordinary person whose hard work usually goes unnoticed. We invite you to read an excerpt from the Russian translation of this essay, which became a bestseller in its homeland and is recognized as one of the best documentary works of recent years.

All of us, since February 24, 2022, have found ourselves in the face of advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editors of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that there is still a place for thought and fiction in the world.

Zhang Xiaoman. My mother is a cleaner. M.: Individuum, 2026. Translation from Chinese by Kirill Batygin. Content

There were a lot of smokers on the stairs. At first the mother tried to reason with the gentlemen with kind words. The mother calls older people mentors, and younger people “beauties.”

Mother often came across a lanky man in his forties. He constantly sat on the staircase with a cigarette in his mouth, stopping every now and then to clear his throat. Having noticed this employee several times, the mother could not resist, walked up to him and started a conversation with him in our clear dialect:

- Mr. Mentor, can you smoke a whole pack a day?

- No, I smoke less than a pack.

- That's how it is! This means you are not that dependent on tobacco.

After a pause, the mother said:

— Mr. Mentor, the customer’s manager constantly complains that there are cigarette butts lying on the stairs. Look: there is such a huge sign hanging on the wall: no smoking. They even threaten fines! What if the bulls are put in a napkin or collected in a glass? And I would throw them away after you.

The “boss” understood the mother’s hint and after this meeting began to appear on the stairs less often. The mother noticed that the man began to shake off the ashes and bulls into a plastic bag and take it with him.

The mother also came across a younger smoker, just as thin as the older comrade. The mother turned to the young man with a laugh:

- Handsome, I wash three floors every day. You smoke here, and I’ll pay for it. The manager of our customer complains even about a handful of ashes. And no matter how much I pick up bulls, it’s all in vain. I’ll clean up, but then the complaint will still come. Oh, why did you cough? Be careful with cigarettes. Smoking a lot is harmful to your health,” with this the mother turned around, picked up napkins and towels and began collecting ashes and cigarette butts near the young man.

Mom's words and actions seemed to make the guy feel morally responsible. Or he understood and sympathized with the difficult lot of the cleaning lady. In any case, he smiled and promised that this would not happen in the future. And indeed, when the mother later saw that guy, he always shook off the ashes and bulls into a plastic cup, which he immediately threw in the trash.

Problems with ash and cigarette butts in stairwells arose constantly. Mom’s boss was just as fed up with them as her mother was, so the women reported it to management. And it’s not to say that the deputy head received much more than her mother, but worked much less. And therefore there was a feeling of solidarity here. The farmhand felt sorry for the farmhand. And then there was a noticeable decrease in smoking on the stairs. True, this was explained simply: they were relocated to the restrooms.

Some smoke, hidden in cubicles and sitting on toilets. A piece of paper is laid out on the floor, onto which ashes and bulls are thrown. When a person gets high, the piece of paper, along with the ashes and cigarette butts, flies into the toilet. There are also those who smoke while standing, shaking off the smoke and ashes directly into the toilet. Sometimes the water was not washed off completely, and the mother had to listen to complaints. Because of this, the mother only became more irritated, expressing her protest over and over again.

Cleaning the women's restrooms did not bother my mother, and she worked there with great enthusiasm. However, a different kind of problem arises here: constantly wet sinks and floors that need to be wiped all the time. In addition, hair is constantly found on the floor and in the toilets. The mother first collected them into a pile with a scraper, then wrapped them in paper and threw them into a bucket.

- And so whole shreds!

Some girls have a whole ritual associated with their hair: they let their hair down, bend over, lower their head, let the hair fall from the back of their head onto their face, gather it into a handful, straighten up, throw back their head and tie it back with an elastic band. As a result, the floor is strewn with hair.

What can you find in trash cans! It happens that dishes are washed in the restrooms, and then fast food containers and leftovers go into the trash. Wet tea leaves and fruit peels also fly there. And when you pull the bag out of the bucket, dirty smudges remain at the bottom.

The worst thing is the bubble tea cups. The mother had to pull them out of the latrines in large numbers. And not once was the glass drunk completely. The remains of tea with milk spill and, drying up, tightly stick the paper to the trash can. Some people even manage to sprinkle tea on their rugs, causing them to become wet and sticky. The mother had to pick up each glass, straighten it, rinse it under the tap, empty the bucket, put in a new garbage bag, and wipe all the stains clean. Until something worse happened from the unfinished bubble-ti. Out of resentment over this bubble, my mother cried more than once. She hates him. I've never tried it in all my years. The mother does not understand what good can be in such a drink and why young people are addicted to it and pay a lot of money. She shares this thought with me:

- People are different. There are cultural ones, and there are uncultured ones. We are all raised differently, I understand that. But what can I do if, in order to earn money, I have to just do my own thing? You can't imagine what unpleasant things cleaners have to deal with.

Cleaners receive a variety of complaints. Once they complained to my mother that, they say, dirt was found on the bottom wall of the urinal - a remote place into which you still have to manage to look. She had to squat down and almost stick her head into the urinal to see where it was unclean. It turned out to be splashes of urine, which, having accumulated and dried, formed a yellowish rim in the lower part. To discover this, the mother had to bend over. If in her place there had been a fatter lady, then she would have had to hold on to the wall, otherwise she would have hurt herself for a short time on the floor of the restroom. The deputy boss then shared a trick with her mother: you need to take a photo of the suspected area of ​​contamination with your smartphone, pour bleach into it and wipe it with a rag. It happens that a metal sponge is used. When cleaning, you literally have to deal with shit and piss.

In the morning, afternoon and evening, the mother was noted in special statements. Some colleagues signed up before they even started work. It happened that landlords learned about such violations. And of course, complaints came.

The controller (mom’s boss) reminds everyone in the work chat: “How many times do I have to explain the meaning of the signatures on the statements? Or do you think that cleaning will take care of itself from your squiggles? We keep records and calculate salaries using your signatures every month. All this began to happen too often! @××.”

“Accepted! Thank you for your message,” the deputy head replies.

And this is constant communication in chats.

“In the coming week, the authorities will come with inspections. Everyone must be dressed according to the rules, wear masks, and answer questions politely. Today the company must have a manager ×. The exact time of the inspection is unknown.”

"Accepted."

There were also such dialogues with the participation of the chief and deputy chief:

“I understand that ××× works hard, and I don’t know how to present this to him, but the management really has this on video.

“Ugh... I’ll remind him.”

In the world of cleaners - or, if you prefer, in the same world in which you and I live - if you dive into the details and take into account the subtleties of each situation, you soon come to one conclusion: people cannot be divided into absolutely good and absolutely bad. It all comes down to whether we are willing to make an effort to understand the other person.

The outsourced cleaning company, which was responsible for issuing salaries to the cleaners, kept delaying payments. Usually - for a week or two. This was already considered in the order of things. Once the delay lasted almost a month, there was not a word about the salary. The cleaners got angry and decided not to go to work. After the morning meeting, they sat in the rest room and remained silent, remaining indifferent to any persuasion from their superiors. The boss, who usually had a very “predatory” attitude towards the cleaners, suddenly took their side and reported the problem to the top. The next day the salaries were paid.

The biggest concern for cleaners is whether their salaries were calculated correctly. On payday, everyone diligently estimates overtime and checks the time of arrival and departure from work. You can't go wrong with your salary by a single fen. If the amount deposited on the bank card shows even the slightest discrepancy with the amount calculated in the head, then the cleaners immediately go after the bosses. One aunt was credited with the wrong amount, so she burst into tears and said:

“I’ll go and wash the flowers in the flower beds with my tears.”

The boss checked everything, reported and helped her defend what she was owed. The cleaners spoke about the boss like this:

“It’s not easy for him at all.” This is a decent person.

The deputy manager, who constantly had the word “fine” on her tongue, used her own money to buy several hundred yuan of all sorts of goodies for the cleaners during the Dragon Boat Festival, and also threw red envelopes with small sums at the worker Wechat in gratitude to everyone for their support and work. There weren’t enough envelopes for everyone, and those who were in time grabbed them, but everyone was pleased with this attitude. If one of the cleaners came with a complaint about a colleague that so-and-so was not doing his best, the deputy manager would always remark:

— We all work more or less the same. Look how hard it is for this or that. Show some sympathy.

My mother would often meet a girl from Jiangxi in the women's restrooms who would constantly put on make-up throughout the day. This lady laid out her things in a row on a paper napkin and began brushing her teeth, gluing on artificial eyelashes, lining her eyebrows... Having completed the procedures, the girl left the napkin with grains of powder and other things right at the sink. At the same time, the girl was invariably very polite, each time greeting her mother warmly and remarking:

“It’s hard for you, auntie.”

One day my mother replied:

- My beauty, it would be easier if you threw all your stuff in the trash!

The girl began to clean up after herself.

This girl was the boss at one of the tenant companies and was in charge of finance. Perhaps makeup served her as a special tool to ensure success in business.

Watching her preen herself, her mother once said:

“Darling, you are beautiful without all this, but with all this you are absolutely beautiful.”

The girl exhaled:

- Auntie, really?

- Really, really, really beautiful! Auntie's tongue won't let you lie!