Just a Number

BEIJING — In Zijing Dormitory No. 20 I am friends with a fuyuan. Her name is No. 137.

This name did not come at birth, rather it was assigned when she decided to a take a job at China's best university. She cleaned dorm rooms, moped the hallway of the fifth floor and made sure foreign students did not sneak fireworks into the building. She did this for many months, working efficiently, impressing her bosses so much that they promoted her to desk worker. The job comes with a slight bump in pay and a significant reduction in the amount time spent bent over.

But her promotion did not come with a customed name tag. She remains, to the hundreds of students who walk by her desk each day, just a number. What a terrible metaphor for the dehumanizing elements of Chinese working life.

Nearly every service worker in China wears a uniform. The fuyuans here at Tsinghua wore blue when I first arrive, but switched to a pastel pink around the time the air conditioning turned on. They are expected to perform as a unit. Each morning at 8:05 a.m., all employees must line up outside each dormitory and march in a line. The building boss barks excercises and criticizes the previous day's performance. This is standard practice at a Chinese hotel, barber shop or department store.

People are expected to blend in, provide equal levels of service and work as a unit. This happens in America, Europe and elsewhere in Asia. This is the twenty-first century and we believe in homogenization. So I guess what really throws me over the line is the name tag. The name tag is the one element of the service worker uniform that is supposed to distingush the employee. To inform you that this is Ellen; the person that spilled the soda on your blouse yesterday was Linda. Please don't yell at me.

This evening Ryan served me an order of garlic breadsticks at Pyro Pizza. He brought the order out hot, removed it right after I finished my last stick and refilled my glass of water several times. A pretty fine server, especially for someone not working for tips.

I know his name is Ryan from the fight outside Propoganda a few nights back. He's a friendly guy, with pretty good English. I wouldn't mind grabbing a beer with him sometime after work. But here at Pyro (a business owned by an American) he's just "Trainee." At Pyro, they don't even get numbers.

When, I asked Ryan, does one graduate from trainee status?

"I'm not sure," Ryan said. "Maybe three months."

I hope that full-waiter status means a nametag, and while they're printing one of for him, make some for the fuyuan in Building No. 20.

Her name is Liu Meimei.