Maid in China: More Workers Flock To Cities as 'Aunties'
When he was growing up in the Chinese countryside in the 1980s, Wang Jianlong never dreamed he'd grow up to have a maid.
"It was impossible to have a maid at home," recalled Mr. Wang, 25 years old, who runs his own arts-and-crafts business. "Even rich people didn't have maids."
As Mr. Wang talked, Luo Youlian, a slight, weathered woman, bent down and swept around his feet in his sparsely furnished three-room apartment. She gathered up the dirty dishes from the dinner she had cooked him the night before and started washing them.
Ms. Luo worked for Mr. Wang seven days a week, 10 hours a day. She was constantly in motion -- sweeping, dusting, washing windows, doing laundry. She earned about $50 in yuan a month. "It's a reasonable price to pay her," said Mr. Wang, who hired Ms. Luo through an agency.
The emergence of a large servant class, mostly low-paid maids from the countryside, is the latest sign of how money is transforming Chinese society -- and hardening class divisions. Communist inhibitions about hiring servants have largely disappeared. Rising wages have given city dwellers the wherewithal to hire the help they need. And an influx of migrant workers from the countryside has created a class of willing, low-wage workers.
For many middle-class families, hiring a maid has become an affordable luxury. While the per capita income in Shanghai last year exceeded about $1,600, wages for the city's three million migrant workers are about half that, according to Cao Jinqing, a sociologist who studies migrant workers. Migrant workers lack many of the legal rights and employment benefits residents enjoy. Migrants' medical expenses are high, as are fees for enrolling their children in school.
"Mao eliminated class differences," says Prof. Cao. "But with all the changes in China, class differences are coming back."
Ayis, or "aunties," as maids are known in Chinese, are a topic of constant discussion among Shanghai's growing middle class: where to find them, how to keep a good one.
In a restaurant in a downtown office building, three professional women stylishly dressed in black talked about how hard it is to get good help.
Wang Zheng, who works for a Shanghai public-relations business, has been looking for a good ayi for three years to take care of her daughter while she and her husband work. In the meantime, the child lives with her grandparents. "In two years we went through four different ayis," says Mrs. Zheng.
Recently a Hong Kong company opened an office in Beijing advertising Filipino maids, promoting them as having "a better submissive consciousness." The company handed out brochures picturing maids serving tea in pink and white uniforms. While the company says most of the inquiries it has had so far have been from expatriate families, it has also begun to hear from nouveau riche Chinese taken with the cachet of employing a foreign maid.
Ms. Luo is in many ways a victim of both old and new China. She is 32 but looks much older. Her hands are wrinkled and chapped. She seldom smiles, and she looks down when she talks. She first came to Shanghai from the poor province of Anhui, about 300 miles west of here, in early 1998 after divorcing her husband -- a situation that left her ostracized in her small village and with no way to support herself and her 2-year-old daughter. The child went to live with Ms. Luo's mother-in-law.
Hired by a Shanghai family as a live-in maid for about $50 a month, Ms. Luo arrived to find her middle-class employer only willing to pay her less than $45.
"I didn't argue," says Ms. Luo. "I needed the money."
Over the next eight months, Ms. Luo says, her employer shouted at her and watched how she folded laundry, how she cleaned the windows, how she cooked meals.
Finally Ms. Luo quit and went to work for an elderly man who hired her to live in and help take care of his elderly wife. Ms. Luo slept on the living room couch but soon was fending off sexual advances from the man. Ms. Luo says she didn't dare complain to the authorities about her treatment because she, like millions of other migrant workers, is in Shanghai illegally. She lacks a proper residence permit.
Last fall, Ms. Luo moved in with a 72-year-old retired textile worker, Zhao Shiying, and her husband, a retired shop clerk, in their tiny fifth-floor walk-up.
She slept on a wooden platform in a windowless alcove. And with space so tight, Ms. Luo ate her meals with the couple at a small round table in their bedroom. Typically she made a meat dish, vegetables and rice. But Ms. Luo says she was never allowed to eat the meat, just the vegetables. Her employers, she says, told her meat was too expensive. "I was angry, but what could I do," says Ms. Luo. "I am the maid."
Ms. Zhao says she never treated Ms. Luo unfairly and is sorry she decided to leave. "This is a good way to use workers from the countryside," says Ms. Zhao. "They help Shanghai people doing work that Shanghai people don't want to do."
A few months ago, Mr. Wang, the 25-year-old entrepreneur, moved, putting Ms. Luo out of work yet again. She now gets up at 5:30 in the morning and bicycles an hour from the 9-by-9 attic room she rents to a company cafeteria where she washes dishes until 3 p.m. She then heads to a second job cleaning the offices of a cosmetic firm.
Despite her bad experiences, Ms. Luo says she would like to work again as a live-in ayi. It's the best way she can earn a living, she says, and she likes feeling part of a family.
Ms. Luo sends about $12 a month home to support her daughter and up to about $25 a month to her mother. But since moving to Shanghai five years ago, Ms. Luo has been able to save enough money to visit home only twice. When she calls home these days, she says, her daughter sometimes doesn't recognize her voice.
"I never compare my life to the life of these rich people in Shanghai" she says. "I always think it's all about a person's destiny. The people I work for have a good destiny. I don't."
"阿姨"－－中国的佣人阶层
生长于八十年代中国农村的王建龙(Wang Jianlong,音译)从未想到自己有朝一日也能使唤上女佣。
现年25岁的王先生做工艺品生意。他回忆说："过去家里根本雇不起女佣。富裕人家也没有女佣。"
王先生说话之间，他家的女佣罗尤莲(Luo Youlian,音译)在一旁打扫他那空荡荡的三居室公寓。然后，她收拾起昨天晚上的残羹剩饭，开始洗刷碗筷。身材矮小的她脸上刻著岁月的痕迹。
罗尤莲每周工作七天，每天工作十小时。她总是忙个不停－－扫地、拖地、擦窗、洗熨衣服，而每个月的工资约为50美元。王先生说："她的报酬很合理。"王先生是通过一家中介机构雇用罗尤莲的。
目前，中国出现了一个规模庞大的佣人阶层，其中大部份是来自农村的收入很低的女佣。这是金钱改变中国社会，加剧阶级分化的最新例证。禁止雇佣佣人的不成文规定基本已土崩瓦解。薪资的增加使城市居民有钱来雇佣帮工。而外地民工的大量涌入又形成了一个心甘情愿的劳工阶层。
对于许多中等收入的家庭来说，雇一个女佣还是负担得起的。曹建清(Cao Jinqing，音译)是一位研究国内人口流动现象的社会学家，他指出，上海去年的人均收入已超过1,600美元，而当地三百万民工的收入只有这一水平的一半左右。此外，民工也享受不到本地居民所享有的许多合法权利和就业待遇。他们的医疗支出和子女入学费用都很高。 曹教授说："过去，毛主席消灭了阶级差别。但随著社会的变迁，阶级差别又卷土重来。"
女佣在中国被称为"阿姨"，她们是上海不断壮大的中产阶层经常谈论的话题，如怎样找阿姨，怎样留住一个能干的阿姨。
在上海市区某写字楼的一家餐厅里，三个打扮入时的职业女性正在谈论找一个好帮工有多难。
王政(Wang Zheng,音译)在一家公关公司工作。在过去三年里，她一直在寻找一个令人满意的阿姨，以便在夫妻俩忙于工作的时候照料他们的女儿。目前，她的女儿与祖父母住在一起。她说："两年里我们换了四个阿姨。"
最近，一家香港公司在北京开设了分支机构，推荐菲律宾女佣，称她们"顺从意识更强"。在该公司的广告手册里还有身穿红白相间制服的女佣上茶的照片。该公司称，到目前为止，它接到的问询电话大多来自外籍家庭，但也有一些国内的新贵想享受雇佣外国女佣的风光。
从许多角度看，罗尤莲是新旧中国的牺牲品。她现年32岁，但看上去比实际年龄老很多。她的双手皮肤粗糙，满是皱纹。她几乎不笑，说话时总是低著头。1998年，已经离婚的罗尤莲从距上海约300英里的贫困的安徽省来到上海。离婚使她在小村庄里处于孤立，无法养活自己和一个两岁的女儿。孩子现在与她的婆婆住在一起。 后来上海的一个中产家庭同意雇她做女佣，包吃包住，每月工资约为50美元。等她到了那户人家后，才发现他们只愿支付不到45美元的工资。
罗尤莲说："我没有还价，因为我需要钱。"
在接下来的8个月里，这家人盛气凌人地将她呼来唤去，百般挑剔，她叠衣服、擦窗户和煮饭做菜都受到监视。
最后罗尤莲不干了，另找了一户人家，这家的老头雇她来照看老伴。罗尤莲晚上就睡在客厅的长沙发上，但她很快就不得不抵抗来自男主人的性骚扰。受到羞辱的罗尤莲却不敢向有关部门投诉，因为像其他上百万的民工一样，她没有暂住证，属于非法居留。
去年秋天，罗尤莲搬到了72岁的退休纺织工赵时英(Zhao Shiying,音译)家中。赵的丈夫也退休了，他原先是商店营业员。夫妻俩的房子非常狭小，在一座没有电梯的公寓的第五层。
罗尤莲睡在一个凹室的简陋床架子上，没有窗户。由于空间局促，她与退休的夫妻俩人只能挤在他们卧室的一张小圆桌上吃饭。罗尤莲每顿饭通常会做一个荤菜，一两盘素菜和米饭。但她从来吃不到荤菜，只能吃素菜。主人们对她说，肉价很贵。"我很生气，但我能怎么样呢，"罗尤莲说，"我是佣人啊。"
赵女士则表示她从来没有亏待过罗尤莲，并对她的离去表示遗憾。赵女士说："这是使用乡下民工的好办法。他们做那些上海人不愿意做的活。"
几个月前，25岁的私营老板王先生离开了上海，罗尤莲又没工作了。她现在每天5:30就起床，从自己租的9平方米的阁楼出发，骑一个小时的自行车去一家自助餐厅打工。她在那儿洗盘子，一直干到下午三点。然后，再匆匆赶去做第二份工作，为一家化妆品公司打扫办公室。
尽管遭遇坎坷，罗尤莲表示还是愿意到别人家做阿姨。对她来说，这是最好的谋生之道，而且她喜欢那种有家的感觉。
罗尤莲每个月给老家寄大约100元人民币(12美元)作为女儿的抚养费，另外寄200元(25美元)给母亲。从五年前来到上海到现在，由于经济能力有限，她只回过两次家。如今当她打电话回家时，女儿有时都辨不出她的声音了。
罗尤莲说："我从来没有把我的生活同上海的富人比。我相信，这都是命。那些雇我的人命好，而我命不好。"
