In the latter part of the film, Boss Cao said that when he lived in a backward China in the past, there were cicadas and frogs croaking and flowers and grasses on the fields.
In less than a generation, China has made great strides from an agricultural country to an industrial country.
I have a little understanding of the thoughts of some Chinese personnel in the film, such as the supervisor who swears and asks American workers to work overtime; and when Americans visit Chinese factories, Chinese managers tell Americans that they should be worthy of their wages.
They involuntarily took the position of the boss, but the deeper reason was that they (that is, a large part of us) agreed with Boss Cao's sentence "people live to work" in their hearts.
Going back from our ancestors and going back to the previous generation, for thousands of years, most of them have to work all year round to barely survive; to work hard and save in death, can they accumulate. Until the 1990s, farmers were still burdened with heavy taxes. Social Security benefits are only occasionally available during severe natural disasters. The various rights of human beings can never be imagined at that level.
Working and living are closely linked. Even we take work as the essence of life. Being diligent and thrifty is an important virtue, and to say that someone is lazy is a serious negation of it. Moreover, compared with our fathers and grandparents, even if we are on the factory floor, we work 12 hours a day and have to work night shifts. Relatively speaking, our work is still easier. After all, it avoids the scorching sun and tests the limit of physical endurance. Because of the large population, a job that is not easy and long is an opportunity that is not so easy to get.
The workshop can be sheltered from wind and rain, heavy objects are transported by forklift, and there are even cooling facilities such as fans and air conditioners. An extra hour of work will give you an extra salary, and you will be guaranteed income during droughts and floods. Those Americans are free and unrestrained, they finally have 5 days and 8 hours of work, and they want to engage in labor union movement.
There is no solution to this conflict of ideas and mutual incomprehension. Each has a profound historical background.
Sadly, in our age, workers are working hard in factories and living frugally, and it is extremely difficult to accumulate wealth, but the way of thinking of the old times still has huge inertia today. We traditionally do not know what freedom is, how can we fight for what rights?
Chinese people who have lived in the United States in the film said at the meeting that in the United States is freedom, and you can do anything, as long as it is not illegal.
Workers fight for their rights and can rely on powerful organizations like trade unions, which are much stronger than us. However, their freedom is obviously overdone. Strong trade unions, free-flowing capital, etc. have smashed the pot that the bottom people depend on to eat.
We are at one extreme in the direction of "low human rights" and they are at the other extreme in the opposite direction. If they continue to run wildly in their respective directions, the results will not be good.
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