Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
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Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption Jen Smith lives in Shenzhen, where it’s compulsory to wear a mask outside at all times
My Money is a series looking at how people spend their money – and the sometimes tough decisions they have to make. Here, Jen Smith, a children’s TV presenter from Shenzhen in southern China, takes us through a week in her life, as the country slowly emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
Over to Jen…
Since being in lockdown I’ve been bingeing on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. It starts with one episode after dinner, blink, and suddenly it’s 3am. YouTube, Facebook, Google and Instagram are all banned here, so you’d think I’d be a binge-free socialite after a year and a half living in China. Well, those sites are banned unless you have a VPN – I pay $120 (£97) a year for mine, so Sunday was a late night, with a lie-in until 10.30 this morning.
I go for a run – mask and all, as it’s currently illegal to be outside without one. I make my coffee (bought in the UK), fruit smoothie (about 20 yuan, $2.82, £2.27) and cereal (80 yuan a packet) before cycling to work.
Today is a bit of a crazy day in the studio. I work as a children’s TV presenter. My company has profited from the lockdown as more children are watching the shows non-stop – meaning a rapid turnaround for us.
We shoot two shows from 2-6pm then “break” for a meeting. We discuss tomorrow’s shoot while I eat dinner – homemade aubergine curry. It is normal for the Chinese to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at work. Normally the company gives all staff 25 yuan through a food-ordering app, and the whole company would eat together. However, because of the current social distancing, that social time is in the far distant past!
I make it home for 8pm, order some deep-fried cauliflower as a snack (45 yuan) and start the inevitable Kardashian binge.
Total spend: 65 yuan ($9.10, £7.37)
Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption Workers often have a midday nap in the office
It’s a much earlier start (7.30am), but the same morning routine. On my cycle to work I notice that the traffic is almost back to normal – Shenzhen is inhabited by well over 12 million people, so as you can imagine rush hour is intense. This doesn’t change the fact that everywhere you go you have to scan a QR code – leaving my apartment, using the walkway by the river, and getting into the building I work in.
After a morning of shooting I eat homemade potato curry and settle down for a nap. Naptime is such a commonality in China that people store camp beds at the office. I order a coffee and banana chips (20 yuan) for a pick-me-up before the afternoon’s shooting.
It’s St Paddy’s Day so I head to the local pubs area, catch dinner at a French restaurant (222 yuan), then a few drinks (25 yuan – mainly bought by men at the bar for us) before a very tipsy cycle home.
Total spend: 242 yuan ($34, £25)
Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption A disposable cover reduces the risk of transmitting the virus by touching lift buttons
The morning’s shoot (thankfully) was cancelled, so I nursed a hangover in bed until around 11am, at which point I had a phone meeting for a company that I do “plus-size” modelling for (for context I’m a UK size 12). I eat a bowl of cereal and order more cauliflower (45 yuan) while I watch a film.
At 2.30pm an intern picks me up, and we head to the government building to apply for a new work visa. Ironically, the image taken for my visa is Photoshopped to remove wrinkles, freckles and my frizzy hair. When I ask why this is being done for an identification document, the intern replies that the government wants it to be neat, and “the Chinese way” is to have altered photos.
I don’t argue, and have an interview before I hand in my passport. The whole process takes around two hours, so I order food to my house while on the way home (150 yuan for burger, salad and cake!) I take a taxi across town which ends up being 39.05 yuan.
The day starts at 8.30am with coffee and reading, before I get a manicure (280 yuan). My nail lady has been very worried about the state of my hands during the virus, so she spends a whopping two and a half hours treating them while I watch a film (0.99 yuan – bought by her). Because the manicure was so long I don’t have time to eat lunch before our fitness shoot, which runs from 2-5.30pm. I then have an appointment to sign into a building which I’ll shoot in tomorrow.
The building is near a supermarket called Ole (one of the only western supermarkets), and I pick up groceries for 183 yuan before heading home to cook, listen to podcasts and prep for the big day of shooting on Friday.
Total spend: 463 yuan ($64, £52.5)
Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption Jen filming in front of a green screen – a more colourful digital background will be added later in post-production
Fridays are generally my busiest day. The way the Chinese seem to function, is a boss will say “I want this done now” and then employees rush to finish it. Generally, they will write scripts on Monday and Tuesday, discuss Wednesday, then we shoot later in the week. The poor editors, despite mandatory office hours during the week, then have to work tirelessly through the weekend to achieve a Sunday evening deadline.
I start with mashed avocado and a hard-boiled egg before work. The morning shoot runs from 9.30-11.40am, and I have an early lunch – homemade curry again, before my regular nap time. The afternoon shoot is three hours, so I have time to pop home and shower before a live stream at 6pm. I take a taxi to and from the live stream which ends up being 28 yuan.
Total spend: 28 yuan ($3.92, £3.18)
Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption A taxi driver has improvised a screen to reduce the risk of picking up Covid-19 from a passenger
Finally the weekend! Although things are slowly getting better in China after the coronavirus outbreak, there’s still not too much to do. So I use this time to write, play my piano and generally chill inside. Around 3pm, I venture outside to the shops to pick up some snacks (159.60 yuan) before settling in to ring my family back in the UK with a homemade cocktail – a friend of mine in Canada is doing a daily live stream, “quarantinis” where he teaches you how to make cocktails!
What’s interesting is that a lot of people have started leaving their houses again, but it is still illegal to go outside without a mask on, and temperature checks are taken everywhere. I was even refused entry to a building due to being foreign. I imagine this is because recently the only new cases are being brought in by non-Chinese travelling back to China.
Total spend: 159.60 yuan ($22, £18)
Image copyright JEN SMITHImage caption Shenzhen’s Metro system is still very quiet
It’s another slow day for me as many foreigners have not yet returned to China, so most of my friends are out of the country. I start the day by reviewing potential scripts.
This takes me to 1.30pm without realising I haven’t eaten. I decide to go for a quick run and I return to eat mashed avocado and a hard-boiled egg.
I home-bleach my hair with products bought in the UK, then head back to editing again. About half way through the afternoon I take a little break to practice Chinese. I use an app which is fantastic and free! Definitely worth everyone downloading this during social distancing so you can learn new skills!
For dinner I order online again, a three-dish meal for 160 yuan.
Image captionSneh, 22, attended the awards ceremony where the film won an Oscar
A film based on young women in an Indian village who make sanitary pads has won an Oscar for best documentary short. The BBC’s Geeta Pandey met with the women in their village before the ceremony.
Sneh was 15 when she started menstruating. The first time she bled, she had no idea what was happening to her.
“I was very scared. I thought I was sick with something very serious and began crying,” she told me when I visited her home in Kathikhera village not far from Delhi earlier this week.
“I didn’t have the courage to tell my mother so I confided in my aunt. She said: ‘You’re a grown woman now, don’t cry, it’s normal.’ It was her who told my mother.”
Sneh, now 22, has travelled a long way from that point. She works in a small factory in her village that makes sanitary pads and is the protagonist of Period. End of Sentence., a documentary that has been nominated for an Oscar. She will be attending Sunday’s ceremony in Los Angeles.
The film came about after a student group in North Hollywood used crowdfunding to send a pad-making machine – and Iranian-American filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi – to Sneh’s village.
Just 115km (71 miles) from Delhi, Kathikhera village in Hapur district is a world far removed from the glitzy malls and high-rises of the Indian capital. Normally, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Delhi, but construction work on the highway slows it down to four hours for us. And the final 7.5km drive to the village from Hapur town is a crawl, on narrow winding roads lined with open drains on both sides.
The documentary is filmed in the farms and fields – and classrooms – of Kathikhera. Like in the rest of India, periods are a taboo topic; menstruating women are considered impure and barred from entering religious places and often excluded from social events too.
Image captionSneh says that previously, menstruation was not discussed – even among girls
With so much stigma surrounding the issue, it’s no surprise that Sneh had never heard of periods before she started getting them herself.
“It was not a topic that was discussed – even among girls,” she says.
But things began to change when Action India, a charity that works on reproductive health issues, set up a sanitary napkin manufacturing unit in Kathikhera.
Image captionThe women employees work from 9-5 six days a weekImage captionA pack is priced at 30 rupees ($0.40; £0.30)
In January 2017, Sneh was asked by Suman, a neighbour who works with Action India, if she wanted to work in the factory.
A college graduate who dreams of working for the Delhi police one day, Sneh says she was excited. After all, there were “no other job opportunities” in the village.
“When I sought my mum’s permission, she said, ‘ask your father’. In our families, all important decisions are taken by men.”
She was too embarrassed to tell her father that she was going to be making pads so she told him that she would be making children’s diapers.
“It was two months into the job that mum told him that I was making pads,” she laughs. Much to her relief, he said, “That’s alright, work is work.”
Today, the unit employs seven women, between 18 and 31 years of age. They work from 9-5, six days a week and are paid a monthly salary of 2,500 rupees ($35; £27). The centre produces 600 pads a day and they are sold under the brand name Fly.
Image captionThe centre produces 600 pads a dayImage captionMost women in the village used to use old clothes when they got their periods, now 70% use pads“The biggest problem we face is power cuts. Sometimes we have to come back at night to work when the power is back to meet the targets,” Sneh says.
This little business, run from two rooms in a village home, has helped improve feminine hygiene. Until it was set up most women in the village were using pieces of cloth cut out from old saris or bedsheets when they had their period, now 70% use pads.
It’s also de-stigmatised menstruation and changed attitudes in a conservative society in ways that were unimaginable just a couple of years ago.
Sneh says menstruation is now discussed openly among women. But, she says, it’s not been an easy ride.
“It was difficult at the start. I had to help my mother with housework, I had to study and do this job. Sometimes during my exams, when the pressure became too much, my mother went to work instead of me,” she says.
Her father, Rajendra Singh Tanwar, says he is “very proud” of his daughter. “If her work benefits the society, especially women, then I feel happy about it.”
Image captionRajendra Singh Tanwar says he’s proud of what Sneh (left) has doneImage captionSushma Devi’s husband does not want her to work there – but she won’t give it up
Initially, the women faced objections from some villagers who were suspicious about what was happening at the factory. And once the film crew arrived, there were questions about what they were doing.
And some, like 31-year-old Sushma Devi, still have to fight daily battles at home.
The mother-of-two says her husband agreed to let her work only after Sneh’s mother spoke to him. He also insisted that she finish all the housework before going to the factory.
“So I wake up at 05:00, clean the house, do the laundry, feed the buffaloes, make dung cakes which we use as cooking fuel, bathe, and make breakfast and lunch before I step out. In the evening, I cook dinner once I get back.”
But her husband is still unhappy with the arrangement. “He often gets angry with me. He says there’s enough work at home, why do you have to go out to work? My neighbours too say it’s not a good job, they also say the salary is low.”
Two of Sushma’s neighbours had worked at the factory too, but left after a few months. Sushma has no intention of doing the same: “Even if my husband beats me up, I will not give up my job. I enjoy working here.”
Image captionAction India, a charity that works on reproductive health issues, set up the manufacturing unit two years ago
In the documentary, Sushma is heard saying she’d spent some of her earnings to buy clothes for her younger brother. “If I’d known this was going to go to Oscars, I would have said something more intelligent,” she says, laughing.
For Sushma, Sneh and their fellow workers, the Oscar nomination has come as a big boost. The film, which is available on Netflix, is nominated in the Best Short Documentary category.
As Sneh prepares to leave for Los Angeles, her neighbours are appreciative of the “prestige and fame” she has brought the village.
“No-one from Kathikhera has ever travelled abroad so I’ll be the first one to do so,” she says. “I’m now recognised and respected in the village, people say they are proud of me.”
Sneh says she had heard of Oscars and knew they were the biggest cinema awards in the world. But she had never watched a ceremony, and certainly didn’t think that one day she would be on the red carpet.
“I never thought I would go to America. Even now I can’t fully process what’s happening. For me, the nomination itself is an award. It’s a dream that I’m dreaming with my eyes open.”
Image copyright JEN SMITH
Image copyright JEN SMITH
Image copyright JEN SMITH
Image copyright JEN SMITH
Image copyright JEN SMITH
Image copyright JEN SMITH
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 