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Jean genies of Yulin

By Zhao Huanxin (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-12-17 09:13

Yulin is "the world's biggest trouser manufacturing city" and cranks out millions of pairs of jeans at less than US$2 apiece.

On a recent visit to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region city, I made a beeline to Fumian district, which has 360,000 residents, and visited an exhibition hall showcasing two pairs of colossal jeans - so tall that one has to crane one's neck to get a full picture.

At the exhibition hall, a dozen of the 62 apparel brand names were represented. They constitute the bulk of the mind-boggling half a million pairs of trousers, mostly jeans, produced at more than 1,000 plants in Fumian in a single day.

In addition to the Chinese market, they are sold to 30 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, Mid-East and Australia, according to district officials, chalking up sales of 2.5 billion yuan (365.2 million) a year.

It was just a brief trip and on the way I saw an article in France's La Libration which called it "the world's biggest trouser manufacturing city". I wanted see for myself how jeans could be made so cheaply.

The Jueshilang Apparel Manufacturing Plant was one of the few factories that operated that weekend.

Piles of jeans were wheeled into the huge, one-story workshop, where at least 40 young workers ironed different parts of the trousers at a fantastic speed.

The building was noisy and heat waves from the irons made the workers sweat all the time. To keep their energy levels up, a few of them had radios turned up at maximum volume, listening to comic show hosts while robotically doing their jobs.

A worker, surnamed Zhang, said workers at the plant were paid per piece.

The 19-year-old from Guangxi said she was responsible for jean legs and earned 7 cents a pair, or 7 yuan (about US$1) for 100 pairs of trousers.

"There are workers who make 12 yuan or more for 100 pairs of jeans ironed, depending on the difficulty of the ironing," Zhang said, pointing to another work line, consisting exclusively of men.

There was only one button-sewer at the site. The worker, a 21-year-old surnamed Li, was sewing as if performing a magic trick. He first fed a button into the sewing-machine, placed the part of the jeans where a button was needed, and then quickly food-pedaled the machine - and it was all done in seconds.

"On average, I get 1 cent for one button sewed. There are three buttons per pair of jeans, so I earn 45 yuan to 60 yuan for up to 2,000 pairs a day," he said,

That translates into 12.5 buttons sewn in 1 minute.

Li started working at the plant last year after he failed the national college entrance examination. Asked if he liked the job, Li said without hesitation: "No, I don't, but I have to earn my own bread."

He plans to continue his first-time job for a while before finding a career that he really enjoys.

As China's more affluent coastal regions are shifting their industries to less developed areas like Yulin, there is no doubt the apparel businesses will continue to thrive in Fumian, thanks to the abundance of available workers.