On The Production Line
An ode to Taiwan's women electronics workers
I am currently overwhelmed with bill-paying work, which is delaying the publication of any substantive installments of this newsletter. But as soon as I read the following poem about women electronics workers on the assembly line in Taiwan in the 1970s, I knew I had to share it with readers. “On the Production Line,” by Xiang Ye, is a connecting thread between The Secret of the Sichuanese Ipad and Did Leibniz Dream of Deepseeek? .
I encountered this poem in Island Tinkerers, a recently published history of Taiwanese computing by Honghong Tinn. According to Tinn, who translated the poem, Xiang Ye “worked briefly in quality control in an electronics manufacturing plant in Kaohsiung in the early 1970s. She later pursued a career in newspaper and magazine publishing and now teaches creative writing.”
The southern Taiwan port of Kaohsiung was an “export processing zone” where dozens of U.S. companies took advantage of cheap female labor, low taxes, and nonexistent environmental regulation to offshore electronics manufacturing, and in the process endowed Taiwan with the hands-on production knowledge that paved the way for the country to become one of the world’s leading-edge manufacturers of computer hardware.
On The Production Line
A piece of blue work suit A myriad of machineries Ready to go Several thousand watts of light bulbs The brightest is the boss’s keen eyesight Never miss a ¬ thing Meet the production target. Go, go, go. This tweezer is dull. Reject. A gold wire on this transistor is broken. Re-do it. ¬ After magnifying it 30 times ¬ under the microscope, do the 80 times magnification No merest blemish No tiny dent The air conditioner placed right next to a furnace of 500 Celsius degree Sends the breeze to us, caught in-¬ between Some bring goods in, some deliver stuff out Some sit and examine the quality of products Some sneakily snack a dried sour plum54 What is common among us are our arms stretching out Flying and moving like an awakening snake from hibernation Do we have enough for the next shipment? Not yet. Stay ¬ later to work more. Go, go, go…