The wind of Taiwan's Renaissance has become more and more fierce from last year to this year. Following " Want to Meet You ", another Taiwanese drama has hit the social media screens and scored 8.9 points on Douban. 
This new drama "Workers" produced by HBO is adapted from the Taiwanese best-selling book of the same name. It is a rare TV drama in Taiwan that tells the story of workers on construction sites. Lin Liqing, the author of
, is a construction site supervisor with more than ten years of work experience. He recorded and described the real group portraits of this group of "workers" with real and vivid writing. This novel has caused quite a stir since its release, with a Douban score of 9.1. The preparation time for the entire drama lasted for three years. The production team is the original team that created "The Distance Between Us and Evil". The director of "Take My Brother Away Quickly" Zheng Fenfen serves as the director and director of this drama. One of the screenwriters. Under such a configuration, it is not surprising that "The Workman" can receive such high praise. Like "The Distance Between Us and Evil", "The Workman" is also a realistic life drama based on reality and triggering the audience's reflection, but its telling method is more vigorous and uses comedy techniques to present a realistic life drama. A story about survival and dignity. The protagonists of the
story are three workers who are eager to get rich: ironworker Aqi, template worker Changzai, and excavator geek Ahquan.
Aqi is the soul of the iron triangle of making a fortune. He is not active in work, but he is very interested in various ways to make money in the wild. His old father is bedridden and his son is studying. He always fantasizes about making a fortune one day. Get away from your current life. Chang Zai is a strict wife, and will obediently hand over his wages to his wife. His biggest wish is to provide for his daughter to study well and send her abroad. Ah Quan is the only unmarried young man in the Iron Triangle. He has no fixed address and sleeps in the compartment of his old truck every day. His dream is to buy a crocodile bag for his betel nut goddess. The three people dreamed of making a lot of money every day, opening a temple, raising crocodiles, buying lottery tickets... They had all the dreams of "getting rich overnight", but they all ended in failure. "Everyone who has a dream is great" is a chicken soup that has hit the Internet, but it has a lot of irony when applied to these three people's dreams of seeking wealth.
is uneducated, impulsive, has high ambitions and low abilities, and is destined to be cut off. In the first episode of , Aqi discovered a business opportunity during a god-seeking activity: open a temple and collect incense money every day, and you can make a fortune while lying down. So the three of them just went ahead and collected NT$150,000 as a deposit, and found a Thai man to help them buy an Erawan Shrine . When I went to the airport to pick up the Buddha statue, I was told that the Buddha statue had been detained at the customs and that I needed to pay another 200,000 bail.
A smell of fraud slowly came~
But they still believed it. Aqi also secretly mortgaged the land deed of his home. They didn't know they had been deceived until they were stopped by the police when remitting money because the amount was too large. However, the loss of NT$150,000 and the irredeemable land deed did not affect the trio's continued dream of getting rich. A few days after
, a heavy rain brought a crocodile of unknown origin to the construction site. Upon seeing this, Aqi's mind became active again: crocodile bags are very popular. If they can raise this crocodile and keep breeding it, If you keep raising them and use them to make bags, you will have a steady stream of wealth. Chang Zai and Ah Quan heard it, hey! That makes sense! The three of them did what they said and bought the crocodile. They also picked up a bathtub from the garbage dump and moved it to the construction site to secretly raise it. They fed it all kinds of expensive raw meat every day.
As a result, a few days later, the crocodile climbed out of the bathtub and accidentally fell to death... failed again and again. In our opinion, the various "rich plans" of the trio were even ridiculously stupid.
As long as they know how to surf the Internet, they will know that the Erawan Buddha shown to them by Thai people is fake just by searching. As long as they are willing to do some market research before buying crocodiles, they will not continue to daydream about "picking up eggs and opening a breeding farm."
Do you think they really deserve it, and do you feel some sympathy for their families? Why can't we just be a "worker" in a down-to-earth manner and let our family members have less to worry about? But this is also the saddest part of them. They are eager to change their destiny and hope to "live a good life for their families", but they really cannot keep up with the pace of this rapidly developing society.
Because their education level is not high, their vision is very limited. They only see that crocodile bags can make money, but they cannot see how the production chain behind the crocodile breeding business operates.
Because the social class is seriously solidified, the capital resources available to them are quite limited, and there are no professionals to provide help and reference, so it is always easy to believe what others say. Aqi, Changzai, and A's body are full of a kind of "Phu Longgong" (Hokkien, derived from the Japanese "wanderer", originally refers to people who are idle and have no fixed place to live, and now it is used to describe unrealistic people. .) spirit, constantly fighting against life, and constantly moving forward amidst the setbacks day after day.
They look like people living around us, and from the perspective of bystanders, we watch them hit the south wall again and again, and understand the reasons why they fail time and time again. We never put ourselves into them, we They consider themselves to be people who live in the present, but they are people who work hard to run behind the times.
But, are we really qualified to laugh at their naivety? After watching many film and television works depicting the glamorous life of the middle class, it seems that we have just seen the real life at the bottom this time - what is the living condition of a group that has long been ignored and marginalized?
is a short and concise work with only 6 episodes. Of course, it does not take into account the so-called romance. Only the most naked dilemma is before our eyes in the play-survival and dignity. In real life, what do we think of when migrant workers are mentioned? Without stable income and sound social security, he has to do the most dangerous and tiring work. Many details in the
drama also reflect their difficulties. For example, if you have to pay a fine for illegal operations at a construction site, the boss will blame the workers. I don’t dare to see a doctor when I’m sick because I’m afraid of spending money. The most important thing is that there are news about discrimination against migrant workers in the social news every now and then - stereotypes such as illiteracy, lack of quality, lack of money, social instability, etc., all constitute the public's deep-rooted prejudice against this group.
Aqi's younger brother Aqin originally had a girlfriend who was in talks to get married, but the girl's parents looked down on Aqin's status as a migrant worker and refused the marriage. Even Aqin offered 2 million as a bride price, but he could not change the other's view. In today's society, the income of migrant workers has greatly increased, but regardless of whether they have money or not, they are still discriminated against.
Rather than saying that Ah Qi, Chang Zai and Ah Quan dream of getting rich in order to change their own destiny, it is better to say that they are trying to fight for their own dignity as human beings. In their limited knowledge - people with fixed salaries. Only then can we talk about dignity. People who work are not decent. One detail in the
drama is impressive. Chang Zai, who had just finished his work, went to a convenience store to buy something and took off his cement-covered shoes at the door. I think he must have been disliked by other customers for dirtying the convenience store in the past. Lin Liqing, the author of
, wrote in the book: "If the standard for us to judge people is to use hard work, diligence, striving for the top and seriousness in life to determine a person's character, then it is impossible for us not to see it. They deserve respect, so how can we allow this society to label them differently?" The drama "Workers" allows us to see the true side of life at the bottom, although it is full of embarrassment and unbearableness. , yet so vivid and beautiful.
These "workers" will not be knocked down by various setbacks. They can always regain their confidence in life again and again, looking for light and hope in the gaps in life. And most of us are not much superior to this group of "workers". We are just ordinary workers. Their emotions are no different from ours, and our self-righteous sense of superiority does not make us any better than them. advanced.
The breath of life that has always boiled in them, and their understanding of hardship, are much more decent than most of us.
