04Night at the Construction Site

"Night at the Construction Site" tells the story of the tragedy and struggle of a migrant worker father and son. Lao Qin had worked at a construction site for twenty years. He fell from the scaffolding on the sixth floor and suffered a fractured lumbar spine and paralysis of his lower limbs. His son Xiao Qin came from other places. Faced with the reality of his father's paralysis and the high cost of surgery, he ran around asking for help. The third brother, the contractor, offered to keep 25,000 yuan for himself and refused to take responsibility. Xiao Qin went to the labor bureau, courts, and legal aid centers, but encountered obstacles everywhere because there was no labor contract and the workers did not dare to testify. He stayed at the gate of the construction site for ninety days in a row, and was finally forced to accept a private agreement, using his father's twenty years of hard work and the rest of his life's health in exchange for twenty-five thousand yuan. Through delicate writing, the novel shows the institutional difficulties, human relationships and survival pressure that migrant workers face after work-related injuries. The details of the father and son's dependence on each other, the contradiction among the workers who are sympathetic but afraid to testify, and Xiao Qin's persistence in despair outline a true picture of the bottom workers struggling to survive in the city. In the end, the never-ending tower crane became a silent witness, witnessing the brokenness and helplessness of an ordinary family.