Story of Chinese laborers told through Kheel Center items

The history of labor organizations and worker issues in China is the focus of Keywords of Chinese Labor: An Exhibition, opening this month in an art gallery in Brooklyn.

The exhibition will run Sept. 21-29, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with daily guided tours and events. An opening event will be held at 6 p.m. on Sept. 21; attendees must RSVPfor the name and location of the gallery.

The bilingual exhibition features reflections of working class culture - from poetry to publications, and in audio, visual and paper formats - from the China Labor Collection at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archivesin the Catherwood Library, part of Cornell University Library and located in the ILR School.

The exhibition illustrates the lives of millions of Chinese workers who produce cellphones, computers, clothes and other items purchased around the globe and "their efforts to create their own organizations, their attempts to take hold of their own destiny through strikes and protests, and their self-expression in the form of poems, music and plays," according to organizers.

The exhibition is "a unique snapshot as China goes through immense social and economic changes, and a perspective on Chinese society and resistance by workers," said Eli Friedman, professor of global labor and work at the ILR School.

Friedman, who will introduce the exhibition at the opening event, said he was motivated to begin the collection nine years ago as labor organizations were being closed by the Chinese government.

"I was worried there was not going to be any centralized archive of the very important work that had happened in previous decades," he said. "The materials could not be safely kept in China. As far as we know, this is the largest independent labor archive focused on China."

Friedman traveled to China to collect items, and friends and colleagues shared books, pamphlets, worker-written poetry and tens of thousands of digital files. They are being cataloged by Sean Chang, Catherwood Library reference assistant, so that researchers can easily access them.

Many more materials came in after 2019 as organizations were shut down by a new national security law in Hong Kong, Friedman said.

"It has become more urgent that we preserve China's labor history," he said, noting that China's only independent labor museum was shut in 2023. Friedman noted parallels between the 1993 toy factory fire in Shenzhenthat killed 87 people and the 1911 Triangle Fire, for which the Kheel Center maintains an archive. Victims in both fires were locked into their workplaces.

The Brooklyn exhibit, co-curated by Kevin Lin, a visiting fellow at the ILR School, is being hosted by Dagongren United, the Asian Labor Institute, the Kheel Center and the Asian Labour Review. It is organized into four areas: worker living conditions; working conditions; collective actions; and culture.

Attendees can RSVP and check event times here. Events include:

• "Worker Leaders and Collective Actions in China," a talk by Assistant Professor Elaine Hui of Pennsylvania State University;
• A screening of a documentary on Chinese worker poets; and
• "Working Class Poets in China," a talk by Yunfei Du, Cornell doctoral student in the field of Asian studies.

Mary Catt is director of communications for the ILR School.

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