Li Jiang (not his real name) is sweating profusely.
He has been in Singapore for nine years but the migrant worker from Shandong still can't get used to the sheen of perspiration that comes with the ever-present humidity.
Thankfully, his employer paid extra for an air-conditioned room in the dormitory for his employees. There are five of them — all Chinese nationals — crammed in this room in a factory-converted dormitory in Sungei Kadut.
The room is indeed a welcome respite from the heat outside. Li invites us — his first visitors since his dormitory was cleared and opened — to sit anywhere. We settle for small stools while he plonks himself on a bed.
It's been four and half months since Li's dormitory was locked down together with every other migrant worker dormitory in Singapore in a bid to prevent the raging spread of Covid-19 from reaching the wider community.
"April 7," says the 43-year-old, who works as a lorry driver. That's the day his dormitory was shut from the outside world.
"We could still walk along the corridors and go downstairs, but we couldn't leave through that main gate that you just entered," he says.
Even if the workers wanted to leave, it was impossible, he says.
Twice a day, the dormitory residents had to scan a QR code in their rooms to prove that they were physically there. Failure to do so would result in the cancellation of their work permits and deportation back to their home countries.
Still, Li counts himself luckier than some. Even though he was not able to work during the lockdown, his employer paid him S$750 from April to June, thanks to the Foreign Worker Levy waiver and rebates that he received from the government.
S$750 is a huge drop from his pre-Covid-19 average monthly earning of S$3,000, but he was able to make do. Besides, he says, not every employer does this.
"Frankly speaking, these guys (points to the adjacent room) and these guys (points to the other adjacent room), their employers took S$250 as accommodation fee. They were left with only S$500."
"I thought I could take a break"
"Actually, at the start of the lockdown, I thought that it wasn't so bad. I didn't need to work and yet could get S$750. I thought this was a chance to take a break," Li laughs.
His days blended into hours of staring at his phone, interspersed with eating and exercising. Every week, officers would come down to measure their temperatures, and ask if they were experiencing Covid-19 symptoms.
"Really not much different from jail," Li quips on hindsight.
But as the days wore on and the number of new cases climbed, so did Li's anxiety.
It did not help that soon after the dormitory was locked down, four migrant workers residing there tested positive for Covid-19. The workers were terrified at the possibility of catching Covid-19 from the communal bathrooms.
Equally terrifying was the spate of migrant worker suicides and talk of suicide attempts from other dormitories in early August, says Li.
As far as he knows, no one in his dormitory was suicidal or ever attempted to commit suicide during the lockdown. Li thinks that it's in no small part thanks to the large open space on the ground floor of his dormitory.
"Even though we couldn't go out, we could de-stress by playing ball or exercising there. And exercising is good for your mental health!"
The Circuit Breaker, which started at around the same time as Li's dormitory lockdown, was particularly disconcerting for the migrant worker.
"I'm going to say something that isn't so nice to hear. The migrant workers in the dormitories respected and followed the lockdown regulations. But we see some Singaporeans living life as per normal, going out, eating, shopping during the Circuit Breaker."
"It's not a good feeling for us," he says quietly.
However, there were some bright spots in Li's months-long isolation, chief among which are the folks from non-profit Itsrainingraincoats who provided him and his colleagues with food items like rice, vegetables, biscuits and coffee, and cooking appliances.
"MOM came during the lockdown and said that we were not allowed to do so. We couldn't cook and we couldn't go out and buy food. So we depended on food delivery but it's so expensive. A meal could go up to S$10. So we cooked secretly."
Wasn't there a caterer engaged to provide the dormitory with daily meals?
Li nods sheepishly.
"Those were catered to Bangladeshi and Indian tastes. Chinese people aren't used to eating so much curry. It's not good for our stomachs."
He explains that his dormitory has about 150 workers from Bangladesh and India, and only seven from China. Since the caterer prepared the meals in bulk, they told Li that it was just too much trouble for them to prepare a separate type of cuisine for seven people.
Haven't sent money home in six months
Salary, or rather the lack of it, is clearly the issue that weighs most heavily on Li's mind these days. He has not been able to send anything back home over the past six months.
The China that he left after Chinese New Year was struggling to contain the pandemic. Singapore, on the other hand, was safe.
"Who would have thought that things would turn south so quickly here?" he muses.
Ever since he returned to Singapore, he has not had the chance to work. Having no work means no income. Now his family back home — his mother, his wife, and his son — needs money, but he is unable to provide.
This entire episode has given Li much to think about. Many Chinese migrant workers are already thinking of returning to China, he says, because of the economic recession.
"If we return to work in China, we can definitely earn enough to cover our household expenses. We came to Singapore to earn more money. If it wasn't for better earnings, we wouldn't have travelled so far. But now in Singapore, we can't earn anything and still have to suffer. I really can't."
Families back in China are also begging workers to return home, Li lets on. Singapore, with its high population density, does not seem like an ideal place to be in during a pandemic.
However, as much as Li wants return to China now, there's just too much money involved.
"I'd have to quarantine myself in a hotel upon arrival in China. It's going to cost a lot. Besides, the airfare back to China is very expensive now. I'd have to pay around S$2,000."
That's three to four times the usual airfare, Li adds.
Add on the fact that we're now in an economic recession, employers aren't willing or able to pay that kind of money to send their workers home.
Returning to work
Li grins while he holds up his phone to show us his Green AccessCode in an app by the Ministry of Manpower. Under his photo and name, a line of text, highlighted in green, reads "Can go out for work".
It is literally his green light to leave the dormitory and report to work.
There's a lot that goes behind this innocuous line of text. It means that Li has tested negative for Covid-19, his employer has been granted approval to restart business operations, and his dormitory has been cleared.
Dormitory residents like Li are required to provide their temperature and respiratory symptoms (if any) twice daily via this app.
The situation in the dormitories is not back to normal. Save for work, dormitory residents aren't allowed to leave their dormitories yet, even on their rest days. They also have to turn up for routine testing every 14 days, and report their temperature and respiratory symptoms (if any) twice a day to MOM.
It's a long way off from normal but for Li, being allowed to return to driving his lorry is the best news he has received in the longest time.
Stories of Us is a series about ordinary people in Singapore and the unique ways they’re living their lives. Be it breaking away from conventions, pursuing an atypical passion, or the struggles they are facing, these stories remind us both of our individual uniqueness and our collective humanity.
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Top image by Joshua Lee. Interview was conducted in Mandarin and quotes were translated into English.