"On this particular day in late October, hundreds of new employees paraded around a large field in team-building exercises — primarily, as far as I could tell, marching in formation, something very familiar to anyone who went to elementary school in China." That's one view of the Foxconn factory city, shot and described by our friend Joel Johnson.
Johnson recently visited Foxconn's Shenzhen, China factory for a joint special report for Wired and Gizmodo, which he's already teasing on the tech blog. Foxconn is famously the manufacturer that produces iPhones — and a lot of other best-selling electronic gear. Infamously, it's where workers have been known to commit suicide, possibly due to job-induced stress, including one that occurred just today, when a 23-year-old man apparently leapt to his death.
Joel had a guided tour, but he tells me it was pretty open. He could go anywhere he wanted on campus, though naturally he couldn't enter just any building. Nevertheless, he got an intimate look, as these pictures depict. "The work is boring and tedious, and there is no privacy at the dorms," he told me, adding, "But it's not a living hell."
Speaking of no privacy, here's Joel's peek inside an eight-man dorm, which he says is "about the size of a two-car garage." He told me that workers don't often have electronics in their rooms: "Most of them seemed to be hanging out in the 'cybercafe.'"
This is just a small sampling of what Joel has posted at Gizmodo. Check out these two amazing galleries showing contrasting views of life, inside the dorms and out and about:
• Exclusive look: Where the workers who made your iPhone sleep at night