WORK / LIVE 干活 New Worker Art Troupe 新工人艺术团

The New Worker Art Troupe 新工人艺术团 is a band formed in Picun 皮村, a migrant workers’ village in Beijing. It was an honour to welcome Wang Dezhi 王德志, Xu Duo 许多 and Lu Liang 路亮 for a live concert in the factory in Beijing on 10 November 2021.

In recent years the Picun Writers’ Group, from the same village, has caught the attention of Chinese society and of the literary world. Not because of the social status of its members, who are not writers in the traditional sense, but because of their work, which captures reality more closely than that of many professional writers. Their words go straight to the heart of our times and tell the changes in the lives of ordinary Chinese people.

The group started its community writing classes on 21 September 2014. Every week volunteer teachers and fellow workers discuss how to use writing to record and reflect on their lives. Their texts have since appeared in many non-fiction publications, and more and more readers are paying attention to them and to the communities they represent.

Further reading: Global Times · Paper Republic · Academia.edu