My Mother Is a City Cleaner: The Dignity of Life Found in the City's Lowest and Hottest Workplaces

Author Zhang Xiaoman · Publisher Woongjin Thinkbig · Publication Date 2026-08-24 · ISBN 9788901300542

About the Book

From the book

When I couldn't understand my mother, when I faced difficulties, writing and words sometimes saved me. So I thought I could record my mother's life and work history in writing, and meticulously organize what happened during the blurred years in her memory and what I was going through at that time. No, I must. By doing so, I need to understand my mother's past, document her present experiences, and rediscover my past self. There's no need to force understanding. I decided to consider this a path my mother and I walk together.
[Prologue]

That year, my mother was fifty-two and my father was sixty. They both left home for the first time and traveled 1,500 kilometers to a southern city. At first, my mother hesitated to come to Shenzhen. She worried about being a burden to me and not being able to find another job. If she came to Shenzhen, her primary goal was to earn money. Her apprehension wasn't unfounded. In 2017, she was diagnosed with synovitis in her left knee. After more than a year of treatment, she gradually recovered, but her knee was still a little stiff when she walked.
[Chapter 1: Large Shopping Mall]

My mother didn't tell the team leader that she had suffered from synovitis to get this job. She couldn't even talk openly with anyone because if the team leader noticed, she might be criticized for not working hard and doing something else. My mother, who inherently loved to talk, had to suppress her nature there. She always had to stay in her area, and there were CCTVs everywhere in the store.
[Chapter 1: Large Shopping Mall]

Cleaners are the invisible and marginalized people of a shopping mall. The mall's unrealistically high level of cleanliness is the result of the ruthless expropriation of each cleaner's time. Lao Dong's time was squeezed to the extreme. "They don't let you sit down in the mall. You have to keep working." Lao Dong worked 16 hours a day and walked 30,000 steps daily. With aching heels and blisters, limping, she woke up at 6 AM every day and returned to her accommodation in the city's dilapidated residential area past midnight. After preparing the next day's meal and doing the laundry, she only slept five hours a day.
[Chapter 1: Large Shopping Mall]

When my mother was in Shenzhen, every time she saw the piles of my delivery boxes at the entrance, clothes I didn't even wear, the messy kitchen, and the two fat cats I doted on without having children, she would blurt out, "How can you be so bad at managing things?" The 'managing' my mother referred to meant the ability to plan, be smart, and organize daily life meticulously. In other words, it meant not wasting a single day and efficiently allocating the entire family's resources and personnel. My mother planned the order and flow of her work this way even when she worked as a cleaner in large shopping malls and government offices.
[Chapter 2: Government Office]

Shenzhen is a city known for its "high efficiency" and "wealth." However, what impressed me most when I first set foot here at the age of twenty-four was how clean and stylish the public restrooms in the parks were, and I never once saw them run out of toilet paper. Museums and libraries were always sparkling clean, and there wasn't a speck of dust in office buildings. Before my mother became a cleaner, I simply took for granted the tidiness of public spaces and the orderliness of workplaces. I never thought about how this "cleanliness" and "convenience" I enjoyed moment by moment were maintained. Looking back now, the experiences of other cleaners were probably not much different from my mother's.
[Chapter 3: Luxury Office Building]

What saddened my mother most was the fact that even though her children had studied a fair amount and even secured so-called good jobs, they were ultimately still bound by labor. There was no "shore" to climb onto, and they could be pushed out of mainstream life at any time. Whenever I expressed a desire to quit my job, my mother firmly dissuaded me. "You have to work to buy what you want. If you quit, you'll never find a job as good as this again."
[Chapter 3: Luxury Office Building]

Recommendations

“My mother is a city cleaner.” This book wonderfully demonstrates how richly this single sentence can be expanded. Perhaps our story would be the same. The moment we write, "My mother is…," we must imagine, ask, and listen intently. This book has done just that.
― Jung Hye-yoon (CBS PD, author of 『The Invention of Life』)

It re-examines the history of mothers as the history of 'working' mothers. A collaborative project by a mother and daughter, soaked in sweat. After reading this book, you too will want to hear 'the history of our mothers.'
― Lee Da-hye (Cine21 Reporter, author of 『The Joke of an Old World』)

Chunxiang, a cleaner in her 50s, meticulously creates a spotless city every day, asking, "Do you really think you could live well without us?" Reading the story of the cleaner, recorded by her daughter on behalf of the illiterate Chunxiang, I couldn't help but be outraged by their golden labor and their sh*tty treatment.
― Lee Rang (Musician, author of 『The History of Crazy Women by Mothers and Daughters』)

Table of Contents

Prologue We took a long detour and met in Shenzhen

Chapter 1 Large Shopping Mall
People in Shenzhen are all busy making money
How great it would have been if we had bought a house then
I'm useless, a burden to my child

Chapter 2 Government Office
I'm either in the hallway or next to the restroom
Women have a fate like vegetable seeds
I'm the best at managing things in our family

Chapter 3 Luxury Office Building
Do you think I want to be here?
Always just words. They don't respect me at all
The team leader is too ruthless with work
It's not like I have wings
I know my own body well
You don't know how hard Mom works
What will you do when you get old?
Someone who lives like fire, someone full of vitality

Extra Chapters
Searching for Xiaoju
'Trash' business

Epilogue Life that continues after work
My mother's words What kind of book would a person like me be?
My husband's words Digging for stories like digging for bamboo shoots
My daughter's words If my illiterate mother reads this book