A shop providing phone services have no customers after Hejun Toy Factory was closed in Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The shopkeeper is seen watching TV to kill time. [China Youth Daily]

Ms He and her son spend about 40 yuan (about US$5.9) on their daily living costs. Without a steady income, it is worryingly expensive. All she can hope for is the compensation that she might get through arbitration. She said that she would go back to her hometown once she got the money.

Zhang Wei, who had been a manager of the production department of Hejun factory, realized that they could get compensation mainly through arbitration after the factory was closed. He has been busy helping 390 of his colleagues to prepare arbitration submissions ever since. Unfortunately his team is constantly shrinking as increasing numbers of people abandon the process under the pressure of job seeking.

Yang Jiadong, living in a rented house near the Hejun factory has totally lost heart after failing again and again to impress recruiters. Seeing so many sharing his fate, he thinks it will be impossible to find a job in such hard times. He plans to return to his hometown and take up a farmer's living after he gets his compensation from the factory.

Mr. Wei, a colleague of Mr. Yang, has not yet lost hope. The factory's shutdown made him realize that the OBM business is susceptible to risk. He wants to find a job in a business capable of doing its own independent research and development. A risk-resistant position is the goal of his job hunting now.

The two factories' bankruptcies have affected not only their own employees, but also brought hard times to their surrounding neighborhoods. One street, swarming with hundreds of small businesses, had prospered for a decade. With the factories gone, the businesses lost the best part of their regular customers. The owners have either had to sell their shops or close them. A cold winter has indeed arrived.