This photograph is part of a series taken by Christian Henriot during fieldwork on factories in Shanghai in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the time, access to factories was strictly prohibited to outside visitors, especially foreigners. The aim was to capture a rare glimpse of inner-city factories across Shanghai and to document the general conditions of industrial production. Many of the photographs were taken in the Yangpu district, one of the city’s oldest industrial areas. Factories operated in both new and old buildings, sometimes tucked away in narrow lilong (alleys) where much of the population lived. The overall impression was one of poorly maintained housing and severe pollution.

This image shows workers’ time-cards, each placed in an individually numbered slot. In early 1990s Shanghai factories, it was still common for employees to “clock in” manually by taking or stamping a personal card at the start and end of the shift.