Better than KFC

Yijing never understood why Americans wanted to wear these huge rubbery faces. She understood there was a holiday in the U.S. where groups of children would dress up and hold homeowners hostage for candy. But the masks her factory made were for adults.

Once mask characters were selected, engineers would design them on a CAD machine. Later other employees would stretch them over metal forms, spin them in a dryer and then spray tans on the latex faces. Finally, someone would paint features on individual masks, which were bagged in cellophane. It was a complicated process, but her factory in Dongguan, China, had 500 employees.

Dongguan, a city of eight million, was sometimes called "the factory of the world. " The smog in Dongguan obscured the sun and made her tired from a vitamin D deficiency, a condition common in industrial areas of China.

But Yijing's job was not all bad. She moved from a rural Chinese village, like millions of other young migrants, to the big cities. Some factory employees worked 16 hours daily, but her boss was progressive. Like other workers in her factory, she wore a uniform provided by Spirit Sales management. Her eight-hour day included hourly breaks, where she could use her iPhone or chat with her friends. And it was customary to take a quick nap after lunch. Cafeteria staff cooked food in the factory's delicious kitchen. The fried chicken, in particular, was better than KFC. Her factory also offered base pay in addition to piece-rate rages.

Spirit Sales manufactured dozens of latex masks, including zombies and ghouls, but the most popular ones were of candidates before US presidential elections. For the last 20 years, mask sales predicted which candidate would win. First was George and then Bill, George W., and finally Barack. This year Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton. US election polls predicted an easy sweep for Clinton, but that's not what mask sales expected. So far, it was Trump 55%; Clinton – 45%.

Yijing eyed a Trump mask with its puffy eyes, fat jowls, beaver pelt hair, permanent scowl, and orange tan. Her job was the most meticulous in the manufacturing process. First, she carefully applied orange lacquer paint over his rubbery eyebrows and hair. She then stained his lips a mottled pink and added blue highlights to the corner of his eyes.

After she finished a box of The Donalds, she began on some Hillary masks. Her caricature was less pronounced, with a toothy overbite, prominent cheekbones, pearl earrings, and lacquered blonde hair. Yijing carefully painted red lipstick and light brown eyebrow pencil to the basic mask. When she finished a box of Hillarys, she started back on Donalds.

By the time the whistle blew at the end of the day, Yijing felt cross-eyed. She wasn’t sure she didn't accidentally “Donald up” the last batch of Hillarys. All she could think of while walking to her room was, she would be glad when the election was over, and she could go back to painting Snow Whites and Count Draculas.

— opelikakat