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作词 : Currie |
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(NARRATOR) - Yu Hui came from Yangbian, a village in the north of Fujian, opposite Taiwan |
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Government requisitions left him with just one mu of land |
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Not enough to pay for his family's outgoings |
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It was humiliating |
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Yu Hui thought of emigrating |
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(YU HUI) - A man working in a bakery in Britain |
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Can send enough money home |
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To build a big six storey mansion in Yangbian |
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Abroad I could save each month |
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More than I make here in a year |
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(NARRATOR) - And so Yu Hui made a deal with the Snakehead Gang |
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(NARRATOR & YU HUI) - The wind is strong, the tide is high |
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In darkness no-one can see the sky |
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(NARRATOR) - On a forged Korean passport Yu Hui flew from Hong Kong to Europe |
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He dyed his hair to better resemble the man in the picture |
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In Paris he tried to find work, but failed |
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An illegal Chinese with no skills |
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(YU HUI) - I went sightseeing, called my family |
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Told them to pay the snakeheads £7,000 |
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This they did, with the help of loans |
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Secured by relatives and friends |
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(NARRATOR) - In England Yu Hui thought he would have better luck, a chance to earn more money |
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He came stowed away in a lorry |
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Through the channel tunnel |
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(YU HUI) - I heard that some who do this suffocate |
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I was afraid |
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It was hot in the truck |
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I ate a bar of chocolate |
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(NARRATOR) - In London he worked in the kitchen of a takeaway |
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The boss was hard, and the chef, although from Yu Hui's own village |
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Required £200 to give him the job |
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(YU HUI) - I slept on a mattress I found on the street |
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Lived with four others above a takeaway |
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Had to distribute five hundred leaflets every day |
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Then work eight to ten hours in the kitchen |
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For two meals, and low pay |
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(NARRATOR) - When he heard about the cockling work up north |
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Yu Hui assumed it could not be worse than life in London |
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He packed a case and went to Morecambe Bay |
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(YU HUI) - This work is very hard |
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It is cold and hurts my back |
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I live in a room with forty others, we eat only rice |
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I am depressed |
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I want to quit, but because I'm illegal |
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I have no freedom and no choice |
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(NARRATOR) - Five different Chinese teams, all under the control of a gangmaster |
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Work different sections of the bay |
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They work according to the tides, sometimes by day |
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But mostly at night |
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In groups of twenty to thirty |
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(YU HUI) - The English cockling teams felt threatened |
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Because we sieve the tiddlers out, clean our cockles better |
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They poured diesel on our catch to warn us |
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They hate us because we are foreigners |
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So now we work at night, although it is much more dangerous |
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(NARRATOR) - They lay the wooden planks on the sand |
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And shake them to bring the cockles to the surface |
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Harvest them with rakes, clean them up, and drop them in a sack |
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(NARRATOR & YU HUI) - The wind is strong, the tide is high |
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In darkness no-one can see the sea |
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(YU HUI) - And we knew that the tide was rising |
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Only when it touched our feet |
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By that time our only escape was blocked |
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(YU HUI) - If I die, who will pay off the Snakeheads? |
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My family will drown in endless tears |
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They cannot pay, not in fifty years |
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(NARRATOR) - The hovercraft sent by the lifeguard was beaten back by two metre waves |
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Twenty bodies were recovered, only one was saved, clinging to Priest Skier |
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It was not Yu Hui |
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(NARRATOR & YU HUI) - The wind is strong, the tide is high |
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In darkness |