Cockle Pickers

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