"When Yiping Yang moved from Taishan, China to San Francisco, he worked in a restaurant kitchen. It was hard work. Co-workers fought with each other. Passions ran high. Decades later, the work is still hard, it smells way worse, but his crew of 14 middle-aged, mostly Chinese men do not tend to bicker as they make their way through San Francisco, cleaning the city's 2,800 public trash cans, one by one."
"On a recent weekday morning, the 58-year-old Yang, dressed in a full body protective suit, headed to Bernal Heights. His only company was a work truck, a power washer, a mug of American ginseng tea, and some paperwork tracking his progress of cleaning his 18 cans of the day. Yang can't read most English documents, but the routine sheets are an exception. He has filled them out so many times, he does it by muscle memory."
Yiping Yang emigrated from Taishan to San Francisco and now leads a 14-person crew that power-washes the city's 2,800 public trash cans. The crew is employed by a Chinatown-founded nonprofit that won a city contract in 2017 to provide more frequent sanitation and create jobs for people facing employment barriers. Workers earn $25–$27 per hour, work five days a week, and drive Ford Super Duty trucks while cleaning assigned cans. Yang performs a daily routine of cleaning about 18 cans, records progress on repetitive forms despite limited English literacy, and relies on muscle memory for administrative tasks.
Read at Mission Local
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