My parents had to fulfill certain quotas: Several hundred garments--shirts, pants, and other clothing--had to be cleaned and pressed per day. By themselves, every day, they did an amount of work that should have taken four laborers to complete. The muscles of my mother's shoulders and arms became as firm as iron from working with the press, which is considered a difficult job even for a man. In addition to pressing, my father washed the clothes in the machines, which is the reason a strong odor of oil was permanently embedded in his working clothes.