Lin Xi hauls buckets of water up 22 flights of stairs everyday. In her bare apartment in Linyi of Shandong — about 350 miles north of Shanghai — she cooks simple meals on a gas stove on the floor, keeps the light on with a solar generator, and puts up a tent as a makeshift bed for her daughters. Lin has worked on factory assembly lines since she was 14. A single mother of two, she spent the bulk of her savings on a down payment for an apartment in 2021, hoping to give her daughters a home