Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang

Jan 10, 2012 Sandy Tjan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, audio, china, general-non-fiction

In the early 2000s, my brother briefly worked as an executive for a Taiwanese-owned manufacturing company in China. It was a company of truly epic proportions, employing hundreds of thousands in China and abroad, and manufacturing for virtually all the big names in consumer electronics sold all over the world. If you use an IPad or any other Apple product, it would have passed through one of its gargantuan production facilities. Its ‘campus’ in Longhua, an industrial suburb of Shenzhen, was prac...more In the early 2000s, my brother briefly worked as an executive for a Taiwanese-owned manufacturing company in China. It was a company of truly epic proportions, employing hundreds of thousands in China and abroad, and manufacturing for virtually all the big names in consumer electronics sold all over the world. If you use an IPad or any other Apple product, it would have passed through one of its gargantuan production facilities. Its ‘campus’ in Longhua, an industrial suburb of Shenzhen, was practically a city unto itself with massive dormitories, shops, a sports center and a hospital. Security was tight, discipline militaristic, living condition Spartan and working hours extremely long. Assembly-line pay was miniscule by first world standards, but slightly above average for China. Worker suicides were not unknown*. Once in a blue moon, the big boss, a Taiwanese self-made billionaire who scoffed at business school grads, would drop by to preach the virtues of “hard work” and four hours of sleep a day to stadium-full of employees. On certain auspicious days, everyone had to line up to pay their respect to the Tu Di Gong, the Chinese earth god of wealth, eliciting muffled objections from the Taiwanese Christians and mainlanders brought up as atheists by the Communist state. The Taiwanese executives and managers spoke Taiwanese Hokkien among themselves, a language not understood by most of the mainlanders, and looked down on their workers, migrants from the rural interior who formed the backbone of the company’s operations.

After a while, my brother’s functional Mandarin became good enough to talk directly to the workers. He was impressed by their capacity for hard work and innate intelligence. Considering that these people were probably the first generation ever to leave the farm and were spottily educated in rural schools, it was a revelation to see how quickly they learned how the factory worked and to make hi-tech products according to complex instructions. After working hours, he wandered around the town, an industrial Wild West full of shops selling cheap and/or bootleg goods. You could walk into a hole-in-the-wall electronics shop and buy, say, a ‘Sony’ DVD player for a fraction of the official price. Or, if you liked the design of the Sony but preferred the specs of the Phillips --- mei wenti! No problem. They could assemble one for you. The more reputable shops got their wares from the factories that made these brands, so in a sense they were ‘genuine’ knock-offs. Everyone was ambitious, inured to working conditions that were unthinkable in developed countries, and had no respect whatsoever for intellectual property. The officials expected kickbacks, and practically anything was permissible for the right price. Currency manipulation aside, these attitudes seem to be the real cause behind China’s spectacular economic rise.

This book is a fascinating, occasionally voyeuristic, study of the lives of the assembly-line workers who fueled this rise, specifically a couple of factory girls in Dongguan, another industrial town not far from Shenzhen. Chang, a second-generation Chinese American, followed each of her subjects for years, chronicling their working and private lives, collecting information about their family history and even gaining access to their diaries. Daughters, who are less valued under the Confucian system, became the primary breadwinners of the family under the new values of industrialization (sons are often required to stay in the village to care for their ancestral farms and many factories prefer young women as they are considered more diligent and easier to manage). For the first time in history, unmarried, working-class women call the shots and they are ambitious enough to make the most of this opportunity. A sweatshop job is a stepping-stone to a white-collar job in the same factory. A receptionist with a talent for public speaking can become a successful recruiter for a MLM company. Farm girls who never graduated middle school could own export-oriented SMEs. There is a darker side to all of this, and Chang is never sentimental about her girls; she doesn’t shy away from writing about the sometimes-Machiavellian ethos they employed to get ahead, or about the bogus and criminal enterprises that proliferated to take advantage of ignorant migrant workers.

Between stories of the factory girls, Chang inserted her own family’s history of migration. It is decades and continents apart, for the Changs were an educated, upper middle class family that migrated to America after the Communist victory, but it serves as an interesting contrast to the experiences of today’s rural migrants.

Writing about the rising China is practically a cottage industry of its own, but this book is remarkable for putting a human face on the tide of workers who powers the economic juggernaut. It seems to me that this book and both Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present and Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler, who is married to Chang, present the most honest and insightful picture of contemporary China.

*Long after my brother left the company, these tragic incidents became a PR disaster for the company (and Apple). In response to this problem, the management planned to replace troublesome human workers with automatons.
(less)

12 likes · like · see review

Mar 08, 2013 Rusty rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-nonfiction

This is a novel one can spend hours contemplating. The development of factories in China is often compared to our own Industrial Revolution. It is similar yet different in many ways some of which are cultural, some of which are born of necessity. It's fascinating to follow the migrants who move into the cities from their rural origins.

The author discusses migration of young women from the countryside to the city where they seek jobs in the factories in Dongguan. She tells stories about several...more This is a novel one can spend hours contemplating. The development of factories in China is often compared to our own Industrial Revolution. It is similar yet different in many ways some of which are cultural, some of which are born of necessity. It's fascinating to follow the migrants who move into the cities from their rural origins.

The author discusses migration of young women from the countryside to the city where they seek jobs in the factories in Dongguan. She tells stories about several individuals, some she loses and some she keeps as friends. She quickly loses Yongxia and Dali among the thousands seeking work. Min becomes almost a friend. Many young women like Min job hop, attend classes, look for love and hope for better jobs and more money but are often taken advantage of by others.

To understand these young migrants one must know a little about the factories themselves. "It takes two hundred pairs of hands to make a pair of running shoes." Thus begins the chapter describing Yue Yuen, a factory where shoes are made. The author describes the factory itself, its conditions and talks to workers. Self-improvement is a way of life for many of them. It's how the differences between the young migrants and their families begin. Many have little education and expect to learn on the job. Falsifying qualifications, age, and experience is common.

At some point after "going out" (working in factories) young migrants begin to seek mates. The author attends meetings of a club to aid the process. It is poorly operated. She meets Wu Chunming with whom she spends a good deal of time, trying to understand how she will find a husband. She reconnects with Min who takes her to her parents' home for two weeks over the Chinese New Year.

There is so much information in this book that I can only relate a few instances of my impressions. When the author switches tactics to pursue her Chinese heritage background, she discovers much about her family, how they suffered during the cultural revolution and how they scattered across the country and to America. She learns that the family histories which survived the cultural revolution extend for hundreds of years beginning with the migration of the first ancestor but many have been destroyed. Fortunately, hers was saved by a family member who became obsessed with what happened. Within the final pages of this investigation she links her discovery to the stories of Chunming and Min, the migrant girls she came to know best during her research for this novel. It's a read I recommend to those who wish to learn more about this vast country and its people.

(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Feb 11, 2013 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Mikey B. by: Caroline

             Debrouillez-vous!

If you have ever wondered about the people who make most of the objects we use on a daily basis – like running shoes, home appliances, kitchen utensils... read this book. We are given an insightful view of their lives and surroundings.

Most of them are young women who come from rural areas. They essentially abandon the rural lifestyle to embark on an urban factory journey. Most will change jobs several times. They will meet a myriad of friends who just come and go. Their li...more

             Debrouillez-vous!

If you have ever wondered about the people who make most of the objects we use on a daily basis – like running shoes, home appliances, kitchen utensils... read this book. We are given an insightful view of their lives and surroundings.

Most of them are young women who come from rural areas. They essentially abandon the rural lifestyle to embark on an urban factory journey. Most will change jobs several times. They will meet a myriad of friends who just come and go. Their lives are forever altered.

The author does not wage a campaign denigrating the factories young people work in. We are presented rather with their daily living conditions. They work long hours and they are exploited – if they leave the job they may not receive the back pay owed to them (like two months wages). One of the first things that hit me when starting to read, were the job ads specifically asking for “female workers”. In my country (Canada) it would be against the labour code to specify a gender when posting an ad (not that jobs in Canada do not discriminate by gender – construction jobs are male dominated, CEOs are predominantly male).

Importantly the author visits a village, that some of the workers come from, during the New Year vacation period. We feel the contrast between what the young girls’ life in the village would be like with constricting and defined roles around the family, the extended family and the entire rural community. In the factory they have more empowerment – they can ask the boss for a change of position, a raise, or even quit. They can spend their earnings as they wish. They also sense their empowerment when they return to their small community – which aside from the electronic gadgets seems almost medieval; there is no sense of privacy.

Neither does Ms Chang paint the urban factory as a paradise. There is a constant pressure of production – of doing more with less, and also dishonesty between all levels of the workers and employers . We are told for instance that theft is common in the worker bunk houses. Also I got a pervading sense of loneliness,but loneliness is common in the urban environment. So many people, but so few real friends.

I titled this review “Debrouillez-vous” which is a French expression meaning – get on with it, make due, you are on your own. This, I believe, describes the plight of these young girls when they arrive in Dongguan – a huge land of factories – where they must organize themselves, get a job, change jobs – all on their own – and become self-reliant. They are no longer in a communal village.

This is a revealing book and focuses on people – not statistics – so we get a personal view of some of the factory workers – mostly female but young men as well. One statistic does stand out – 130 million migrant workers – the population of my country (Canada) is somewhat over 30 million. That is a staggering number! Perhaps I would have liked more on sexual harassment – after all most of the workers are young women and their bosses male. We are also provided with a chapter on the ubiquitous running shoe. This is a very worthwhile read – up close, engaged and personal.

Some quotes:
Page 11 (my edition): “There was nothing to do at home, so I went out”
Page 57: If migration liberated young women from the village, it also dropped them in no-man’s land.
Page 97: In a universe of perpetual motion, the mobile phone was magnetic north.
Page383: now there was an opportunity to leave your village and change your fate, to imagine a different life and make it real(less)

1 like · like · see review

Sep 01, 2011 Chia-Yi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

While being able to relate to Chang certainly is not a prereq for enjoying this book, I think I've had a different experience reading this book than non-Chinese-Americans may have. My mom grew up working in sweatshops and factories in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, so this book has been really interesting as a look into the generation of girls that came after her. She had limited schooling, and worked with her hands her entire life. The mentality of moving up and switching jobs a...more While being able to relate to Chang certainly is not a prereq for enjoying this book, I think I've had a different experience reading this book than non-Chinese-Americans may have. My mom grew up working in sweatshops and factories in Shanghai and Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, so this book has been really interesting as a look into the generation of girls that came after her. She had limited schooling, and worked with her hands her entire life. The mentality of moving up and switching jobs and taking computer classes to improve your chances at a better job (and husband) seems to be what sets this generation of girls and women apart. My mother didn't go to work because she wanted to improve her life, she wanted to earn money to improve the lives of her siblings and let them continue schooling. She is of the previous generation, just like Chang's father's generation.

It was really interesting how having wealth changed the migrants' roles in their family affairs. Chang mentions that for the older generation, it was not the same (i.e. getting beaten for changing your major without consulting with parents). My mother also earned a lot for her parents, not more than her father, but it only made a difference when she argued for allowing her younger sisters to continue their education.It is interesting to see how much has changed and how things are continually changing, not necessarily in a good or bad way, but just changing.

Some quotes that I liked:
p. 49 "We can be ordinary but we must not be vulgar" - Wu Chunming
p. 58 "The divide between countryside and city was the only one that mattered: Once you crossed that line, you could change your fate."
"You can only rely on your self"
p. 234 "Seventy percent of Chinese people are bad." - Lao Gong, businessman

Some of the reviews talk about how Chang uses a lot of metaphors, or jumps from topic to topic, or delves too deeply into her own family history for the purposes of the story. I think to try to understand present modern China, you really do need to understand at least some of the history, and the cultural things that have led up to present day. I admit that at some points her narrative is a little weak, but the richness of history makes up for that and the intrigue of the modern girls' story holds up well against it.

As for the metaphors, that is part of Chinese culture (i.e. the not talking openly about yourself or feelings or opinions), so if you really don't get the picture or effect she is going for, then you could try just thinking about it for a few minutes. That break in space between paragraphs is meant to tell you to take a moment and think before you barrel further into the story. This is not like your fictional novel where you just want to see what happens at the end. Part of the process is really trying to understand the people and what they are going through in these stories.

On a somewhat related note, this is an interesting project (scroll down to "Apart Together"):
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/e...

(less)

5 likes · like · see review

May 02, 2011 Maggie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, books-for-challenges, asia

3 stars but at times 2 1/2. Parts were very interesting while other parts seemed repetitive. The author focuses on a couple of young women who leave the country areas of China, travel to the main cities and seek work in the factories there. Their stories are sad mostly, as they are at the mercy of unscrupulous employers. However they also live an unreal lifestyle - easily moving from one factory to the next (often just on the say so of a stranger) in the hope that conditions would be better else...more

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 03, 2009 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are two great reasons to read this book! One, the direct relevance it has to almost everyone alive today who consumes products of any sort (shoes, bags, cell phone parts, computer parts) made by the intrepid young working ladies of Dongguan in Southern China that the author describes in this book. Second, Ms. Chang's narrative voice was truly a pleasure to read.

The material itself is fascinating and up-to-the minute-timely; the book details how a huge migration is taking place in China, t...more There are two great reasons to read this book! One, the direct relevance it has to almost everyone alive today who consumes products of any sort (shoes, bags, cell phone parts, computer parts) made by the intrepid young working ladies of Dongguan in Southern China that the author describes in this book. Second, Ms. Chang's narrative voice was truly a pleasure to read.

The material itself is fascinating and up-to-the minute-timely; the book details how a huge migration is taking place in China, transforming family life, economic life, and the individual fates of millions of young women and men who leave the countryside to work in cities full of factories, cities which are changing and growing at an insane speed. Knowing next to nothing about China, this book opened the door a crack for me to understanding something about the country. It was a great introduction, providing a context or anchor for further reading, and sparking my interest in learning more. Ms. Chang was the perfect narrator; she wrote in a way that provided an immediately familiar and recognizable narrative voice to an American reader but with her Chinese language skills, family background, open mind, and warm heart she was also able to become close enough with the Chinese women to give us an intimate view of their lives, ambitions, and view of the world.

It took me almost a month to read the book. Upon finishing, I realized I was going to miss Ms. Chang's company, telling me the story of these girls and their surroundings through the filter of her own wonderfully insightful mind; sometimes with gentle humour, sometimes subtly scathing, sometimes admiring of the girls, sometimes seeing right through their words and acitons. While picking up on unusual and fascinating details with a reporter's careful eye, Ms. Chang also showed just as good a feel for understanding the bigger picture and going to the heart of the matter in her analyses. It would have been difficult to read about some of the chinese style self-help-gurus, the cult style English teachers and the like without touches of Ms. Chang's scepticism and wit. It was useful, after reading about the flimsiness of business standards in Dongguan and shallow ethics of the Dongguan workplace, to have Ms. Chang anchor the story in the context of a larger picture of Chinese values and history. I appreciated the honesty, open-mindedness, humour, courage, and wisdom with which Ms. Chang researched the book, lived her life in a very intense environment without losing her own perspective, and narrated this fascinating story. (less)

10 likes · like · see review

Feb 05, 2009 Kristine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: china, greatest-hits

A little longer than it needs to be but it's very enlightening. It really makes you realize how fortunate we are to be employed or even unemployed in the USA.

These girls leave home as young as 14 and are hired at talent markets so they don't even see the conditions of the factory until the first day on the job. They also live at the factory, sleeping in dorms. Working from 8am to midnight with two short (10 minute) breaks is not unheard of. Employers also withold pay so they cannot quit without...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jan 30, 2009 Chrissa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ms. Chang created a fascinating portrait of several women (including herself and her family) who "went out" from their birthplaces and from the cultural strictures of those places. For a place that is often in the news as The People's Republic of China is, one seldom seems to glean much of the life of the people within. For most of this book, I felt like a child with my nose pressed to the glass, unable to look away from the lives of the women portrayed within. This is an interesting read that w...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 07, 2009 Ann rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was very disappointed in this book. It was very disorganized.
The way it jumped from one thing to another with no transition beyond some extra space on the page was quite disorienting. (E.g., one section ended with a statement about an old relative laying in bed waiting to die and the next paragraph started with a description of a table loaded with food.)

The descriptions and conclusions also seemed very superficial. I chose the book because I was very interested in learning about life in China...more

5 likes · like · see review

Mar 23, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is a bit hard to review because it is somewhat more complex than one would first expect.
The story turns out to be a bit different than the preconceived notion also.

For the positive, the writer had a background at the wall st journal,
probably the least biased newspaper in America and this gave her the mindset and habit to write an interesting and unbiased account of this unusual mass migration from rice patty to factory.

She also integrated her life with her subjects to an unusual deg...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 24, 2013 Jake Kula rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I gave this book a two star rating because although there were some interesting parts about how the Chinese lived their lives, it didn’t get as far into the rights and politics as I would’ve liked and zeroed in on certain individuals’ boyfriend problems and other personal problems and avoiding the big picture. It was also very random, in that it kept jumping from topic to topic without any structure. Although her ability to write this book are unquestionable (she grew up in China and is fluid in...more I gave this book a two star rating because although there were some interesting parts about how the Chinese lived their lives, it didn’t get as far into the rights and politics as I would’ve liked and zeroed in on certain individuals’ boyfriend problems and other personal problems and avoiding the big picture. It was also very random, in that it kept jumping from topic to topic without any structure. Although her ability to write this book are unquestionable (she grew up in China and is fluid in both Mandarin and English) Leslie T. Chang’s qualifications are very limited, and I think this was published more because of the lack of firsthand accounts from inside this superpower.
This book defiantly has no shortage of first-hand accounts. She accompanies many citizens on their journeys to raise their salary and happiness. The way she describes relationships and problems of the Chinese people, she ends up making it sound a lot like a prejudice America with less regulations. When she is talking to a friend who is attempting to receive her commission from a company that fired her, she just makes It seem very normal. “ ‘When I met him in China, he didn’t behave like a person who was important and busy… When she finally got through to (him), the global chairman of a Swedish pain company, she was certain that the two would talk as friends, equals, but of course it was exactly this kind of blind confidence that brought Chung Ming to where she was today.” (Chang part two chapter 8 53:49). Although this style of writing is useful to figure out how the average Chinese citizen lives, it becomes redundant and I think the book would have been better if she switched back and forward from a citizen perspective and a broad political perspective. Dating and relationships were also a common topic in this book. “Afterward, Lin Chiang sent an assessment to her on her mobile phone. ‘I’ve discussed it with my sisters, and we all think he is too soft. He’s no worthy of you’” (Chang part 2 chapter 9 1:15-1:26). Experts like these or on this sort of topic make up a good portion of the book, and although this might appeal to some people I didn’t find it very interesting.
Another flaw with the book was that the entirety of the people she talked to were females with problems with their lives but no apparent solutions. “Nothing about Min’s life satisfied her after she returned from her visit home for the new year. She wasn’t learning anything from her job, and her salary was low. She could see how badly she stacked up because she worked in the human resources department… and she was unhappy with her boyfriend.” (Chang part2 chapter 9 0:04 0:27). There are no quotes that say this directly, but her problems don’t get solved. The entire book can be summarized by a handful of firsthand accounts that describe the general Chinese culture (which resemble the Asian stereotypes very well I’m sorry to say). Education is everything, if you study hard you will be successful, Women aren’t supposed to be ambitious, and knowing English is a sign of prosperity.
Long story short, I think this was geared towards a female audience and didn’t suit my interests on Chinese politics. The one good thing I got from the book was noticing how closely the problems of the Chinese resemble ours, and how their society isn’t really much different from ours. They have even loosened their grip on the public to promote their growing economy “One day, Chung Ming heard the news that the government had passed a law legalizing direct sales.” (Part 2 chapter 11 12:10-12:17). This book is good to a certain target audience, but not for me.
(less)

like · see review

Jan 06, 2013 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Terrific book about factory workers in China. Author is a Taiwanese-born American who speaks fluent Mandarin, and apparently looks the part as well. Details her travels and relationships she forms with factory workers (who are mostly girls) while weaving in factual/statistical information about China.
Lots of interesting info in the book, probably more than I can recall here, but the main things I remember are

- China’s workforce today is (one of?) the largest migration in human history. Nearly al...more Terrific book about factory workers in China. Author is a Taiwanese-born American who speaks fluent Mandarin, and apparently looks the part as well. Details her travels and relationships she forms with factory workers (who are mostly girls) while weaving in factual/statistical information about China.
Lots of interesting info in the book, probably more than I can recall here, but the main things I remember are

- China’s workforce today is (one of?) the largest migration in human history. Nearly all factory workers are migrants, from small farms out in the country

- Most factory workers are females, since guys are able to get engineering/design jobs easier, and are more likely to have an education, having been supported by their family

- Identity fraud is common, since the law requires girls be a certain age in order to work (yet factories avoid hiring older workers because they fear they’d have to pay them too much)

- Self-improvement is a central focus of many factory workers, yet their opportunities for self-improvement are often questionable. The “schools” that exist are often run by people barely qualified to be giving advice. The most popular topics are computer skills, foreign language skills, and “working in an office” skills

- “Square and Round”, a Machiavellian book about getting ahead, was written by someone who in all aspects appears to be a loser and a failure. There’s nothing impressive or successful about him, aside from having written a best-selling book, and it’s not clear that following his advice is even a good idea

- Peoples’ identities are tied to their cell phone. Some people will even avoid befriending those without mobiles since they’re so hard to keep track of. And when someone loses their mobile, it usually means losing touch with all the friends they’ve made. It seems uncommon for people to talk about their family/home village, possibly because of the identity fraud, or possibly simply because it’s rare for people to be close

- Although many workers start out being very filial and sending the majority of their money back home, most will start saving that money instead, or spending it on themselves. However, it seems everyone knows about everyone else’s monetary situation, particularly how much savings they have, and whether they spend frivolously. Thus there is some social pressure to save
(less)

like · see review

Jan 01, 2013 Amber rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book explores two related topics: the conditions and situation of female migrant workers in China, and the author's family history in China (she is American but her family immigrated in the mid-20th century). The former is much, much more compelling than the latter, which to me seemed meaningful for the author but ultimately not compelling enough, or connected enough to the broader story, to warrant being included in the book. Some of the interesting things I learned from this book:
--employ...more This book explores two related topics: the conditions and situation of female migrant workers in China, and the author's family history in China (she is American but her family immigrated in the mid-20th century). The former is much, much more compelling than the latter, which to me seemed meaningful for the author but ultimately not compelling enough, or connected enough to the broader story, to warrant being included in the book. Some of the interesting things I learned from this book:
--employers withhold the first two months of a worker's pay, and one who leaves without approval (which is difficult to obtain) means forfeiting this money. Nonetheless this often happens, if better positions are available, as climbing the ladder from floor worker to supervisor or especially positions like secretary is well worth it.
--China has 130 million migrant workers, three times as many as immigrated from Europe to America over the course of a century
--money sent home is the largest source of wealth accumulation for rural families. In contrast with prior generations of migrant workers, women (or, really, girls, as they are quite young) who leave home now rarely return to farming permanently, as they never knew this life previously. Older generations care for younger children and harvest the fields. However, the rural lifestyle does provide a safety net for workers, and the author postulates that China does not feature the shanty towns prevalent in other developing (or for that matter developed) countries because of this safety net.
--Also in contrast with previous generations of migrant workers, today's do not face the same sort of intimidation from police, or discrimination, because in many towns they are now the overwhelming majority of factory workers.
--Based on working conditions, European- or American-owned factories are most preferred, followed by Japanese, Korean, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally domestic companies.
--Power supply shortages are prominent and often limit working hours
--70,000 people work at the Yue Yuen shoe factory, which makes athletic shoes for several major manufacturers. When Nike and Adidas came under pressure to improve working conditions, they went to an 11-hour workday at the factory, and gave workers Sundays off--but this prompted many workers to quit because they could no longer get enough overtime. I thought this was an interesting microcosm of the problem of imposing developed-world values onto the developing world.

As noted, though, I thought the author's discussion of her family history really dragged, and that ultimately the book would have been better without it. In addition, these parts are more prone to unnecessarily over-the-top language and lame similes like:
"An incident from half a century ago would be recalled differently, with each person's version fixed and distinct--pieces of China they carried with them that had hardened over time, like precious pebbles worn smooth."
"Zhao sat perfectly straight on the couch--as stiff-backed as a young cadet, and arrogant in this knowledge. Silently he pointed to himself, his thumb aiming at his chest like a dagger that has found its target."
"The Cultural Revolution took everything the Chinese people had long held sacred and smashed it to pieces, like an antique vase hurled against the wall."

Nonetheless, the discussion of this class of Chinese women, and the Chinese migrant-worker economy, is interesting and makes this book worth reading. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Dec 11, 2012 Grady McCallie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: china

Author Leslie Chang explores the lives and attitudes of a handful of young Chinese women who have migrated from rural villages in the interior of the country to work in urban factories near the coast. A second, minor thread recounts Chang's own family's migrations. It's not initially clear how that second story relates to the first, but it gradually appears that Chang intends it as a counterweight to the essentially history-less lives of her subjects. By the end, she balances a cousin whose life...more

like · see review

Dec 07, 2012 Kellie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nook, nonfiction

It is a fascinating window on understanding the human connection to the computer I'm using to type, the shoes I use to exercise, the phone I use, the tv I watch, and anything else that I have that bears the distinction of being Made in China. I feel to honor the work and lives of these invisible and heretofore anonymous workers, because I have to accept that stuff I want to use every day comes through their hands and helps create the unique and challenging lives they have chosen to lead. I have...more
It is a fascinating window on understanding the human connection to the computer I'm using to type, the shoes I use to exercise, the phone I use, the tv I watch, and anything else that I have that bears the distinction of being Made in China. I feel to honor the work and lives of these invisible and heretofore anonymous workers, because I have to accept that stuff I want to use every day comes through their hands and helps create the unique and challenging lives they have chosen to lead. I have been fascinated in the reading of this book to be able to think of the individuals to whom I'm connected, if only by the thinnest of threads, by global trade.

Yarn comes to my knitting hands from all over the world as well. I have in my possession right now yarn from the US, England, Scotland, Peru, Uruguay, Canada, Turkey, China, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. I found all those examples in about a 20-minute perusal of my stash. I'm sure there are more places represented. It comes through all those hands in all those countries and enriches my life in ways that the individuals at the other end of the production line may not even be able to imagine or understand. It may be just a commodity to them, depending on the volume being produced.

It is appealing to think of the world as small and to work toward a new kind of localization of products and services. In the end, it will not entirely work. Don't get me wrong, I love supporting local businesses and all that, but there is no doubt that even local businesses are dependent on the global economy in major ways (my local organic farm uses computers, smartphones, cars, trucks, cameras, shoes and clothing). Just as most of the running shoes in the world are made in just a few factories, then shipped to many different brand distributors, that local or boutique dyer you love may be buying the base yarn from one of several large-scale suppliers, who in turn get their yarns from many different sources around the world, and some of it might come down the pipeline of global trade, perhaps from large and fully industrial factories.

Yarn has such a warm, fuzzy connotation in our minds that we may not like to think of our beloved medium coming from a mill run by workers in hairnets monitoring vast machines. The fact is since the advent of the industrial revolution, much of it does come from such a beginning. Even in our immediate, intimate, and seemingly small world of knitting, there is always going to be a connection to the wider manufacturing world. I don't think this is a bad thing. It is the world where we live and I'd rather think about my computer or my shoes or my yarn being made by a person, perhaps a Factory Girl a world away in China.(less)

like · see review

Nov 23, 2012 Isham Cook rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: china-bookshelf

Late in the book there is a disturbing account of a small-scale business operation in an apartment in Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The male running it keeps his female underlings working all day and forbids to them to leave the apartment except for a few hours once a week; they sleep in a cramped dormitory-style bedroom. Quiz: this operation is A) a brothel, B) a sweatshop, C) a religious cult, D) none of the above. D is correct: it's a private English language school for adults, mainly female...more Late in the book there is a disturbing account of a small-scale business operation in an apartment in Dongguan, Guangdong Province. The male running it keeps his female underlings working all day and forbids to them to leave the apartment except for a few hours once a week; they sleep in a cramped dormitory-style bedroom. Quiz: this operation is A) a brothel, B) a sweatshop, C) a religious cult, D) none of the above. D is correct: it's a private English language school for adults, mainly female factory workers between jobs who want to gain English credentials. Their teacher's notion of language learning is, like so much in China, quantitative-based and modeled on the factory assembly line: a machine he invented rapidly rotate words which the students must memorize as they flash by. This episode in Leslie Chang's book is representative in presenting two aspects of life in China for the hundreds of millions of migrant workers trying to achieve career stability or success in the city. On the one hand, there is the optimistic assessment, emphasized by Chang throughout the book, namely the freedom migrants now have to leave the village and go where opportunity beckons, with increasing numbers of success stories, primarily for female migrants, who often paradoxically enjoy greater freedom than males due to the obligations of male migrants to return to the village and care for their family. As Chang recounts with the stories of two migrants she befriended and followed for two years, Min and Chunming, the choices young Chinese women from the countryside now have at their disposal for upward mobility can be compared to the freedom and allure of worldwide travel young people from the developed world enjoy.

On the other hand, there is a powerful counterforce holding many Chinese back from freedom and autonomy: the imposing psychological control of group conformity. As a longtime American resident in China, I see this all the time in numerous guises among all social strata, not just migrants (and I write about this in my website attached to my Amazon profile). Although it is true that working conditions in factories have been improving over the past few years as workers learn about their rights and bargaining power through better communication (the internet) as well as negative publicity about labor exploitation at Foxconn, this still largely applies to skilled factory workers. For countless other workers in the service industry (restaurants, shop workers, the sex industry), working conditions remain awful - 12-14 hour days, 1-2 days off per month, minimum wage. Educated white-collar workers, for their part, experience a different kind of exploitation, hardly less grim: typically just as long working hours (though varying considerably from company to company) or 24-hour cellphone monitoring when off work, with elaborate penalty systems for failure to respond immediately to cellphone summons or other minor infractions (one highly educated female I know who worked as a journalist for a national newspaper quit because they were docking too much of her pay each month for largely unspecified penalties).

So returning to the aforementioned English training school, where Chang would describe the conditions experienced by these women as a matter of personal freedom and choice, we also recoil at the psychological coercion involved, which prevents them from rebelling, protesting and leaving. To be sure, this school is a bizarre exception, and most English schools in China, even unaccredited ones, are run like normal schools, with students present only during class hours. But another book needs to be written that deals with the dark side of China's economic success, even in these upwardly mobile times. It's good to have Chang's upbeat account, but for every migrant who achieves success like Min, how many millions of Chinese (including the educated class) remain locked and paralyzed in their internal cages of fear and anger, quietly spending their entire waking hours making superiors rich while they receive a pittance (not to mention the horrifying ongoing problem of companies that don't pay their workers at all, even an entire year's promised wages, folding up operations just before the Spring Festival and disappearing). After years of teaching in Chinese universities, I could see the mental slavery all around me on university campuses, which unlike universities almost anywhere in the world, are completely void of any signs of student protests. Largely enabling and ensuring China's economic expansion, in short, is group coercion and internalized fear on a scale few other societies know.(less)

like · see review

Nov 03, 2012 Nathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: other-non-fiction

I've been reading the last few months, but struggling to find something worth saying about the books I've read. This excellent book, however, moved me to words. It's an account of the highly mobile and mostly-female workforce in China, the 16-18 year olds who leave the farms in the countryside and flood into factory cities like Dongguan and Shenzhen in southern China. The author tells the stories of several girls, as well as her own investigations into her family history, and the results paint a...more I've been reading the last few months, but struggling to find something worth saying about the books I've read. This excellent book, however, moved me to words. It's an account of the highly mobile and mostly-female workforce in China, the 16-18 year olds who leave the farms in the countryside and flood into factory cities like Dongguan and Shenzhen in southern China. The author tells the stories of several girls, as well as her own investigations into her family history, and the results paint a fascinating picture of the social changes, and constants, over the last seventy years of China.

The real heroes are the girls. Brave, focused on self-improvement, constantly hunting for new opportunities, and creating this new social identity in a space which hadn't existed before in the same way. Their stories are by turns fascinating and frustrating, inspirational and banal. They're living a hypermodern life: job seeking, self-improvement, upwardly mobile, but with everything exaggerated and accelerated. They rise quickly, fall fast, experience orders of magnitude of income change that we can't dream of, change careers, search for marriageable men, and so much more, while optimistic and opportunistic.

I've been curious about China's Great Leap Forward for a while now, and Chang's exploration of these new women of the Pearl Delta and of her own family history both serve to help make sense of what happened and how it's currently dealt with (or not). The necessary subjugation of self to society in small farming communities, the ferocious turning on intellectuals, the decision to show the shape of history but blur its details, it's all part of a repeating pattern and structure which the novelty of today's factory girls is poured into. New material, same mould.

Passages which stood out for me:

My assumptions had come from studies of Chinese migrant workers done in the mid-1990s; almost a decade later, this world had utterly changed, but things were happening too quickly to be written down.

(on the relationship between locals in political power, and the migrants): We already disliked each other. In the middle of the interview, I looked over at the assistant and he stared blankly back at me. The young woman next to him had fallen asleep. The phrase mutual contempt popped into my mind. The interview was useful: Without seeing for myself, I never would have believed how completely the government ignored the migrants.

Another high-speed negotiating tactic was to offer to take a passenger partway to his destination for a smaller fare; drivers were such short-term thinkers that they would rather earn less money but get paid sooner.

Chinese history museums are troubled places. Ancient civilization was great, or so the official narrative went, but it was feudal and backward. Modern China was ravaged by foreigners, but the Chinese people were heroic in humiliation and defeat. China stood up in 1949 when the Communists came to power, but there were other years since—1957, 1966, and 1989 in particular—that went prominently unmentioned. Everything that was jumbled and incoherent and better left unsaid must be smoothed into a rational pattern, because the purpose of history from the time of Confucius has been to transmit moral lessons to later generations.

In the seventh century, the emperors of the Tang Dynasty ordered court historians to compose a chronicle of the previous reign. Every dynasty since has written the history of the preceding one, slanting or omitting facts to bolster the ruling regime; since 1949, the Communist Party has done the same, presenting modern history as a heroic struggle to resist the will of foreign powers. But here in Dongguan, the past contained a startlingly different lesson: History was openness, markets, and foreign investment. History began with a handbag factory, and schoolchildren must be indoctrinated in the merits of good infrastructure. The museum guide urged the children to be “civilized spectators,” and the third- and fourth-graders filed into History in ragged lines. Soon the huge lobby was deserted, and I was left alone to ponder the unlikelihood of a Chinese history museum that did not make a single mention of Mao Zedong.

THE STORIES OF MIGRANT WOMEN shared certain features. The arrival in the city was blurry and confused and often involved being tricked in some way. Young women often said they had gone out alone, though in fact they usually traveled with others; they just felt alone. They quickly forgot the names of factories, but certain dates were branded in their minds, like the day they left home or quit a bad factory forever. What a factory actually made was never important; what mattered was the hardship or opportunity that came with working there. The turning point in a migrant’s fortunes always came when she challenged her boss. At the moment she risked everything, she emerged from the crowd and forced the world to see her as an individual.

Women make up more than one-third of China’s migrants. They tend to be younger than their male counterparts and more likely to be single; they travel farther from home and they stay out longer. They are more motivated to improve themselves and more likely to value migration for its life-changing possibilities. In one survey, men cited higher income as the chief purpose of leaving home, while women aspired to “more experience in life.” Unlike men, women had no home to go back to. According to Chinese tradition, a son was expected to return to his parents’ house with his wife after he married; a son would forever have a home in the village where he was born. Daughters, once grown, would never return home to live—until they married, they didn’t belong anywhere. To some extent, this deep-rooted sexism worked in women’s favor. Many rural parents wanted a grown son to stay close to home, perhaps delivering goods or selling vegetables in the towns near the village. Young men with such uninspiring prospects might simply hun—drift—doing odd jobs, smoking and drinking and gambling away their meager earnings. Young women—less treasured, less coddled—could go far from home and make their own plans. Precisely because they mattered less, they were freer to do what they wanted. But it was a precarious advantage. If migration liberated young women from the village, it also dropped them in a no-man’s-land. Most girls in the countryside were married by their early twenties, and a migrant woman who postponed marriage risked closing off that possibility for good. The gender imbalance in Dongguan, where 70 percent of the workforce was said to be female, worked against finding a high-quality mate. And social mobility complicated the search for a husband. Women who had moved up from the assembly line disdained the men back in the village, but city men looked down on them in turn. Migrants called this gaobucheng, dibujiu—unfit for a higher position but unwilling to take a lower one.

The network-sales model was ideally suited to a Chinese society in which traditional morality had broken down and only the harshest rules—trust no one, make money fast—still applied.

“If I only go to school, come out and do migrant work for a few years, then go home, marry and have children,” Min said, “I might as well not have lived this whole life.”

The migrants I knew spent a great deal of time managing their phones—changing numbers constantly to take advantage of cheaper calling plans, and switching phone cards when crossing to another city to save on roaming fees. That was the short-term mentality of Dongguan: Save a few pennies, even if it meant losing touch with some people for good. Migrant workers are a major reason the Chinese mobile-phone market is the world’s largest, yet the industry has mixed feelings about them. Migrants were behind the market’s poor economics, one friend in the telecommunications industry told me; they supposedly drove down prices because they were willing to pay for only the cheapest services. Popular culture also felt their negative impact: The quality of Chinese pop music had deteriorated in recent years, I was also told, because migrants chose the least sophisticated songs for the ring tones of their phones.

Newer migrants have looser ties to their villages. Their trips home are no longer dictated by the farming calendar or even by the timing of traditional holidays like the lunar new year. Instead, younger migrants come and go according to their personal schedules of switching jobs or obtaining leaves, and these are often tied to the demands of the production cycle. It is the seasons of the factory, rather than the fields, that define migrant life now. Migrants increasingly look and act like city people. Migrant magazines launched in the 1990s have folded or are struggling to find readers now. Songs about the migrant experience are no longer heard in the factory cities of the south; the workers on the assembly line now listen to the same pop tunes as urban teenagers.

THE TRADITIONAL CHINESE calendar divides the year into twenty-four segments and gives farming instructions for every two-week interval. The year begins with lichun, the start of spring on February 4 or 5 and the time for spring sowing. The calendar dictates when to plant melons, beans, coarse cereals, beets, and grapes and when to harvest rice, wheat, apples, potatoes, radishes, and cabbage. It predicts heat and heavy rains. It sets the proper time to protect crops from the wind, to kill pests and collect manure, to weed and to irrigate, to fix fences for livestock and to welcome in the new year. The calendar was standardized during the Former Han Dynasty—with regional variations, it has governed the rhythms of life on the farm for two thousand years. The girls at Yue Yuen know nothing of the farming cycle. When they go home, their parents don’t usually want them to work; if they help out in the fields, they suffer sunburns and blisters from the unfamiliar labor. One migrant worker described to me a typical day at home: She kept farmers’ hours with the rest of the family but spent most of her day watching television.

Management introduced Lean Manufacturing to increase efficiency and reduce waste at Yue Yuen. Workers say that while they work shorter hours now, the time on the line is more stressful; tasks are parceled out precisely and there is almost no downtime. Assembly lines have been restructured into small teams so workers can switch tasks every few days, whereas before they might have done the same thing for a month at a time. This makes production more flexible, but it is exhausting for the workers. Also in the name of efficiency, living arrangements have been reshuffled so workers live with their assembly-line colleagues rather than with their friends.

The parents of migrants had terrible instincts. At every stage, they gave bad advice; they specialized in outdated knowledge and conservatism born out of fear. Some initially forbade their children, especially their daughters, from going out at all. But once a migrant got to the city, the parental message shifted dramatically: Send home money, the more the better. Some parents pressured their daughters to marry, though only someone from their home province—which seemed as unreasonable as telling a person living in New York to date only natives of Ohio. On the job front, their advice was invariably bad: They warned against jumping factories, which was usually the best way to get ahead. Migrants learned quickly how to deal with their parents: They disobeyed, they fought, and they lied. They kept their distance; Chunming did not go home during her first three years in the city. The girls were matter-of-fact about such transgressions. “They don’t know how things are outside, so I do something first, and then I tell them about it,” Min said. A new life began the day they arrived in the city, and they would do what they needed to protect it. The past did not matter, and the present was everything. Family was a trap that would pull you backward if you weren’t careful.

Chang attends a class for self-improvement: In the weeks to come, other rules would pile up fast. When pouring tea, the cup should be 70 percent full. Purple eye shadow suits all Asian women. In pursuing success, knowledge contributes 30 percent and interpersonal relations 70 percent. Hold the receiver in your left hand and dial the number with your right. When smiling, the mouth should be opened so that teeth don’t show, the lips flattened with the corners of the mouth slightly upturned. During the noon rest hour, do not lie horizontally on the chair or desk. No action was so elementary that it didn’t require instructions; the class sometimes felt like a crash course for Martians trying to pass as human beings. The heroes from history never varied. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong led the pack, with Hitler a distant third. He was valued for his eloquence; the Nazi leader was a wonderful speaker. Etiquette, not History. But I noticed something: The students did not fall asleep. They did not look bored. No one ever left to use the bathroom during the two-hour class; they were afraid they might miss something. All their lives, these young women had been taught by teachers and textbooks that struggled to make sense of the modern world. They knew by heart the incoherent mush of rules, self-help, and Confucian exhortation. They took only what they needed, grasping the principal lesson long before I did: If you look and act like someone of a higher class, you will become that person.

Dongguan learning took place in humble settings. Classrooms were bare and dim and plagued by power cuts, and computers so grimy and ancient they looked like archaeological finds. The students were poor and spottily educated, and even their teachers apologized for their heavy rural accents. Almost none of the instructors had a proper degree; many, like Teacher Deng, trailed a string of failed businesses behind them. But for all that, they were revolutionary. In the regular Chinese school system, students did not speak in class; often they did not even take notes until the teacher told them to. They studied a set curriculum determined by a government committee. Teachers pitted students against one another to make them study harder, and the entire system revolved around tests—a test to get into a good middle school, then a good high school, and finally a good college, or any college at all. Like the imperial civil service exam, the educational system was designed to reward the few: Every year, the equivalent of only 11 percent of the freshman-age population entered college. Students who fell off that track were channeled into vocational schools to learn employable skills like machine tool operation and auto repair, but the curriculum was generally so outdated that the schools functioned more like holding pens for the students until they went out to work. China is trying to reform its education system. Some teachers have embraced “quality education,” which emphasizes student creativity and initiative over rote learning. To that end, richer and more progressive schools have introduced electives such as art and music. Making higher education more accessible is another goal: In recent years, the government has sharply expanded college enrollment. But education remains one of the most conservative areas of Chinese society, burdened by hidebound teachers and administrators, political constraints, and a historical obsession with test scores.

The commercial schools in Dongguan belonged to another world. Unburdened by history, they were free to teach what they wanted. They focused unabashedly on practical skills; teachers used material from the Internet or from their own experiences working in factories or companies. They did not pit students against one another and they didn’t give out grades. Since every student was there to improve her own job prospects, class rank was irrelevant. They ignored writing—the cornerstone of traditional scholarship—in favor of public speaking. Knowing how to speak would help the students win a better job, obtain a lower price quote, or sell more of whatever they ended up selling. “We are all in the sales business,” the White-Collar teachers reminded their students again and again. “What are we selling? We are selling ourselves.”

I later learned, not from Teacher Deng but from his students, that the Zhitong school sold fake diplomas. Each one was a small book with a shrink-wrapped plastic cover, like the cheap photo albums some of the girls carried around with them. A counterfeit degree from a vocational college cost sixty yuan—around $7.50—while one from a vocational high school was half that. Formal education was not valued in Dongguan, but until then I had not realized how little it was worth.

I asked him what he thought about the other success studies books sold in China. He hadn’t read a single one. “All the books in China just take their ideas from the outside,” he said. “China really has no original ideas.”

Chunming got a job as a reporter at the China Inspection and Quarantine Times. The newspaper was run by the government agency in charge of import and export inspections, and the nature of her work would have been unrecognizable to any conventional practitioner of journalism. Chunming would decide to write an article about a company; her chosen subject, fearing trouble getting its goods through customs, would pay the paper for positive coverage. The price for good press was determined on a sliding scale, in the same way that advertising rates are set. Two thousand yuan bought a brief mention, while a full-length feature might cost fifty thousand yuan. This was journalism as extortion, and Chunming worked on commission and did well.

Maybe it’s impossible to write the history of a small place in China, because everyone with talent or ambition goes out.

I had met this type of person—every reporter in China has. He was the protester, the petitioner, the person so focused on righting a wrong that the effort consumed his life and cast him into a separate universe where he lived alone.

“This is an economic era,” Zhang Hong’s son had told him, “and the Party cares only about business. Your problem is political. If you’re looking to the Party for an answer, you will never get it.”

In 1978, the Communist Party set up commissions to review and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of victims from two decades of political campaigns. In the Party’s judgment, the Anti-Rightist movement had been “unnecessarily broad,” with many people “mistakenly” labeled Rightists. This followed the piecemeal approach to history laid out by Deng Xiaoping, allowing the reversal of individual verdicts without addressing whether the movement itself had been wrong. But the numbers said otherwise. Across China, more than half a million people had been named Rightists—all but ninety-six, it was eventually decided, had been labeled by mistake.

And, finally, insight into drivers: Driver’s licenses were another racket: Aspiring drivers had to take fifty hours of classes at government-affiliated schools, but on test day they still had to bribe their examiners. “In each car there are four people taking the test,” a factory executive explained to me, “and if one person doesn’t give money, all four may fail.” It was far easier to buy a fake license, as Chunming had done years ago. She had taken a few lessons since—“I know how to drive forward”—and she figured that one day she would learn the rest of what she needed to know. “Driving is not hard,” she informed me. “The key is not to get angry at other people.”(less)

like · see review

Jul 10, 2012 Nicola rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, recommended

When my sister asked what I was reading recently, I told her it was a book about Chinese factory workers.

“God, you’re worthy,” she replied scathingly.

But the thing is – despite its worthy subject matter and uncomfortably small print – Factory Girls is actually a highly enjoyable read. Providing a flipside to all those “terrible working conditions, suicides, general calamity” articles about manufacturing in China, Leslie T Chang seeks to find out more about the average Chinese factory worker on a...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 27, 2012 Cortney rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was an excellent book. It's the perfect type of non-fiction: an in depth, well written treatment of a very specific and interesting topic. The author spent several years interviewing the women, and the little details she gives of their lives really make the stories authentic. She chose to periodically weave a storyline of her own family history in China throughout the book, and while I could appreciate the artistic notion of juxtaposing her own "migration" with the migrants of the factories...more

like · see review

Apr 08, 2012 Tricia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: china

This book chronicles a few years in the lives of women who migrated from their villages to the cities to work in factories and make new lives for themselves. Most of the factories highlighted were in the Guangdong Province. For example, one Dongguan factory makes branded athletic shoes with nearly 70,000 employees - most under the age of 30. (Note that many of the parts for the shoes are smuggled out so that it is hard to necessarily spot a counterfeit made elsewhere.) The girls interviewed had...more

like · see review

Mar 28, 2012 Corinne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Our author, Leslie Chang, is Chinese-American. This puts her in a unique position in China - she is familiar-looking, she has credibility just for having Chinese ancestry and speaking Mandarin. But she also speaks English and was raised in the golden land of American, and this combination leads her to a few pretty unique relationships. Namely, Chang gets to know, over a three year period, two "factory girls," girls from small villages in rural China that have left home for the industrial city of...more Our author, Leslie Chang, is Chinese-American. This puts her in a unique position in China - she is familiar-looking, she has credibility just for having Chinese ancestry and speaking Mandarin. But she also speaks English and was raised in the golden land of American, and this combination leads her to a few pretty unique relationships. Namely, Chang gets to know, over a three year period, two "factory girls," girls from small villages in rural China that have left home for the industrial city of Dongguan, where they hope work hard and change their fortunes.

Life in Dongguan is hard and lonely. Girls arrive so young and inexperienced and the work they have to do is monotonous and incredibly low-paying. They are alone, in a huge city, living in a dorm with dozens of women with only a tiny space for themselves. Yet, they have this incredible ability to see this life as an "opportunity" and a chance to "better themselves." They do NOT give up! They hop from factory to factory, hoping for a little bit better pay or a job that they feel is a little higher up on the social heirarchy. They send money back home and spend the rest on themselves, usually on "self improvements" like learning English. Our author joins them on lunches, in their factories, even takes a trip home to the village. And along the way we learn about real life in China from the point of view of someone who can both be objective and yet understanding.

While this book is mainly the migrant story of two young girls in a vast sea of, literally, millions, it is also Chang's story. While learning about migrant's in today's world, she looks at Chinese migration in recent history and her own ancestor's migrations from city to town and back, to America and back, as well as her family's experiences as a result of the communist revolution. While I really liked reading her own story, it almost felt like a different book sometimes - like it might have worked better as two separate books - one about the factory girls and a memoir of her own history. I just would've liked the fusion to fit a little better but it was all interesting, sometimes fascinating, what her ancestors went through. Maybe I would've just preferred it edited differently so I didn't feel so jarred back and forth.

I think that anyone who wants to be able to get a solid sense of China today and the massive changes that are happening in Chinese society should absolutely give this book a try. (less)

like · see review

Jan 13, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Leslie is an American of Chinese decent. She goes to China to write a story about Chinese girls who leave the farm to work in factories (if it isn't obvious from the title). This mass migration of people leaving the farm to go work in factories is creating a whole new dynamic in China that has yet to play it self out. Leslie does a good job of discussing many of the issues associated with this mass migration from a peasants perspective. However I found the book to be a little slow at times and f...more

like · see review

Dec 28, 2011 Joe Rogel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The world is full of growing economies, but to thrive a society requires those with fierce and deliberate minds- the dreamers with ambition, the fighters with a cause and the innovator who sees a cityscape where others see only shadows cast by clouds. In this vein of thought, China has been able to catapult itself forward by the entrance of women into the workforce- opening the way for additional intellectual capital and growth.

The rise of women migrant workers, however, is a tenuous one tempere...more

like · see review

Aug 10, 2011 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Listened to this on audiobook while jogging. It was long and could've used some editing, I thought--particularly with the long sections detailing the author's ancestor's stories and history. I suppose some would find that part interesting or enlightening but I just thought it distracted from the main story in an already long book. The "main story" being the factory girls.

Now I thought the factory girl stories were really interesting. First of all, I had always pictured Chinese factory workers as...more

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 05, 2011 sacha kenton rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

this was not as informative as i thought it would be, since it was written by an american and not an insider, in fact half the book is about how difficult it is to get information or even interviews. however it probably would get a native in trouble to write about it from the inside, so perhaps this is all we can get? also the author decided to 'weave' in her own irrelevant 'history,' but she is not maxine hong kingston and so it became annoying, rambling and even less informative. the writing w...more

like · see review

May 15, 2011 Timothy Hallinan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the best book I've read about the human side of 21st-century China. Chang, the former Wall Street Journal Beijing correspondent, worked for more than a year to create relationships with the young womenwho have left their villages behind and gone into the factories of the South. In focusing her narrative on such a humans scale, Chang puts a face on the Chinese industrial juggernaut -- and it's the face of young women and teenage girls, who have walked away from everything and everyone the...more

like · see review

Apr 03, 2011 Marks54 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is the story of a small number of young women working in the newly developed factory town of SE China, such as Shenzhen. They are a few in a population of well over 100 million Chinese, mostly women, who travel thousands of miles from home to work in these factories in towns that have arisen almost from scratch to cities with millions of inhabitants. If you want to understand the evolving economic life of China and how the Chinese government needs to maintain growth, you need to read t...more This book is the story of a small number of young women working in the newly developed factory town of SE China, such as Shenzhen. They are a few in a population of well over 100 million Chinese, mostly women, who travel thousands of miles from home to work in these factories in towns that have arisen almost from scratch to cities with millions of inhabitants. If you want to understand the evolving economic life of China and how the Chinese government needs to maintain growth, you need to read this book. These are the core experiences today for many in a country with so many people that it can apply a labor based strategy to nearly any product or industry and undercut just about any other economy in the world. Jobs are leaving the US and coming to China because US firms cannot match the low labor costs. The various parts of the book are amazing. To start with, imagine an entire society of young people with no roots and nowhere to go. Literally, everybody's identity is tied up with their cell phones, so that if your phone dies, is lost, or is stolen, you lose all your critical contacts, friends, potential employers, etc. You become invisible and nobody knows where to reach you or whether you still exist. There are other parts of the book dealing with exploitation of women, recreation, and travel back and forth from home. The part of the book that most entertained me was the chapters on education and training -- the entire emphasis of which is to learn just enough to be able to BS your way into the next job and then learn by doing. All professional training is on making a good impression and fooling people regarding your background and skills. This society is based on becoming a fast talking con who can jump from job to job. In training classes that work this way, the ones who stay on until the end are the losers, while the people who learn a lot drop out and get a new job. Most Americans, I suspect, have very little idea of how this new society works and what it means for American competing with China. If you have to pick one book on how the world economy is developing and changing today, this is a good one to choose. It is also well written and very easy to read and remember. The author is a Chinese-American who writes for the Wall Street Journal. (less)

like · see review

Jan 15, 2011 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I learned a lot from this book, and found it an interesting read. It’s an account of a particular segment of Chinese culture, seen through the eyes of an American. And it’s true that only a foreigner can see a country clearly, and also true that foreigners always bring their own beliefs and prejudices to the country they’re describing.

However, given that, this book gave me a real sense of what it’s like for young women in China today. Chang does a clear, thorough job of detailing the lives of wo...more

like · see review

Sep 13, 2010 Betsy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If I could, I'd give this journey through changing China three and a half stars. It's well-written and paints a spot-on picture of the changing landscape in China's factory-centric cities. Much as the industrial revolution changed the face of the United States in the late 1800's, China is now evolving with massive migration to cities and a changing economic future. Chang chooses to follow young girls who have migrated to the city for factory work and explore their ups and downs through job chang...more

like · see review

Jul 25, 2010 Mona rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this during my first months living in China, I really learned a lot from this book. I bought it with a skeptical mind, thinking that the author might try to give an account of "the way things are in China today" as if any single narrative would do. However, I was impressed as Leslie Chang (the author) is appropriately self-reflexive throughout and goes to lengths to make it clear how she found, engaged with, impacted and was impacted by her sources, the "factory girls". The book was trul...more

like · see review

title link	preview: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
avg rating	preview: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China Goodreads rating: 3.86 (2671 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8247140-factory-girls?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328319985l/8247140.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8247140-factory-girls?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie T. Chang[/url]

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (20)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Leslie T. Chang

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Factory Girls: Fr...

Quotes from Factory Girls: From Vi...