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Fabrieksmeisjes: indringend portret van twee jonge vrouwen in het moderne China

Leslie T. Chang,

Albert Witteveen (Translator)

3.92 · Rating details · 8,054 ratings · 983 reviews

Twee jonge vrouwe, de zestienjarige Min en de twintigjarige Chunming, hebben hun familie op het platteland achtergelaten in ruil voor een anoniem bestaan als fabrieksmeisje in de industriestad Dongguan in Zuidoost-China. Schrijfster Leslie Chang raakt bevriend met deze jonge vrouwen en volgt hen bijna drie jaar lang tijdens hun pogingen om hogerop te komen. Op meeslepende ...more

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Paperback, 396 pages

Published April 4th 2009 by Artemis & Co (first published January 1st 2008)

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Dec 15, 2011 Grace Tjan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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

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 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.
...more

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Dec 03, 2019 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: gender-studies, human-rights, 21st-century-history, journalism, china

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 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 ...more

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Aug 27, 2011 Chia-Yi rated it really liked it · 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 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...

...more

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Jul 11, 2009 Jennifer rated it it was amazing · 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 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. ...more

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Aug 15, 2013 Becky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, political, women-s-studies, modern-nonfic, needs-to-be-100-pages-shorter

I am truly at a loss for how to rate this book. It was entirely new information, I vacillated between fascination, horror, and awe…. And then complete boredom. This book could have easily been 150 pages shorter, there were times that it was excruciatingly repetitive, and at one point I actually thought tom myself, “Hasn’t she already told this story?”

The pacing for this book was entirely wrong. The setup and presentation of information was wrong. It seemed so helter skelter. The stories felt l ...more

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Jul 19, 2020 L.A. Starks rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book was published in 2009 and the highest compliment I can give is that I wish I'd known about it (A New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and read it then.

While Chang weaves in her own life story, which is fascinating, she focuses on several Chinese teen-aged girls and young women who've "gone out" from their villages, where there's no work, and found jobs in cities like Dongguan. Even though I usually reject the premise that the anecdotes speak for the whole, in this case, the depth o ...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, china, 3-stars-and-a-half, sociology, nonfiction

You might expect a book about the lives of migrant workers in China to be incredibly depressing, full of tales of abuse. This book isn't like that at all; it's informative, and doesn't gloss over ugly things, but nor does it beat you down.

Factory Girls focuses on the lives of young women living in Dongguan, a huge city in southern China filled with factories and inhabited mainly by migrant workers. The author spent several years getting to know workers there, and most of the book tells their sto You might expect a book about the lives of migrant workers in China to be incredibly depressing, full of tales of abuse. This book isn't like that at all; it's informative, and doesn't gloss over ugly things, but nor does it beat you down.

Factory Girls focuses on the lives of young women living in Dongguan, a huge city in southern China filled with factories and inhabited mainly by migrant workers. The author spent several years getting to know workers there, and most of the book tells their stories. But there's a lot of the author in the book as well; not just recounting her interactions with the migrant women (the migrant population in Dongguan is estimated at 70% female), but also tracing the history of her family in China, before they left for Taiwan and eventually the U.S.

This book is certainly worth reading if you are curious about life in modern China; it's full of stories from the lives of the people Chang meets, as well as some broader factual information to give them context. Chang gets to know a couple of the women very well, meeting their friends and traveling home with them to visit their families. In a way, their stories are surprisingly positive; they seem very in control of their lives and able to pursue what they want from life, which is quite different from the typical industrial revolution story of oppressed workers. They change jobs frequently in search of better opportunities, they date, and they send home enough money to gain a voice in family affairs. But in other ways, the picture is hardly rosy: relationships don't last, everyone is obsessed with money, bosses often cheat their workers and corruption abounds.

From a writing standpoint, the book is good: it's a smooth, easy read without feeling dumbed down, and the organization is clear. However, Chang made a couple of tricky choices that may impair some readers' enjoyment of the book.

First, there's the decision to include so much of herself in the book, and stick scrupulously to events she witnessed and stories she was told rather than trying to draw broader generalizations. Sometimes I felt that the book could have used more breadth or depth, but ultimately Chang seems very careful to limit it to what she can discuss with authority. So, for instance, we get detailed accounts of events and conversations for which the author was present, which aren't necessarily earth-shaking, but which allow the reader to see where her information is coming from. Toward the end, she even admits that the two women she focuses on most may not be representative of most migrant workers, without suggesting how they might be different (for Dongguan, at least, both seem atypical in that they quickly moved up from assembly line work).

Second, there's Chang's decision to write so much about her own family history and her quest to discover it, including her visits with long-lost relatives. She justifies this by pointing out that, like the workers' stories, it deals with migration; perhaps a better justification would be that it provides a historical context, and a contrast between people like her distant cousin who are stuck in the past and the young, ambitious women of Dongguan who are focused on the present and future. While I found the family history reasonably interesting, these sections ultimately seem a little too removed from the subject matter of the book, and cause it to be longer than necessary.

Overall, an interesting, readable and worthwhile book. If you like this and are interested in a fictional take on the lives on young female migrant workers in China, I recommend Miss Chopsticks. ...more

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Feb 23, 2012 Caroline rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: world

For me this book felt like a gentle drenching in the culture of Dongguan - a city that grew up from small sweatshop factories and burgeoned into a town of massive enterprises, sucking in migrant workers from rural villages hundreds of miles away.

Seventy thousand people now work at the Yue Yuen factory in Dongguan. "Inside the compound's brick walls, workers sleep in factory dorms and eat in factory cafeterias and shop at factory commissaries. Yue Yuen runs a kindergarten for employees' children For me this book felt like a gentle drenching in the culture of Dongguan - a city that grew up from small sweatshop factories and burgeoned into a town of massive enterprises, sucking in migrant workers from rural villages hundreds of miles away.

Seventy thousand people now work at the Yue Yuen factory in Dongguan. "Inside the compound's brick walls, workers sleep in factory dorms and eat in factory cafeterias and shop at factory commissaries. Yue Yuen runs a kindergarten for employees' children and a hospital with a 150-member staff; it has a movie theater and a performance troupe, volunteer activities and English classes. It operates its own power plant and fire department...."

When Yue Yuen set up its first factory its employees often had to work until midnight, and they only got one day off a month. Then big American brands like Nike and Adidas were chivvied in the West about the bad working conditions in the factories belonging to their producers. In response Yue Yuen changed to an eleven hour workday, and gave its workers every Sunday off... but other things changed for the worse. In 2001 Adidas initiated a programme called "Lean Manufacturing" to increase efficiency and decrease waste. Not only did this put more pressure on the workers - with tasks precisely designated and little downtime, but workers were no longer allowed to share dormitories with friends....instead they had to share with assembly line colleagues.

Life in most of the big factories appears vast, impersonal and pressured - but in fact the people working there sound far from cowed by their situations. Throughout the book we hear about people moving onto new jobs at the drop of a hat, happily falsifying information about past work experience and skills in order to get better jobs. Many of the people interviewed seemed fantastically ambitious and enthusiastic. Ambitious to earn more, to learn better social or business skills, and to learn English. (English sometimes taught in extraordinary ways!) It seems a lonely life though - with people moving all too easily in and out of one another's lives. Several times the author talks about friendship links being tenuous - with contact information only kept on mobile phones. Lose your phone, lose your friends.

There is another huge aspect to this life though, and that is the rural culture that most of these people come from.
"The continuing link to a family farm has stabilized China in an age of mass migration. Its cities have not spawned the shantytown slums of so much of the developing world, because the migrant who fails in the city can always return home and find someone there. A teenager may go out for work, leaving his parents on the farm. A husband who migrates may have a wife at home tilling the fields, or sometimes the other way around. A married couple might go out together, leaving young children in the care of their aged parents. In the city, a migrant may look desperate, but almost every migrant has a farm to fall back on."
All the young people interviewed in this book were sending money home to their parents in the countryside.

In one instance the author accompanies one of the girls back to her country home. Hours of cramped and uncomfortable travel by train, and at the end of it - some incredibly basic conditions. A family of people sharing beds, sharing washing water, and unwanted waste just dropped on the floor. I was amazed that such an ambitious work ethic could have blossomed in such circumstances, but the desire to better oneself seemed a burning issue for most of the workers.

Back at the factories there is much duplicity and corruption - pyramid schemes, often involving gullible factory workers,or pay-offs to buyers at factories and suchlike. All of this is perhaps exacerbated by the incredibly low wages that the workers get.

Another thing that stuck me was the incredible urge for business that everyone seems to have, with every opportunity for investment or diversification leapt upon.

All in all I felt the book could have been considerably shorter than it was - especially the first half. I also did not enjoy the author's discussions about her investigations into her own family, and family history. This just felt like a rather lumpy aside. On the other hand I did feel I got a very good impression of what life is like for migrant factory workers in China - and I am very pleased I read it. ...more

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Nov 17, 2015 Brit Cheung rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: perspectives-on-china

I acquired this little book last year from a local library that has piles of English books particularly and neatly stacked up in a room, quite cozy and convenient for readers who like to be more bilingual （like me）.

The protagnists are those migrant female workers, the young girls who fleed their imporverished rural villages in quest of a better city life.

The book primarily covered a period from late 90s and early 00s. At a time particularly in 90s, if they strive for something new they need to c I acquired this little book last year from a local library that has piles of English books particularly and neatly stacked up in a room, quite cozy and convenient for readers who like to be more bilingual （like me）.

The protagnists are those migrant female workers, the young girls who fleed their imporverished rural villages in quest of a better city life.

The book primarily covered a period from late 90s and early 00s. At a time particularly in 90s, if they strive for something new they need to challenge and break the bonds of the old world and traditions where their options are extremely limited. Most girls would end up being married at young age and their fates are mostly set . There is no other alternative if not choosing to go outside.

Village life was never a pastoral scenery swarmed with arresting tranquility and poignant nostalgia. If you rusticate for a while yearning for a flavor of country life, think it again and get yourself prepared for a disillusionment.（thing changed a bit in recent years）

What impressed me most was author mentioned that when rural teenagers were trying to do something new and desperately in need of life guidance their parents will invariably and inevitably offer the worst advice. They were never privileged to attain favorable guidance as their urban peers did.

Dreams are great but the reality won't always offer them romantic answers. Almost poorly educated, Village girls ,if not most of them, would end up as workers in those obnoxious sweatshops.

I swear you were not rare to see those reports on incessant cases of jumping-off-the-roof stuff in some or other of those factories a few years ago even you didn't pay much attention to China.

Things transformed a bit these years but the “constructive conflict” still taneciously persists in modern China with the fact that rural people , migrant workers included, never can access to an identity belonging in cities however hard they try, however affluent they may be.

The book succeeded in exposing the real life of individuals instead of focusing on the big picture of social transformation.I love the way the author drawing us a bittersweet picture through the eyes and experiences of insignificant individuals like most Chinese people ,like me..

But the defects are also noticeable. The book seems not have arranged its chapers chronologically , which made me kindof bewildered and excruciating.

I will give the book three and a half stars. ...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Mateo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Some people, when they travel, are most amazed by the differences they find ... the donkeys, the tuk-tuks, the rat-on-a-platter, the strange drinks and weird foods. Others are most taken aback by the unexpected similarities: the corn farmer with a cell phone, the slum dweller playing Grand Theft Auto 4, the kids who rock out to punk and metal. The best travel writers and foreign reporters, though, simply see.

This is a splendid, splendid book. It's not only better than I expected, it might even ...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Ann rated it did not like it · 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

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Feb 05, 2020 Nadia added it · review of another edition

Amazing (but really not shocking) how much cultural overlap there is between the families depicted in this book and Afghan families. Young women leaving their rural homes to work in urban factories tilted the social hierarchy. Their agency came from their economic empowerment.

Plenty of people have asked me when I think the status of girls/women in Afghanistan will fundamentally change or when the bacha posh practice will cease to exist. I've always believed that the more society sees women as c ...more

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Feb 11, 2020 Zak rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

This book is more than a little dated by now, but it still gives the reader a useful look into the Chinese psyche. While the realities of the cities mentioned in it, like Shenzhen & Dongguan, have undoubtedly changed a lot, there are still large swathes of the country yet to experience the same wave of transformation. As China now develops inwards away from key coastal areas, these other areas will likely go through the same metamorphosis.

One statement quoted several times in the book stuck with ...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Maggie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, asia, non-fiction

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

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Jan 01, 2013 Amber rated it liked it · 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 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. ...more

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Jul 10, 2012 N rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: recommended, non-fiction

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

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Sep 15, 2011 Larry Bassett rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, kindle, china, nonfiction

I read this book 1st about 10 years ago and just now have listen to it and audible while following along with the Kindle version. As a result I have taken a lot of paragraphs out of the book and they are included along with this review.

The author is a Chinese American Who speaks Chinese and spent a considerable amount of time interacting with people at a very human level to be able to write this book. But as she acknowledges in the book she primarily relies on her relationship with only two youn ...more

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Mar 23, 2009 James rated it really liked it · 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

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Apr 10, 2016 James rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to James by: Bay Area Book Geeks

Shelves: non-fiction, book-club

An account of girls moving from rural areas to the big cities for better opportunities, a universal story that could be told in different countries and by many women, including my mother. The first bit of this includes the fairly brutal factory conditions, the chaotic hiring practices and poor living conditions, mill girls from the 19th century gave similar accounts, the Chinese version has been in the news lately.

Next the author gives an account of her grandfather's quest for education that in An account of girls moving from rural areas to the big cities for better opportunities, a universal story that could be told in different countries and by many women, including my mother. The first bit of this includes the fairly brutal factory conditions, the chaotic hiring practices and poor living conditions, mill girls from the 19th century gave similar accounts, the Chinese version has been in the news lately.

Next the author gives an account of her grandfather's quest for education that includes college in America and a beating given by his father for changing majors and his murder by persons unknown. His devotion to his country is shown thru diary entries and is contrasted later with the modern migrants who are more self-centered. The story of part of the family fleeing the Communists and some staying behind is also retold.

Following this is a bit that covers the self-help industry, pyramid scams, inferior almost cult-like schools mixed in with some dating practices. This section explores the fakery and fraud that is so much a part of the factory subculture in China. Forged IDs and credentials are common, lying about your age, phony dating pictures, nothing seems real. I've been told that there's a saying, everything but your mother is fake , this conveys the levels of deception encountered.

Next the author goes to the villages of some of her friends and shows what these girls are fleeing from; poverty, poor schools and patriarchy. It then gets you thinking, are those factory life styles really that bad compared to the alternative? Among my many Chinese friends and coworkers I have never talked to anyone not from an educated middle class or better background except for brief phone conversations along the lines of You want massage?, so this bit was fascinating. This is contrasted with her trip to her own village where no members of her family reside and only few locals remember them.

The book ends with a bit of a hodgepodge of stories that tie all the bits together including the impact of the Communist regime on China. Like most history there is good and bad, but the status of women has certainly improved tremendously, now there are women infantry officers, mayors and other high level jobs. You can read fictional but fairly accurate accounts about Chinese women at the start of the 20th century in works by Pearl S. Buck and Lin Yutang if you want somewhat depressing reads. ...more

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Dec 17, 2017 Kuang Ting rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Author Leslie Chang is Peter Hessler's wife. The couple is renowned for their non-fiction books on contemporary China. Chang uses plain yet informative language to write the stories of factory girls. This book is said to be the first in its kind dealing with this group. Factory girls are those who leave hometown for cities on the East Coast. Major manufacturing hubs are in these big cities. They can't earn enough money in villages. Therefore, many people abandon their schools and start working i Author Leslie Chang is Peter Hessler's wife. The couple is renowned for their non-fiction books on contemporary China. Chang uses plain yet informative language to write the stories of factory girls. This book is said to be the first in its kind dealing with this group. Factory girls are those who leave hometown for cities on the East Coast. Major manufacturing hubs are in these big cities. They can't earn enough money in villages. Therefore, many people abandon their schools and start working in factories when they turn 16.

Among these people, about one third are women. As you can imagine, you go outside, far away from homes, at such a young age. Everything must be hectic but exciting as well. These young girls are forced to 'grow' fast in desperate situations. They may encounter abuse, betrayal, intimidation, anxiety, and many other negative things. They might be naive at first, but all of them would gradually be 'adults'. The transformation would take only one or two years, and they would be like a whole new person.

Chang follows several girls like these and chronicles their changes. There are two major protagonists who are more willing to share stories with Chang. The others might appear in only one chapter. Then they would disappear. It's a norm in this world. People come and leave constantly. Some may go back to hometown, get married, have children, and follow Chinese traditions. Some may choose to go to another city searching for better opportunities.

Chang spent two years in a major manufacturing hub, Dongguan, doing research. She not only followed the girls but also observed the city itself. Dongguan is known as the sex capital of China. She went to the nightclubs and saw many spectacles. You can use Youtube to get a glimpse of this unbelievable industry. Some girls found working as prostitutes more profitable (like 12 times higher) than assembly workers. So they chose the 'shortcut' to earn more money. It's really sad to see this phenomenon.

"Factory Girls" is a book about ordinary figures. There in no complaint or suggestion for a greater China. These are simply stories of normal people who are working hard for their dreams. You could watch Chang's Ted speech on youtube. After reading the book, I am impressed by their diligence and resilience. Modern capitalism works because of their hard works (and sacrifice?) We should always be grateful for these people and contribute more back to the society.
...more

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Nov 10, 2008 Heather rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Leslie Chang is a newspaper writer, not a novelist, and it shows in her first book. Though the subject matter is fascinating (an entire generation of Chinese children abandoning their farm lives to make money in the clogged, smoggy cities), Chang's details often get jumbled. In the same paragraph, she will jump forward and backward in time. I found some of this very confusing; she apparently hates chronological order.

Plus, she interjects a heavy dose of her personal family history, ostensibly t ...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Alice rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, asia, non-fiction

China today is really the wild, wild west - except with a lot more people. The rural girls who "go out" to the factories learn very quickly that they can only rely on themselves, and lying and cheating are a normal way of life. It's amazing to think this is the reality for thousands of people who make all the little unnecessary things that clutter out lives. I didn't think the author's exploration of her own family really added to the story, but rather was a distraction (I might have given the b ...more

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May 13, 2019 Naeem rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Review of Factory Girls, by Leslie T. Chang, 2009

Leslie Chang spent two years with women workers in Guangdong, China to produce this book. It is basically an ethnographic account – though she does not convey it in these terms being a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. The basic message is simple: women workers find their work meaningful. Not the work itself which is mindless and alienating. Rather, meaning emerges as the by-product of the work: money, status, skills, and mobility. Westerner ...more

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May 01, 2020 Lee rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good book on the lives of the women who make everything in what has become the factory of the world.

Before Chang, there was no book-length treatment in English of the women who were working in the factories in Southeast China, making the million things that we all buy. Chang rectifies this, doing a great job burrowing into their world, showing the reader what they want and why they make the choices that they do. She is a journalist, but Chang does such a great job, she almost feels like an an A good book on the lives of the women who make everything in what has become the factory of the world.

Before Chang, there was no book-length treatment in English of the women who were working in the factories in Southeast China, making the million things that we all buy. Chang rectifies this, doing a great job burrowing into their world, showing the reader what they want and why they make the choices that they do. She is a journalist, but Chang does such a great job, she almost feels like an anthropologist, peeling back the layers of the inner workers of her sources, until we feel like we are staring at their naked souls. She portrays her characters so empathetically that it gives voice to these characters. For much of the book, Chang felt invisible, rather it felt like her sources were using Chang as a medium for their own voices, the sign of great reporting. That empathy is the great strength of this book.

This book has a few issues which detract from it. Like her husband, Chang's writing is very hands off. Chang distantly narrates things, but she tries to let her sources take up most of the narrative oxygen. Often, it does not feel like she is guiding the narrative, she is just reporting on one thing, then the next, and she lets the juxtapositions speak for themselves.

This kind of style is difficult to pull off, to artfully control something while appearing to not be in control at all, but rather just letting the narrative meander where it will, like a winding river. When done well, it can be marvelous, but Chang does not write quite well enough to reach this level. Some of her narratorial control seems hamfisted and too contrived.

The whole second stream of narrative, the history of her family, was a part of this, and it turned me off a bit. The story of her family is fascinating, but it really seemed like a separate book, not related to what was going on in Dongguan. She tries to put the two side by side, the story of these women in Dongguan's factories and the story of her family, eliciting from the comparison something that is more than the sum of the parts. But, in the end, it did not work for me.

That said, this is still a good book, well worth the read. ...more

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Jul 23, 2010 Sarah Jacquie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: chinese, life

LOL this is my longest review ever, but it is because I was so engrossed in it! I loved every page, every story, and I loved being able to glimpse into the rare world told from a compassionate view and not an economical study of China feeding the world with materialism. In fact, that is briefly mentioned -- instead it is a message of promise and hope.

I did NOT want this to end. This book is beautiful, and it is written through the eyes of someone who stands on the border of being American, and c ...more

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Jan 24, 2014 Tam rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fic

I suppose for a reader not yet familiar with China, much of this book content would be quite shocking and enlightening. I did not particularly feel that way, yet still there are many insights worth reading.

The main focus of the book, these factory girls, or we should rather call them migrants (since at first I mistook the word "factory girls" for workers on assembly lines only), are fascinating. Instead of knowing them through the usual presentation of statistics, numbers and graphs, plus some I suppose for a reader not yet familiar with China, much of this book content would be quite shocking and enlightening. I did not particularly feel that way, yet still there are many insights worth reading.

The main focus of the book, these factory girls, or we should rather call them migrants (since at first I mistook the word "factory girls" for workers on assembly lines only), are fascinating. Instead of knowing them through the usual presentation of statistics, numbers and graphs, plus some sensational stories, Leslie Chang simply looks into several ordinary girls that she seems to stumble upon by complete chance. After getting to know these migrants, we find them not so ordinary anymore, we find them, in fact, extra-ordinary, in both good and bad lights. These stories are the ones that draw me most, their emotional struggle, their pragmatic dealing with the world they live in. Unfortunately, I find the structure of the book quite frustrating. To the book's credit, I realize life is not so easily categorized and ordered into separate aspects, such as work, study, marriage, family. And none of these girls' stories are complete, so it is after all an endless struggle, with repeated occurrences of many issues. Nevertheless, I think the book could be trimmed down and ordered more effectively.

I am not that interested in looking at Chang's comments on national characteristics, the "Chineseness" of many things she found in the country. I am deeply skeptical about thinking there is a unique "essence" that marks the difference of one group of people to all others. As if some of their experiences are true to them only, as if some resulted reactions could happen to them only. It shares some shortcomings with How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, I think. No, my personal belief, that if you have a lens large enough to look at a wide span of history, you would find humankind is pretty much universal. We find ourselves in many other people throughout history. The circumstances are not exactly the same, but there are ones very similar. Yet, we tend to exaggerate what we find as special.

I am not that interested in Chang's personal family history and her quest to reconcile with a home she had not known for many years. The connection between her story and those of factory girls seem a little bit stretched and very much personal. They are not really meaningful connection to me, but surely to the author since she could better make sense of her world.

On the other hand, I appreciate Chang's effort to understand how people try to deal with their pasts, how memories and history are treated, how history might be a burden, a very heavy baggage. But I come to a slightly different conclusion. There are perhaps two ways of dealing with history, one is ignoring it, pretending it differently; another is facing, confronting it. Both works, you know. We do both ways at the same time, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. ...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Rusty rated it really liked it · 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 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.

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Jun 23, 2009 Louise rated it liked it · review of another edition

Factory Girls is a non-fiction book written by an Chinese-American journalist. It focuses on the stories of girls who immigrate from rural Chinese villages to factories in more urban areas of China. The girls work in shoe factories, purse factories, factories that make one specific plastic piece for a larger item, and a lot of other factories, but their stories are all the same — they left the village for better opportunities.

I’m glad that someone finally wrote a book like this. People in Americ ...more

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Aug 10, 2011 Katie rated it liked it · 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

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Sep 22, 2014 Angela Sun rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I had really high hopes for this book. Being Chinese-American, I was searching for a well-researched nonfiction book that would provide cultural insight into my heritage. I thought that learning about a segment of the population in today's China was a good place to start.

Chang brings 6 years of research with this book, mainly by following 2 women ("factory girls") through their journey from the village to Dougguan, a manufacturing hub in China. However, she also adds in stories from her own jou ...more

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About Leslie T. Chang

Leslie T. Chang

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Leslie T. Chang lived in China for a decade as a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, specializing in stories that explored how socioeconomic change is transforming institutions and individuals. She has also written for National Geographic. Factory Girls is her first book.

A graduate of Harvard University with a degree in American History and Literature, Chang has also worked as a journalist ...more

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