Factory Girls

From Village to City in a Changing China

By: Leslie T. Chang

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

China has 130 million migrant workers - the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China's Pearl River Delta.

As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life - a world where nearly everyone is under 30; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; and where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family's migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation.

A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America's shores remade our own country a century ago.

©2008 Leslie Chang (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A gifted storyteller, Chang plumbs...private narratives to craft a work of universal relevance." ( Publishers Weekly)
"An exceptionally vivid and compassionate depiction of the day-to-day dramas, and the fears and aspirations, of the real people who are powering China's economic boom." ( The New York Times)

I enjoyed most of it

This was a book that averaged out to be a three for me. There were parts that were five, others four, others two or less. I visited China in 2007 and wanted to experience a side that is not readily revealed to the tourists on the tours. There were parts of the book I really enjoyed but it tended to drag on. A shorter version would have been much better.

great book

A very good listen that never stood still for too long and yet is filled with relevant and little known information that I could follow. I can't wait to listen to it again.

Great Book on Changes in China

This book talks about the changes in society that have been occuring in the past 20 years. It follows the life of several different immigrant women moving from the village into the city to work in factories making export goods. Its shows that this is a time of hugh changes in Chinese society for women. An excellent story.

Great story, terrible narrator

This books covers both the lives of young migrant factory workers in Dongguan and the author's family history in Manchuria, leading to the author's impression of what had gone wrong in China, in terms of the traditional Confucius teachings and the political system. It's a great read.

I was born in Southern China; much of the description of the workers' hours and of the Chinese Internet in the 2000s recall fond memories in me. I did not know about the lives of the factory workers in such detail, especially women migrants. The author's take on what had gone wrong in China is also an interesting perspective that I think has much truth to it. But then, the country is so complicated, that cannot be the only thing; it explains certain aspects of the Chinese mentality, but there are so many other things too.

The narrator is terrible and monotone and has no idea how to pronounce Chinese words. Horrible choice for this book, where Chinese words appear often, even in the form of entire ancient poems! some of the poems are well known to even kids in China but the narrator butchers the whole thing so much, you can't even tell what she's trying to say, except from the memorization of the poems, you know what poem she is trying to read. Just horrid.

Fantastic

While I didn’t find her family history all that interesting, the stories of the young women she follows was outstanding. I have a much better feel for modern China now. I was skeptical how good it would be at first, but then at points couldn’t stop reading.

The rest of the story

Having traveled in China and Taiwan and visited many factories from the late 1980's to the present time, this book tells 'the rest of the story'... what I have wondered about on each of my factory visits... who are these people that are working in the factories? and where did they come from?, what are they thinking?, etc. And it tells the personal struggles of the 20th Century for a highly sophisticated culture. I wish every high school student in the USA would read this.

Excellent book, poor narration

If you could sum up Factory Girls in three words, what would they be?

Excellent reporting. Recommend.

How could the performance have been better?

The narrator, Susan Ericksen, is a poor choice for this material. She does not know how to properly pronounce the Mandarin Chinese vocabulary that is part of this story. The audiobook's producers should have hired a Mandarin dialect coach to teach Ericksen Mandarin vowels, consonants -- and why not? -- tones. Even if the listener does not speak a word of Mandarin, one expects the performance to be correct.

Poignant, heartbreaking and hopeful.

Here is the human face of Chinese success. These girls are cast adrift in a Kafkaesque landscape of out of control croney capitalism and socialist sloganeering. Some of these girls have had no contact wtih the State in their entire lives. It sort of gives the lie to the all encompassing and omniscient State in China. There is a bomb ticking in China, but it is not the one everyone thinks it is. This is an important book and you should read it if you want to understand what is going on in China. Susan Ericksen give it a heartfelt and warm reading.

terrible mispronunciations, good story

this person mispronounced every Chinese word in the book so badly that you could never talk to a Chinese person about the content of the book because they would have no idea what you are talking about. this is a simple fix! study pinyin pronunciation for 2 days before ruining a book.

Compelling Whirlwind

People come and go so quickly around here. The story is fascinating, frustrating, lonely, hard and hopeful. The book is well written and the narrator perfectly propels it. Everything here is in flux - dirt, roads, small and large factories, the women, the jobs, the buildings, the worker dormatories, the buses. People jump jobs over and over, inching up the ladder toward a yearned for success. In Thomas Friedman's books he is the one on the move; here, Leslie Chang stands in stillness to capture the whirlwind around her. A very good read.