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)

If you are curious about China - worth a listen.

My title says it all - if you are interested in contemporary China - this is worth a listen. Although the author is young, she is intelligent, insightful, and a good writer.

The book starts strong by helping the listener to understand the unprecedented changes sweeping China as millions move from the country to the city looking for work. In the process, everything changes: the villages are empty (especially of young girls), the city folk are not happy to be inundated by uncultured country folk, the immigrants have to create new lives and identities, and huge factory operations have to be maintained against a backdrop of untrained workers who are constantly leaving and returning to work.

Along the way, the reader learns more about what has happened in China over the last 150 years (think Boxer Rebellion and colonization; think warring factions within China; think of the brutal, self-inflicted wounds of Mao's rule) and how the latest migration is but one of many migrations over thousands of years for Chinese people - including the migration of the author's family to the US.

My biggest gripe about this book is that it is too long and repeatedly bogs down in the details of some of the characters it follows. She does best when she is looking at the big picture and helping to sort out trends.

The Evolution of China

This was written by the wife of teacher/ writer Peter Hessler. She gives us the Chinese perspective of China as we move through modern places like Shenzhen and rural places that are fast becoming modern. It is the women that are leading this change. Many leave their villages in search of a better life. Sometimes they lie or charm their way up the ladder of success. Sometime they improve themselves through study, but they are very driven to make lives better. We discover how lost some of the women are as they traverse the bridge to modernity from the simplicity of farm life before. We come to understand the pressure many feel as they become the matriarchs of their poor families. Many are expected to return during the rural holidays with electronic gifts like washing machines or air conditioners to lavish on their hard working, less educated parents. I have been in China for a brief 4 years, but can see where many people succeed there are also many that fail. We are left with a glimpse of how hard it is to make it in the number two world economy right now. We are left to ponder the outcome of this machine that is leveling everything old and reshaping itself into something that will blend the old with the new in an exciting and shocking way.

China, Migration, and Urbanization

The largest migration in the history of the world is unfolding in China, as the rural young from agricultural villages make their way to way to factories in the cities. Chang, a Chinese-American reporter for the Wall Street Journal, spends three years following the lives of two young women as they struggle to make a new life (and invent a new China) in the factory city of Dongguan.

In the process of learning about migration and urbanization in China, we also follow Chang on her own journey to understand her families past, with her relatives participating, victimization and triumph through revolution, migration, the cultural revolution, assimilation, and authoritarian capitalism. The experience of the "factory girls" that Chang follows stands in for the experiences of millions of Chinese, as well as the larger global story of the move from the country to the city.

The young ladies that Chang profiles are forced to re-invent themselves at each step, while struggling to maintain links to the village families that they have left behind. This migration, and the changes that this flow of labor brings to China (and global capitalism) one of the most important stories of our time, is beautifully and sensitively told in this heart-breaking, hopeful and important book.

Learned so much about subject

Any additional comments?

This book really helps me understand doing business with China. I had no idea that there was this life going on overseas. They really rely on us bringing them work. Its very educational and entertaining. I just think it dragged in parts especially following the author's heritage. That got a little boring and I got lost. But there is no book like this and everyone should know where everything we use daily comes from. How much labor goes into everything and how PEOPLE make it all, not machines.

boring

I found this to be dull and boring. I wanted it to draw me in, make me care about the characters. It fell way short!

PICKING DAISEYS IN CHINA

Leslie Chang is perfectly suited for this journey into the heart of China’s economic transformation. Ms. Chang works for the “Wall Street Journal”. She has family experience of imperial and communist China from the 1920s to the present; she speaks Mandarin Chinese, and grew up in the United States. Chang brings intimate perspective to the dynamics of economic and social change in 21st century China.

“Factory Girls” offers a glimpse of the tremendous cultural change occurring in today’s China. Sixteen year old girls are leaving rural China to seek their future in the City. With little formal education, they fuel the engines of China’s rapid industrial growth. Chang follows several of these amazing young women back and forth from their rural beginnings to their immersion in the difficult life of factory work.

China is not America. Chang’s book is frightening to a parent in an American culture that practices and endorses extended childhood. Imagine an American sixteen year old daughter taking a train to a city where she knows no one, has no financial support, and is expected to make her own living. Imagine an American daughter that has no opportunity except as a barer of male children. What is a Chinese female to do if her life options are so limited? What is any human to do if their options are unfairly limited?

“Factory Girls” is an impressive report of the massive cultural change occurring in China. It is an astounding affirmation of the “will to power” outlined by Friedrich Nietzsche. One cannot help but admire the factory girls of China as ugly as the reality of their lives seem to “too comfortable” Americans.

Living in Shenzhen - and What A Disappointment

The subject matter of this book is compelling from so many different perspectives. Having lived in Shenzhen since the mid-90's, and having spent many years in the trading business and more time than I care to admit trudging around factories in China, I was very excited to see this book come out, and was expecting so much from it. The information conveyed here is really good, and the author does a very workmanlike job of conveying factual (mostly) information. The writing, however, is horrendous. I've read better on the back of cereal boxes - seriously. I honestly don't understand why a publisher would let this out of their shop - I can only guess its because of her connections with the WSJ. And the only thing worse than the writing is the narration. The narrator has no passion for the subject matter, and it comes off exactly that way. She makes bland writing even worse. And as for the pronunciation of the Chinese, it's abysmal, inconsistent (the city of Dongguan comes up several hundred times in the book, and she butchers it at least 6 different ways, including pronouncing backwards once); I didn't hear one Chinese word that was even close to correct pronunciation. For anyone that lives in China interested in this compelling topic, it's like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard. I struggled through it only because I have a personal interest in the topic. If I saw anything else from this writer or the narrator, I'd steer well clear of it.