Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Leslie Chang, a Chinese-American writer, has produced an informative volume about the Chinese migration of women from rural areas and life to urban living. She accomplishes this by telling the stories of individual and groups of women. She illustrates the book with direct quotes and closely written stories. She works very hard to help the reader understand what is taking place through Chinese eyes.

The book is great to listen to and is very informative. After listening I thought that the same information could have been presented in less space and with fewer words. After a few days of reflection, however, I believe her approach enables to listener/reader to internalize the situation in urban China or get a feel for what is taking place. The cumulative effect is positive and was, in my case, informative.

The reading of the book is excellent.

Engaging and enlightening. And perfectly read by Susan Ericksen who voices the author and her other characters cleanly and expressively, with just the right blend of passion and dramatic restraint.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Very well written, good narration, and good audio quality. I was a little disappointed in that there was very little mention of non-migrant workers who also are in the same boat as the authors friends. Specifically, what is the fate of institutionalized girls within the factor workforce?

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.

Excellent reporting. Recommend.

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.

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.