Factory Girls

The author

Factory Girls is the story of millions of young female migrants who leave the impoverished rural countryside for the “instant cities” along China’s coast – in this case, it’s Dongguan in Guangdong province – in search of a better life. Leslie T Chang, a Chinese American, spent a decade living in China, working as a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. She made repeated trips to Dongguan, a sprawling city of factories and more factories with the largest network of highways in China, and eventually stayed on for some time and got to know several factory girls, namely Chunming and Min, intimately. The result is an intensely moving tale of the lives of these “ordinary workers”, whose ambition and fierce determination to move up the socioeconomic ladder, burns brightly throughout the narrative. They share mostly similar profiles - usually no more than 16 years old, leaving their homes for the first time, and having no more than a few years of formal schooling. Growing up quickly, learning to deal with life independently and expecting no help from anyone are among the first things they learn when they embark on their life-changing quests. Chang writes, “Life was something they faced alone, as they had been telling me from the first day we met. 'I can only rely on myself'.”

Why I like the book:

• It has depth. The author, a Chinese American with ancestral roots in China’s Northeast, draws parallels between the girls’ stories and her family’s migrations, first to Taiwan and then the USA. In doing so, she draws us deeper into the human and personal perspective, rather than hovering at the broad social and historical realm.
• She really knows the girls. She spent a few years getting to know them really well, especially Chunming and Min, going with the former on blind dates to seek a marriage partner and visiting the latter’s village when she returned home for the first time since she left two years ago. The depth of interaction allowed Chang to observe keenly the complex emotions experienced by the girls in their constantly drifting lives and the search for some form of stability as they strove to carve new paths for themselves.
• It is, at the end of the day, a very uplifting book. It will be hard not to come away inspired by the courage and determination of these girls in their quest for a better life.