25 & Trying

Factory Girls

Factory Girls

My latest nonfiction read ventured into territory I was really unfamiliar with. Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China is an incredibly in-depth account of her experiences as a Chinese American studying the lives of factory women. She actually studies a LOT of aspects of Chinese culture, and doesn’t limit herself to just the factory women. But it is in these relationships that she really shines.

Chang was living in Beijing at the time writing for The Wall Street Journal, but devotes much of her experience studying factory and migrant life, to really getting INSIDE their world, and becoming friends with many of these women. She buys them mobile phones so that they can stay in touch with her, and she even rents apartments in the factory city of Dongguan in order to stay in touch with them better.

She focuses mostly on the stories of the two women that she got closest with – visiting their villages, getting involved in their migrant city relationships, and trying to understand them on their own terms. The two girls are very different. One works on the factory floor and dreams mostly about her future with new boyfriends, new hairstyles, and the latest mobile devices. The other is constantly on the upward slant – she has moved from the factory to the clerk’s office, and has had several attempts at owning her own business.

The most interesting thing about these women is, in fact, the way they relate to each other. They exchange phone numbers only to change mobile phones. They become friends and then switch factories — leaving behind a completely skewed sense of reality. Things that are permanent are only temporary, and yet Chang does an excellent job of bringing her reader in. We are instantly connected to the women who have “gone out” to not only find a better life (as the traditional narrative goes), but to become their own people.

Dongguan Skyline

The city that has literally been CREATED out of the Western desire for cheap products and labor has become a haven for many migrants. Sure, there are the stories about women that work for years as factory workers, and who send home every single cent to their parents. But Chang introduces us to the idea that factory women actually DO have a level of choice. They definitely suffer at the hands of an institutionalized and male dominated society, but not all think of migration to cities as something they are forced to do.

One interesting thing that Chang does is integrating her own Chinese history into the story of these women. She gives a crash course in complicated Chinese politics simply by telling the tale of her grandfather, and her family’s immigration first to Taiwan and then the United States. Some chose to leave China and some chose to remain – decisions that have shaped the face of her family. The decisions have also brought her back here to the Communist Republic to learn about those women that are at the dividing line between China and the rest of the world.

My final thoughts about the book can be summed up in a scene where Chang receives a Coach bag from one of the women who works in the factories. She incorrectly assumes it is fake. Apparently, Coach also makes their bags authentically American by producing them in Dongguan.

Think of China what you will, but most definitely take the time to think about where your clothes, computers, and – yes – bags, come from.