Dare to Set Out

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China

Author: Leslie T. Chang

Price: US $26.00

Hardcover, 432 pages

Published by Spiegel & Grau

Everyone knows that China is the world’s factory. But only after reading this book do I feel that I know what Chinese workers are like on a personal level. They are strong and vital, and not at all the victims they are so often depicted as,” former Wall Street Journal correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winner Ian Johnson said of Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls.

Among China’s population of 1.3 billion, 260 million are migrant workers. In southern cities bristling with factories, migrant workers who patiently compile export products have made an inestimable contribution to China’s booming economy. They represent the largest population migration in human history, triple the number of European migrants to the U.S. a century ago.

Foreign media usually focus on the harsh environment and miserable living conditions of Chinese migrant workers. After two years of in-depth research on this social group, however, Chinese-American author and former Wall Street Journal correspondent Leslie T. Chang sees them as a self-reliant, optimistic and mobile community. Chang has lived in China for a decade, during which time she has written stories about individuals under the background of social and economic transformation. Preferring to write from other than the received perspective, she decided to focus on migrant women factory workers.

“Setting out” is the phrase migrant workers use to define their mobility. “As there was nothing to do at home, I set out,” is how the story of such migrants’ journeys begins.

On the title page of Factory Girls is a hand painted Chinese map which, apart from big cities, includes three small villages–the birthplaces of Qingmin and Chunming, who feature in the book, and author Leslie T. Chang’s ancestral home of Liutai Village in Jilin Province. There is a connection among the three girls – all have been migrants.

“When my grandfather left the remote village where my ancestors lived for generations, he decided to change his name and start a new era. He first studied in Peking University and then traveled to the U.S. He used his diary to copy out lines of English words in efforts to study hard. Seven years later he came back to China, and my father and his four siblings were born. Years later, each of the children went to the U.S.,” Chang recalls in the preface. Her grandfather, Zhang Shenfu, was a geologist during the Republic of China period (1912-1949), and her father Zhang Ligang is a renowned physicist. “My family story is similar to that of young migrant women as it is about young people who left their beloved homes after China’s epoch of turbulence, disorder and isolation from the rest of the world.”

Why focus on young migrant women? Chang is especially interested in the way migration changes people’s lives. As a woman writer, she believes that migration has a greater, more complex impact on women than on men. In rural areas young women generally have a lower social status than men. As factory workers they are regarded as equals, and sometimes given preference over young men for work requiring patience and a light touch. Therefore, she wanted to see how such women adapt to the change in their social roles from the traditional to modern persona. She also draws many parallels with them, by virtue of their common gender, on emotional and communicative levels.

The book’s stories of the lives of migrant girls start in the early 1990s. In Chang’s view, the past 20 years witnessed China’s development into one of the world’s most energetic, vital economies. Along with economic growth, people’s lives changed to an extent that forced them to give up their stable lives and discover their own destinies. Citizens began buying houses and cars, so becoming global consumers. Yet the new era also brought great pressures, evident in fragile marriages, a broadening generation gap, and unpredictable changes in values and ethics, all of which present a full picture of migrant life.

In short, migrant workers stories offer another perspective on China’s development over the past 20 years. Chinese society encompassed the double whammy of opportunities and pressures amid its transformation from a traditional to a modern global society. In rapidly developing China, life changes so quickly that people from every stratum have to break away into their own worlds and learn how to compete and be entrepreneurs.

The book focuses on two young women from among China’s millions of young migrants, and traces their stories of shuttling between Dongguan City in south China’s Guangdong Province and their hometowns. “They are smart, competent, and have great ambitions. My story needs these representative characters, and they are indeed curious about me and my report.”

Lü Qingmin became a migrant worker in the year 2000, and Wu Chunming in the early 1990s. In contrast to the earliest job seekers who eventually returned to their rural homes, both are educated and came to cities with the specific aim of living a better life. Most of their experience typifies that of migrant workers. One example is that of Chunming almost being duped into becoming a prostitute. As for Qingmin, after a disagreement with her first boss she began job-hopping. Both young women have distinctive personalities. Qingmin is brave and resilient; Chunming is intent on pursuing the meaning of life and happiness. Both share the qualities of unremitting endeavor and courage. Many might think that migrant women workers are a vulnerable group lacking the ability to change their destinies. However, they hold their heads high, daring to challenge authority. They learn English in their spare time and how to use computers as a means to survive in their new world. The fatal turning point always comes at the moment they take a stance and express their personal interests and demands at the risk of losing everything. It is from that moment on that the world begins to respect each of them as individuals.

Chang has always deplored the arbitrary label of “blood and sweat factories.” She instead focuses on the hopeful and optimistic aspects of migrant life. Although some may criticize her obvious presets, we have to admit that her book for the first time delineates the individuals that make up this hitherto shadowy group. Younger than the previous generation, well-educated, and driven not by poverty but the active pursuit of opportunities, they are to be admired. It is self-respect rather than fear that makes them stay in cities – setting out signifies the intent to change their destiny.