BOOK OF THE DAY: GEMMA HUSSEYreviews Factory Girls – Voices from the heart of modern Chinaby Leslie T Chang; Picador; 420 pp; £12.99
TOWARDS THE end of this astonishing book, Leslie Chang says: “Perhaps China during the twentieth century had to go so terribly wrong so that people could start over, this time pursuing their individual courses and casting aside the weight of family, history, and the nation.”
It is a strange speculation, which comes as a shock at the end of a book which carries the stories of real people, mostly young women, caught up in the biggest migration in human history. Something like 130 million migrant workers travel from rural China to industrial cities to work in the manufacture of the vast array of goods which we hoover up in the consumerist world.
They mostly work 11 hours daily, six days a week; they sleep in dormitories, eat badly, earn less than $100 (€79.80) a month, desperately try to claw their way off the assembly line, send money back to their parents, and still consider themselves lucky. They feel lucky to have got away from the stifling hovels, poverty and isolation of rural China. It is truly a mass movement.
Leslie Chang, a Wall Street journalist, (whose family left China before she was born) concentrates on one industrial city, Dongguan. The area produces one third of the world’s shoes. The Yue Yen factory is the biggest manufacturer for Nike, Adidas and Reebok, along with smaller brands like Puma and Asics. Seventy thousand people work at this factory.
Inside the compound walls lives this population of under-30s, sleeping in factory dorms, eating at canteens, shopping at factory shops. The plant has a kindergarten and a hospital, a cinema, a fire department, and its own power plant. Yue Yen offers stability in a daunting world.
To bring a human dimension to her account, Chang picks out two young women and follows their progress. Lu Qingmin (known as Min) and Chunming lead the extraordinary lives of the factory grind, taking night-classes – often run by charlatans – in English, computers and self improvement, while also searching for decent men to marry.
Chang observes: “Viewed from Dongguan, the needs of the Chinese economy were changing so fast that the education system of the country was not even trying to keep up any more.”
Life is fragile among the teeming masses. When Min’s mobile phone is stolen, she loses her whole new life because she has no other way of contacting anyone. She has to start again.
At the lunar New Year, 200 million people embark on horrendous long journeys on filthy crowded trains to spend time back at home. China’s prosperity has seen air travel and a huge car industry develop – but these are not for the poor.
It is often heartbreaking when the author searches for her family history, as when she finds out how the family suffered under the Cultural Revolution, and how it was divided.
As one tool in trying to understand today’s China, this is a most valuable, if troubling read.
Gemma Hussey is a former minister for education, director of the European Women's Foundation, and author of At the Cutting Edge – Cabinet Diariesand Ireland Today – Anatomy of a Changing State