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5 out of 5
by
Jennifer
from
Winterthur, 25, Switzerland | Jul 11, 2009
There are two great reasons to read this book! One, the direct relevance it has to almost everyone alive today who consumes products of any sort (shoes, bags, cell phone parts, computer parts) made by the intrepid young working ladies of Dongguan in Southern China that the author describes in this book. Second, Ms. Chang's narrative voice was truly a pleasure to read.
The material itself is fascinating and up-to-the minute-timely; the book details how a huge migration is taking place in China, transforming family life, economic life, and the individual fates of millions of young women and men who leave the countryside to work in cities full of factories, cities which are changing and growing at an insane speed. Knowing next to nothing about China, this book opened the door a crack for me to understanding something about the country. It was a great introduction, providing a context or anchor for further reading, and sparking my interest in learning more. Ms. Chang was the perfect narrator; she wrote in a way that provided an immediately familiar and recognizable narrative voice to an American reader but with her Chinese language skills, family background, open mind, and warm heart she was also able to become close enough with the Chinese women to give us an intimate view of their lives, ambitions, and view of the world.
It took me almost a month to read the book. Upon finishing, I realized I was going to miss Ms. Chang's company, telling me the story of these girls and their surroundings through the filter of her own wonderfully insightful mind; sometimes with gentle humour, sometimes subtly scathing, sometimes admiring of the girls, sometimes seeing right through their words and acitons. While picking up on unusual and fascinating details with a reporter's careful eye, Ms. Chang also showed just as good a feel for understanding the bigger picture and going to the heart of the matter in her analyses. It would have been difficult to read about some of the chinese style self-help-gurus, the cult style English teachers and the like without touches of Ms. Chang's scepticism and wit. It was useful, after reading about the flimsiness of business standards in Dongguan and shallow ethics of the Dongguan workplace, to have Ms. Chang anchor the story in the context of a larger picture of Chinese values and history. I appreciated the honesty, open-mindedness, humour, courage, and wisdom with which Ms. Chang researched the book, lived her life in a very intense environment without losing her own perspective, and narrated this fascinating story.
3 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Kristine
from
Cave Creek, AZ | Nov 30, 2008
A little longer than it needs to be but it's very enlightening. It really makes you realize how fortunate we are to be employed or even unemployed in the USA.
These girls leave home as young as 14 and are hired at talent markets so they don't even see the conditions of the factory until the first day on the job. They also live at the factory, sleeping in dorms. Working from 8am to midnight with two short (10 minute) breaks is not unheard of. Employers also withold pay so they cannot quit without permission. If they walk off they lose all their back pay. One factory told their employees that their client was behind in payments so they were docking all employee wages by 30% until the debt was paid. Don't even get me started on discrimination.
I could go on and on but you really need to read the book. The author gets to know some of the girls quite well. there are chapters on the dating life, learning English, etc etc and she even reveals a bit of her own dynamic Chinese history.
I recently saw a story on the news about Chinese girls returning home after losing their factory jobs. It really takes on a whole new meaning since I read the book.
1 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
Chrissa
from
Spring, TX | Jan 30, 2009
Ms. Chang created a fascinating portrait of several women (including herself and her family) who "went out" from their birthplaces and from the cultural strictures of those places. For a place that is often in the news as The People's Republic of China is, one seldom seems to glean much of the life of the people within. For most of this book, I felt like a child with my nose pressed to the glass, unable to look away from the lives of the women portrayed within. This is an interesting read that will stay with me.
1 people found this review helpful
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1 out of 5
by
Ann
from
Lowell, MA | Nov 24, 2008
I was very disappointed in this book. It was very disorganized.
The way it jumped from one thing to another with no transition beyond some extra space on the page was quite disorienting. (E.g., one section ended with a statement about an old relative laying in bed waiting to die and the next paragraph started with a description of a table loaded with food.)
The descriptions and conclusions also seemed very superficial. I chose the book because I was very interested in learning about life in China today. I stayed with it to the very end hoping I'd learn more, but nothing more ever came. When I finally finished I felt I'd wasted my time and wished I quit sooner.
2 people found this review helpful
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4 out of 5
by
James
from
Reno, NV | Mar 23, 2009
This book is a bit hard to review because it is somewhat more complex than one would first expect.
The story turns out to be a bit different than the preconceived notion also.
For the positive, the writer had a background at the wall st journal,
probably the least biased newspaper in America and this gave her the mindset and habit to write an interesting and unbiased account of this unusual mass migration from rice patty to factory.
She also integrated her life with her subjects to an unusual degree which gave her more information and allowed her the chance for personal growth and self understanding.
One gets the impression that previous to writing the book she ignored the Chinese aspect of her personal history, but in spending so much time with ambitious Chinese girls, she came to see a side of herself she had previously ignored.
The author comes across as a bright, spunky, likeable person so this helped to make the book an interesting read.
She lists quite a few interesting observations about Chinese behavior that are good too.
The 70 pages of personal family history was unexpected and while it probably made her parents happy, the book would have been better without that.
She went with one of the girls to the home farm twice and tells of life there, a high def. TV that the kids watch all day long,
but no indoor plumbing or heating, so they have to stand up and jump around to stay warm while watching it.
3-8 people sleeping in a bed...
And much more.
One funny account of bathing in the country.
"the women of the family would heat a basin of water.
One after another they washed their private parts and feet, without changing the water in between.
Then the men would refill the basin and do the same.
Every so often, the family members took a sponge bath, but that was usually different from the once in many days they washed their hair.
Eventually every part of the body would be clean, although rarely at the same time."
But, the factory girls themselves:
Most accounts tell of the low pay and long hours, they make it seem like the poor girls live a life of misery.
But throughout the book one feels that the girls don't feel that way, instead they look to the future with optimism that with each year their life is getting better and that they have more choices.
There is a sense of excitement.
Few things make people as happy as being optimistic about the future,
and except for one adult man who is fighting the government about a grievance from long ago, there are no sad sacks or whiner's in this book.
Just a hoard of ambitious people relentlessly pushing ahead with high expectations.
The major disappointment is that except for one photo on the back cover there are NO photos.
The dorms & lunchrooms they live in, the factory floor, the train stations, the farm back home, a hundred interesting images that one can only imagine.
The China of today is so different from China of 20 years ago,
and 20 years from now it will again be so different.
A photo record of this transformation is needed.