Leslie T. Chang

Co-sponsored by Porter Square Books

Do you know who makes your sneakers, that snazzy luxury handbag you’ve been coveting, and the mobile phone that you just can’t leave home without? By and large, this work is done by young women in China who leave their homes to work in sprawling factory cities.

Though we rely on cheap goods made in China, few Westerners have been inside the factories that provide us with the products we depend upon, and even fewer have penetrated the lives of the young women who leave their homes to work in China’s sprawling factory cities.

In Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, former Wall Street Journal Beijing correspondent and first-generation Chinese-American Leslie T. Chang tells the story of these workers who labor countless hours to provide us with the material goods we take for granted. Factory Girls is told primarily through the lives of two young women, whom Chang follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, a sweltering industrial city in the Pearl River Delta. Chang explores what these young women who leave their homes and families experience in the city: twelve-hour work days, seedy living conditions, business scams, and a total break from one’s family and past. Chang vividly portrays a world where lying about your age, your education, and your work experience is often a requisite for getting ahead; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class.

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