Favorite quotes from "factory girls"

Migration

在家里没什么事做，所以我出去。 At home there was nothing to do, so I went out.

出去 -- literally "to go out"-- is the Chinese word for leaving your home to work somewhere else. To migrate.

Women make up more than one-third of China's migrants. They tend to be younger than their male counterparts and more likely to be single; they travel farther from home and they stay out longer. They are more motivated to improve themselves and more likely to value migration for its life-changing possibilities. In one survey, men cited higher income as he chief purpose of leaving home, while women aspired to "more experience in life." Unlike men, women had no home to go back to.

Women who had moved up from the assembly line disdained the men back in the village, but city men looked down on them in turn. 高不成低不就。

To die poor is a sin.

The continuing link to a family farm has stabilized China in an age of mass migration. Its cities have not spawned the shantytown slums of so much of the developing world, because the migrant who fails in the city can always return home and find someone there. (...) A married couple might go out together, leaving young children in the care of their aged parents. In the city, a migrant may look desperate, but almost every migrant has a farm to fall back on.

Studying

Both of the women were enrolled at Mr. Wu's school. They had shaved their heads to express their commitment, as Buddhist monks did when joining a monastery. To learn English, it was necessary to renounce the world.

She sometimes didn't understand what her students said; occasionally she corrected them when they were in the right. Often she answered their questions incorrectly. But she had the right instinct when it came to teaching, and somewhere along the way she had figured out the secret of learning a foreign language, which started with being unafraid.

The easiest thing in the world is to loose touch with someone.

The only person you can rely on is yourself.

Life plans

She had made up her mind, she told me. "I want to learn English so I can live a happier life."
"I would like a child to grow up to have a happy life and make contribution to society," she said.
"A contribution to society?" I asked her, startled. "What do you mean?"
"I don't mean to be a big scientist or something like that," Chunming said. "How many people can do that? I think if you live a happy life and are a good person, that is a contribution to society."

What did I get out of this book? Most readers highlighted the horrible conditions in the factories, but to me this is nothing new and I know that it is even worse in other countries. Two things shine out for me: the typically Chinese character and how Chinese people deal with things, and the general historic idea of migration which is strengthened in this book by going back to the author's own family who's history started when her ancestor moved to Mandchuria a couple hundred years ago.

Here is my book review on Amazon.com.

I am currently a foreign student in North America (just like the author's grand father), but I am facing the decision whether to return some day or stay here as a migrant. One thing is for sure: I will not go back to my ancestor's village. 家里没有什么做，所以我要出去。 At home there is nothing to do, so I have to go out.

a visit to the center of the world

About a thousand years ago, the Chinese built the worlds longest canal from Hangzhou in the south to Beijing in the north. They used pound locks on their canal a couple centuries before this type of lock was invented in the West. One of the canal's main uses was to transport grain from the south to their capital in the north -- grain was how the provinces paid tax to the emperor. When China flourished, its capital, Beijing, amassed immense riches and people at the emperor's court had time and money for studying and the arts.
Beijing for many centuries was one of the richest cities of the world.

On my visit to Beijing I had the feeling that this part of the city's role is still true today. The tax is no longer delivered as grain from China's many peasants. It is now delivered in US dollars from the many foreign-owned factories along the Chinese coast. Factories where workers with little education work over ten hours a day, often six and a half days per week. And a lot of the profit from those factories goes to the capital Beijing and other big cities in the country. Beijing has excellent public infrastructure -- beautiful avenues with grade separated crossings, excellent public transport including a vast subway network built from the late nineties and gradually opening, high-speed internet, cell phone networks (even the rickshaw riders have cell phones!), large bike lanes used by bicycles and electric scooters (both the motor-bike and the pedal-bike based sort) -- one of the greatest things about the city compared to Taiwan is that there are no noisy, stinky motor-scooters around. With it's modern street-scape, modern subway and electric vehicles Beijing feels like a place from the future! (Compare the subway's contact-less smartcard tickets to Toronto's paper tickets and coins... it's like Canada is still in the iron age.)

Tourism, the government, the headquarters of foreign companies, and most recently the Olympics provide Beijing with an influx of money that lets people have a very good life compared to the rest of China. And the city itself has a high quality of life... the beauty of the streets and the efficiency of transport are enjoyed even by the lower-income citizens. Also, there are more universities in Beijing than in other parts of China and all of them have quotas for local applicants in their tough entrance exams. Therefore, a good education is also a privilege that Beijingers enjoy, even if they are not from a high-income class.

Just like in the old imperial times... 北京中国的都市 -- Beijing, capital of China, "the Central Country".