The history of a family begins when a person leaves home.
Leslie Chang’s new book Factory Girls is a collection of personal and family histories, recording the lives of those who left rural tradition behind to make a new life for themselves in the city. The city in question is Dongguan, the monstrous metropolis at the heart of the Pearl River Delta that has become the “factory of the world.” Unlike Shenzhen and the other special economic zones that grew as a result of a government directive, Dongguan grew on its own terms, making the rules up as it went along. The old rules no longer apply, traditional education and family values have little or relevance, and new arrivals in the city have to learn fast and adapt quickly in order to survive and prosper in this strange and often hostile new environment.
Ms Chang, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent in China, spent three years in Dongguan recording the lives of two migrant women workers in particular, a relatively new arrival Lu Qingmin, and Wu Chunming, a veteran of over ten years, whose fierce determination to climb the social ladder and make new lives for themselves encapsulated the pioneering spirit of Dongguan. Like everyone else, they started their new lives on the factory floor, but soon learned the way forward was to get a clerical job or move into sales. Everyone in Dongguan was on the move, jumping from factory to factory, and from one get-rich-quick scheme to another. Sometimes they made more in a month than they would in a year back home; sometimes they had to start all over again after losing their life savings, or their entire social and professional network when their phone was stolen.
The city changes people. Very often when they return to their home villages, migrants feel bored, listless and alienated from the antiquated world they have left behind. When Lu Qingmin returned home at the New Year, Chang noted, she immediately set about “civilizing” her parents and ordering a whole raft of home improvements. Returning migrants have power, money and status. They are the ones who will determine the future.
Chang’s time with the migrants of Dongguan inspired her to explore her own family history, a history that began 90 years earlier when her grandfather left the ancestral home in Manchuria to study in America before returning to help build a new China. The later family moved to Taiwan before settling in America. Chang resisted the pull of her ancestors for a long time before embarking on her own journey – a journey that led eventually to Dongguan.
China is currently experiencing the greatest migration in human history, and there hundreds of millions of stories to be told.