Factory Girls From Village to City in a Changing China

China has 130 million migrant workers, nearly all of them under thirty. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines in the industrial city of Dongguan. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, to makeshift English classes where students have their heads in monklike devotion, and back to a farming village, revealing the poverty and idleness that drive girls to leave home in the first place. A book of global significance, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is transforming Chinese society. Book jacket.