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420 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
Staying in Min’s village made me think about my own family. Long ago when my parents were children in China, they had grown up in a similar way.
In the factory towns of the south, I was meeting young women and watching them learn how to be individuals. They found jobs; they confronted bosses; they tried to learn new skills. Mostly they came to believe that they mattered, despite their humble origins. Do not feel inferior because we are ordinary migrant workers, Chunming wrote in her diary. We have no reason to feel inferior. In Zhang Hong’s world, it was still 1957 [the Great Leap Forward]. He loved himself; he hated himself. He hated Mao; he quoted Mao constantly. He despised the Party; he belonged to the party.
…
My thanks go first to those I knew in Dongguan, who taught me so much about this city in which we were all outsiders. Lu Quigmin and Wu Chunming generously opened up their eyes to me, granting me their trust, patience, time, and lasting friendship. Zhang Qianqian and Jia Jimei showed me life on the assembly line, while Jiang Haiyan and Chen Ying shared their struggles to rise above it. Liu Yixia opened my eyes to the way English is learned in a factory town.
He had dark kind eyes in a trim face the color of a walnut; he spoke deliberately, with the precise gestures of a Peking opera performer, and he never raised his voice.
She had dyed and permed her hair so it was long and crinkly, like caramel taffy.
He was three years older than Min and as skinny as a hastily drawn cartoon character, with long limbs and a narrow handsome face and a bashful smile.
The boyfriend answered the door. His face was narrow and tough and darkish red, like a cord of beef jerky; he looked to be in his forties.
He had a narrow face that came to a point at his chin and a tiny square mustache that hung on his upper lip, like a stray postage stamp.
He had a thin face, with the skin stretched tight over the cheekbones and hair so short it gave him a permanently startled expression.
The boy, Zhang Bin, had a narrow face, round dark eyes, and pale cheeks that were flushed with nervousness.
Learning my family story also changed the way I saw the factory towns of the south. There was a lot to dislike about the migrant world of Min and Chunming: the materialism, the corruption, the coarseness of daily existence. But now there was an opportunity to leave you village and change your fate, to imagine a different life and make it real. The journey my grandfather attempted was one that millions of young people now make every day – they left home; they entered an unfamiliar land; they worked hard. But nowadays their purpose was not to change China’s fate. They were concerned with their own destinies, and they made their own decisions. If it was an ugly world, at least it was their own.