Factory Girls From Village To City In A Changing China Summary

“The factory owner steals the largest part of the work day from each worker. That’s how he gets rich at our expense.” The workers are forced to work more than thirteen-hour days with little pay. Most of the workers knew how the system worked but if they did complain they would be fired immediately and someone else would do the job. The job market for the majority of an uneducated workforce is a cycle with little pay the workers hardly make little for their family much less to improve there lives. There was hardly any other option for men but to work in factories unless they were upper class women, however could marry into the rich or the much less desired option of being a prostitute. According to the book by Galvao there is a double standard to women who are prostitutes they are called “whores” for having sex for money, but women who have multiple affairs in the upper class are never acknowledged. The proletariat is looked down upon for having to work these tough jobs for little pay while the rich live freely without interruption. The feelings of jealousy toward the bourgeoisie create contempt and animosity between these two groups. “The mansions spend on abundant tables. Factory women work for five years to earn the price of a bourgeoisie dress. They must work their whole lives to buy a cradle.” These budding social classes and ideologies created a clear division between these groups.

Daily life during the Yuan dynasty was not so enjoyable life for woman. This is because woman had a very difficult life and had no rights,they were to be bossed around by men and couldn't accomplish anything themselves unless they make dinner.As well as ,girls were forbidden to have an education and only wealthy boys were able to attend school and because boys were able to succeed greater in society.According to this article called Ancient China:Daily life mentions something really interesting about woman “They were considered much less valuable than men. Sometimes when a baby girl was born she was put outside to die if the family didn't want it. This was considered okay in their society. Women had no say in who they would marry.”.Girls were

Four Chinese mothers have migrated to America. Each hope for their daughter’s success and pray that they will not experience the hardships faced in China. One mother, Suyuan, imparts her knowledge on her daughter through stories. The American culture influences her daughter, Jing Mei, to such a degree that it is hard for Jing Mei to understand her mother's culture and life lessons. Yet it is not until Jing Mei realizes that the key to understanding who her

Imagine being kidnapped and forced to work night and day on purses, in addition hardly any food or rest. In Threads, a novel by Ami Polonsky, Yuming, a thirteen-year-old girl, is trapped inside of a pink factory along with twenty-two other children, who are rumored to have been there for almost ten years. After finding a small piece of scrap paper, Yuming writes a note desperately asking for help and sticks it inside one of the purses. Clara, a twelve-year-old girl, finds the note inside of a purse at the Bellman’s department store in Evanston, Illinois. The note Yuming wrote stated “The middle of May. To Whom It May Concern: Please, we need help! There is pale pink factory, few hours outside of Beijing, somewhere in Hebei Province. 22 children in

“We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are... obedient chinese daughters.” This quote sums up the world that May and Pearl live in, that no matter the culture, no matter the time period, and no matter the situation, your gender decides your fate or does it? The theme of gender and how they dictate our roles in society run rampant in Shanghai Girls by Lisa Lee. Lee’s novel covers a great deal about the immigrant experience and the struggles they had to go through to adapt to their new environment but one thing they didn 't need to adapt was the parts they played in their families. The importance of this traditional society,where the men are the breadwinners and the women the caretakers are first shown in how Pearl and Mays family worked. The father was expected to make money and take care of the household, while the mother, May and Pearl were off fooling around. When the situation turns dire, the father does not conform to his role to help his family and takes the easy way out and sells off his daughters. However the father did not account for his daughters refusing the offer he already made to pay back his debts. This caused a thunderstorm of confusion and trouble, which led to the death of respect, Pearl had for her father. For in this critical moment, the father wet himself and could not muster out a word but the mother brilliantly stepped in and defused the situation. “I see hardness in her that I’ve never seen before.”,

Once the Chang family moved into Los Angeles and had their herbalist shop and asparagus farm under way, they realized the need for more laborers. In order to support their wives and kids with groceries, clothing, and education, the Chang’s needed to find the cheapest labor possible while still establishing the farm as a business that could support their income. The cheapest laborers were relatives, and they were for the most part thankful to come and work for Yitang, even if it was not their ideal working situation. One frustration Sam expressed in the book that may correlate to the continuing poor treatment and vision of the Chinese, is that within the Chinese workforce, most hard-working laborers in the railroad, farming, mining, and

My literature review is on the Gender Matters set of essays. The first essay is The Startling Plight of China’s Leftover Women by Christina Larsen.This essay is about the unmarried, educated women in China and why they are still unmarried.. The second essay is The Invisible Migrant Man: Questioning Gender Privileges by Chloe Lewis. This piece is about the struggles and issues that married male migrants face and have faced.The last is Body-Building In Afghanistan by Oliver Broudy.It is about the men who are unemployed in Afghanistan whospend their time working out. My literature review is written in the following order: Larsen’s essay, Broudy’s essay, and lastly Lewis’.

Book Review: Growing Up in the People’s Republic: Conversations Between Two Daughters of China’s Revolution. By- Ye Weili with Ma Xiaodong

Tsurumi says that only three options were given to most young women in Japan in the Meiji period: work at a textile mill, weaving house, or a house of prostitution. Tsurumi says that women in all three cases had effectively been “sold” by their parents into the workforce, and were without the ability to choose where they wished to work (Tsurumi, 187). To detail even further, Tsurumi says that girls working in any of these fields were effectively “purchased commodities” to their employers, and were treated as objects (Tsurumi, 188). This continues to support the idea that these women were victims of a society determined to society’s vulnerable populations for their labor and ignore their humanity. Despite this, the women of Japan’s textile mills worked tirelessly in harsh circumstances in an effort to support their families, and, as a result, also supported the larger local and national communities of which they were a part. In conclusion, Tsurimi says that a woman working in Japan’s textile mills “made [her contributions to the industrialized economy] for her family and herself, and not for the country or company” (Tsurumi, 198). Even if their contribution was not intentional, however, the impact the factory girls of Meiji Era Japan had on the industrialization of Japan’s economy is irrefutable, and showcases

As industrialization spread in Western Europe, the production of products and goods moved from the household to factories which drastically changed family life. Married women were unable to work unless they left their children and home in someone else’s care. Moreover, middle-class women generally did not leave their homes in order to work. In contrast, the women of Eastern Asia rapidly joined the work force after the introduction of industrialization and made up a gigantic portion of the labor force. This difference is probably due to the fact that the rural women of Eastern Asia were always laborers, and they make up the majority of the female population. Additionally, European women generally preferred domestic labor to laborious tasks. Rural women were offered independence by leaving their homes in order to perform domestic work; they generally sent their earnings to their families or saved it for themselves. Moreover, the European women that participated in the work force were forced to travel long distances and were separated from their families from long hours. Additionally, their wages were significantly lower than that of their male counterparts. Furthermore, women worked under poor conditions and were constantly susceptible to disease. Similarly, the poor women of Eastern Asia sought employment in the cotton and silk industry.

Rural workers who move to cities, seeking for employment opportunities, are captured and sent back to their hometown, because the government thinks they are the source of crimes and that they should be tracked down to maintain China’s public image. All-China Women foundation and constitutions were launched to preserve and enforces rights of women and rural residents in political, economic, culture and family life, though no improvement was done by the government.

In her novel Factory Girls, Leslie Chang offers an insider’s perspective of the Chinese export business that ultimately exposes the true colors of factory life in China to the people of the western society. Throughout the novel, she cites historical reasoning as to why a sudden growth in factory workers has occurred and how it has turned into the monstrous industry that it is now. Mainly, she credits the large migration of people from the rural areas to the cities because this caused major political reform. The PRC were then able to move into the global economy with a new strategy, given by Deng Xiao Ping, which consequently caused trade to open up and certain cities to be designated as placeholders for economic development with the potential for newer business.

The emergence of the market economy has spurred unprecedented waves of rural to urban migration seeking emplotment. One particular group of women that have migrated, especially for factory work, are dagongmei, or “working girls,” young female migrants. As explored in Leslie Chang’s book Factory Girls and her TED talk, it is important to listen to the voices and lived experiences of the migrants themselves, rather than speak for them or assume them to be helpless victims of capitalist exploitation. It is important to recognize that many of these women choose to migrate for a variety of reasons, some to get away from the family, some to gain a sense of independence, others to escape a difficult rural life. As explored in her book Made in China, Pan Pun Ngai does agree that it is true that many women eagerly migrate for work voluntarily, and usually do not view their circumstance as being one of victimhood. In fact, many view the label of dagongmei as not an identity to be ashamed of, but rather a new identity and sense of self for the millions of young country women

Lisa See is an American writer and novelist born in 1955 in Paris, and grew up in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles. Her great-grandfather left his village in China to immigrate in Los Angeles at the beginning of the last century. Although she is only 1/8 Chinese, she spent he childhood in the Chinatown of Los Angeles, and her familial background has given her roots in Chinese culture and has had a great impact on her life and work.

Although this sometimes isn’t the factories fault because most of the workers are uninsured so they are denied medical and social services (“China: Beijing’s Migrant 1”). Most of the factories do try to pay their workers by hour at about twenty cents per hour, but some only pay them once a year (Goldman 1). This however is breaking the rule of Labor Law fifty in China, which states that workers must be paid on a monthly basis. The average wage per month is only about sixty-five dollars which isn’t a sufficient amount of money to support an average family (“China: Beijing’s Migrant 1”). These people try to work overtime to earn more money, but often times they are forced to do this regardless (Goldman 2). Chinese workers often work in fear, because they have to ask permission to leave even after their shifts are done and to even go to the bathroom (Goldman 1). The Chinese workforce is starting to realize these problems and they won’t stand for it.