Factory Girls_ From Village to City in a Changing China - Chang, Leslie T_ [44]
Qianqian woke up past ten o’clock one Sunday just as I arrived to see her. She yawned, stretched, and slowly swung herself out of her top bunk. She pulled on a green tank top, jeans with floral embroidery stitched down one leg, and scuffed high heels with pointy toes. “In the whole year, only these few months are a bit more fun,” she said. Two bunks over, a roommate sat in bed practicing English phrases under her breath. She took a weekly class run by the factory. The sentences in her well-thumbed book were strange.
THIS IS LOO. HE’S FROM PERU.
One made sense:
DON’T LOSE THE OPPORTUNITY.
Qianqian walked downstairs, past the other dormitory buildings, and through the factory gate. Out on the sidewalk, the sun’s glare was so strong that the street appeared blinding white, like an overexposed photograph. Qianqian entered a department store and gravitated toward the racks of sequined high-heeled shoes. She fingered a yellow platform shoe whose strap had three glittery pink hearts, like Valentine’s Day candy. “This is very fashionable this year,” she said. In the gifts section, she pointed out a picture frame with fake roses embedded inside; she had given one to a friend for her birthday.
Back on the near-deserted street, she shouted at a girl walking past. “Qu Jimei! Where have you been?”
A girl with dyed red streaks in her hair stopped walking. She was carrying a nylon Nike backpack. “I’m going home,” she said.
“You’re going home? Now?”
“Now.”
Qianqian held the girl’s hand for a moment. “Well, goodbye then,” she said. She watched the girl walk away. “You meet so many friends in the factory like this, and then they go home.”
“Do you keep in touch?” I asked her.
“It’s hard. Sometimes we exchange addresses.” Her closest friend in the city was someone she had met during her first stint at Yue Yuen. They had quit the factory at the same time, gone home to their respective villages, and arranged to come out again together. Qianqian frequently visited the friend on her days off. The effort required to keep in touch explained why the factory girls had so few true friends. The easiest thing in the world was to lose touch with someone.
We sat down in a sunbaked plaza outside a department store and ate ice-cream cones. A girl in a blue-and-white striped factory shirt who appeared to know Qianqian sat down with us. She idly fanned herself with a postcard she was on her way to mail. “I have left the factory,” she announced. It was so hot that no one responded. The two girls sat in silence and watched me writing in my notebook.
“Do you read English?” Qianqian asked the girl.
She laughed harshly. “I didn’t even finish elementary school!”
After the girl left, Qianqian explained that they had worked together at a small factory nearby. “Yue Yuen is better,” she said. “The welfare benefits are better. There is a library and an activities center. You can play chess or join the Hula-Hoop club.” I asked her if she took part in any of those activities, and she said no.
She walked down the street, encountering other friends who were going home, saying hello and goodbye to people who in all likelihood she would never see again. From afar, Qianqian’s parents were pressuring her to go home too, and yet they wanted her to send more money. She had given them almost five thousand yuan in her first two years out but nothing since. In her village, parents traditionally built a house for a grown son to live in after his marriage; Qianqian’s younger brother was only fourteen, but her parents were already worrying about the expense.
“All the other people in the village have built their houses,” her father had said to her. “How come mine hasn’t been built yet?”
“I was going to ask you the same question,” Qianqian retorted.
From their homes in the village, families tried to influence their daughters. Send money home. Don’t get a boyfriend outside. Get