Factory Girls_ From Village to City in a Changing China - Chang, Leslie T_ [56]
Self-improvement was a constant theme in the diary. After he finished his schooling, my grandfather spent two years doing practical training at mines and factories in the Northeast and the Midwest. He enrolled in a Chicago night school to study electrical machinery. The diary entries bristle with alien English words he was trying to learn: Goodman Standard Shortwall Machine. Ratio of cement sand and slag. Pyramid Pump Open Hearth Mixer Blast Furnace Corrugated Underframe Door. He copied down inspirational advice from the titans of American industry.
Marshall Field’s Ten Things Worth Remembering
1. The Value of Time
2. The Success of Perseverance
3. The Pleasure of Working
4. The Worth of Character
5. The Dignity of Simplicity
6. The Improvement of Talent
7. The Joy of Originating
8. The Virtue of Patience
9. The Wisdom of Economy
10. The Power of Kindness
From afar, his family pressured him to come home. Reading my grandfather’s response in his diary—My desire to return home is strong, but my studies are not finished yet—reminded me of Chunming, who had expressed an almost identical thought in hers. Who knows why I am not going home for the new year? The main reason: I really do not want to waste time. Because I must study!
But at heart these journeys were different enterprises. The factory girls go to the city to improve their lives; my grandfather left home so he could return one day and better serve his country. You could say that my grandfather left home for home, while the girls leave home only for themselves. Chunming in her diary never stopped circling her favorite subject, which was herself: how the city was changing her, how others might see her, and the minute details of her physical appearance: My eyes do not have double eyelids, she wrote, but they are not too small. Their being single-lidded has not affected their vision. I don’t have thin lips but my mouth can speak persuasively. I speak loudly and boldly, not gently, but this has been my nature from birth. Through hundreds of pages of his diary, no such selfportrait of my grandfather ever emerges. The entries read like classical poems—terse and controlled, the individual implied but never visible.
During his time in America
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
MAP
1 Going Out
2 The City
3 To Die Poor Is a Sin
4 The Talent Market
5 Factory Girls
6 The Stele with No Name
7 Square and Round
8 Eight-Minute Date
9 Assembly-Line English
10 The Village
11 The Historian in My Family
12 The South China Mall
13 Love and Money
14 The Tomb of the Emperor
15 Perfect Health
PART ONE The City
PART TWO The Village
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
COPYRIGHT