《Factory Girls》（Chang, Leslie T.）
The easiest thing in the world was to lose touch with someone.
A day on the assembly line stretched from eight in the morning until midnight—thirteen hours on the job plus two breaks for meals—and workers labored every day for weeks on end.
When there wasn’t an overtime shift, she skipped dinner and took a few hours of lessons in how to type on a keyboard or fill out forms by computer. Most of the factory girls believed they were so poorly educated that taking a class wouldn’t help, but Min was different. “Learning is better than not learning,” she reasoned.
There was nothing to do at home, so I went out. This is how a migrant story begins.
What keeps them in the city is not fear but pride: To return home early is to admit defeat. To go out and stay out—chuqu—is to change your fate.
Yet earning money isn’t the only reason people migrate. In surveys, migrants rank “seeing the world,” “developing myself,” and “learning new skills” as important as increasing their incomes. In many cases, it is not crippling poverty that drives migrants out from home, but idleness.
I never saw old people on the bus.
From this incident, I understand: Some people who have always seemed unapproachable may not really be so. You just need to make yourself a little more approachable.
A person cannot grow up through happiness. Happiness makes a person shallow. It is only through suffering that we grow up, transform, and come to a better understanding of life!
She had recently taken the bus—a two-hour ride—to spend an afternoon with him. “He is not tall, he is not handsome, he has no money, his job is not good,” Min said. I waited for something to follow this declaration of shortcomings. “But you like him,” I said at last. Min didn’t say anything, but she smiled.
【本周读了一半，下周继续】