Welcome to the First Readings group blog on the China Conversation, hosted in partnership with Brown University’s Office of the Dean of the College. We are making this page available to the Brown community to share thoughts raised by the University’s 2011 First Readings selection, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by journalist Leslie T. Chang. Chosen in part for its relevance to Brown’s 2011-2012 Year of China program, the book was distributed to first-year students and is being widely read and discussed across campus. Chang herself will join the discussion here, in October. More information is available on the First Readings website.

As described by Dean Katherine Bergeron, “Factory Girls examines issues of migration and industrialization in contemporary China by focusing on the stories of two young women from the provinces who come to the city of Dongguan to work in the factories, learn new skills, and achieve ‘success.’  As Brown celebrates the Year of China, Factory Girls should cause you to reflect on the question of a country’s relationship to both its past and its future and how that attitude can affect the lives of ordinary people trying to get ahead.”

We hope you will join the conversation on this page, in one of two ways:

• Anyone with a brown.edu or alumni.brown.edu email address can create an account on the China Conversation and begin a blog reflecting on the themes of the Year of China. (Alums without an alumni.brown.edu address can get one at alumni.brown.edu/services/online/.) Once you have registered and started to blog, you can select “First Readings” as one of the Conversations to display your blog post/s about Factory Girls.
• No Brown email or registration is needed to comment on blogs already posted on the site. All are invited to comment.

Please send any questions to global_conversation@brown.edu.