Reviews and Comments

Chapter 7 - Square and Round Describes the drive for education and improvement amongst the factory workers, being met by other enterprising migrants setting up training courses - of variable quality - on the subjects which might provide advancement. One class is being taught by a 17 year old who went out from her village when she was 15, was an assembly worker and is now an educational consultant. Another teacher had been in Donggguan for 22 days. The fierce competition to stand out, combined with the diversity of ways this might happed reminded me, for some reason, of the Cambrian Explosion (described in Wonderful Life ), a large number or random experiments in what was needed to succeed in a competitive environment, with no underlying plan.

Chapter 6 - The Stele with no name Leslie Chang investigates her family history. Her father was a physicist, born in China, but emigrated to the US in 1961. Her grandfather was a geologist, who studied in the US, and returned to China, where we was murdered in 1946. The treatment of family members during the Cultural Revolution reminded me of the importance of 'Biography' in Lea Ypi's book Free.

Chapter 5 - Factory Girls Describes life in the Yue Yuen shoe factory, with its seventy thousand workers, making trainers for Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma etc.

Chapter 4 - The Talent Market Min and her friends have some time off, get together, but most leisure activities cost money. She is working in a office, socially and financially higher than the assembly line. Describes the Talent Market - and omnipresent discrimination on the basis of gender, appearance, age, home province etc. In 2004 her mobile phone and savings are stolen from a hotel room, loosing all her contacts, the friendships of a year and half are gone.

Chapter 2 - The City Describes the City of Dongguan , including how little the migrants (speaking Mandarin ) interact with the Cantonese speaking locals.

Chapter 1 - Going Out Introduces the life of a Factory Girl, via Lu Qingmin (Min), who, a week short of 17, leaves her village to work in a factory in Dongguan in 2003. Covers her factory life, and her farming village in Hubei Province.

1. Stalin - Lea is taught at school that Uncle Stalin, like Uncle Enver, is/was kind to children. Her teacher had shaken the hand of Enver Hoxha.

Bridge players - Colin played bridge with Boris Schapiro, Terence Reese, also Graham, Maureen' previous husband, and Lord Lucan

The adopting family Maureen Withcombe - Mother 2, had been married to Graham Mathieson, and they had two children, Peter and Gill. Maureen had an affair with Colin and the married him in 1951. Colin Harding - adoptive father, bridge player and stockbroker. Aunt Phillis - Colin's wealthy spinster Aunt - wanted Colin to settle down, marry Maureen and have a family.

Weaving together Edinburgh, Oxford and Balkan wars, although written in 2014, around a different set of wars, the theme of an unending cycle of vengeance has uncomfortable links to the conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East.

The hut in the forest on little legs could be a reference to the Hut of Baba Yaga

The small grey froglike creature is a reference to Gollum, who Bilbo encounters in The Hobbit.

'So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods...' I suspect this is a reference to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Myths - and new ways of looking at them are a common Pratchett theme