[2][3] Her grandfather, Zhang Shenfu, a mining engineer who'd studied in the U.S. and then worked for the Kuomintang government, was bayoneted to death in 1946 by Communist soldiers.
[2][5][6] In 2004 as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Chang visited Dongguan, Guangdong province, China.
[3] In response to the negative press surrounding occupational safety and health in Chinese factories.
In 2004 she traveled to the South Central China factory city of Dongguan to document the lives of Wu Chunming and Lu Qingmin, two migrant workers who were born to poor farming families.
The book follows their lives over three years and also includes the author's own family history of migration within China and to the West.