Hi. So I'd like to talk a little bit about the people who make the things we use every day: our shoes, our handbags, our computers and cell phones. Now, this is a conversation that often calls up a lot of guilt. Imagine the teenage farm girl who makes less than a dollar an hour stitching your running shoes, or the young Chinese man who jumps off a rooftop after working overtime assembling your iPad. We, the beneficiaries of globalization, seem to exploit these victims with every purchase we make, and the injustice feels embedded in the products themselves. After all, what's wrong with a world in which a worker on an iPhone assembly line can't even afford to buy one? It's taken for granted that Chinese factories are oppressive, and that it's our desire for cheap goods that makes them so.

嗨。今天我想來探討一下 這些為我們制造日常用品的人們： 例如我們的鞋子，手提包，電腦，還有手機。 這個話題時常讓我們覺得很內疚。 想象一下，一個年輕的農村女孩給你縫制跑步鞋 可每個小時還賺不到一美金， 又或者是那個加班為你組裝iPad的中國小伙子 在加班之后從樓上跳了下來。 我們，是全球化的受益者， 可每筆交易卻似乎都是在剝削那些受害者， 而這種不公平 似乎也深深烙印在這些產品之中。 總而言之，這個世界到底怎么了？ 一個在組裝iphone生產線上的員工卻買不起一臺iphone？ 人們理所當然地認為，中國的工廠就是應該被壓榨的， 因為我們渴求便宜的產品 造成了這樣的局面。

So, this simple narrative equating Western demand and Chinese suffering is appealing, especially at a time when many of us already feel guilty about our impact on the world, but it's also inaccurate and disrespectful. We must be peculiarly self-obsessed to imagine that we have the power to drive tens of millions of people on the other side of the world to migrate and suffer in such terrible ways. In fact, China makes goods for markets all over the world, including its own, thanks to a combination of factors: its low costs, its large and educated workforce, and a flexible manufacturing system that responds quickly to market demands. By focusing so much on ourselves and our gadgets, we have rendered the individuals on the other end into invisibility, as tiny and interchangeable as the parts of a mobile phone.

很顯然，西方社會的需求 和中國人對他們遭遇的申訴被連接在一起， 尤其是當我們中的很多人已經因為我們對世界影響 而感到了內疚， 然而，這是不正確的，也是不尊重他人的。 我們極其自戀地去想象著 我們有力量去操控地球另一邊 千萬的人民，讓他們以如此可怕的方式 去遭受痛苦或者遷移。 事實上，中國制造的產品遍布全球， 也包括他們自己的市場，這要歸結于許多因素的綜合： 低成本，大量受過教育的勞動力， 還有有彈性的工作制度 這些都快速地迎合了市場的需求。 我們因為太專注于我們自身和產品上， 所以忽視了產業鏈另一端的個體的存在 將他們看成是可以隨時被替換的，微小的 像手機零件那樣。

Chinese workers are not forced into factories because of our insatiable desire for iPods. They choose to leave their homes in order to earn money, to learn new skills, and to see the world. In the ongoing debate about globalization, what's been missing is the voices of the workers themselves.

中國工人并不是因為我們對于iPods的無限渴求 而被迫進入工廠的。 他們選擇離鄉背井，是為了賺錢， 為了學習新的技能，以及為了看看這個世界。 在對全球化發展趨勢的辯論中 我們缺失的，是聆聽工人們自己的聲音。

Here are a few.

以下就是一些例子。

Bao Yongxiu: "My mother tells me to come home and get married, but if I marry now, before I have fully developed myself, I can only marry an ordinary worker, so I'm not in a rush."

包永秀（音譯）說：“我媽媽讓我回家結婚 但是如果我還沒有讓自己得到充分的發展 就結婚，我只能嫁給一個平凡的工人， 所以我根本不著急。”

Chen Ying: "When I went home for the new year, everyone said I had changed. They asked me, what did you do that you have changed so much? I told them that I studied and worked hard. If you tell them more, they won't understand anyway."

陳穎（音譯）說：“我過年回家的時候 每個人都說我變了，他們問我： 你怎么會有這么大的改變？ 我告訴他們，我很努力地學習和工作， 即便你想給他們講更多，他們反正也不能理解。”

Wu Chunming: "Even if I make a lot of money, it won't satisfy me. Just to make money is not enough meaning in life."

吳春明（音譯）： “即使我賺了很多錢 也無法滿足我自己。 賺錢并不是生活全部的意義。”

Xiao Jin: "Now, after I get off work, I study English, because in the future, our customers won't be only Chinese, so we must learn more languages."

肖金（音譯）說： “現在我下班以后，就會去學英語 因為在不久的將來，我們的客戶將不僅僅是中國人， 所以，我們需要學習更多的語言。”

All of these speakers, by the way, are young women, 18 or 19 years old.

以上的話，都是出自一些年輕女孩的口， 她們僅僅18、19歲。

So I spent two years getting to know assembly line workers like these in the south China factory city called Dongguan. Certain subjects came up over and over: how much money they made, what kind of husband they hoped to marry, whether they should jump to another factory or stay where they were. Other subjects came up almost never, including living conditions that to me looked close to prison life: 10 or 15 workers in one room, 50 people sharing a single bathroom, days and nights ruled by the factory clock. Everyone they knew lived in similar circumstances, and it was still better than the dormitories and homes of rural China.

因此，我花了兩年時間去了解流水工作線上的工人們 例如在中國南部的一個工業城市——東莞。 有一些主要的問題不斷的重復著： 他們到底賺了多少錢， 她們想要嫁給怎樣的人， 他們是否想要跳槽 還是留在一個工廠內。 另一些話題，則幾乎不被提起 例如：在我眼中如牢獄般的生活條件 10-15個工人住在一個房間里， 50個人公用一個廁所， 日以繼夜地按照工廠的要求來作息。 他們每一個人都知道，即便是住在如此的環境里面 也會比他們在中國農村的老家的條件 好得多

The workers rarely spoke about the products they made, and they often had great difficulty explaining what exactly they did. When I asked Lu Qingmin, the young woman I got to know best, what exactly she did on the factory floor, she said something to me in Chinese that sounded like "qiu xi." Only much later did I realize that she had been saying "QC," or quality control. She couldn't even tell me what she did on the factory floor. All she could do was parrot a garbled abbreviation in a language she didn't even understand.

工人們很少談論他們制造的產品， 他們往往很難解釋清楚 他們到底做了什么。 我訪問了呂清民（音譯） 這個年輕的女孩是我最了解的， 我問她她在工廠里到底從事什么工作 她用中文告訴我，聽起來像是 “秋西。” 很久以后，我才知道她說的是 "QC"，也就是質量監控。 她竟然都不能告訴我她在工廠里做的是什么。 她能做的就只是模仿一個英文縮寫的發音 而這個語言是她根本就不懂的。

Karl Marx saw this as the tragedy of capitalism, the alienation of the worker from the product of his labor. Unlike, say, a traditional maker of shoes or cabinets, the worker in an industrial factory has no control, no pleasure, and no true satisfaction or understanding in her own work. But like so many theories that Marx arrived at sitting in the reading room of the British Museum, he got this one wrong. Just because a person spends her time making a piece of something does not mean that she becomes that, a piece of something. What she does with the money she earns, what she learns in that place, and how it changes her, these are the things that matter. What a factory makes is never the point, and the workers could not care less who buys their products.

馬克思認為這就是資本主義的悲哀 疏遠了工人與他們所制造的產品。 與傳統的鞋匠或者木匠不同， 工人在工廠沒有控制權， 在她所做的工作中，沒有快樂， 沒有真正的滿足或理解。 但同許多馬克思 坐在英國圖書館的閱讀室里想出來理論一樣， 這一點，他錯了。 僅僅因為一個人用她的時間 去制造一件物品，并不代表 她就變成了這件物品。 她用她賺的錢去做了什么 她在那個地方學到了什么技能，以及她如何被改變 這些才是重要的。 一個工廠制造什么并非重點， 工人們也不在乎誰買了他們制造的產品。

Journalistic coverage of Chinese factories, on the other hand, plays up this relationship between the workers and the products they make. Many articles calculate: How long would it take for this worker to work in order to earn enough money to buy what he's making? For example, an entry-level-line assembly line worker in China in an iPhone plant would have to shell out two and a half months' wages for an iPhone.

記者報道了關于中國工廠的新聞 另一方面，也強調了 工人與產品之間的聯系。 很多文章都在計算： 這些工人要工作多久，賺來的錢 才夠買一件他們制作的產品？ 舉個例子，一個初級組裝生產線的工人 在中國組裝iPhone配件 要傾其2個半月的工資才能買一臺iPhone。

But how meaningful is this calculation, really? For example, I recently wrote an article in The New Yorker magazine, but I can't afford to buy an ad in it. But, who cares? I don't want an ad in The New Yorker, and most of these workers don't really want iPhones. Their calculations are different. How long should I stay in this factory? How much money can I save? How much will it take to buy an apartment or a car, to get married, or to put my child through school?

但說真的，這些計算有任何意義嗎？ 再舉個例子，我最近寫了一篇文章 登在紐約客雜志上， 但是也供不起我在雜志上登一個廣告。 但是，誰在乎？我不需要在紐約客上登廣告 其實，大部分的工人，也不是真的需要iPhone。 他們的計算方式是不同的。 我在工廠要待多久？ 我能存多少錢？ 我需要多少錢才能買個房子，買輛車， 才能結婚，或者足以送我的小孩去學校？

The workers I got to know had a curiously abstract relationship with the product of their labor. About a year after I met Lu Qingmin, or Min, she invited me home to her family village for the Chinese New Year. On the train home, she gave me a present: a Coach brand change purse with brown leather trim. I thanked her, assuming it was fake, like almost everything else for sale in Dongguan. After we got home, Min gave her mother another present: a pink Dooney & Bourke handbag, and a few nights later, her sister was showing off a maroon LeSportsac shoulder bag. Slowly it was dawning on me that these handbags were made by their factory, and every single one of them was authentic.

這些我試圖去了解的工人們 對他們和產品之間的聯系有著很抽象的解讀。 大概在我遇到陸青敏，也就是小敏的一年后 她邀請我去她農村的家做客 過春節。 在回家的火車上，她給了我一個禮物： 一個棕色皮質的Coach牌零錢包。 我謝了她，雖然我很自然地認為這應該是個山寨的產品， 就好像東莞在出售的大部分產品一樣。 回家以后，小敏給了她媽媽另一個禮物： 一個Dooney & Bourke牌的粉色手提包， 幾天以后，她的姐姐正在展示 一個紅褐色的LeSportsac單肩包。 慢慢地，我好想明白了 這些東西都是她們工廠生產的 每一件東西，都是正品

Min's sister said to her parents, "In America, this bag sells for 320 dollars." Her parents, who are both farmers, looked on, speechless. "And that's not all -- Coach is coming out with a new line, 2191," she said. "One bag will sell for 6,000." She paused and said, "I don't know if that's 6,000 yuan or 6,000 American dollars, but anyway, it's 6,000." (Laughter)

小敏的姐姐告訴她父母 “在美國，這個包要賣320美金。” 她的農民父母看了看，無言以對。 還有，Coach正在推出一系列新產品2191 她說：“這個好像要賣6000。” 她停頓了一下：“我不知道是6000人民幣，還是 6000美元，無論如何都是6000啦。” （笑聲）

Min's sister's boyfriend, who had traveled home with her for the new year, said, "It doesn't look like it's worth that much."

小敏姐姐的男友也回到家 與她一起過年， 他說：“看起來不值這么多錢。”

Min's sister turned to him and said, "Some people actually understand these things. You don't understand shit."

小敏的姐姐對他說：“有的人 就是懂這些東西，你懂啥。”

(Laughter) (Applause)

（笑聲）（掌聲）

In Min's world, the Coach bags had a curious currency. They weren't exactly worthless, but they were nothing close to the actual value, because almost no one they knew wanted to buy one, or knew how much it was worth. Once, when Min's older sister's friend got married, she brought a handbag along as a wedding present. Another time, after Min had already left the handbag factory, her younger sister came to visit, bringing two Coach Signature handbags as gifts.

在小敏的世界里，Coach包包有一個很奇怪的價值。 它們雖然不是一文不值，但是相比起它們的實際價值 還是相差甚遠，因為她們所結識的人里面 幾乎沒有人想要買，也沒有人知道這值多少錢。 有一次，小敏大姐的一個朋友結婚 她帶著一個手提包作為給新人的禮物。 又一次，小敏已經離開手提包的工廠了 但她的小妹妹來看她的時候 帶了兩個經典款Coach作為禮物。

I looked in the zippered pocket of one, and I found a printed card in English, which read, "An American classic. In 1941, the burnished patina of an all-American baseball glove inspired the founder of Coach to create a new collection of handbags from the same luxuriously soft gloved-hand leather. Six skilled leatherworkers crafted 12 Signature handbags with perfect proportions and a timeless flair. They were fresh, functional, and women everywhere adored them. A new American classic was born."

我打開一個有拉鏈的口袋 看到一張卡片寫著一些英文： “美國經典。 1941年那些表皮磨光的 美國棒球手套 啟發了Coach的創始人 促使其研發了一個新系列的手提包： 奢華、柔軟的的表面和手套的皮質一樣。 6名技巧純熟的皮革工人制造12只經典款手提包 他們有著精準而快速的手藝。 這些手提包新穎，具有相當的功能性，世界各地的女人都喜歡 一個新的美國經典誕生了。”

I wonder what Karl Marx would have made of Min and her sisters. Their relationship with the product of their labor was more complicated, surprising and funny than he could have imagined. And yet, his view of the world persists, and our tendency to see the workers as faceless masses, to imagine that we can know what they're really thinking.

我想知道馬克思是否會被小敏 和她的姐妹所影響。 她們與產品之間的關系 更復雜、驚奇而且有趣 這都超出他的想象。 但是，他對這個世界的觀點沒變，而我們卻將 這些工人們看成是一群上不了臺面的群體， 想象一下，假如我們可以了解工人們的真實想法。

The first time I met Min, she had just turned 18 and quit her first job on the assembly line of an electronics factory. Over the next two years, I watched as she switched jobs five times, eventually landing a lucrative post in the purchasing department of a hardware factory. Later, she married a fellow migrant worker, moved with him to his village, gave birth to two daughters, and saved enough money to buy a secondhand Buick for herself and an apartment for her parents. She recently returned to Dongguan on her own to take a job in a factory that makes construction cranes, temporarily leaving her husband and children back in the village.

我第一次見到小敏的時候，她剛滿18歲 她剛剛辭去在一家電子設備工廠的 組裝生產線的工作。 接下來的兩年，我看著她換了5次工作， 最后固定在一個比較賺錢的職位 是在一個硬件工廠的采購部門。 不久，她嫁給了一個打工仔， 然后移居到了他的村子， 生了兩個女兒， 他們存夠了錢給她買了一輛二手別克車 給她的父母買了房子。 最近她獨自回到東莞 在一個起重機工廠里找了份工作， 暫時與她村里的丈夫和孩子 分居兩地。

In a recent email to me, she explained, "A person should have some ambition while she is young so that in old age she can look back on her life and feel that it was not lived to no purpose."

在最近的一封郵件里，她解釋： “人們年輕的時候，應該有所抱負 那么在他們老的時候，回首過去 就不會覺得這一生都毫無意義。”

Across China, there are 150 million workers like her, one third of them women, who have left their villages to work in the factories, the hotels, the restaurants and the construction sites of the big cities. Together, they make up the largest migration in history, and it is globalization, this chain that begins in a Chinese farming village and ends with iPhones in our pockets and Nikes on our feet and Coach handbags on our arms that has changed the way these millions of people work and marry and live and think. Very few of them would want to go back to the way things used to be.

在中國，有1億5千萬像她一樣的工人， 其中三分之一，是離鄉背井的女性， 她們在工廠、酒店、餐廳 或者是大城市的建筑工地工作。 這么算來，是她們創造了歷史上一個龐大的人口遷移的數字， 而這個產業鏈的起點，就是“全球化”的風靡 從中國的農村 到最終進入我們口袋里的iPhone和腳上的耐克 還有手中的Coach手提包 這改變了數百萬人的 工作、婚姻、生活和思想。 他們其中很少有人 愿意回到過去的生活。

When I first went to Dongguan, I worried that it would be depressing to spend so much time with workers. I also worried that nothing would ever happen to them, or that they would have nothing to say to me. Instead, I found young women who were smart and funny and brave and generous. By opening up their lives to me, they taught me so much about factories and about China and about how to live in the world.

我第一次去東莞的時候，我很擔心 擔心與工人相處的時間會很壓抑沮喪。 我也擔心他們永遠不會改變， 或者他們也沒有什么能對我說的。 然而，我發現那些年輕的女性都很聰明、風趣 而且勇敢、大方。 通過向我展示她們的生活， 她們教給我很多關于工廠 關于中國，以及如何生存在這個世界的道理。

This is the Coach purse that Min gave me on the train home to visit her family. I keep it with me to remind me of the ties that tie me to the young women I wrote about, ties that are not economic but personal in nature, measured not in money but in memories. This purse is also a reminder that the things that you imagine, sitting in your office or in the library, are not how you find them when you actually go out into the world.

這就是小敏在回家的火車上 送給我的Coach錢包。 我一直保存著它，由此提醒著我與這些 我記錄過的年輕女生的聯系， 這些并不是因為經濟而是因為個人情感的聯系， 價值并不是在于金錢而是記憶。 這個錢包也是一個提醒， 你坐在辦公室或圖書館里時所想象的東西 和你走出去真正接觸的東西 并不一樣。

Thank you. (Applause) (Applause)

謝謝。（掌聲） （掌聲）

Chris Anderson: Thank you, Leslie, that was an insight that a lot of us haven't had before. But I'm curious. If you had a minute, say, with Apple's head of manufacturing, what would you say?

謝謝，Leslie，真的很有見地 我們中很多人從未這么思考過。 但是我很好奇，如果你有一分鐘時間 對Apple制造商的領導人說一些話 你會說什么？

Leslie Chang: One minute?

一分鐘？

CA: One minute. (Laughter)

是的，一分鐘。（笑聲）

LC: You know, what really impressed me about the workers is how much they're self-motivated, self-driven, resourceful, and the thing that struck me, what they want most is education, to learn, because most of them come from very poor backgrounds. They usually left school when they were in 7th or 8th grade. Their parents are often illiterate, and then they come to the city, and they, on their own, at night, during the weekends, they'll take a computer class, they'll take an English class, and learn really, really rudimentary things, you know, like how to type a document in Word, or how to say really simple things in English. So, if you really want to help these workers, start these small, very focused, very pragmatic classes in these schools, and what's going to happen is, all your workers are going to move on, but hopefully they'll move on into higher jobs within Apple, and you can help their social mobility and their self-improvement. When you talk to workers, that's what they want. They do not say, "I want better hot water in the showers. I want a nicer room. I want a TV set." I mean, it would be nice to have those things, but that's not why they're in the city, and that's not what they care about.

你們知道嗎，那些工人們真正啟發我的 是他們的自我激勵、自我推進 還有足智多謀，都深深警醒著我 他們最想要的是教育，是學習 只是因為他們大部分有著窮困的家庭背景。 他們通常中學就離開學校了。 他們的父母大都是文盲， 他們獨自來到城市打拼 晚上或者周末，他們去學習電腦的課程， 或者是學英語， 就是學一些真的非常非常基本的東西，你知道嗎？ 例如如何在Word里面打字 或者用英語講一些簡單的事情。 所以，如果你們想要幫助那些工人 開展一些小型、集中、基礎的課程 這會帶來的結果就是 你的工人得到了提升， 但是希望，他們也會晉升到Apple更高的職位中 你可以幫助他們適應社會流動性 幫助他們得到自我的提升。 當你于工人們交談，你就會知道這就是他們所要的。 他們不會說：我想要浴室里有更熱的水 我想要一間更好的房間，想要一個電視 我的意思是，有這些東西固然很好 但是他們來到這個城市不是為了這些， 而且他們根本不在乎。

CA: Was there a sense from them of a narrative that things were kind of tough and bad, or was there a narrative of some kind of level of growth, that things over time were getting better?

他們有沒有說過 生活環境真的很艱苦，或者是 自我得到提升以后，這些東西 也會得到相應改善？

LC: Oh definitely, definitely. I mean, you know, it was interesting, because I spent basically two years hanging out in this city, Dongguan, and over that time, you could see immense change in every person's life: upward, downward, sideways, but generally upward. If you spend enough time, it's upward, and I met people who had moved to the city 10 years ago, and who are now basically urban middle class people, so the trajectory is definitely upward. It's just hard to see when you're suddenly sucked into the city. It looks like everyone's poor and desperate, but that's not really how it is. Certainly, the factory conditions are really tough, and it's nothing you or I would want to do, but from their perspective, where they're coming from is much worse, and where they're going is hopefully much better, and I just wanted to give that context of what's going on in their minds, not what necessarily is going on in yours.

當然，當然了。我是說，大家都知道 這其實很有趣，我花了大概2年時間 在東莞生活 在這個時間里面，你可以看到每個人的生活 都在起著巨大的變化：變得更好，變壞，或者偏離軌道 但總體來說，都是在進步的。 只要你花足夠的時間，就會變好 如果一個人十年前來到城市 現在應該已經成為城市的中層階級， 所以總體趨勢一定是變好的。 只不過你初入城市的時候 一下子還無法感知。看起來好像每個人都很窮 很失落，但這都不是真實的。 可以肯定，工廠的環境十分艱苦 在坐的你我都不會愿意前往， 但是比起他們所來自的地方，站在工人的角度來看 這都是值得的，他們也希望 所去的地方這些都會得到改善，我只想 把他們所想的東西陳述出來 而這些并不等同于你們所認定的東西。

CA: Thanks so much for your talk. Thank you very much. (Applause)

感謝你的演講。 非常感謝。（掌聲）

From www.ted.com

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