Novice filmmaker David Redmon can explain how he came up with the idea for his new documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China. During the course of researching a film on the “Girls Gone Wild” phenomenon, he became fascinated with the idea of connecting the drunken revelers who toss brightly colored beads in the streets of New Orleans to the teenage girls who make them at a factory in China.

Global Envision contributor Amanda Howe talked with Redmon at the USA Film Festival in Dallas about global trade in the context of following this one product – Mardi Gras beads – through the manufacturing and supply chain.

Amanda Howe: Your research led you to a bead distributor in Louisiana. How did this then help you get inside a bead factory in Fozhou, China?

David Redmon: I interviewed Dom Carlone, the owner of Accent Annex and Mardi Gras Madness. His distribution business sells most of the Mardi Gras beads to New Orleans. He wouldn’t tell me who his bead supplier was in China but he said that if I could find out where the factory was I could do a film on it. After careful Internet research, I came up with the name Roger Wong, manager of the Tai Kuen Factory in Fozhou. Using Dom’s name as an introduction, I managed to spend two months filming inside a Chinese factory under the pretext of doing a movie about Roger.

AH: How did making the film influence your ideas about globalization?

DR: It’s one thing to read about globalization and quite another thing to experience it. In my film, I follow the lives of four of the young Chinese women in the bead factory. One worker said that if it were not for the factory job, she’d be back in her hometown doing unpaid household chores and watching TV. She viewed the factory job as her chance to leave home, earn money, and help her family out financially. Another girl worked at the factory in order to finance her younger brother’s education.

I befriended these people and was therefore able to understand their differing perspectives on being connected to a global economy. Roger, the manager, was very hospitable towards me. I could understand his point of view as well as that of the workers I followed. So in the end, I was more confused than confident about the merits of globalization.

Chinese workers are eager for economic opportunity. Imposing Western labor standards on the Chinese and conducting boycotts doesn’t help the workers.

AH: What were conditions like in the factory?

DR: The conditions inside the factory were neither great nor horrible. Americans read only the grittiest exposes on life in a Chinese factory. Eighty percent of the workers returned to the factory every year. The plant earned a regional award for being a model workplace. The workers, unless married, were separated by sex and typically about ten girls would share a room the size of a college dorm. You could get a less crowded arrangement if you paid a little extra. Meals were taken together but generally the male workers were discouraged from interacting with the women. Workdays were typically 14-hour shifts with Sundays off.

There were inequalities in pay among the workers. About ten percent of the workforce was male. Men earned more money than women for the same physically demanding work. There were also a few artists at the plant painting intricate beads by hand and they earned double the wages of the regular factory worker. Most of the complaints about wages stemmed from Roger’s policy of docking workers pay if they didn’t meet his quotas.

Many of the workers were terrified of Roger. In China, everyone must carry residency licenses (hukou) authorizing the person to work in a certain region. Roger would take these from the workers and hold them until the end of their labor contract. This impeded labor mobility.

AH: What can developed countries do to improve labor standards in emerging economies?

DR: Chinese workers are eager for economic opportunity. Imposing Western labor standards on the Chinese and conducting boycotts doesn’t help the workers. Proactive solutions that give workers access to capital and education, rather than trade sanctions, improve their living standards.

AH: How would you like Western audiences to view these women?

DR: Living with the factory workers taught me that it’s possible to make a life just about anywhere. My latest project is a film about Mexican workers in an intimate apparel “maquiladora,” or factory. Like Mardi Gras beads for the Chinese women, ladies lingerie doesn’t elicit the same emotions from the Mexican seamstresses as it does for the consumers. That doesn’t mean that these workers’ lives lack an appreciation of intimacy. I want my audience to be able to relate to these women instead of thinking of them as abstract cogs in the global machinery delivering them cheap goods. I think this is how most of us perceive foreign labor if we think of these workers at all.






Contributed by Contributed by Amanda Howe, an attorney specializing in Comparative Intellectual Property and Banking Law and currently working as a Legislative Analyst for National Write Your Congressman in Dallas, Texas. .

To read another Global Envision interview, see Development Dialogue Turns Into “Miracle” for Pakistani Women.