Young Babylon: Life and Death on a Chinese Assembly Line

"So which kind of death do you think would be the best?"

It is the kind of question that teenagers taunt each other with during late-night boozy sessions–daredevils slouched on their parents' sofa, teasing death with an indolent toe.

In Young Babylon, however, such a question isn't mere banter. It is stuck to the sweat-stained collars of the scores of Chinese workers who enter the factories where they daily expose themselves to machines and chemicals and leaking pipes that might well send them to an early grave. Nothing, indeed to laugh about at all.