While China’s steady transformation from rural agriculture to urban manufacturing over the last few decades has pushed the nation to the forefront of the global economy, it has also brought significant demographic change for the millions of people who poured into cities hoping for a more prosperous future. Opening on the eve of what it calls the “largest migration in human history”—the annual journey home of some 130 million people for the New Year holiday—Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home offers a glimpse of the challenges faced by a generation of migrant workers who left their children behind to be raised by their grandparents. Fan follows one such couple, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, over the course of three years as they struggle to raise a teenage daughter growing up back home in their remote village with very different values from their own. Opting for a factory job rather than the education her parents had hoped for, Qin’s desire for a better life of her own demonstrates that change doesn’t always come easily, for a family or for a nation.

Presented as part of the Depth of Field 2011-2012 Series: Art and Culture in Transit(ion)

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