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What’s the point? No one says it, but they must be thinking it, and it makes us wonder too.

Life in China can often seem like it’s hidden behind a cultural bamboo curtain. Chinese-Canadian director Lixie Fan’s documentary draws that curtain back, showing us the harsh life of one family, the Zhangs. The parents live in rural China and have to travel to the busy coastal cities to find work. Their dream is to make enough money to give their children a good education, so that they can find better work and break out of the poverty cycle.

Ironically, their very absence to earn money for the next generation is what drives the family apart. When they return home once a year for the New Year holiday, or in occasional phone calls, they are so desperate for their children to do well, that they seem able to talk of little else. Their tedious life reflects in nagging conversation and feeling abandoned, their teenage daughter Quin rebels, wanting some fun and quits school, only to find herself in the same factory work as her parents.

Although Quin’s father says little, his face speaks eloquently of his despair that his life of monotony might all be for nothing. At home, the camera catches him snapping. 

This sometimes heart-breaking film is punctuated by scenes of huge crowds of migrant workers waiting for up to five days to catch an overcrowded train. These are some of the 130 million who only return home once a year for the New Year celebrations in what is thought to be the world’s largest migration of people.

Just as these oases of family hope interrupt months of drab existence, stunning views of the Chinese landscape break up the regular setting: the dismal lodgings and factory that the Zhangs endure for most of the year.

This multiple award-winning film is a huge insight into another culture, but shows how family relationships work the same way the world over. 

Derek Walker