What I thought was going to be a film about worker migration in China turns out to be a fascinating look at the parent-child relationship. So, your parents entire lives has been dedicated to providing for you, yet you only see them once a year - on the Chinese New Year. And when you do see them all they do is mount pressure on you to study hard so you can be successful and eventually take care of them. But this makes you miserable. Is it completely selfish to want to follow your own path? Is it even wrong to be selfish? What do you owe these people you barely know and frankly don't like? Do you really need to give up your freedom and happiness for them? Quite fascinating questions that burst to life in this documentary. Now, where do I find some answers??

What I thought was going to be a film about worker migration in China turns out to be a fascinating look at the parent-child relationship. So, your parents entire lives has been dedicated to providing for you, yet you only see them once a year - on the Chinese New Year. And when you do see them all they do is mount pressure on you to study hard so you can be successful and eventually take care of them. But this makes you miserable. Is it completely selfish to want to follow your own path? Is it even wrong to be selfish? What do you owe these people you barely know and frankly don't like? Do you really need to give up your freedom and happiness for them? Quite fascinating questions that burst to life in this documentary. Now, where do I find some answers??

For the Chinese New Year, roughly 130 MILLION people migrate from factory jobs in the cities back to their villages and their families. To give you an idea of the size of such a migration, imagine the states of California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, and Virginia EMPTYING for a train ride to Kansas.

4 out of 5 (B+)

A quiet meditation on the struggles of the lower class in developing China, this documentary is a great companion to Up the Yangtze (which Lixin Fan also worked on).

“Have you ever seen a Chinese with a 40-inch waistline?”

Forget soda and popcorn. Instead, bring your TSA jokes, your public transit delays, your entitlement, your privilege, your ungratefulness. If you thought you didn’t have some of those, this movie might change your mind.

My only exposure to China was Shanghai in 2010, but it felt like that thing communism does best: a façade, big pretense, keeping up appearances. The only true tidbit of China I glimpsed was when I got lost around Tian-Zi-Fang and stumbled upon a market with people genuinely excited to see me, but also genuinely weathered by their misfortune and everyday struggles.

This movie is about those people, about truly difficult socioeconomic choices, about parenthood, and about hope of that hardest kind – hope that you need to carry inside you for 10–15–20 years on end.

Even our 99% will be someone else’s 1.

“... a disturbing and and quietly powerful portrait of the Chinese migrant fatory workers who keep their economy going. The title refers to the one chance that these 130 million people getto return to visit family — every year for Chinese New Year. Director Lixin Fan made the brilliant Up the Yangtze a couple of years ago and he specialises in showing us the inter-generational conflicts that are bubbling up under the surface of modern China.”

Read the rest of the review at Funerals & Snakes.

Incredible insight into the lives of ordinary Chinese people, punctuated by clear reminders of the differences between 'East' and 'West'. Must watch.