Last Train Home - NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Chen Suqin, left, and Zhang Changhua, married migrant factory workers in Lixin Fan’s documentary “Last Train Home.”
A Family Caught in the Wheels of China’s Industrial Locomotive
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: September 2, 2010

According to an introductory note that appears on screen at the beginning of Lixin Fan’s documentary “Last Train Home,” every year, during the lunar New Year, 130 million workers return from China’s industrial cities to their homes in the countryside. This temporary shift in population, which the film calls the largest human migration in the world, is one of those numbers that seem impossible to comprehend. One hundred and thirty million people, moving between work and family, stoking the engines that drive the machinery of worldwide consumer capitalism. What does that look like? What does it mean? More