The largest human mass movement occurs each spring in China when 135 million migrant workers leave their factory jobs in China’s smog-choked industrial cities to journey to their home villages in farmlands hundreds and thousands of miles away to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
Millions of these migrants are husbands and wives who left infant children in the care of grandparents in the villages as they sought better paying jobs in China’s booming industrialized economy. “If families cannot reunite for the New Year holiday, what’s the point?” says one migrant in the 2009 film, “Last Train Home,” a documentary by Chinese filmmaker Lixin Fan.