Last Train Home

The Deng Xiao Ping EraEach month, the RAS will focus on a particularly topic for our events; November being Deng Xiao Ping. Using a quote from our book selection "The (structural) changes that took place under Deng's leadership rank among the most basic changes since the Chinese empire took shape during the Han Dynasty more than two millennium ago.” (Ezra Vogel)

Last Train Home is a 2009 documentary film directed by Lixin Fan.  It won the Best Documentary Feature at the 2009 International Documentary Film Festival- Amsterdam (IDFA).

Working over several years, director, Lixin Fan travelled with one couple on their annual Spring Festival trips.

Like many of China’s rural poor, the Zhangs left their native village and their newborn daughter to find work in Guangzhou in a garment factory.  They continued working for 16 years seeing their daughter, Qin, only during Spring Festival.

Their daughter, now a restless and rebellious teenager, resents her parents’ absence and longs for her own freedom away from school and her rural hometown.  Much to the dismay of her parents, she eventually leaves school to work in the city.