Toronto Star: Last Train Home: The high price of low-priced Chinese goods

originally posted at The Toronto Star:

by Jason Anderson
February 24, 2010

An emotionally wrenching portrait of migrant workers in China, Last Train Home has already become one of the most acclaimed Canadian documentaries in recent years.

The winner of prizes at film festivals in Amsterdam, Whistler and Montreal, it plays Wednesday at the Isabel Bader Theatre as part of the Human Rights Watch series before starting a regular theatrical run on Friday.

Director Lixin Fan – who will be on hand for questions at tonight's screening – is in Toronto for his film's local premiere. As the 33-year-old Chinese-Canadian filmmaker explained in an interview, this city has particular significance to him as it was the first stop in his own immigration story.

"I was passing over Scarborough while I was flying into Pearson this morning," said Fan, who is now based in Montreal. "That was the area where when I came in spring of 2006 – I lived in a basement there as a freshly landed immigrant. Being on the plane today and seeing all those houses and buildings, I did get emotional. It's been quite a journey for me personally in the past four years."

Before immigrating to Canada, Fan worked as a journalist for the Chinese broadcaster CCTV. Keeping a foot both in the official sphere and the world of independent filmmakers more willing to be critical of the state, Fan also edited To Live Is Better Than to Die, a documentary on the impact of AIDS on a rural Chinese community that was banned at home after winning several awards abroad.

Unsure of how to begin his career in Canada after landing in Toronto, he chanced upon news of a spotlight on China at that year's edition of Hot Docs. A fortuitous meeting with Montreal director Yung Chang and producer Mila Aung-Thwin led to his involvement in a documentary they were planning. The result was Chang's film Up the Yangtze, which went on to become one of the most successful Canadian documentaries of all time.

"That was only three months after I landed," Fan said, "so I really feel like I was one of the fortunate ones in the big immigrant army trying to find their dreams in Canada."

But given the many ironies of life in our globalized economy, it's not so strange that this new immigrant would repeatedly return to his previous home. Part of Fan's goal was to pay tribute to those who he believes have helped fostered the "glamorous development" that China has today yet have reaped little of the benefit.

"The migrant workers are great contributors to China's prosperity," he said. "They're the people who made it possible. Yet they don't necessarily get what they deserve; there's not enough social care or social support for this group."

Fan and his small crew spent almost three years documenting the lives of Changhua and Sugin Zhang, two factory workers in the industrial city of Guangzhou. Like tens of millions of workers, they toil to support children and other family members left back home in China's impoverished rural areas.

Fan said creating the film had more to do with waiting than shooting. "My crew and I would go to the factory day after day and just sit with the parents and talk to them about their day and their lives," he said. "We'd sleep on the piles of clothing they made and waited until they got off work, usually at midnight. We tried to blend in and gain the amount of trust we needed. That really helped to make our way into their lives and hearts."

Then there were the surreal and gruelling scenes at the local train station, where huge mobs of desperate workers spend a week or more trying to start their journeys home to celebrate Chinese New Year, often their only chance to see their families in the entire year.

Fan believes that Last Train Home's often raw emotional content is the biggest reason why audiences are connecting with his film so strongly. "I think the story is really universal," he said. "On a personal level, it's a family story. It's something that could happen anywhere in the world so people can easily relate. On another level, audiences do realize after watching the film that the lives of migrant workers have a very close relationship with our lives in the developed world. It's very easy for us to ignore the real price behind the cheap price tag of the products we consume every day."