This documentary tells one of the millions of stories of migrants from rural China who comprise the backbone of the Chinese economic miracle. It provides a human face behind the ubiquitous label "Made in China." This massive dislocation of people may well represent the largest, most rapid migration in human history. The film demonstrates how one generation of Chinese is experiencing the culture shock of an Industrial Revolution which took centuries in the West. It is inevitably both an elegy for a lost way of life and a grassroots view of what could become the most powerful economic power on earth.
MADE IN CHINA follows the lives of a typical migrant couple, Heqing and Heping Fan, including their first trip home after two years in the city. They both work in the Cixi Industrial Zone, a manufacturing center with over 1,000,000 workers, mostly former peasants, south of Shanghai, in a plant making bathroom products for export. They work seven days a week, twelve hours a day for approximately $.45 an hour or about $250 a month. Each month they save about $150 dollars to send back to their village. The factory owner feels he is doing his workers a service; rural China is overpopulated and industrialization is the only answer for surplus peasants.
"In a profoundly moving way, this beautifully photographed film captures the rhythms of work and home life in one of China's new factory towns and an ancient village, and the links between them. It shows the exceptionally demanding physical as well as emotional labor behind China's economic miracle. Made in China simultaneously stimulates your mind and your heart." - Thomas Gold, Professor, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley
"Made in China opens a window into the difficult lives and many sacrifices of the migrant laborers who are powering that country's economic boom as well as conveying the pain and heartbreak of the children they often have to leave behind back in the villages." - Martin K. Whyte, Professor of Sociology & Chinese Studies, Harvard University
