If you have any complaints about traveling over Thanksgiving weekend, check out “Last Train Home,” which opens this Friday, Nov. 26, and runs to Dec. 2 at the Michigan Theater. This award-winning documentary film, made by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan, looks at the epic phenomenon of 130 million workers going home for Chinese New Year’s, as well as the intimate cost to one poor rural family of leaving the children behind to be raised by grandparents in order to work those distant and demanding factory jobs.

From the Michigan Theater’s website:

“Beautifully shot, haunting and haunted.” - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin — now a restless and rebellious teenager — both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower.

The Michigan Theater is located at 603 E. Liberty St., Ann Arbor.

This film is in Mandarin with English subtitles. It is sponsored by The Confucius Institute at the University of Michigan (CI-UM) and the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies. It is not rated.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and the Big Island of Hawaii. She is editor of IMDiversity.com Asian American Village, lead multicultural contributor for AnnArbor.com and a contributor for New America Media's Ethnoblog. She is a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her website at franceskaihwawang.com, her blog at franceskaihwawang.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.