What does it mean to leave? To leave friends, newborn children, the mountains where you grew up? Get on a bus, towards the big city. Living in a room with five others, identical to thousands of other rooms. What does it mean to return? To see a village of aging elders chasing a future that leaves no room. Replace your wooden house with an identical one made of concrete.
We started from the end, from the outskirts of Guangzhou, and arrived at the beginning, in the village of Dimen, looking for those who leave their parents and their children there and leave for the city. An economic boom and all that follows in a small part of a gigantic country. Mingong tells a journey through time, from today’s China to the one that is disappearing.