Last Harvest

Throughout China’s history, countless individuals have made sacrifices for the “greater good.” This is the story of two of them. Displaced by a state water diversion project in their older years, will they be able to make new roots, or simply become cogs in a new machine?

"Last Harvest" follows the remarkable journey of Mr. and Mrs. Xu, an elderly farming couple on a relocation forced on them by China’s mammoth and highly controversial South-to-North Water Diversion project. Lyrical and intimate, this film brings us into the home and life of two compelling and hardworking peasants facing major disruption late in their lives. Through their experience, we see the imminent extinction of an Old China as a New China emerges.

The Xus live in Tutai, Hubei province, a small, idyllic and traditional farming village surrounded by mountains and streams. Although their families have been living there for generations, everything changes when people from the government’s Water Works Department arrive. The life of the Xu family is put on hold as they become aware that they are among the 800,000 people who will have to relocate thanks to a project that will take decades, divert several major rivers, and end up bringing 44.8 billion cubic metres of water to thirsty Northern China, particularly Beijing. 

After years of preparation, the Xus leave their home in the darkness one morning, taken by bus to a townhouse complex hundreds of kilometers away. But will their new life be a better life? Will they eventually like it – or be able to afford it? What is to become of their life’s work so far? What is to become of them amid so much change?

"Last Harvest" offers a direct experience of the collision between traditional culture and modernization shared by millions of Chinese peasants, continuing the story – after the people have been relocated and have to re-build their lives.

Told from the unique perspective of its Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, (Jane) Hui Wang, "Last Harvest" makes an important contribution to our understanding of modern China – and the seismic physical, social and psychological changes going on there. 

BACKGROUND
China’s South-to-North Water Diversion Project

More than half a century ago, on an inspection trip by the Yellow River, Chairman Mao Zedong said, "Southern water is plentiful, northern water scarce. If at all possible, borrowing some water would be good." 

In the 1990s and after years of study, the Chinese government took on Mao’s idea, initiating a multi-decade infrastructure development, the controversial South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project, changing the lives of 800,000 people forever.

The project has three main components: 
- the Western route, diverting water from the Yangtze to the Yellow River.
- the Eastern route, along the path of the Grand Canal.
- the Central route, from the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han River (Yangtze’s largest tributary) to Beijing and other parts of Northern China, where water is expected to flow largely due to gravity.

Construction began in 2004 and was completed in 2014. The Central route project is the largest of the three, and the one that is affecting the Xu family.

The South-to-North Water Diversion project is expected to alleviate the dry rivers and low rainfall in heavily industrialized northern China. Opponents criticize it for a number of reasons, claiming the project is not worth the resources spent on it, that it will waste large amounts of water through pollution and evaporation, that it will increase the price of water for ordinary people and cause water shortages and transportation problems along the Yangtze, and that it will be environmentally harmful. As well, India and Bangladesh claim that 150 million people in those countries will suffer from low water levels when a river they depend on, the Bhramaputra, has water diverted away by the SNWD. 

Director: Hui Wang
Producers: Jun Zhang, Hui Wang