China has seen dramatic changes over the past several decades, but its rural areas are not keeping the same pace. We have traveled to many villages in Henan Province in order to choose the right place to film our story and everywhere we go, we find quite similar scenarios: the old looking after their grandchildren while their sons and daughters are out in cities as migrant workers. Lack of work-age young people is one of the major causes leading to lifelessness in rural areas.

For most villagers, farming is the only way of making a living, but things started to change in recent years. 2017 is a big year for Chinese farmers as most of them have been granted a certificate for farmland management right, and getting farmland management right verified is the first step toward free land transfer.

The village that we visited has over 800 households with more than 3,000 residents, 30% of the farmers have transferred their land to agricultural companies.The land transfer rate is expected to keep rising as more and more farmers come to realize the benefit of doing so. According to village officials, land transfer could add up to 40 percent to the total income of farmers, and that can greatly improve people’s livelihood.