Husband and wife Changhua Zhang and Suqin Chen are among 130 million migrant Chinese workers, most, like them, who have left children behind in the village for elders to care of, and who only see their family once a year when they head home for the biggest holiday of the year, Lunar New Year. In 2006, they will have been away from their village for sixteen years, they starting this life when their only child at the time, daughter Qin Zhang, was one year old, she raised by Suqin's parents, her father having since passed. Three years in their collective lives from 2006 to 2009 are told, largely centered on those annual trips home, and the parents' relationship with their two children, which also now includes adolescent son Yang Zhang, who they don't really know in only seeing them once a year. Changhua and Suqin's goal in choosing this life was to get the family out of poverty, they living to work - in a clothing sweat shop - sending money home so that Qin and Yang will stay in school for a better future, one that they themselves had no chance at in being confined to an agrarian existence. Qin, who over the course of those three years, will be at an age where she will make decisions for her own life, she seeing her parents' sacrifice not so much in that vein, but rather one that had a negative impact for her in not really having had parents and living what she considers a sad existence in the village, which is comprised primarily of school and farm work.