Hua is 32.
She grew up in a farming village
but moved to Yangshuo town over 15 years ago.
Today she's making the long trek home
to help her mother, Hue Ru, bring in the yearly harvest.
Each family in Hua's village grows everything it needs to survive
plus a field or two of peanuts for some much-needed extra cash.
The problem is, almost all the young people have left for the cities.
They need money for their children's education
and they're desperate to avoid a lifetime of subsistence farm labor.
Modern Chinese villages are filled with grandparents
and grandchildren.
Harvesting peanuts is grueling work
but it's not particularly complicated.
You grab a bunch of stems and pull
and shake off the dirt.
That gets you most of them.
But Hue Ru goes back and carefully rechecks every single clump.
She's a survivor of the Great Famine and can't bear to leave behind a single nut.
Hua keeps a sharp eye out for cicada skins.
It's a traditional Chinese medicine.
She can sell them in town for more money than the peanuts will bring in.
On the way home they stop to pick up a few handfuls of green beans for lunch.
Hue Ru gathers bamboo grubs to supplement our meal.
During the Great Leap Forward this was their only available meat.
When she washes rice for lunch
she carefully collects the water to feed the family buffalo.
In fact Hue Ru isn't poor at all.
Her four children all have jobs in town.
Three years ago they pooled their savings
and built her a two-story house
with modern sinks
and toilets.
It even has a washing machine.
Hue Ru uses the living room to store her rice and nuts.
When it's time to prepare lunch
Hue Ru ignores the modern kitchen in favor of her old hut
and fire burning stove.
Hua doesn't mind.
This was her childhood home.
Hua's daughter is a different story.
She was raised in town.
After a cursory inspection of the farm she's bored to tears.
Happily, that big new house came with a television set.
For everybody else the long day's work has just begun.
The all-important rice seedlings are almost three weeks old
and the fields have been prepared for them.
Each one must be planted by hand.
Barefoot.
You never know what's living in that soft brown muck.
They can always use an extra pair of hands.
You throw each seedling like a dart.
The plants are supposed to be exactly four inches apart.
It's easier said than done.
Hours later we head back to the house.
All those nuts aren't going to clean themselves.
You'd think Hue Ru would be tired
but this is what she's been waiting for.
She's not interested in washing machines
or modern stoves.
She just wants the chance to sit and talk with Hua.
There's one thing way Hue Ru can't do on her own:
the peanuts must be washed in a nearby canal behind the house
and her spine is so deformed that it hurts too much to carry them.
Once they're soaking wet, they double in weight.
Even though Hua does the heavy living
Hue Ru is in constant pain.
The new driveway, it turns out, is for drying nuts
not parking cars.
Hua wants her mom to come live in town
but Hue Rue can't bear to leave her country life.
Besides, who would take care of the family buffalo?
When Hua finally heads to Yangshuo
her mother goes back to the only life she knows.