Even prior to the Ming Dynastic Era, Huzhou was known as a center of the silk trade and for the production of ink brushes. Somewhat logically, it is now a regional hub of the Chinese textile industry, but that does not necessarily make it a fun place to live and work—quite the contrary, in fact.
Wang Bing documents the hardscrabble lives of a number of migrant workers laboring away in Huzhou’s sweatshop-like workshops in “Bitter Money,” which opens this Friday, Jan. 10 at New York’s Anthology Film Archive.
