Dongguan, simultaneously the manufacturing hub and inadvertent sex capital of China, is home to 1.7 million female factory workers, 300,000 of which are now former factory girls turned sex workers. Since the government crackdown on prostitution in 2014, an increasing number of women seek to flee Dongguan – and the stigma associated with it. It is here that 22-year-old country girl, Jolin, has worked for the past five years, and where her story begins. The documentary focuses on a former factory girl, Jolin, who is the only child of her family and has found work as a stripper in Dongguan. She undergoes risky plastic surgery to look more “sexy” and tries to find her estranged father for reasons that go beyond healing her fractured family. She hopes to leave Dongguan behind and become a famous actress in Shanghai.

JOLIN: The Evolution of my Life participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative.