At the height of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, Shanghai sent thousands of young people to Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River to toil on farms.
The political campaign, called 'Up to the mountains and down to the countryside', sparked large-scale migration to rural areas across China.
In the past two years, Chongming has become home to a new group of exiles - migrants forced to make way for construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam more than 1,000km up the river.
China must move one million people for the controversial project and Shanghai has just finished taking in 5,500 of them, putting many on an island north of the city.
With China preparing to dam the Yangtze next month and flood the reservoir early next year, officials are speeding the relocation programme which started on a large scale in 1999.
Officials say the project is needed to generate electricity and control floods on the world's fourth-longest river.
