Filming fragments of life

Documentary worker opens the door on obscure and vanishing ways of life as he peers into village traditions and crafts

In 1911, American missionary William Marcus Young arrived in Laodabao, a remote ethnic Lahu village on the border between Southwest China's Yunnan province and Myanmar. From him, villagers learned choral singing and how to play the guitar.

Since 1920, choral singing and playing the guitar have become a tradition in the village, where people have long used music to express their thoughts and emotions. Now about 80 percent of the 473 villagers can sing and play the guitar.

Reindeer herders in an Oroqen village in Genhe county of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region are gradually losing their traditional nomadic lifestyle. Photos Provided to China Daily

This story is told in one of the most popular episodes of a short documentary series called Great Tribe that has been shown on the internet since Nov 14.

Other popular episodes include the story of an Oroqen village in Genhe county of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, in North China, which is gradually losing its traditional nomadic life of raising reindeer, and one about a remote hidden Ethnic Mongolian village near Kanas Lake in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Each of the 10 episodes in the first season of Great Tribe lasts about 12 minutes, not long enough to tell the full history of an ancient village.

But Li Wuwang, 35, the founder of Cicada Modern, the production company that made the documentaries, says that with the short videos he wants to spark curiosity about the remote villages, which are almost forgotten by the outside world.

"It's just like our slogan says: to see the curious East," he says.

"There are many facets to a village, but we don't want to make encyclopedic documentaries. We want to present them from a specific angle," he says, adding that the aim of the first season is to find elements of the villages that will resonate with audiences.

Forthcoming seasons of the series will focus on themes like special traditions.

Li, a student of traditional Chinese art and advertising planning grounded in Western concepts of design, is interested in representing "brilliant" Chinese traditions in a modern way to attract audiences that are keen on well-presented productions.

The Great Tribe series is not the first that Li and his team have made.

Before founding Cicada Modern in 2015, Li worked for Hunan Satellite TV, a leading channel, for 10 years, where he was in charge of the publicity for its programs.

For many years he was interested in studying traditional crafts like porcelain.

So in his spare time, he would visit Jingdezhen, China's "porcelain capital" in Jiangxi province in East China, to acquaint himself with the masters there.

"I focused on the masters rather than their skills, but I learned the history of China's porcelain through books," he says.

"China has so many treasures that need digging up. And the deeper I dig, the prouder I feel. That is also my feeling when I make these documentaries," he says.

  

The first documentary series his team made was The Great Shokunin I, which was released online in June 2016.

It presented shokunin, a Japanese word describing assiduous craftsmen who devote their lives to perfecting their skills.

The videos featured craftsmen from around Asia, including an American-Tibetan woman who spent more than 10 years on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau organizing local people to weave yak wool scarves in the traditional way, which were sought by luxurious brands in Paris such as Louis Vuitton and Hermes; a Tibetan thangka painter who taught people to paint thangka - traditional painting on silk or cotton - via livestreaming platforms on his smartphone; and the Koizumi family, who made Japanese iron kettles.

There was no theme for The Great Shokunin I, says Li, adding that with the first season they wanted to see how viewers would react to the shows and clear up people's misunderstandings about the lives of craftsmen.

"Many people think that craftsmen live very hard lives, obscure and unpromising, so they need help or even donations. But in our shows they see that they live decent lives," he says.

For Great Shukunin II, Li took the theme of the beauty of the East. And for the third season, which was released on Jan 18, the theme is mentorship.

For the purpose of the series, East means places in Asia that have been influenced by Chinese Han ethnic culture over the last 2,000 years.

"In II, we try to interpret the beauty of the East from 12 artistic perspectives in the 12 episodes", he says.

So in 15 to 20 minutes, people will see handicrafts from across the country, such as the pottery of the Li ethnic group, brocade, copper incense burners, ancient paper, Han Chinese clothing, pine soot ink and Chinese bass drums; and there are also natural silk dyeing techniques from Cambodia.

"What we are doing is taking things out of the storehouse, where treasures are hidden from the public, repackaging them and presenting them to audiences."

In order to the bridge the gap between craftsmanship and modern audiences, they employ popular Taiwan model and actress Lin Chi-ling to introduce the stories and do the voice-overs.

"Lin has a childlike voice, unique but not suitable for traditional documentaries, but we wanted to create a different style," Li says.

Besides tradition, Cicada Modern also aims its cameras at interesting trivia in everyday life.

On Jan 1, it released a series of short documentaries called Light of Life, which captures the unusual lives of ordinary people.

In each 25-minute episode, the length of a meal, people will see the stories unfold over three consecutive days.

For instance, the first episode records the stories of travelers who try to enter Tibet by taking a dangerous path from Yunnan and stop at a place called the Sichuan Hotel.

"We are living very fast-paced lives, so people forget their original selves. By watching other people's lives, we get the chance to reflect and rediscover ourselves," says Li.

The director of the first episode of Light of Life, 27-year-old Zhou Xiaomeng, says: "We don't want to teach people lessons through our documentaries. We just want people to see other people's lives over a meal.

"It's a show, but in a documentary style."

Editor: Wang Shixue