Zou Xueping, Zhang Mengqi and Wu Wenguang. Photo: Sohvi Sirkesalo

Story: GuanJun Liu
The world is changing with really remarkable speed. As Goldman Sachs projected China will have a larger economy than United States in 2027 which was drawn up before the Western financial crisis. Not only China’s economy draws plenty of the West attention, but also China state’s actions, political issues, culture and its dramatic growing international status. However, to some of, or a large scale of people in the west, China is, still, more likely a mystery, as well as massive misunderstanding of this country.


Tampere Film Festival supplied three Chinese documentary directors, Wu Wenguang, Zou Xueping and Zhang Mengqi, with a good chance to reveal real parts of China by showing Chinese movies. And it was my great honor working as an assistant and interpreter for the Chinese group.

Mr. Wu, is representative of people from his generation (born between 1960s—1980s), narrated his own stories between his mother and himself, meanwhile, it conveyed historical rudiments at that time in China. Zou Xueping and Zhang Mengqi, who are units of the new generation (after 1980s), expressed their interests of China history and delivered their own thoughts about challenges the new generation are facing at and their suppositive future.

Not only me, but also, I think, the local people acquired new perspectives of China. The directors come from different places than where I have been living in China, rather different than people from Europe. Individuals often aren’t really aware of is that fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic in many ways, for example village life from these three directors’ show. You can’t run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case.

For my part, spending time with these three directors expands my vision of what are happening in other parts of China. Their works also remind me that what a single person could contribute to his motherland----a simple scene, a short documentary could help people understand more about China, could touch so many people recording a country’s memory!

The author is a TAMK Degree Programme in Media student
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