Telling Chinese stories through first-person participatory documentaries

I have kept a watchful eye on the Looking China project hosted by Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture (AICCC) for a long time. In the earlier time of 2022, the 11th year of the running of the project, I was honored to participate in “A Tour in Beijing”, a part of the project as an instructor, and thereby offered an opportunity again to study the international communication of Chinese stories. The project this year was carried out in two stages. In its first stage, it produced 3 documentaries on Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in early 2022 in memory of the successfully held Games. It also completed another 6 documentaries in July 2022 in its second stage. All these 9 documentaries were produced under the cooperation between 9 young foreign directors from different countries and Chinese volunteer producers. Before that, working as the executive director, I had made Childhood in China, a two-part special aired on Discovery Channel in April 2020. It was a globally-broadcast version revised from The Post-00s (It’s Chinese name is Linglinghou, which is a documentary project led by Professor Zhang Tongdao, Director of the Documentary Centre of Beijing Normal University (BNU)), an educational documentary series in China. The special offered a 12 year tracking to a dozen of children shortly after they attended an experimental kindergarten in Beijing in 2006. It particularly captured moments of exploration, anxiety, and joy as they experienced a contrasting education that shaped their distinctive personalities. In the co-producing period with Discovery Channel, I came to realize the very part of transcultural communication and was motivated to act as a guide to the Looking China project. In view of this, the article first analyzes the documentaries in “Looking China: A Tour in Beijing” in 2022 and introduce my co-production experience based on Childhood in China. With a review of typical documentaries at home and abroad, it concludes with a discussion on possible solutions to shoot a documentary applicable for better international communication.