China News Service, New Taipei, March 20th Title: Documentary creator Zhao Lina’s Jiangnan and Taiwan
China News Service reporter Yang Chengchen
About a month ago, the 8-episode documentary "I'm Here" produced by Taipei's "City Images" "Jiangnan Meets You" has finished broadcasting the last episode of the video "Purple Sand Qinglin" on the video website. In the comment area, Taiwanese readers left messages asking for advice on the books mentioned in the film. The interaction between the creator and the audience continued after the film ended, which was beyond Zhao Lina's expectation.
In the past few years, Zhao Lina, who is also a director, producer, and writer, has led a film team to visit many cities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to talk about the cultural connections between Jiangnan and Taiwan. Purple clay pots, ancient kilns, traditional Chinese medicine, Huaiyang cuisine, Erhu... Each story focuses on one thing or a group, and "I Met You in Jiangnan" received a good number of clicks.
Recently, documentary director and producer Zhao Lina was interviewed by a reporter from China News Service at her home in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Photo by China News Service reporter Yang Chengchen
"City Image" was established in 2021. Before that, Zhao Lina's work was mostly in the cultural field. In 1995, Zhao Lina, who was from Changshu, Jiangsu Province, and her husband started a cross-strait family and began to frequently travel back and forth between Jiangsu and Taiwan. In the early days, she was a full-time writer, writing, publishing books, and publishing columns in Taiwan.
"Pure writing makes me feel the bottleneck of creation. I seem to have been staying in the 'pyramid', out of touch with society, let alone telling Taiwanese readers about the real mainland." Zhao Lina said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Service recently.
In 2007, Zhao Lina got involved in cross-strait exchanges, assisting cultural circles in cooperation and mutual visits. From 2019 to 2022, she and her team collaborated with the National Palace Museum in Taipei to publish a book to introduce the story of the circulation of cultural relics related to Yushan in Changshu across the Taiwan Strait; the "City Image" project, launched almost at the same time, has released two seasons and 20 episodes so far. Documentary short film, "I Met You in Taiwan" has 12 episodes in the first season.
"There are many cultural connections that audiences on both sides of the Taiwan Strait may not have noticed in the past." Zhao Lina said that one of the episodes of "Dynamic Time Travel" tells the story of the railway. The film starts with the legend of the Taiwan Sugar Train and the founder of the Taiwan Railway, Liu Ming, and then introduces Zhu Ziqing, who is familiar to Taiwanese students. In the prose "Back View", the railway track that the old father hobbled across with an orange in his arms is located on the north bank of the Yangtze River in Nanjing.
"Many Taiwanese people don't know about the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, but they must have read "The Back". What more people don't know is that the railway side where Zhu Ziqing bid farewell to his father is only about 50 meters away from the place where Sun Yat-sen's coffin rested in Nanjing." she introduced.
Jiangnan flavor and Taiwanese food are important topics throughout the two seasons of the documentary, which have aroused a lot of resonance. In the first season, Zhao Lina invited Taiwanese historian Lin Tianren and playwright Zhou Ruihua and his wife to be interviewed. Chen Jie, a well-known Qing history scholar from Yangzhou, was Lin Tianren's mentor. Chen taught Zhou Ruihua the traditional lion head method when they were dating. Chen Jie passed away in 2019. Zhao Lina wrote in the commentary that now in the couple's home, every meal and every dish is filled with longing and nostalgia.
In the second season of "Easy to Eat," the filming team visited Cijin, Kaohsiung, Tamsui, New Taipei, Suzhou, Taizhou, Jiangsu, and other places to interview three gourmets. Living in different cities, the three of them all have connections with Jiangnan and believe in the dietary principle of "eat less, more flavor". Zhao Lina said that the gifts of nature make the ingredients and flavors of cuisines in different places different, but the food essence of "palatable and precious" is consistent on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and people's tastes can be said to be connected by the same thread.
Zhao Lina and her team conducted long-term field investigations on various themes and extensive preparation work involved in the 20-episode documentary. What is presented to the audience is a 6 to 10 minute video per episode, but the filming team has accumulated a huge library of video materials for this purpose.
"Details are the easiest to touch us and readers." Zhao Lina gave an example. After Mr. Chen Jiexian finished drinking wine, he poured the soup left over from making the lion's head into the rice. He called it "pressed wine rice." In many places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, people have similar drinking habits. "This is the trace left by Chinese culture in daily life."
After the two seasons of the documentary were aired, Zhao Lina received positive feedback from many Taiwanese viewers. After watching it, Lin Tianren commented that the documentary clarified the origins of culture and told it in a way that Taiwanese people usually see but don't know "why they can see it." Taiwanese scholar Zhang Shannan left a message: "What you have done will leave an indelible and beautiful ink color on the inextricable history (connection) between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait."
At present, Zhao Lina is planning to film the content of the next season. "Funds are urgently needed. solved problem".
For the future, Zhao Lina has greater hopes: "I look forward to expanding the shooting range beyond Jiangnan. We often say that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are very close. Apart from blood relations, where is the cultural closeness? What is the historical basis? I hope these Images can provide some clues." (End)
