As one of the four ancient civilizations, China is a country with long history and time-honored culture. Thousands of years of cultural accumulation has created the noble character rooted in its national backbone. While shaping humanities over the years, time has also leave Chinese people with other precious things. China’s porcelain enjoys its reputation all over the world, and cultural relics at national treasure level are countless and priceless, which even shocks the world! The Grand Canal, which still flows today, is the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients. The Silk Road and the Tanzania-Zambia Railway have so far promoted cultural integration and demonstrated the spirit of the Chinese nation. Today, we will recommend several humanities documentaries for you to have a better understand of China.
If National Treasure Can Speak
If National Treasure Can Speak displays 100 cultural relics in its 100 episodes. The program is divided into four seasons, with 25 episodes in every season, and each episode introduces a cultural relic for 5 minutes. Shortness does not mean roughness, but a higher requirement for “perfection”. The documentary condenses the “Pillars of a Great Power” in a five-minute video, traversing ancient dynasties and modern ages, visiting the sages and present people, and focusing on the little-known legends and tortuous experiences behind these national treasures. It gets audiences immersed in the experience and appreciate the immortal value and charm of the Chinese national treasure while looking for the Chinese soul in the fascinating and ups and downs of the story.
Chinese porcelain
Produced by the documentary channel CCTV-9, it depicts a magnificent picture of the journey of China’s export of porcelain to the world during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and presents the important historical events about China’s export of porcelain. Watching this documentary is like traveling through the time tunnel, viewing the past and present of China’s exportation of porcelain.
Chinese porcelain has dominating the world. In the three centuries during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a total of 300 million pieces of Chinese porcelain landed in Europe, not to mention the large amount of import from our neighbor, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. The huge amount and scale of porcelain market all over the world somehow prove the existence of a world-class cultural contact that breaks the country border. Porcelain is not only a combination of craftsmanship, aesthetics, and commerce, but also the first global commodity under the influence of eastern and western aesthetics.
Different from the previous documentaries of Chinese porcelain, “china” no longer focuses barely on the aesthetic value and cultural value in itself, but standing at the height of economic globalization and tracing its process of becoming outstanding in the world in the Ming and Qing Dynasties from an international perspective, to explore its profound impact on the political economy, social life, culture and art of countries around the world. For a long time, when it comes to ancient China, especially the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many people have the inherent impression that they were closed and locked up and remained crippled. The documentary “china” has used a large number of historical facts to effectively change this one-sided view.
A River A City
The Jing-Hang Grand Canal is the oldest canal with the longest mileage, and has been the largest project in the world. As one of the oldest canals, it is a great project created by the working people of ancient China. Throughout history, the great Chinese people have written their glorious history on this great river.
The 4-episode human history series documentary “A River A City” attempts to use a different way from previous humanities documentaries, with a commercial town on the canal as an entry point, and digging into the civilization of the “Grand Canal”. From the change of history and character’s destinies, it presents the inherent power and mechanism of civilization growth, and explores the unique natural endowment and cultural evolution path of the Grand Canal. The documentary shows the cultural heritage of the Millennium Canal and the glorious history of Chinese civilization by recreating the discovery of cultural heritage of the “Canal Business Capital”, together with its formation, its golden age and the present and future.
Wild China
Wild China is the first joint production of China Central Television and the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has filmed many national wildlife and scenic reserves in China, 86 kinds of Chinese rare wildlife and life stories of more than 30 ethnic groups, illustrating the natural and human landscape of China. The shooting period had lasted for 4 years, with advanced photography techniques such as aerial, infrared, high speed, time delay and underwater photography, recorded a large number of precious and wonderful pictures.
Wild China contains six episodes, namely “Heart of The Dragon”, “Shangri La”, “Tibet”, “Beyond the Great Wall”, “Land of the Panda” and “Tides of Change”.
Wild China won the 30th “News & Documentary Emmy Awards” with the Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, Editing and Music and Sound of natural history documentary.
China Relics Decoded
From the six narrative angles of “Heaven & Earth”, “Family & Nation”, “Health & Wellness”, “Seeds of Civilization”, “Building a Civilization” and “Crafting a Civilization”, this documentary focuses on architecture, cultural sites, stone carvings, murals, and cultural relics in collections, telling the cultural relics themselves and the wonderful stories they carry. While displaying China’s rich historical and cultural heritage, China Relics Decoded emphasizes the presentation of cultural essence that deeply rooted in the blood of the Chinese nation, as well as the Chinese nation’s traditional outlook on life, values, and the world, thus further showing the Chinese culture’s great contribution to the progress of world civilization, and its blending development with world civilization.
China’s Treasure: Guizhou
China’s Treasure: Guizhou takes colorful history and culture as its warp, and the rapid rise of economic achievements and ecological construction as its latitude. Guizhou is being focused on from an international perspective in an all-round way for the first time, and its natural ecology, inheritance and development, as well as the perseverance, pioneering and innovative spirit of Guizhou people are presented in a comprehensive way with the overlap of modernity and tradition, inheritance and innovation.
China’s Treasure: Guizhou is divided into four episodes, each lasts about 22 minutes, and tells the story of Guizhou to the world in an in-depth and thorough manner from four dimensions: “Wisdom of Man and Nature”, “Dream Catchers”, “Nurturing Memories” and “Eye on the Future”. This high-level documentary was carefully produced by Guizhou to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC as a record of the great achievements of New China. It had taken nearly 3 years from project establishment to its completion, and is a large-scale Chinese provincial-level documentary project undertaken by Discovery for the purpose of international publicity. At the same time, it is also the first collaboration between Discovery and Guizhou and China Global Television Network, which has set the beginning for the domestic-international simultaneous broadcast of China’s provincial-level publicity brand.
The Maritime Silk Road
As the first documentary on the Maritime Silk Road with more than two thousand years’ history, The Maritime Silk Road takes the economic and trade exchanges and cultural communications of countries along the route as the starting point, and depicts live characters in reality against historical background of exchanges. It connects history and reality, local and international, and uses impactful visual language, delicate and vivid character stories, creating a masterpiece with international standards. It not only shows the civilization and glory of the Maritime Silk Road; but also emphasizes the style and achievements today. There are legends that have gone through thousands of years, as well as down-to-earth stories of ordinary people.
The film crew has shot across nearly 20 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Among them, the ten ASEAN countries have always had the closest relationship with the Maritime Silk Road in history and present days. Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam and other countries are the main partners and shooting locations of this documentary. The series The Maritime Silk Road uses vivid and real shots to record the legendary stories of people in these countries who insist on, explore, struggle and pursue their dreams. It also shows the far-reaching impact of the construction of the 21st Century “Marine Silk Road” on the economic development and cultural prosperity of the countries along the route from multiple levels and angles, such as shipping, economy and trade, science and technology, culture, immigration, and dreams.
This documentary explores the historical treasure trove of civilization, records the development trajectory of the times, displays the spiritual beliefs of the Chinese, and interprets China’s dreams about ocean.
TaZaRa: A Journey without an End
The documentary was directed by Dr. Zhang Yong, Associate Professor of the African Research Institute, and the multinational production team brought together filmmakers, scholars, and experts from Africa, China, and Europe to visit platforms, cities, villages, and witnesses along the Tanzania-Zambia Railway from an international perspective, leading the audience to feel the true status of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, the largest African aid project of New China.
There are three episodes in the film, namely “A Railway of Friendship”, “The Life Line” and “Love for Tazara”, digging deeply into the cultural connotation of the railway from the dimensions of the history of building, the impact of the railway on the people along the route, and its influence upon Chinese and African youths. Among them:
The first episode “A Railway of Friendship” explores the unknown history from the perspective of the game between China and the West behind the construction, with a glimpse of the agenda setting of the Western media. The filming team interviewed the founding President of Tanzania, Nyerere’s wife Maria, former Prime Minister of Tanzania Salim, Tanzanian Minister of Transportation during the building period, and many other historical witnesses, and collected a lot of precious historical materials.
The second episode “The Life Line” tells that ever since the construction in the 1970s, as time pass by, the role of the railway has declined, but it is still the source to survival and a road to life for residents in poor and remote areas. The production team went deep into dozens of sites and villages along the railway to conduct oral interviews, recorded the true status of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, and took pictures of the scenery, animals, folk customs, and ceremonies along the entire Tanzania-Zambia Railway.
The third episode “Love for Tazara” has drew its inspiration from Ma Ji’s crosstalk “Ode to Friendship”. It tells that the Tanzania-Zambia Railway is the original memory of Africa for an entire generation. To this day, many people still go to Africa or come to China for the railway. This episode focuses on the story of the Chinese crews, including experts on the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, cemetery managers and Confucius Institute volunteers, and truly records the “Tanzania emotion” shared by the people of China, Tanzania and Zambia.
Voice of the Earth
Voice of the Earth is a documentary produced by iQiyi. It uses folk songs from all over China as the carrier, telling the fate of the singers, and witnesses the historical changes with the melody. It uses the innocent folk songs to lead the audience to slow down their pace and return to the beginning of life.
The entire documentary shows the whole process of roots, reproduction, courtship, marriage, labor, birth, and death. It carries and illustrates the cycle of life, and implies the ancient Chinese philosophies about the origin and reproduction of human beings, from the very beginning of the world to marriage and funeral, birth, aging, sickness, and death, and people continue their songs of “you, me, him” carried in their genes.
