A Marble Travelogue portrays a globalized structure with China at the center
Through the trips of a piece of marble between China and Greece
It reveals the situations of people from different classes and with various cultural background
The survey of the documentary started in May, 2018
The shooting of the core part was finished in 2019
And two months after we returned to China, everything was changed by the epidemic
I filmed the end of the pre-COVID age
Each stop of the documentary represents one part of the chain
Of globalization
In terms of marble production
Peloponnese, Greece is an important location for raw material mining
There’re two major centers of statue production
Marble is turned into different products there
These products are sold from Yiwu to Santorini for consumption
Marble itself is a carrier of cultural information
The white marble in the documentary is close to the marble
Which was used for classical buildings
Such as Parthenon Temple and Temple of Zeus
In Greece 2,500 years ago
Especially in the third world countries and East Asia
People pursue western-style and European-style buildings made from marble
It is a symbol of class and identity
Chinese independent documentaries mainly portray figures
But the center of this documentary is actually a social phenomenon
The object is taken as a clue
Due to the financial crisis in 2008
Lots of things traditionally owned by westerners have been sold to Chinese
One Chinese Greek acquired the mine
Like a number of French and Australian wineries have been purchased by Chinese
In recent years
China has become the biggest producer and consumer of all kinds of raw materials
Marble is closely linked with real estate industry
Piraeus is Greece’s biggest port
It has been acquired by COSCO
Which shocked the Greek society
My favorite person in the documentary is Mr. Zhen from Quyang
I was curious that
Where the statues in front of bath centers and in parks came from
Then I found two places, which were Hui’an, Fujian, and Quyang, Hebei
He started to do statue production with his father in early 1980s
Then the whole village followed them
Before 2008
Nearly all the western-style statues produced in Quyang were sold to the overseas market
After 2008, with the rise of China
A lot of the statues were sold to the domestic market
Marble power
Some was collected to make fridge magnets
The part of Quanzhou depicts the workers producing the magnets
I have strong empathy for workers
“I don’t which countries the places are in”
“I only remember New York”
Such a great industry starts from the proletarians
In labor-intense factories
The workers contribute to the industry with their hands
Each one of the economic chain doesn’t know each other
And they’re far from each other
A fridge magnet sold in Greece was actually produced in a factory
In Quanzhou, Fujian
Two Chinese who got married in Santorini bought it and brought it back to China
This is a typical phenomenon of globalization
Two documentaries of mine are about Sino-European relations
I was influenced by my father
Who was an international journalist
At the end of 2004 when the Indian Ocean tsunami happened
He appeared on TV with a microphone
As a child
I could see all kinds of global news at my home
I majored in TV director for my bachelor’s degree
And I majored in screenwriting for my master’s degree
Later I made documentaries
I have experienced lots of cross-cultural dilemmas
I record the freshest and the most representative situations
In the current age
The stone industry and the western-and-eastern culture impact
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Reform and Opening-up policy was implemented in China
After 2008, how to find a place of my own in the world
The confusion has been existing until now
Since the outbreak of COVID-19
The flow of people and goods between China and Europe has been drastically reduced
There has been a great loss on the sale
The price of international shipping soars
Back to then no foreign merchants could got into Yiwu for purchase
They could only rely on old customers and relations
COVID-19 is more like an accident
Which dramatically reveals all the problems
The world in my documentary is like a different world
From now