Field Diary: Jizu Shan
A conceptual artist and filmmaker briefly lives with a husband and wife team of mushroom hunters and finds spiritual nourishment and symbiosis with the nature world within the physical toil.
The documentary Field Diary wasn't meant to look like it does. The initial plan was for Brother and Sister Zi, mushroom hunters living in a mountain hamlet on Jizu Shan, to act as guides on my quest to collect rare species of fungus that grow on the sacred Buddhist mountain for Breathing 2021. As time went on, and I grew more connected to the couple, it became clear that I needed to change my shooting plan and turn the camera on them.
There were three reasons: First of all, few people understand the art of mushroom collection and possess the physical traits required to climb mountains like Brother Zi. It would have been impossible for me to match his speed with or without a heavy camera. Hiking into the remote valleys of these mountains in search of mushrooms was arduous enough.
Secondly, I wanted to document Brother and Sister Zi in their truest form without altering or influencing their life's rhythm. I often asked them to treat me as air, I will do whatever you do, I will eat whatever you eat. I was sensitive to the fact that if my shooting schedule were to impede their plans to harvest mushrooms, every day they lost waiting on me would cost them hundreds if not thousands of yuan.
The final reason is that the life and philosophy of Brother and Sister Zi is an inheritance of values that is decidedly non-mainstream and anachronistic in today's society. They are devout Buddhists––simple, sincere, and hardworking––with their own independent views on their children's education. Their daughter is studying special education at university, for example, and plans to specialize in childhood neuro-developmental disorders, an extremely understaffed and under-resourced field in China.
Field Diary is a visual homage to Brother and Sister Zi divided into five chapters according to altitude and geographic location: Mushroom collection (2,000-3,000m), Brother and Sister Zi's home (2,000m), the walnut groves and vegetable patches (1,800m), and so on down the valley. During the summer I lived with them I harvested wild mushrooms and, more importantly, a tenacious, beautiful vitality.
Shandong-born painter, visual artist, and videographer who studied oil painting and copperplate engraving at Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. She lives in an ancient stone home in the mountains of southwest China.
