There are two classically misinformed perceptions of the Akha, the seemingly centenarian opium smoker with tar-stained teeth who the traveler briefly encounters (and photographs) while trekking through a small village in northern Thailand; and the elderly women hawking trinkets and marijuana to tourists on the streets of Bangkok wearing bedazzled headdresses. Politically neglected and socially marginalized, the perception of the Akha often begins and ends with opium, HIV/AIDS, poverty and a patronizing visage of exoticism that borders on noble savagery.

Zhao Rongjie spent months living, traveling and collecting stories in mountain-villages across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and China in order to craft a more authentic, humanizing, and, ultimately, fascinating portrait of Akha identity, customs, and concerns. Her film balances the heartbreaking realities of addiction and social degeneration with mesmerizing scenes of mountain life and intimate dialogues that few outsiders will ever have a chance to experience. offers a more personal, nuanced and humanizing glimpse into the legacies of migration, transnationalism and age-old customs that unify divergent communities in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and China.

Yunnan

Akha

 series began in 1999 as an analysis of the meaning of self-survival. As I have grown older, my understanding of life has become more comprehensive and so has the project evolved.

, I decided to observe the metamorphosis of silkworms without intervention, as it exists in an unconscious natural state. I raised more than 1,000 silkworms, watched them hatch, fed them mulberry leaves, and placed them in individual glass cubes to cocoon over a 50-day period. When they broke free from their cocoons, I harvested the natural silk and used it to weave silk embroidery. While the cocooning process unfolded, I wrapped a crystal ball in layer upon layer of newspaper clippings from around the world as a way to represent the daily imprints and pressures of civilization—politics, economics, culture, and society—on the human soul. I wrapped the crystal ball—the pure, ethereal planet, the original earth—in newspapers to symbolize the artificial cocooning of our interconnected world.

These three actions occurred simultaneously in a controlled environment. To juxtapose the metamorphosis of silkworms and quarantine, I transformed my home into a cocoon and isolated myself from the outside world for two months.

 project while in self-isolation: “Breathing is not close to suffocation, there is freedom in between. Breathing and suffocation are not far away, there is life and death in between." (呼吸与窒息不近,中间隔着自由；呼吸与窒息不远，中间隔着生死.) Human beings have been wrapping themselves like silkworms since the dawn of civilization. After this global catastrophe, will we continue our violent development or will we re-examine our lives and adjust our ways of being so that we can humbly return to nature?

At the conclusion of the project, we cut a short video with the footage we'd shot over the course of more than two months explaining the impetus and phases of 

Cocoons

I'd been down in the valley for a week when I decided it was time to go back to the mountains, riding a motorcycle this time. I left Dali around noon and arrived at Baicaolong village on Jizu Shan (Mountain) three hours later. After resting for a moment, I put on my boots and headed off toward the vegetable garden to look for Da Ge and Da Sao. It’s rainy season—when horses are used to transport hundreds of kilograms of walnuts from the groves to the village—and the normally tortuous path is even muddier than usual.

The vegetable plot is right next to a river that swells during the rainy season, breaching its banks and submerging the tree trunks, making it impossible to build a bridge across the river. By the time I arrive, the day’s work is basically over. I help Da Ge and Da Sao in the garden for a little while, then go home and get ready to harvest walnuts the next day.

Mid-September is walnut harvesting season on Jizu Mountain. A week ago, Da Ge and Da Sao told me they had to go to Muxiangping to cut bamboo poles for the walnut harvest, which required a 25-kilometre trek there and back. Da Ge explained that the particular species of bamboo he sought is highly prized because it’s solid, durable, and flexible.

I followed Da Ge and Da Sao into the mountains to pick walnuts. Once Da Ge had climbed the walnut tree and found a stable foothold, he raised his freshly-cut bamboo pole toward the clusters of fruit and began to hit, poke, shove, and finally shake the branches of the tree back and forth until it rained down walnuts. I moved beneath the canopy of the trees looking for shelter until Da Ge was finished. Later, he told me that a day harvesting walnuts is harder than a day hunting for mushrooms in the mountains.

Da Sao and I collected the walnuts that now carpeted the ground beneath the tree and started peeling the hard, green fruit from the shells. When we got home that afternoon, we cleaned and dried the walnuts, then packaged them in large plastic bags. Later that evening, we brought our harvest to the main gate of the village where buyers were gathered in anticipation of the annual harvest.

The road leading to Muxiangping village was completely clogged by farmers hauling their walnut harvests to the market on mules, tricycles, vans, and even their own backs. It was nine o’clock by the time we delivered our walnuts and returned home for dinner.

Da Ge told me the price of walnuts this year was considerably lower than in previous years. But what worries him more is that few young people nowadays care to learn the old ways of harvesting walnuts. If no one is able to climb the trees in a few years, he says we might as well cut them down…

Monday is market day in the town at the foot of Jizu Shan. People from all over the region come to buy and sell fish, meat, fruits and vegetables, and seasonal agricultural products. This time of year, mushrooms, chestnuts, walnuts, bamboo shoots, and Chinese herbal medicines are hot commodities.

Yesterday, Da Ge and Da Sao picked fresh mushrooms for the weekly market. They made the long journey to Muxiangping on foot and returned carrying bamboo baskets full of mushrooms. It was already dark when I got home, so I ate a hurried dinner and started to sort and package the mushrooms. I used a small knife to scrape and clean the mud from the roots of the fungus, then sorted them by species, and wrapped them tightly to keep them fresh for the morning market. It was 11 o’clock by the time the work was done.

The following morning, we loaded the truck and set off for town before dawn so that we could sell the mushrooms for a good price. By mid-morning, the market would be full of vendors from the surrounding mountain villages selling unique varieties of mushrooms and driving the price down. Some specialize in species that only grow below 2,000 meters in elevation, while others harvest mushrooms that can’t grow below 3,000 meters. Brother Zi tells me vendors are concerned because the rainy season came more than a month late this year and the mushroom harvest was far less productive than expected.

Jizu Shan is considered sacred in Buddhist cosmography. Legend has it there were once 72 active temples on the mountain. Most of them have fallen to ruin, but the majority of people here still consider themselves to be Buddhists.

Da Ge and Da Sao managed to sell all their mushrooms before 10 a.m. Most of their customers own restaurants in the town, but the COVID pandemic has meant fewer tourists visiting Jizu Shan and more difficulty for everyone around Jizu Shan to make ends meet.

Field Diary: After the Harvest

At six o’clock in the morning the sky was still dark except for the thin marble glow on the horizon that indicated the skies should be clear and sunny today. This means we’re going up the mountain to pick mushrooms with Da Ge and Da Sao. The dawn sky brings an omen of favorable weather before most have risen in Bai villages below Jizu Shan.

There are several different routes for mushroom hunting around Jizu Shan (Chicken Foot Mountain). Today, we decided to drive to Fangguang Temple and hike into the mountains from there. At eight o’clock, we arrived at the temple gates and decided it was best to split up into two teams: Jiaju and I on one team, Da Ge and Da Sao on the other. The place where they’re planning to go is far away, and there’s no way the two of us can keep up with them. Locals, like Da Ge and Da Sao, who climb these mountains often are said to “run the mountain”.

After saying goodbye, they soon disappeared and left Jiaju and I to climb slowly toward Taohuaqing Pass at an elevation of 2,700 meters. From the pass, there are four paths that lead into the mountains and each goes to a different place. When the weather gets bad, even locals can easily lose their way on the foggy mountain slopes. We chose to stick to areas where Da Ge and Da Sao had taken us before, and tried not to stray too far from the paths. The weather was sunny after the heavy rains two days ago, so we didn’t have to go far to find mushrooms. We had good luck today. We found several new species of fungi and saw a snail parasitized by mushroom fungi (bottom right).

As the sky grew dark around noon, the mountains became veiled in fog and there was a sudden heavy rain. By that time, we’d picked enough mushrooms and decided to head back to the tower courtyard, which wasn’t far away, and seek shelter from the storm. Inside this temple, there are several stone pagodas where monks and masters long since passed are buried.

Guarding the pagoda courtyard is a 72-year-old master monk named En Xin. He saw me walking into the tower yard soaked from the rain, and kind-heartedly laughed that I had gone out without checking the weather forecast. 

Field Diary: Among the Mushroom Hunters

 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 

. 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

 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.

 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.

Field Diary: Jizu Shan

September 15, 2021, Jizu Shan, Yunnan, China

I woke up this morning to capture some footage of the sunrise. The sky was still dark, but Da Ge and Da Sao had already started their day when I met them in the courtyard. I said a quick good morning and goodbye to them as I got on my motorcycle and drove halfway up the mountain to catch sunrise.

I stood on high outcropping with a panoramic view of Baicaolong Village while a rooster crowed in the village below. Some in the village had just finished breakfast and were beginning their trek up their mountain fields. Each went their own way--on foot, motorcycle or horseback. A girl was playing with her mobile phone while riding her horse, which I thought must be a lot safer than doing so while behind a wheel. It’s quite common for villagers here to play on their mobile phones…

Not far from the ridge where I was waiting for the sunrise lives a man I nicknamed “Big Big Brother" because he’s Da Ge’s (Elder Brother) elder brother. A month back we'd been caught in a sudden downpour while we collecting mushrooms higher up the mountain. Da Sao said we needed to find shelter and led me to Big Big Brother’s house. She led me down a weed-covered mountain path to a walnut orchard. Under the tree was a pile of dead tree trunks about one meter in length, sealed with mud at both ends—honeycombs. That was the first time I met him. 

Big Big Brother lives on this solitary hillside where he raises bees alone. Da Sao told that he never feeds them sugar water, and the honey they produce is sweet but with a hint of bitterness. The flavor is a consequence of the bees suckling nectar from medicinal herbs.

Big Big Brother saw me drenched and shivering and offered me a glass of homemade herbal moonshine made specifically to drive away the cold. He likes to drink, and after two glasses he begins to tell stories. 

Five years ago, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for cutting down some old trees on this hillside and planting walnut trees. After serving two years, he was sentenced to probation outside prison. After he got out, he went home and continued growing walnuts and red bayberries. He got interested in beekeeping and started raising sheep, chickens and geese. He had two dogs (one large, one small) to keep him company. Most of the time, he stayed alone, drinking and herding sheep. 

In the years that have passed since his release, Big Big Brother has chosen to live as a hermit. Only a select few people have been on his property or witnessed his unique method of beekeeping.

Field Diary: The Beekeeper

As 900 high-definition photographs of mushroom spore prints play successively at the frequency of human breathing, two types of sounds fill the sonic space. Natural elements, organic life: birds, chickens, livestock, bees, wind, water, lightning, frogs, cicadas, the crying of newborn babies. These sounds are associated with the 300 wild mushroom spore prints I collected on the mountain slopes of Jizu Shan between April and October, 2021 and photographed in my studio in Dali. 

The remaining 600 images of genetically-modified mushroom spore prints I paired with unnatural sounds: education, economics, science and technology, war, religion. These unnatural "voices" are metaphors for human greed, ugliness, ignorance. Together, the imagery and sounds represent the tenuous relationship between nature and human society.

Mycelicopia (film)

In Daoist theory, duality exists inherently within natural life.

One Exhale, One Inhale（一呼一吸）


One Stillness, One Movement（一静一动）

I consider myself very fortunate to have spent my childhood in the countryside. My mother was in poor health at that time, so my grandmother took care of me. I remember following older children into the mountains, climbing trees to fetch bird’s eggs, fishing in the river, stealing fruit from the orchard, growing vegetables and harvesting crops in the fields like adults. I moved to large industrial cities in northeast China throughout my school-aged years, before deciding to return to the countryside in my mid-twenties. I’m a product of concrete and soil. And I’ve tried to integrate that duality into the 

 series to reflect the impact and contradictions of humanity’s relationship to Nature.

The first day of the exhibition was a great success. One visitor was moved to tears. I watched a four-year-old child examine each of my works closely, and afterwards he asked me questions about each one. His parents were shocked because their son had never reacted to art so seriously. I was moved by the resonance between my works and the audience. The power of the natural world and the visual impact of the works produced direct sensory stimulation without the need for textual annotations.

At the entrance I placed a crystal ball wrapped in newspaper. Every visitor who entered the exhibition hall invariably noticed something curious about the headlines pasted on the crystal ball and asked a question. Through their interpretation of the crystal ball, I wanted each visitor to develop their personal connection between 

 and the natural world. When they encounter the silkworm cocoons in boxes, I want them to feel isolation, to think about their home and communities, to sit with a profound sense of bondage and depression. Alternatively, when they move to the miraculous and exquisite mushroom spore prints, I want them to be overwhelmed by the microscopic, unseen world and by the role mycelia play in natural ecology.

 is that respect for nature is respect for life. Throughout the decades, I've tried to integrate my social values and my self-worth so that the works emit what they want to express without obstacles.

 exhibition was held at a time when the arts are suffering tremendously in China. Most galleries are still closed and public exhibitions are only now returning to the few that are open. Art industries have been coerced into creating political propaganda. Film scripts are subjected to strict political review in order to obtain shooting licenses. Musicians and stage performers are prohibited from publicly displaying their tattoos; they must now wear long-sleeved jackets or cover them with skin-toned tape. This is a dark era for artistic creation, one that necessarily conjures metaphorical expression.

Opening Night: Chengdu

 is an expansive eight-part ethnographic docuseries set amidst Yunnan’s dramatic natural landscapes and diverse cultural geography. The films follow the director’s journey from the frenetic cities of modern China to the peripheries of Yunnan as she explores the symbiotic relationship between seeds, social harmony, and cultural preservation.

The first episode opens on the outskirts of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province with a population of nearly 7 million, where younger generations of ethnic Bai and Yi farmers are feeling the financial pressures of social mobility. Conflict between tradition and modernity lies at the core of this film, prodding the audience to question the meaning(s) of progress and evolution.

 is layered with sub-narratives that illuminate the evolving relationships between humans and land, food and water, place and identity, ritual and adaptation in Yunnan’s unique ecosystems and ethnographic regions. Rongjie exposes us not only to a mosaic of cultures, but to the various meanings of home and the circumstances that dictate the need to either preserve or reform tradition.

Seeds + Seeds: Bai & Yi

Zhao Rongjie’s third film takes us to a wide valley on the western fringes of southwest China where the Nu Jiang (Salween River) emerges from the world’s fourth deepest gorge, slows to a languid pace, and begins its wide meandering course through Myanmar toward the Bay of Bengal. In the small hamlet of Namu, surrounded by fields of crops, we are introduced to the Dehong Dai (Tai Nüa), the northern branch of the Tai ethnic family, through a solemn, yet enlightening encounter with three generations of Buddhist artisans from the Sobao Family.

Since the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), they have offered their talents in the service and restoration of their local Hinayana temple known as Zang House: preserving records, transcribing scripture, reciting sutras, and maintaining the upkeep of the sanctuary. The family’s commitment to the preservation of Buddhist iconography manifests in sculptures, paintings, and weavings that adorn the temple’s interior. Their work is tattooed onto their bodies, ancient symbols of protection and cultural identity. Grandfather Sobao set clearing the rubble from the ruined temples once the orgy of destruction was satiated. The work led him to discover a duty that that would fulfill his life’s mission and establish a legacy for his heirs.

Tradition may be fated to make way for modernity, but perhaps never as colorlessly and calamitously as was forced upon rural China’s reluctant “ethnic minorities”. And yet, through the artistic contributions of the Sabao Family, we learn that the preservation (and restoration) of what we consider “sacred” requires resilience, innovation, and the courage to nourish seeds of creative renaissance.

Seeds + Seeds: Dai

The Tibet of the imagination—windswept, wild and impossibly vast—does not deceive reality. Its majestic isolation and inhospitable terrain command respect, if not reverence. The majority of Tibet is desert, steppe, coniferous forests, and ice-capped massifs with an 

 elevation of 14,300 feet (4,380 meters). What precious land that is flat or arable has been passed through the generations and reserved for subsistence farming by families that have worked the same plots for hundreds of years.

Every spring, snowmelt from the Himalaya and monsoon rains cascade through its three parallel river basins—the Yangtze (world’s 3rd longest), Mekong (12th), and Salween (26th)—forming some of the deepest, most precipitous gorges on earth. Thousands of miles away, government planners in Beijing have sought to “alleviate poverty” and modernize the region through the construction of highways, suspension bridges, and large-scale infrastructure projects. Development and deforestation, however, have only exacerbated the stress on the fragile environment, leaving cliffside villages (and newly built roads) at risk of being swept into the gorges by falling boulders and mudslides. In response, the government built new settlements with modern accommodations and amenities on higher ground, and encouraged Tibetan families to leave their old villages, farmland, and ways of being behind.

Zhao Rongjie’s latest documentary offers an intimate view into the perspectives of Tibetans as they navigate evolving environmental and political landscapes in northwest Yunnan. As with each episode, the conflict between tradition and modernity lies at the heart of the narrative, as does humanity’s relationship to nature. We are left with an homage to a land and people who face decisions riddled with uncertainty, while the continuity of their cultural inheritance hangs in the balance.

Seeds + Seeds: Kham Tibetan

 our natural spaces is a noble cause, a necessary and long-awaited counter-balance to the impact of more than two centuries of unchecked industrialization and development. But when demarcated national parks and protected forests overlap with traditional lands of Indigenous peoples, conserving endemic flora and fauna can come at the cost of ancient customs and cultural morês. 

In the fifth episode of Zhao Rongjie’s ethnographic docuseries 

, the conflict between tradition and modernity plays out once again in the highlands of Yunnan Province. The director brings us to Chihengdi Village located in the heart of the Three Parallel Rivers (Salween, Mekong, Yangtze) Protected Area, an isolated pocket of rich biodiversity in southwest China. Only a few generations ago, the Lisu lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle in Gaoligong Mountains, hunting and gathering according to the seasons. As families settled into permanent villages on the promontories above the Nujiang (Salween) gorge, they turned to subsistence farming and began cultivating small tracts of arable land. In recent years, the construction of government roads and unchecked logging stripped the land of its root systems and left Lisu communities at risk of mudslides.

The tenuous economic and environmental conditions in the Nujiang region prompted the government in Beijing to initiate efforts to stimulate local industry while preserving the critical wild lands. This led to the relocation of Lisu families from their old mountain hamlets to newly constructed riverside villages en masse. Today, no longer are men permitted to hunt in the nearby forests with bows and arrows; instead they stage shooting competitions in the village using standard bulls-eyes. The 150 year-old cathedrals have also been abandoned. The church remains the centre of communal life—where locals practice an old form of Catholicism infused with animism—but no longer do the spirits dwell in their villages and forests.

*During a recent conversation, Rongjie revealed that Chihengdi was the hardest place to film during her six months of travels. It wasn’t the remoteness, but rather the fragility of cultural survival and the precarity of hope that permeated the community. It is for that reason she considers this episode to be perhaps the most meaningful included in the Seeds & Seeds docuseries.

Seeds + Seeds: Lisu

“As long as there is a seed, I am ready to see a miracle.”

Away from the clamor of modern China, ethnic Xiangtang villages are found high in mountains surrounded by terraced rice paddies dug into the steep valleys above the Mekong River gorge. Here in the verdant transitional zone between the eastern flank of the Himalaya and the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia we are introduced to Zhu Hong, a farmer and former Village Head who returned to his rural roots after nearly two decades in the city to farm the land. Zhu Hong’s story illustrates the village’s efforts to preserve the traditions of farming and seed saving that have sustained agricultural productivity in these mountains for more than a thousand years, while cautiously adapting to evolving environmental conditions and technological advancements.

The forces of encroachment have never been closer to Bangdong, nor more determined to modernize this isolated corner of Lincang County, Yunnan. With only around 9 percent of the world’s arable land and roughly 20 percent of the global population, agricultural productivity in China is a national priority that cannot afford to belie illusions of pastoralism. Since the revolution, one of the primary functions of the Communist Party has been to transform rural China into a fertile ocean of industrial agriculture.

Despite Beijing’s most resolute intentions, the villages featured in 

, like other non-Han areas of Yunnan Province, have long maintained a tenuous relationship with the power structure nearly 5,000 kilometers away. Here one encounters a mosaic of staggering landscapes connected only by ancient mountain paths that inspired Yunnan’s oft-repeated mantra: “The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.”

Seeds + Seeds: Xiangtang

Ethnographic research, ecological fieldwork, documentary film and conceptual art coalesce in a ground-breaking visual exploration of modernization vs cultural preservation in Southwest China.