Singing in the Wilderness

I first came to Little Well in 2014 when the choir was at rehearsal. Villagers just came back from the farmland with muddy hands and shoes. All the happiness and hardships in life were chanted in the name of God. But then I realized the seemingly peace is only trying to protect a tragic secret: Miaos’ thousands of years of suffering from wars with the Han, which is universally the same experience for most of the minorities in China. Even “the Miao” is an official Chinese term given to them, but there’s nothing left in their memory to call themselves anything else.

So when the Han is trying to hijack the only thing they have left – singing, by turning the choir into a commercial product, I know this story has to be told. This is a film about double-colonization, when the Han took their home and culture, the missionaries took over their memory and then the Han came again to take over their land and faith altogether. After all that happened, who they were and who they are now? We have seen many films about communities fighting to reclaim their heritage but this is a fresh look into the communities who don't even remember what should belong to them. But through singing, I feel connected with them.

I’ve been making documentaries about China’s ethnic minorities - Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang who come to eastern metropolises to pickpocket, the Buddhist Dai in Yunnan who no longer have time to sit in the temples thus imported monks from Myanmar, and this time the commercialization of a Miao Choir in the upland of Yunan. For me, it was an intended escape at the beginning of every filming, to run away from the same ideology in the mainstream, and to find freedom in the wilderness. But they all turned out to be the same story that resonates with the actualities of my own life.

After the failed political movements in the 80s, the disillusion for the system was soon submerged by excitement for miraculous economic development. Miracle happens to Little Well too. Farmers from a remote village ended up on the stage of Lincoln Center in New York. Everyone is crazed by this boisterous celebration of success and prosperity, however below the surface, there’s an unspoken unease within all of us, just like the ghosts in Little Well.