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Between 1405 and 1433, Admiral Zheng He of China led seven epic voyages to more than 30 countries, including Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Kenya and Tanzania. The admiral and his crew gathered knowledge and wealth from Indochina to Africa for China's Ming empire. These voyages were the biggest naval expeditions mounted at the time. Zheng He was bigger than life and could have changed the course of history. But after the seven voyages, he and his Treasure Fleet were forgotten by China, and the world, for six hundred years. National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita sets sail to discover why. To celebrate the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's maiden exploration voyage, Michael Yamashita traveled over 10,000 miles from Yunnan in China to Africa's Swahili coast taking over 40,000 pictures for the feature story on this great explorer, published in the July 2005 edition of National Geographic.

On February 14, 2007, Valentine's Day, eight people who support gay relationships and marriage went to SOHO Modern City and various bus stops to give roses and cards to passersby, wish them a happy Valentine’s Day, and ask their support for gay rights. Upon seeing the words in the cards, everybody reacted differently. When they were asked their opinion of homosexuality, or what they would think if a family member were gay, their answers were all different and interesting, and even blackly humorous.

Ju Anqi traveled all over China looking for interesting quilts and stories of people sleeping under them.

2005 Project by Zhang Peili

Huangyangchuan township, Gulang County, Gansu province. In a village, two members of a family died in accidents in a short period. People took it seriously, they decided to rebuild the old temple in the village, hoping it could bless them with peace. In the ceremony after the rebuilding was finished, the figure of Buddha, the picture of Chairman Mao, the Taoist and the country shamen, gathered together…This film documented the details of this ceremony, hoping to reveal the common status of Chinese people’s religion.

The director himself is a veteran news cameraman who put aside a year in the filming of this documentary. He delves into the life and work of four TV news cameramen, giving us a unique perspective on the media world, capturing the rarely seen story of human struggle in an industry where humanity has all but vanished. The documentary reveals the heartfelt feelings of Taiwanese journalists, while at the same time, paints a picture of the director’s own reflections on the ever diminishing ethics of this industry and the impact it has had upon his own life.

The Documentary record the life of a panda, Ying, and his Trainer, Bai, in their small residential room inside China Wuhan Acrobatic Troupe. They both share a life behind bars where the outside world is out of reach and only accessible through a television.

A film about queer and religion

Qiu Sheng works in Beijing. He accidentally saves Tao Zi, a female university teacher, at work, and she loses her job. Out of gratitude, Tao Zi asks Qiu Sheng to be her babysitter. Although the two have different life backgrounds and disparity in social status, they gradually establish a kind of trust and a kind of friendship in the process.

In northern Shaanxi, those three-wheeled trucks who came to the city from rural areas came to be suffering. They talked hard and finally sent their children to distant universities. Four years have passed, the big children can't find a job, the future is uncertain, the smaller children have come to the age of the university. It seems to be in the instinct, a family is still like a hen hatch, waiting for the new hope to break out.

Two tramps on the way... a mother and a son.

Chenxiang is a boy who lives in a small village at the foot of Mount Hua, his mother is a goddess named Sanshengmu, who was imprisoned under Mount Hua for marrying her father and giving birth to a boy, violating divine laws. Knowing this, Chenxiang decides to rescue his mother at all costs...

A journey of the filmmaker, Wu Wenguang, somewhere in China, and his view of public life in the cities and villagers. He meets some of his friends, a gay man in Beijing, and a lesbian couple in Shanghai.

Wang Wo’s experimental documentary takes the direct cinema approach to the realm of avantgardism, immersing the viewer in a non-narrative, highly sensory experience of urban China in its visual and aural splendor.

Heike Baranowsky captures situations in Chinese everyday life, as in her sixteen-minute film projection T Square (2006), which she made together with Waszem Khan (camera: Volker Gläser). The film operates with a hardly perceptible and slow and regular zoom in on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where the evening ritual of lowering the state flag is in pro- gress. The transition from a city panorama to the action at this historically and politically charged location is accompa- nied by a change in atmosphere, both through the onset of darkness and a shift in perception from mere viewing to ob- serving. (Peer Golo Willi)

Cheng Sanhe, the first "Kanu" who successfully filed for bankruptcy in Taiwan, went from being inexplicably indebted at the beginning to realizing that he had already owed millions of debts. The bank's collection and the finance company used threats and intimidation to collect debts. Sanhe has since fallen into the hell of "using cards to raise cards". Taiwan’s first "card god" Yang Huiru, who successfully profited from banks with bonus points, used the loopholes in bank bonuses to successfully connect relatives and friends to purchase tickets or shopping station goods by swiping cards, and then use online auctions to earn the difference. Earning millions in the bank, the bank stopped using credit cards. Yang Huiru, who has also experienced personal pain, persuaded the card slaves to face reality: "Hurry up and cut off the card! Because the interest is too heavy, don’t think about borrowing another cash card to pay off the card debt. It’s getting deeper and deeper."

Interesting Times: The Secret of My Success is a 2002 Chinese documentary film by director Duan Jinchuan about China's contemporary politics of democracy and the realities of the one child policy. The director shows how this policy is being implemented in Fanshen, a rural village in Northeast China. The film is part of the series, called Interesting Times, which shows different aspects of modern life in China. The other films in the series are: The War of Love (dir. Duan Jinhuan and Jiang Yue), Xiao's Long March (dir. Wu Gong AKA Kang Jianning), and This Happy Life (dir. Jiang Yue). The documentary aired on TV in a shortened version with English narration (59 min.), but a longer version (71 min.) screened at some international festivals.

A Beijing delivery boy takes a grave risk to support his sick father.

A small rural township called Red White was seriously devastated by the May 12th Earthquake in China 2008. A 62-year-old Taoist survived even though his temple was largely torn by the disaster. This documentary tells the story of how the Taoist practices the widely believed Chinese traditional religion and the local people’s daily life during the township’s post-quake reconstruction.

This film describes the life of some ordinary people in a small town in southern China. Among them, there is a guy just graduated from a college, a businessman, a government office worker, etc.. Although it is said that the country advances triumphantly and the economy develops rapidly, these ordinary people are in a miserable state. Because it is a time of money, they are dreaming of getting it as much as they can to change their poor fate, which seems impossible for them forever.

Hongxing alone picked up the burden of family life, supported Yang Chang to become the head of the village, and helped Yang Chang lead the whole village to realize the wishes of their ancestors.

One boy, one girl. One close space, one silent night. What is the relation between them? The great works in art history structure, influence their relations, and show us something. At the same time, the boy and the girl convey their experience and taste on these works. Usually, a boy and a girl will make love to end a scene or a film, but it didn’t happen. It seems that they spend the night clearly, but the tomorrow is still unknown.

Life at the kindergarten appears rich and colourful, made up of a variety of cheerfully sunny rituals and games meant to train these children to be good members of society.

The emperor's southern tour, where the place is full of hospitality, needless to say, local food attractions need to taste the tour. West Lake Moonlight Night, quiet and distant, the emperor sat in the boat and tasted the famous West Lake vinegar cooked by famous chefs. Even though the taste of the world's famous dishes, the emperor is still attracted to the delicious taste of this dish, for a time completely disregard the image, big. The so-called music is very sad, and the bones of the fish are stuck in the throat, and the pain is unbearable. The chef tried his best, and it was hard to see the results. He was also raised by the emperor who was angry and angry. At this time, the calm prime minister is coming out...

Taking its title from a Chinese proverb, the two-channel video observes three men up a tree imitating animal sounds. Absurdist in tone, an ancient custom from rural China is brought to an urban park in a commentary on migration and loss of tradition.

Hu Jie short film.

Kang Mao is the lead singer of Chinese punk rock band SUBS. She's a prominent figure in China's burgeoning rock scene and uses music in her fight for freedom of expression. This intimate portrait of an extraordinarily brave woman gives us a rare glimpse into a society where rock music is silenced by censorship and bans. SUBS travel to Norway but getting the audience to engage with their message is no simple matter.

In China’s remote Liangshan, three Yi “bimo” priests struggle with changing times. The feared “cursing” bimo, once invoked to harm or heal, has lost his calling under new bans. The “soul-calling” bimo, healer and mourner, bears private grief after four failed marriages before fathering an heir. And the “official” bimo—both priest and Party cadre—falls from power when he unlawfully rigs a village election. Tradition endures amid upheaval.

Twenty plus classmates look back into the past, tracing back through a 30 year history. One after another adapts to the random events that come to shape their lives, to the four seasons of life and nature. The years they were about experience coincided with the reforms and opening up of China. Floating in the changes of the new era, some experience compromises and the loss of ideals, whilst some keep struggling ahead with great determination. Thirty years later, Lin Xin encounters his old classmates, and records their individual lives and history; the ease of monotony, the loneliness of success, the weariness of a life of plentiful, the helplessness of poverty... all come forth in the lives of these group of people, becoming an epitome of the lives of ordinary people in small to middle-sized cities in this era, and at the same time reflecting on a generation that advances forward undefeated.

After his boyfriend leaves, a young man is lost in nostalgia and depression, until a mute street kid tries to distract him from his melancholy. A moody and romantic story that pays homage to the film noir of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai.

In China, many parents are sacrificing everything to see their children graduate successfully from a university in order to obtain highly-paid jobs. Han Peiyin has sold off all the family’s home valuables and now works in Xi’an to make the money for his son, Shengli, to attend a university. For years, Han, carried a notebook in which he recorded all of his loans - mostly small amounts such as 10 or 20 RMB. Han is convinced that knowledge has the power to change destinies, and expects his son to be successful.

An unreleased documentary by Chinese filmmaker Kang Jianning, the film interweaves the recollections of academic Fan Xiuzhang—particularly his political ordeals in the 1950s and ’60s—with the sweeping arc of the Mao era and its procession of violent political campaigns. Its structure becomes a form of critique, juxtaposing individual agency against a regime that demanded absolute loyalty and the erasure of the self in service of the state.

July 27th, 1976 - a day the people of Tangshan will never forget. When that fateful day ended, tens of thousands had been killed, and the lives of the survivors would be changed forever. No public official, no expert, nor anyone among the seismological personnel - regardless of what they were doing that day - should ever forget. History will always remember the twilight of that day.

The baby is a temporary floating population. He works diligently, from a small restaurant owner to a tea shop manager to a bar manager. This film records the survival state of children centered and gay comrades: trivial, messy, boring, and entertaining themselves. The camera calmly captures every bit of their daily life for more than two years, and as time goes by, the changes the baby presents are more ordinary. The film calmly explains the relationship between "comrades" and "society", and the various small details interpenetrated in the film also metaphorically reflect the changes of today's society

Aoluguya, Aoluguya is the first film in Gu Tao’s Ewenki Trilogy. A tale that unfolds in the Aoluguya forest, featuring such unique characters as a mother who dulls her sadness over the absence of her son, Yuguo, with alcohol; her brother; and Maria, the tribal chieftain who watches over them.

From Variety: "Guaranteed to never screen in any legit mainland Chinese venue due to its daring depictions of rebellious artistic protest as well as explicit sexuality, Hu Ze’s “Beijing Suburb” is a quietly masterful work portraying really struggling artists. This remarkable case of art imitating life observes a tiny community of painters and various multimedia artists — social critics all — operating clandestinely in a courtyard-style building in the capital’s outskirts. Hu’s film itself is clandestine, in the manner it reveals the hardships these artists must endure, in its quiet advocacy for the artists’ position, and also in its strong erotic content, carried to an extent comparable in the region only to South Korean cinema. Brave fests should do everything they can to secure a print, as difficult as that might be."

Luo Liang, a young man trying to meet the expectations of family and work, has come to town looking for something better but is unsure of his lot in life.

Animator Zhao Ye makes his feature-film debut with this challenging contemporary fable about the wages of personal sacrifice.

Exercise in its own form of absurdism. Jokes are good if you tell them well. Strange jokes have to be told even better. The maker likes really strange jokes and that's why he practices telling them well. Man takes his injured friend to the hospital. There it becomes apparent that a leg is missing.