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About one year ago to this day, myself Paul Morris and Kit Gillet made the video above. Right before we made the video, I wrote a cold (i.e. I didn’t know the people I was writing to) pitch to the New York Times. It read:

Dear Editor,

Every year the skies around China explode in fireworks that continue almost around-the-clock for two weeks. As part of a long-held Chinese tradition to use fireworks as a way to ward off evil spirits, firework sellers pop up across China in the weeks leading up to New Year, arming Chinese citizens for the days and nights ahead.

Unlike in the West, where firework safety is paramount, safety is far from people’s minds in China, where fireworks are set off within high-rise compounds, tossed on the floor, set off in narrow alleys, and even thrown at friends in the spirit of good humor. Back in 2008 a giant unfinished hotel building turned into a flaming torch after officials ignored police warnings and used a nearby rooftop as the platform for a firework display. Tens of thousands of Beijingers took to the streets to watch it burn.

While adding a level of danger, the ubiquitous presence of fireworks creates strong visuals. We are proposing a 3-minute video that would combine footage taken from a strategic height that would allow panoramic views over the whole of the Beijing skyline and on-the-street footage taken between the historic Drum and Bell Towers – one of the main areas revelers congregate. We would also cut it with footage of the fly-by-night firework stores and other night-time elements of the festivities. We can turn this over in less than 12 hours and have it to you by Chinese New Year, New York time.

Jonah M. Kessel

Needless to say, I received no response. At this time, this was quite normal. A year ago, a cold call to an editor usually came back either with a ‘no’ or it didn’t come back at all. And to be more fair – at the time of that email, I was just transitioning from a still shooter to a video shooter.

Regardless of the no reply, myself and filmmakers Kit Gillet and Paul Morris went ahead and made the short film anyway. It was one of our first group efforts using DSLRs. There is no post production on this stuff. Its all direct out of camera, and there’s not much of a story — just some fun visuals in a chronological order.

From that point to today, I finished 75 videos — and have more that are unfinished works in progress. To say the least — last year I dove into the video world and didn’t come up for air. I spent every day watching videos, studying gear, looking at video journalism, how its perceived, where its failing and where I feel its succeeding. Over the course of 75 videos, I learned new lessons from each — in shooting, editing and storytelling.

At some point this year, after making many of those videos I was approached by the New York Times to start producing videos for them. And then over the past six months, I started working for the same source that once ignored a pitch of mine. Now I’m both editing and shooting videos and my work with the The Time’s thus far has been nothing but exceptionally interesting, fun, educational — and inspiring. If you’ve missed some of these videos, here are some of my favorites:

• A Date with the Censors
• Wukan Video Journal
• Word Crimes
• Filming China’s Darkside
• The Reddest Village in China

While the stories I do for the Times accompany articles, as Chinese New Year came up again, I decided to send the pitch out one more time — as a stand alone video piece. 75 videos and one year later — they took the pitch. And in some small way, this gives me hope for the year of the dragon. That hard work, dedication and persistences can lead to good things. And the hope that the year of the dragon — will have more opportunities to tell more important stories that the world needs to see.

Now, the task is to “one up” myself from last year. A chance to show what difference a year can make. A chance to tell a story better than I could a year ago. A chance to go big. Filming for “2012: The Year of the Dragon” begins tomorrow. Check back in the next couple days on nytimes.com or here to see this year’s pyrotechniques spectacular and the result of my plan to — go bigger. After all — the dragon is not a quiet symbol.

Happy New Year – 新年快乐！

Jonah

NOTE FROM JONAH: Before I begin this tale, for those not from New York or New England — please re-read the headline above in your most sarcastic inner monologue.

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In front of me was a perfectly still and prestine alpine lake. There was no trash floating in the water, the sky was clear of pollution and I couldn’t hear a single car honking its horn. This was not your average Chinese landscape.

Then, when the Chinese man in the tight suit said “Jonah Mathew Kessel” I walked forward on a red carpet in front of the amazing landscape. As I walked forward one of the theme songs to Star Wars began to echo across the alpine lake behind me. Trying to keep my composure and not laugh at the choice of music used for my introduction, I gave an unrehearsed speech describing the beauty of Jiuzhaigou National Park, found in Sichuan Province on the Tibetan Plateau.

Behind me was a circa 10 meter red banner that read “World Famous Photographers Focusing On The Fairyland — Jiuzhaigou.”

I introduced myself in Chinese and quickly switched to English in my speech to a large Chinese crowd of nature lovers and photographers. As I spoke in English a translator would repeat after me, giving me time to look around and reflect upon the situation. I gave one of the most generic thank you speeches anyone has ever given and then watched as a flood of cameras and cell phones snapped photos of me shaking hands with the man in the suit.

As hundreds of people took the same picture of me, I looked at the sign again. It read “World Famous Photographers … “. While I didn’t know it when I woke up, this would be the day, someone decided myself and 11 other colleagues were “World Famous.” (Again, if you aren’t from New York or New England, please re-read the last sentence using your sarcastic voice).

It was one of the stranger moments of my three years in China … But let me rewind and help explain how and why I got to this stunning place.

Two Months Earlier

Two months earlier an art gallery called and asked if I would be interested in going to photograph Jiuzhaigou National Park. They said I could stay for as little as three days or longer if I wanted and it would be like a “paid vacation.” For going to the park, saying a one-minute speech, and giving them 20 photographs — they would give me 10,000 RMB ($1500) and cover all of my expenses.

The circumstances were a bit fishy but I decided to give it a go. I agreed to their terms and hung up the phone. Minutes later they called back and asked “By the way, do you know any other foreign photographers in China?”

If you throw a rock at a foreigner in Beijing, you are most likely going to hit either (a) an English teacher or (b) a photographer. Having thrown many rocks at foreigners in Beijing, I happen to know a lot of photographers (and a lot of pissed off English teachers). I asked them why and they told me they needed many foreign photographers to go. I asked how many they were looking for, and the woman replied — about 12 or 15.

And this is when I realized, I had just signed up for my first “white guy job.” If you are unfamiliar with this term — in China, some foreigners get jobs, simply because they are foreign, not really from any merit, skill or ability. Also important to note, “white” in this sense refers to anyone, not from China.

My friend Mitch Moxley is actually writing a book about this right now. His book, tentatively titled “Tall Rice” details some of the funny jobs you can get in China, just by being foreign. Mitch uses these experiences to talk about greater topics from China.

Journalist Mitch Moxley’s TALL RICE: The High and Low Adventures of a Foreigner in China, inspired by the article “Rent a White Guy” in The Atlantic, chronicles Moxley’s outrageous adventures in Beijing, from fake businessman to Chinese propagandist to low-budget music video star, a young man’s search for identity in the most unexpected of places, to Katie Salisbury at Harper Perennial, by Stephanie Sun at Weed Literary (World English).

Based upon some of Mitch’s earlier writings on the topic we can definitely expect a fun read from this one due out in the summer of 2013. Check out some hilarious experts already published by the Atlantic Monthly here:

• Chollywood: Behind the scenes of China’s booming film industry
• Rent a White Guy: Confessions of a fake businessman from Beijing

While I had heard a lot of tales from Mitch and others about jobs like this, I had yet to really take part.

Although this was a bit of a “white guy job” — it was certainly a “white photographer guy job.” I called some friends and got a few signed up to either (a) endure or (b) enjoy the trip with me, pending on how it would go. Amongst photographers who joined me were the immensely talented Chi Yin Sim, Peter Carney, Jeff Lau, Keith Bedford and Jasper James.

While some of our foreign group were indeed photographers, a couple others slipped in — including some architects and some Italians who seemed to be more interested in smoking cigarettes than taking pictures.

The group was carted around for a couple days attending some very stereotypical Chinese events including an enormous banquet featuring traditional song and dance accompanied by a fog machine, bubble machine, snow machine, laser light show and a completely out of place psychedelic backdrop.

Our group was also given front row seats to the 2011 Miss Jiuzhaigou Finals. Hundreds of others crammed in behind us to get a look. But hey — we were now world famous. World famous photographers only sit in the front. The competition was hot, but in the end contestant number 9 took this years crown, although I was really rooting for number 6.

And just to put your mind a rest, in case you were wondering — in a Tibetan beauty pageant, there is no swimsuit contest.

Following these exciting events, we heard countless speeches by low level officials from … well, I’m not exactly sure where they were from.

Back at The Gorgeous Lake

Back at the gorgeous lake I was not the only one who had become “world famous” — the architect, the businessman, the smoking Italians and my five photographer friends were also now “world famous.”

When the ceremony was finished the large crowd dispersed. The group of world famous photographers would then spend three days photographing this amazing spot. Throughout these days, people who had seen the ceremony would continually stop me asking to take my picture or to talk to me. This was a strange juxtoposition.

On one hand, I was photographing an amazing place. There was countless half frozen waterfalls, amazing walking paths surrounded by fields of moving water and clear lakes everywhere.

In a place like this, I think its actually hard to take bad pictures. And while the scenerio was beautiful, on the other hand, I felt a bit foolish being there. Knowing that it wasn’t the quality of my pictures that mattered, but the color of my skin that was important.

A beautiful picture by a Chinese photographer, would not have been wanted. While China is certainly booming in some areas, in other areas there still seems to be so much value put on image — that all logic is forgotten.

While this did bother me, the place itself is simply fantastic. This I suppose, is the dichotomy of the “white photographer guy” job.

For more information and photography from Jiuzhaigou National Park — see last week’s post here.

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Mind-boggling. Exciting. Funny. Diverse. Contradictory.

There are so many words one can use to describe China. But one word I would not necessarily use is beautiful. While China is often stunning, it is rarely stunningly beautiful.

In my three years in China, I’ve traveled to about 25 provinces. And after going to all of these place, very rarely would the word beautiful come to mind when describing them. Sometimes I end up in beautiful villages, however they are usually extremely poor and trash is almost inevitably scattered across the landscape. And when you do see stunningly beautiful areas in China, you are usually surrounded by 20,000 of your closest comrades.

Interesting, exciting, funny, diverse — sure. But beautiful — not necessarily.

However, last week I had the opportunity of visiting Jiuzhaigou National Park on the TIbetan Plateau in Northern Sichuan. And after three years in China, this marked the first time for me that I found a place — stunningly beautiful. Although I was not alone, compared to visiting the Forbidden City, this place was like visiting a ghost town. While in the summer, crowds soar here, in the winter it feels much more like the Sierra Nevada than China.

The national park, which is indeed a famous tourist attractions in China, is also an UNESCO World Heritage Area. UNESCO describes the area as:

Stretching over 72,000 ha in the northern part of Sichuan Province, the jagged Jiuzhaigou valley reaches a height of more than 4,800 m, thus comprising a series of diverse forest ecosystems. Its superb landscapes are particularly interesting for their series of narrow conic karst land forms and spectacular waterfalls. Some 140 bird species also inhabit the valley, as well as a number of endangered plant and animal species, including the giant panda and the Sichuan takin.

Although the park does get crammed full of tourists in the summer and fall, during winter — for the most part this place was extremely empty for Chinese standards.

The road through the park gives very good access to countless waterfalls and lakes. The fauna and landscape are perhaps the only place I’ve been in the world that reminded me of Yosemite National Park. I’m not sure if the rock climbing crowd has truly explored this area, but even from the road, it looks like there is an endless amount of untouched surfaces to climb.

For me this was a great change of pace and it reminded me — there are still pristine areas left in China not completely over run by tourism, pollution or enormous sky scrappers. The facilities that were there, were actually very nice. There were a few resorts scattered around the park and within the park hundreds of kilometers of walking trails — many of which are on very cool wooden paths surrounded by waterfalls on all sides.

Photographically, getting to this park in the winter was truly a treat. Waterfalls, ice and gray skies make some longer exposures during day time hours pretty easy. At f/32, ISO 50 I could get a lot of exposures up to 1.5 seconds and create some nice motion blut. If I were to go back, I would surely bring an ND filter. I saw a couple Chinese photographers with ND filters shooting 30 second+ exposures, which I would love to see how they turned out.

Beyond long exposure waterfall photography the color of the park is very cool. The alpine lakes remind me of those I had seen in New Zealand and in volcanic areas in Hawai’i. Unique minerals in the area create some amazing colors in the water. Combined with some stunning visibility, the colorful lakes contrast very nicely against the white snow and green trees.

According to Wikipedia:

Seven of the nine Tibetan villages are still populated today. The main agglomerations that are readily accessible to tourists are Heye, Shuzheng and Zechawa along the main paths that cater to tourists, selling various handicrafts, souvenirs and snacks. There is also Rexi in the smaller Zaru Valley and behind Heye village are Jianpan, Panya and Yana villages. Guodu and Hejiao villages are no longer populated.

While we did visit some of the villages, like many Tibetan things I’ve seen, the areas seemed a bit fake and people were scarce. However, our guide told us we could rest assured “The Tibetan people here are both very happy and rich.” Sadly, the current series of self-immolation monks is just around the corner from this area … The propagandized statement was just one of many our guide would make.

Oh yes … my guide. The circumstances in which I was being guided around this place is a story in itself.

And while the story itself is not nearly as beautiful as the park, it is a pretty entertaining and includes me walking down a red carpet to the music from Star Wars.

Ill tell that tale next …

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. A Helping Hand is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part V of this series takes place in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan with Gong Changxiang, a mentally disabled man working in a vocational center.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. “Hello My Name Is …” is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part IV of this series takes place in Fuyang, the small city of 10 million in Anhui Province with Yuan Weiwei who was born with Cerebral Palsy. This video is a bit different and focuses on the family of the subject. This is also my favorite of the series.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Part IV of this series was the hardest of the videos. It also turned out to be my favorite.

The task immediately became a bit daunting when we found out our subject who we were meant to be profiling — couldn’t talk much.

While Weiwei was not afraid of the camera, his speech and dialogue were not developed enough to get entire sentences out of him. He also was not the most mobile of our subjects. He had trouble getting around, which made our filming locations limited.

However, even given these limitations the story developed in front of us into a rather heart warming story. The camera ended up turning to his mother to help drive the narrative, while Weiwei would maintain the visual story.

After a couple different versions of the script, we finally settled on the version you see here. After this we went into post production where the hardest decision was the music.

From an audience perspective, or film makers perspective, I’m not sure if people realize how hard it is to pick the correct music. It will instantly change the mood of your film and can even change the message. In many ways, I think the music is just as important as the images.

Our choice here, which came from stocksound.net, is bordering on cheesy — or too much. The story in itself is actually quite sad. However, the mother’s continued support and optimism is pretty inspiring. Given the dichotomous nature of those two feelings, it was very tricky to decide if we were bending the story toward an unreal truth with this music. There are a couple other versions with completely different songs, which won’t see the light of day, but they did truly change the mood of the film.

When we settled on this music, the images and pacing of the story were cut to fit and the product ended up being my favorite of the series — including the main movie.

Three weeks after these videos published on the premier of a Youku Channel, we got word that a local NGO in Anhui saw the video and actually approached Weiwei’s family to help. As a journalist and film maker this is great to hear. That our documentation of a live may have helped a family. Hopefully, more details on this later …

For now, enjoy “Hello, My Name Is …”

Jonah

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. China Doll is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part III of this series takes place in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui with Jiang Yuqiu — who has brittle bone syndrome

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. Working Dreams is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part II of this series takes place South of Beijing with Li Chao — a mentally handicap chef.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Although he appears serious during a couple moments of the film, I can assure you — as soon as the camera would stop rolling he was smiling and laughing. This was really nice to see — regardless of any of the hardships he had faced, he continued to smile his way through life.

Support from his family and coworkers was also great to see and I believe the result of the compassion people have shown him, has resulted in a normal life for Li Chao.

He goes to work. He is married. He hangs out with his family. Really, there was very little difference between this man and any other, despite his disability.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. Blind Ambition is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part I of this series starts in West Beijing with Han Yao — a visually impaired stenographer.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Her husband was also a big help. He joined us for the day and interestingly enough, he is also visually impaired. Perhaps more interesting is their combined interest in photography.

At some point in the video we show them taking pictures but had we had more time, we would have gone deeper into this. Both of them enjoy the art of photography. You might think this hobby would not be the first choice for people who can’t see through the camera, but from this shoot, I learned this is a bad assumption.

While the couple does have limited vision (what was described to us as “about the width of three fingers”) they take pictures based on other senses. Its a very interesting process to watch.

The subject’s interest in photography made it a little easier for us to photograph her. Some of our other subjects were not nearly as comfortable around the cameras — but Han Yao was completely used to it and the effect was shown on the video.

I think Hao Yao’s confidence and accomplishments are to be admired by all. Especially in the physical and mental environment of China, to achieve so much is very impressive.

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Using a fat Chinese man, a large backpack, a baseball cap and the hood from my sweatshirt I attempted to hide myself.

I was hiding in between the beefy man and a 35 kg f-stop Satori camera bag on the back of the fat man’s motorcycle. He drove me down a dark dirt road in the middle of the night near the uniquely autonomous village of Wukan, Guangdong Province.

I was hiding from those that might not want attention drawn to this small village of about 13,000 people.

Earlier in the week, pissed off villagers had over thrown their leaders and in mass numbers forced the police out of town. When the police came back, they setup barriers and created a stronghold around their fishing community, only letting in sympathizers.

The New York Times’ Edward Wong described it as:

The outsiders had come to see how furious residents had transformed their village on China’s southeast coast into a temporarily autonomous zone. Their anger focused on two issues: what they called illegal land sales by village officials, and the death on Dec. 11 of a village advocate while he was in police custody. The villagers chased out Communist Party officials, repelled an assault by police officers and barricaded all roads leading into Wukan with tree trunks. The two police stations in the village stood empty. So did the headquarters of the Communist Party committee.

This was not a new conflict nor is it unusual in China. The villagers were protesting illegal government land grabs. And after a village representative was killed in police custody, they had simply had — enough.

Within one week of the Telegraph’s Malcome Moore breaking the story — the stronghold had drawn media attention from all across the globe and eventually landed me at what would be the tail end of the conflict. The international media gave the small village the ability to rage “a propaganda war.”

And while I certainly missed the hot part of this story, I think I may have witnessed the strange part.

It makes perfect sense to me that people would be mad about government land seizures and certainly over the death of a villager — however, what didn’t make sense to me was the “end” of this story.

My video journal above for the New York Times gives a brief outline of what happened, but to me it seemed not much was resolved — given how mad everyone was days earlier.

Minutes after the protest ended life seemed to go back to a pretty normal state pretty quickly.

During my last interview with reporter Edward Wong, the crowd was dispersing from the town hall meeting. While people slowly drifted away, a pancake vendor frantically shuffled his cart out to the crowded street to capitalize on the mass numbers. This was the China I knew. Someone had to take advantage of the opportunity and make money.

The pancakes were delicious …

Ed and I walked down to the ocean to see the fishing port. Fisherman were getting their boats ready and some young kids played on a dock as the sun set over the small town that had made global headlines.

The “ending” to me seemed to abrupt. Its hard to believe it could end so peaceful and so suddenly after what had occurred. And as one villager put it — ““I’m afraid they might come and take people away … The local government always says one thing but does another.” I hope for the sake of this village, this man is wrong.

But for now, it seems the book has been left open …

Video Journal

My video goes along with a written journal by Times’ reporter Edward Wong. See Ed’s journal here.

This package comes out today on nytimes.com and is a bit different than the reporting that has previously been done on the incident. While we give the news, our assignment was for both of us to give a more personal story of what it was like to come to the village and the process in which we watched the news unfold. This falls into the “journal” category of news rather than a traditional “this is what happened” type report.

From a reporter’s perspective this was a bit a media circus. Toward the beginning of the video I show one shot of reporters almost being run over by a minivan with a village leader in it, as one example of the amount of media there.

To see how this story unfolded check out Timess staff earlier reportage on the event:

• Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s Muzzle
• Demonstrators Who Took Over Chinese Village Halt Protest
• Officials Meet With Protesting Chinese Villagers
• Wukan Protesters Seek Return of Xue Jinbo’s Body
• Wukan Revolt Takes On a Life of Its Own

While I was shooting video for this assignment, I kept a camera attached to my hip with a Blackrapid RS 7-Strap. The photos from this post are mostly taken with one hand while holding a camera rig in the other.

BREAKING NEWS & DSLRS

Although this video is pretty straight forward, on the technical side, if was hard to produce. The video journal (top video) was produced Thursday night/Friday morning Beijing time in between 12:00 am and 5:00 am. However, I had made a news clip one day earlier for TimesCast that also had tough deadlines. Working DSLR’s and breaking news can be very tricky with workflow, especially with file sizes and transmitting times. The news clip above was actually edited from the back of a crammed car in the middle of the night. Transmitting from this type of remote location slowed data rates down to about 15 Kbps which forced me to convert all video down to 720p and quality to below 50%.

One reporter I saw at the scene had a proper microphone attached to — just a cell phone camera with a tiny steady cam on it. Compared to caring around tons of weight, glass and a shoulder rig — this is amazing. Given that the information needs to get out as quickly as possible, if you are put in the scenario where the files will be compressed anyway, this almost makes more sense. It allows reporters to be extremely mobile and transmit and much faster speeds. However, the down side would be if you actually wanted your footage to look good post event …

With my normal workflow, all files out of a Canon DSLR get immediately re-codaced into Apple ProRes to make editing easier and export quality better. This step really slows down your work flow so for the news clip directly above, I skipped it and the main journal at the top of this post, was re-codaced.

While the quality you can get from DSLRs is great, I think they are less than ideal for stories like this that need to be turned around as soon as possible … otherwise, you might find yourself getting very little sleep.

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In the fall of of 2011 I was approached by Save the Children to help tell a story. This story would be an ordinary story — a snapshot into the lives of five different people. However, those five people were not exactly ordinary. The subjects all had physical or mental handicaps.

But what was ordinary about these people — was their desire to live life to its fullest. They wanted the same things all other Chinese people wanted. They wanted jobs and financial security. They wanted a husband or wife. And they wanted to be treated equally and with dignity. While their lives were a little different, they were in many ways the same as all other people.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population.

In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back.

Through contributions from Save the Children China, the European Union and Kingfisher — friend and journalist Kit Gillet and myself got the opportunity to help create short videos to help show this ordinary side of China’s disabled population. We didn’t want to portray these people as heroes or create sympathy. Instead, the idea was to show the actual reality of their lives — and minimize superficial and sensational ideas surrounding them.

Toward the end of the main feature Li Weihong, Vice Chairman of the China Association of the Blind says:

“I think disabled people can participate equally in normal life and through their efforts help others. I think having a disability is not bad luck but simply an inconvenience. We can do a great job and be involved completely and equally, as long as we are provided with a barrier-free environment and help in overcoming our disabilities.”

This quote summed up a big part of our goal. While showing the ordinary side of these people, we also had to show the different side — as well as the challenging side.

We wanted to make an integrated video package which would allow a big picture view — but also give the opportunity to see the individual peoples lives. With the help of Save the Children we found five subjects in Beijing, Anhui and Sichuan who we could spend some time with filming their daily routines. After filming them we found a couple experts to ask about issues surrounding China’s disabled population. This accumulated to about 1 TB of footage which we split up into six videos. The first, embedded above is the main piece titled “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same.”

This 10-minute feature gives an over view of the current situation for disabled people living in China. After piecing this together, we made five additional short four-minute videos that show the ordinary aspects of the people’s lives seen in this film.

The video profiles include a visually impaired stenographer in Beijing, a teacher in Hefei with brittle bone syndrome, a mentally handicapped chef outside of Beijing, a boy with cerebral palsy in Fuyang and a ping-pong playing, car washing man in Chengdu. We talked to their families, their spouses and their friends and coworkers. We saw their daily triumphs and hardships while at the same time, saw how society was viewing them as they went through their daily routines.

I believe the situation for disabled people China is immensely better than in was in the past. However, the population still faces great hardships and barriers to having normal lives. Many of these hardships come from China’s infrastructure and environment.

Li Weihong, goes on to say:

“The biggest problem, As I see it, is to form an environment where the blind can see, the deaf can hear and where the physically-handicapped can get around. If that can happen then the disabilities of those with handicaps will be gone and they can live a life like any other person.”

I Believe Weihong is talking about more than a physical environment here. And while it is easy to look at China as a developing country with issues that need tending, I think many of these same issues still exist in the West.

Please enjoy “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same” and help share these videos with people of all countries to help create greater awareness of issues facing disabled people around the planet.

Barriers and stigmas can only be broken with dialogue and awareness.

Check back throughout this week for the five shorter video profiles.

Jonah