Full coverage: ‘看中國’外國青年影像計劃專題

Editor's foreword: "Looking China" International Youth Film Project is co-organized by the Academy for International Communication of Chinese Culture (AICCC), Beijing Normal University and Huilin Foundation. The program focuses on the young participants’ personal experiences of Chinese culture and encourages them to discover and tell Chinese stories from their own perspectives.

As of the year 2017, students from all over the world were invited to participate in the project. They were stationed in 12 municipality, provinces and autonomous regions here in China. Every filmmaker has worked out a 10-minute short film about Chinese culture around the topic of "Craftsmanship·Inheritance·Innovation.”

The movie "Taste of Shenzhen," directed by Volen Penev and produced by Fan Mengzhu, shows us the life of a representative inheritor of Shenzhen Yunpian cake, which is Guangdong Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage.

His family business Hechenghao was founded in 1901 and serves mainly Yunpian cakes. He said he is not just making cakes, he is passing on Shenzhen’s culture. He and his team also hold events including lectures, to make sure more people know about its local culture. 

Some people say Shenzhen is a cultural desert, because it was designed to be an economic center of the region and massive immigrants from other places in China that make it a big city without much character.

The director chose to film the movie at old streets of the modern city to feature the daily cooking process showing plenty about lives there. As the old Chinese saying goes, "Humanity's most fundamental relationship is with what we eat." By presenting the local cooking process, we can learn much about their lives as well.

PS. The movie contains animal killing content, which may make some people feel uncomfortable.

(The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Panview or CCTV.com. )

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