Full coverage: ‘看中國’外國青年影像計劃專題

Editor’s forward: "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 2018, students from 35 countries were invited to participate in the "Looking China" project. They were stationed in 11 municipalities, provinces and autonomous region here in China. Every filmmaker has worked out a 10-minute short film about Chinese culture around the topic of "Ecology, Biology, Lifeology."

The short film, “The Life of a Seed,” directed by Maria Luz Siccardi; produced by Xu Lin; translated with English subtitles by Maria Liz Siccardi and supervised by Victor Cruz follows a middle-aged woman who devoted her professional career to taking photos of plants.

Earlier in life she studied Finance at the University of Shenzhen and head for a successful career in investment banking. But she had a hobby in which she would visit the surrounding countryside in Guangdong Province, take photos of plants, identify the plant species that she had pictures for and shared them on her Social Media.

She had earned widespread recognition for her efforts and even had a fan club. She was contacted by magazine to write about the plants she photographed and was invited to give public lectures at universities around China. She had gotten so busy with her hobby that she quit her job in investment banking to make a career out of her hobby.

Did she make the right decision? Well, she loves her job and is earning an income from it, so the answer appears to be yes!

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