Du Shenzhong playing the pipa at his home in Shaoyu village, Shandong Province Photo: Courtesy of Liu Xiaochen

Perhaps by reading Mo Yan's novels or watching Zhang Yimou's films, you've already created an image of what China's countryside must be like in your mind. However, if you want to get a more realistic picture of China's rural areas, you shouldn't miss the as-yet-to-be-released documentary Village Diary (Xiangcunlidezhongguo).

A true record of life in a village in East China's Shandong Province, the English subtitled Village Diary has touched many viewers during screenings with its depiction of the joys and sorrows of people making their way through life in the rural countryside.

"It makes you laugh and makes you cry. Real life is always far more exciting and touching than any artistic creation," many people who have watched the film have commented on douban.com - a site for critiquing books, films, TV programs and other media - where the documentary holds an 8.9 out of 10.

"I hope this documentary will change people's understanding of farmers and the countryside," Jiao Bo, director of Village Diary, told the Global Times.

The land, the people

Two years ago, Jiao and his crew of five college students headed to a medium-sized village in Yiyuan county, Shandong Province looking to produce a documentary on rural life. As villages in China go, the village of Shaoyu can't be considered too rich nor too poor, while culturally speaking it has managed to retain many traditional customs while still staying closely connected to the outside world.

The documentary covers the life of the village over the course of a year, which it divides up according to the traditional 24 "solar terms" (24 approximately two-week long periods) used in ancient China.

Keeping focus mainly on three families that live in the village, the film documents the comings and goings of these villagers while trying to explore the subtle changes going on in a traditional village right smack in the middle of social transformation.

Village life is represented through certain "main characters" in the film, such as Du Shenzhong, who has been described by many people who have watched the film as the most lovely and intellectual farmer they've ever seen. While Du is persistent about living the life of an educated man despite living in poverty, his wife, on the other hand, is a practical rural woman. The different outlooks on life shared by the two usually mean they are always arguing.

Zhang Zi'en is the village's Party Secretary. Spending most of his time taking care of village affairs all year long, he also must deal with the complaints and doubts of villagers.

Du Bincai is a college student living with his father. His parents divorced when he was around 3 years old due to his father's fight with mental illness; he hasn't seen his mother for over 19 years.

Jiao's lens covers the typical peaceful life of a village, family relationships and the dreams of ordinary farmers as well as the disputes between villagers. Themes within the film are many; involving environment protection when a 100-year-old tree is sold to an urban area as decoration; touching on grass-roots politics when several villagers plan to investigate the financial accounts of the village committee led by Zhang Zizhong; and talking about the "Chinese dream" as Du Shenzhong attempts to learn the pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument similar to a lute.

Audiences laughed as they watched Du lie to his wife about how much he paid for his pipa; they looked on with heavy hearts as a child loses his father, who was killed in an accident at a construction site; and they wept as Du Bincai sings a song for the father who raised him all on his own.

Though a documentary, Village Diary has rich plots and a number of climaxes that help push the story along. Screenings shown on several occasions have won the film tons of praise from both audiences and industry insiders. Prior to becoming well-known publicly, the film had already won nine awards at film festivals over the past few months.

Familiar lens

The documentary crew lived in the village for a total of 373 days to record farmers' lives rain or shine. They shot over 1,000 hours of raw footage, which they edited down into the 97-minute final film.

A photographer who grew up in a rural area, the 58-year-old Jiao has deep feelings for areas such as these, the memory of which he is trying to preserve through his camera lens.

"When we first got to the village, we had no idea what we would end up with. Without any planning beforehand, several main storylines began to emerge as shooting proceeded," Jiao told the audience after a screening at Beijing Normal University on Tuesday.

"I have to thank God for allowing us to run into these people and their stories."

Also from a rural area in Shandong Province, Jiao was able to talk to local villagers on their own terms, which greatly helped the shoot. "We treated them as equals and tried to represent the most natural side of their lives," said Jiao, jokingly referring to himself as a "farmer in a big city."

Rural understanding

By recording farmers' daily lives, the documentary reinterprets people's preconceptions of farmers and their relationship with the land.

"I hope the film can change people's stereotypes about Chinese farmers and help them really understand farmers' lives," Jiao told the Global Times.

Though a farmer, Du Shenzhong pursues his dream of playing the pipa and is a wise and farsighted man, very different from the stereotypical image of farmers in China. "A farmer also has his spiritual pursuits. Du's dream can be seen as a miniature of the larger 'China dream,'" Jiao said.

Things in the village are changing now as screenings of the film have caused the village to garner increasing attention from outside. Glad to see these changes, Jiao also worries that their simple life might be changed in a direction that he's not willing to see.

"Dozens of villages disappear in China every single day," Jiao noted. "I only hope that urbanization will not uniformly change their lifestyles but rather allow them to live as comfortable as they like."

A release date for Village Diary has yet to be set.