This is not about hatred. This is not about espionage. This is not about history or cultural exploration. This is only about one man's travel, a travel on record, a travel without any plan.And eventually, a travel ending with warm details and reflections on life.
Japanese reputed public broadcaster NHK produced this amazing series of documentaries five years ago. NHK invited actor Tomohiro to take on the challenge of traveling 36,000 kilometers (about 22,369 miles) by railway throughout China. The path was designed by computer software, such that the route is an unbroken line, and not a single part of the route crosses another part of the same route.The trip is broken into two editions: Spring and Fall. In the Spring edition, Sekiguchi's trip begins by flying from Japan to Lhasa in Tibet, and ends in Xian - with a distance of 17,000 km. The Fall edition continues the journey, and ends with a combined 36,000 km traveled.
However, except the planned routes, there was nothing else scripted or arranged. The whole team were only Tomohiro, his Japanese-Chinese translator and a cameraman. When Tomohiro gets off from one train, he just walks around, find something to do on his own before it's time for the next train. It's just so hard to imagine how to make a documentary in this way: how to find stories, how to keep audience engaged, how to make this interesting and meaningful?
But this documentary itself is not structured for something big. Tomohiro just behaves as himself, friendly talking with passengers on the train, asking whatever he was curious about, following local people to check out their real life.This kind of daily ordinary life is hardly seen on any other television programs, movies or documentaries. It's just too ordinary, too simple, too plain, too trivial.However, this didn't make it a failure, instead a huge success.
Through his eyes, China is not an abstract concept, not a powerful country or a nation that has "unpleasant" history with Japan. China is just all about the Chinese people, who are friendly, enthusiastic, kind and simple. These ordinary people are amazing. And this is the reason why audience just want to follow him to see what's going on next.
What makes this documentary such a success? I would say two reasons:
first it's focus on the most ordinary people; second, it's the attractive childish curiosity of the host.
