Cover of the book Beyond the Mountain Photo: Courtesy of Ryo Takeuchi

 

Ryo Takeuchi(left) Photo: Courtesy of Takeuchi

"I want to show people the real Liangshan, a mountainous area in Southwest China's Sichuan Province and a diverse China," Ryo Takeuchi said. 

Takeuchi, a Japanese documentary director now living in Nanjing, the capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, never expected the documentary he made in 2021 to attract the world's attention. So far, the documentary Beyond the Mountain has been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube and has been featured on the Japanese influential online news Yahoo! and Topic's home page. 

Now the documentary has been launched as a book with the title Beyond the Mountain that truly showcases the real changes China's poverty relief efforts have brought to Liangshan and the dedication of poverty alleviation workers and volunteers.

The highlight of the book is that the participants to the documentary tell their own stories from their individual point of view and the director himself describes his love affair with Liangshan, which was also one of the main reasons for making the documentary.

Hani, writer of the book told the Global Times that, "I hope that this book will make more people pay attention to what is happening in Liangshan and help more people in need to achieve their dreams."  

Emotional connections

Takeuchi filmed Liangshan for the first time in 2011 when there were no roads yet and he needed to ride a donkey to enter the village. In the documentary, he returned to Liangshan after 10 years to truly record the great changes that had taken place from the perspective of a foreigner. The film crew this time was able to drive to the village and pay an old woman selling water on the mountain path through QR code.

Takeuchi told the Global Times that: "We recorded the villagers' lives authentically, we got close to them and what they showed us was very real, without intentionally paying attention to image or speech, because they believed in us and there was a certain feeling of trust among the people involved, which resulted in a good documentary."

The documentary connects people from different regions and the authenticity of the documentary made viewers feel like they were in Liangshan.

Some netizens talked about their own relationship with Liangshan. A Japanese netizen's comment on YouTube said that, "I wept when I saw the children say their dreams were to practice music, dance, soccer, and acting, but when they had money they wanted to donate it to the school." Others praised the poverty alleviation policy after watching the film. 

After the documentary was released in 2021, Yilin Press contacted the producer of the documentary and they agreed to explore more stories in the book. 

"There were so many touching stories that were not shown in the documentary and many people want to read about untold stories, so we published this book to let more people know about Liangshan," Li Rui, the editor of the book Beyond the Mountain, told the Global Times. 

In March 2022, Hani set off for Liangshan to begin writing, even though it was not easy to get there in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the writing process, Hani felt that she only superficially understood the people featured in the documentary, but she didn't know what their deepest feelings and thoughts were, so she insisted on going to Liangshan to meet and talk to them. 

"I needed to go to Liangshan to get a real feeling of the people, so that I could establish an emotional connection with them," Hani told the Global Times.

'Talk about your dreams'

Takeuchi encourages Liangshan's students to speak about their dreams, stressing that, "If you have a dream, please talk about it! If you don't talk about it, no one will know what your dream is and no one will help you, then your dream may never become reality."  

Dream seems to be the key word of both the documentary and the book.

In the book, Hani and Wenggume (the main character in documentary) climbed to the so-called "cliff village," which is a part that is not featured in the documentary. 

Wenggume is a Yi woman characterized by a very strong adventurous spirit, when she learned about Hani's desire to climb up to the "cliff village," Wenggume insisted to go along. Hani said that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for her because going to the cliff village is not easy and according to the local tradition, women cannot go out and engage in such perilous activities. 

"For the first time in 40 years, I have written so many words, many of these are because of you," Wenggume wrote in the book. 

While the photographer Xu Liang had a crucial role in both the documentary and the book, he made the documentary from formation to realization. Xu had been preparing this project since he joined Takeuchi's teams. 

"Xu wanted to shoot Liangshan, he described his idea to me and has kept encouraging me. I was very impressed by him," Takeuchi said.

Xu hoped to shoot the documentary since his teaching experience in Liangshan. In the book, in 2017, Xu, who had returned to his home country for summer vacation after studying abroad, saw the monument the villagers had erected for a teacher who had worked there and Xu was deeply touched by it. 

At that time, he was interested in learning about a different side of China, so he made the decision to go teaching in Liangshan in 2018. 

"This book is about the realization of many people's dreams, because everyone is chasing their dreams: Takeuchi's dream of making a Chinese documentary came true, Xu Liang's dream of shooting the Liangshan documentary came true, Wengume's dream of climbing to the 'cliff village' came true and my dream of writing a book came true," Hani said.