In 2019, Depth of Field showcased stories covering a range of topics: Shi Yangkun’s nostaglic exploration of China’s last collective villages, Zhu Lingyu’s careful and artisitic portrayal of survivors of sexual violence, and cities seen through the eyes of food delivery men.
Beimeng Fu is an award-winning multimedia journalist and founder of the newsletter The Southern Chinatown. Her research focuses on China and the Chinese diaspora’s interactions with Southeast Asia and Latin America. Through character-driven features, she explores the human story of global power shifts and how vastly different worlds resonate with one another. She has worked at BuzzFeed News, ABC News, and Sixth Tone, with bylines in Nikkei Asia, Rest of World, and more.
Beijing’s infamous “airpocalypse” in 2013 prompted the Chinese government to declare a “war against pollution,” putting forward initiatives to clean up the air. Today air quality in the capital city has been improved, but the battle for blue sky is far from over, especially for the people in charge of fighting it.
The number of people who wear hanfu, a traditional style of dress that ethnic Han Chinese wore before the Manchu-ruled Qing Dynasty, has increased rapidly in the past few years. According to a report conducted and published by Hanfu Information, an account that aggregates information on hanfu, the number of hanfu fans grew from less than 500 thousand in 2015 to more than 2 million in 2018, with the hanfu industry valued at 1 billion RMB (~ 150 million USD).
In 2015, after actress Xu Jinglei revealed on Weibo that she had had her eggs frozen in the U.S., giving rise to heated debate in the media, the fertility procedure entered into China’s public consciousness. Although the service has been available in China for a decade, it is currently available only to married women. A recent lawsuit against a hospital for refusing to freeze the eggs of an unmarried patient could potentially change that, but until then, single women who want to undergo the procedure must travel abroad for it.
Wang Shuang is one of the biggest stars in Chinese soccer. In August 2018, Wang signed with the Paris Saint-Germain women’s club, becoming the first Chinese soccer player to join the prominent French club. Signing with Paris Saint-Germain has significantly elevated Wang’s reputation both domestically and internationally. This video documents Wang’s journey to Paris and her struggles to learn a new language and training style.
This story by photographer Cai Xingzhuo takes us to the basement of a funeral home in Changsha and looks at the life of a funeral makeup artist. The moody images show a world we rarely see, and an occupation that’s still seen as a taboo by many Chinese people.
China continues to construct facilities on artificial islands it built to increase control over disputed territories in the South China Sea. But how did China build these artificial islands in the first place? Using examples of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and controversial islands in the South China Sea, Paperclip explains the construction of artificial islands from engineering, commercial and national security perspectives.
This story follows two people in their 20s, who were laid off from internet companies amid an economic decline that has affected many sectors in China since last year. Heli, without telling her parents who believe a stable elementary school teacher job is the best for her, starts to pursue a career in tarot cards reading. Wang Zishan picked up photography and started traveling after he was laid off. Their anxiety and loss of direction reflects a generation who just entered employment but already have to prepare themselves for uncertainty.
Coming from an impoverished village in Tianshui, Gansu province, Yang Cheng, Li Huijun, Zhou Xuxu work as food delivery men in Wangjing, a district in northeastern Beijing. The three men hail from one extended family. Although the hours are long and the working conditions are hazardous, food delivery work has provided opportunities for people like Yang, Li and Zhou to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
