cotton road 棉花之路

第一趟外高桥之行就收获颇丰。

徐孜（cathie）小姐是一位热情开朗的上海女孩，同时也对棉花业务非常熟悉的专业人士。从她那里，我们不仅了解到棉花是如何“进入”中国——这个跟之前我想象的并不一样，大部分棉花在业务正常的时候都是先由国外棉花产商联系徐小姐那样的公司运至中国，放在专门经营的棉花货舱里，之后棉花就等在仓库里，等有人来买。当然据说经济危机，以及美国政府去年的退税政策让现在很多棉花产商不敢贸然运棉花到中国，因为仓库的成本很高，所以越来越多的棉花是先找好买家再运过来——同时还获得了好多有用的联系方式。她就是Laura口中的“right person”！

我觉得和Laura一起做这件事情很开心。人的生命是旅程，棉花经过的路也是旅程。用棉花经过的这段路程，把一个个人的故事，人的生命串联在一起。不同的语言，不同的国家，不同的文化，不同的肤色，不同的生命，却传递着同样一件事物。这本身就已经很有意思了。

所以我想我需要做的，是帮助Laura，记录下我们听到、见到的有关棉花的人的故事。而目前我觉得最难的一点，就是如何让人们在镜头前面自然的展现自己。面对镜头谁都会有点紧张，只是有多有少。遇到不大健谈的，或者对镜头太过陌生的人，我也有点紧张。Laura在Notes中提了很多很好的建议。这些应该都是她在美国拍片时候的经验吧。我觉得很实用。

明天我希望能够真的同袁先生，陈先生还有那些喜欢用是、否回答问题的工友们真的聊天。希望能拍到他们同棉花相关的喜怒哀乐的故事。

Li Zhen and I had great fortune and luck 运 (yun4) on Monday at Wai Gao Qiao.  Our 运 began when we met Cathie Xu, a woman who works for Mallory Alexander International Logistics Company.  Cathie is an engineer by training; she works near Wai Gao Qiao and manages the movement of goods to and from China, from the shipper to buyers. Because she occasionally works with cotton, she was able to take us to three different cotton warehouses for a look around.  These are ‘bonded warehouses’, where cotton is sent before it is sold.  If cotton has a buyer already, it is shipped from its origin (Bennettsville, South Carolina for example) straight to the mill that has made the purchase.  However, if cotton doesn’t have a buyer, it can be shipped to a warehouse in a Free Trade Zone like Wai Gao Qiao where it might be purchased in transit, or after it arrives to the warehouse. Today we saw cotton from Oklahoma, Texas, India, Mexico and Mali. It expanded the story for me to lay eyes on cotton from around the world, collected in the same room.  At first glance, a bale of cotton is a rather uniform thing; but these hundreds of bales stacked one on to of another were undeniably unique: bound neatly or with broken wire; colored yellow, brown, or pinkish; dirty and clean; wrapped in plastic, burlap, or a cotton sack. Each bale possesses its own history, an object with a kind of “embedded energy” (to quote my friend Ellen Kochansky). The work of cotton growing and harvesting is an uneven playing field around the world.  It’s gathered by hand or by $500,000 machines.  But it all ends up here, in relatively the same place in the global market. I find this interesting to think about. 

One of the things Cathie said to us was “You should have made your film in 2006!” There was a lot of cotton on the global market then, and a lot of it was in China. Even though China is still importing cotton from around the world, textile production has greatly slowed given the global decline in demand. Still, Mr. Yuan’s warehouse (left) was pretty full.  The second warehouse we visited had only cotton from India (the above photo); they were unloading big shipments of granulated polyvinyl chloride when we arrived. The third warehouse we visited was the largest and newest, with cotton stacked about 9 bales high. I didn’t pay careful attention to the PBI tags we saw, but in her interview Cathie mentioned Oklahoma and, I think, Charlotte. We did a couple of interviews here at the warehouse, one with Cathie and one with Mr. Chen Bin, the warehouse manager. It was the end of the day, cold and raining, and the light was falling fast.  We weren’t able to do much, but it was a start. I am eager to return here in particular to film these enormous stacks and amass a visual collection of ID tags from around the world.

Mr. Chen Bin was incredibly helpful, and even gave us a ride back the edge of Shanghai. In the car he happened to mention that his wife works for a textile company in Yan Pu District, which is in Shanghai. He gave us her number and we will follow up to see about a tour. Even though I hope we will also be able to return to Ningbo, having access to a location closer to Shanghai will be great. 

All warehouse managers agreed to invite us back for more filming between now and July.  We’ll be able to document how shipments of cotton rise or fall, depending on the global economic situation, as well as how long cotton sits before buyers come. Our final stroke of luck came when Cathie Xu introduced us to a cotton broker, Mr. Wang Li.  He works in customs clearance and does CIQ inspections at a location in the Free Trade Zone. Mr. Wang invited us to come with him to film the inspections and related activity at the port; we’ll also be able to connect with cotton’s transport out of port by truck drivers. In addition to American cotton, I want to attend inspections of cotton from around the world. I am interested in how all this cotton, which is grown under such wide-ranging economic circumstances and conditions, is able to compete or not once it’s here. For instance, many of the cotton bales from India were disheveled and falling apart, with exploded brackets. Cotton from India looks like cotton from a developing nation.

第一次见到柯瑞嘉觉得这跟我印象中的纪录片导演有着十分的不相同。一个那么温文谦和，看上去柔柔弱弱的女子，怎么也不像顶着烈日在棉花地里跟农民兄弟一起流汗的下力棒。然而她那既热情又不会过火的标准的微笑，就让人不自觉得就很亲近，很愿意为她效劳，无怪击哥第一面见下便对我说，这样的人能成事。
再说我，之前我没有真的拍过电影。第一次触电是大学毕业时候为了纪念我们的青葱岁月拍的一个仅仅几分钟的小东西，称不上电影，更像是一篇小小的散文；第二次是前一学期的作业，一个无聊的会议新闻节目。因此，棉花之路的体验对我来说是全新的。
基于对柯瑞嘉愉快的第一印象，以及我对拍摄纪录片的好奇与兴趣，我对棉花之路的拍摄充满期待。
周五我们去了宁波，如柯同学所记，我们那天还是颇有收获，也鉴于她的记叙以及甚为详细，我就不再累述了。
小柯对我很信任，谢谢她。因此，我更觉得需要改进的是：多做点功课，我应该了解一些基本的技术知识，多学点专业的棉花纺织类词汇，免得跟柯同学交流时候很难将一些技术性的东西准确解释。
明天，不，是今天，我们又要去新的地方联系新的工作，希望一切顺利。

Yesterday Li Zhen and I went on our first shoot in Ningbo, China at the Weike Mian Fang factory. To get there we had to drive about 3 hours, which included the shortcut of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the longest bridge in the world. Kenny Zheng drove us to Ningbo and expertly navigated once we were there. The image here is from the Hangzhou Bay Bridge at night, on our return home.

Surprisingly, we were granted permission to film at Weike Mian Fang right away, which we weren’t expecting. Li Zhen explained to the factory manager that we would like to film longer, to talk to the workers and spend more time in the location. He did not initially understand this but told us that once we finished shooting, we could discuss this possibility.  We couldn’t find him when we finished for the day, so our next step is to follow up with him to determine if it will be possible to return.

Weike Mian Fang is part of the larger Veken Textile Company, but they only produce cotton thread and some kind of polyester fabric. One side of the factory was devoted to the processing of large bales of polyester from Malaysia. In this same large room cotton was also being processed. Large machines slowly combed through piles of raw cotton to separate the trash. The clean cotton becomes thread and the dirtier cotton is separated for other products, like blue jeans, or it is thrown away.  A room adjacent to the area where raw cotton arrives from the Port of Ningbo contains large bags dirty, raw cotton that has been discarded by the thread manufacturing process.

What is consistent from the U.S. all the way to China is the smell of cotton. Weike Mian Fang smells just like the gin in Cameron, South Carolina and the warehouses in Savannah, Georgia. I was not expecting this, and yet I recognized it as soon as I stepped onto the factory floor.  Cotton has an “organic” smell, like crushed, dried twigs mixed with fresh air.  I was also caught off guard by how few workers I saw in the factory; Weike Mian Fang appeared almost empty to me and people were scarcely to be seen. I caught glimpses of workers, manning the larger machines.  But when raw cotton is being spun into thread, the machine dominates– it fills the room.  Isle upon isle of small, robotic arms rhythmically do the work of spinning threads - 沙 (sha1)- and then making these threads into one, long line on a spool:  线 (xian4).  Even if it would have been possible to speak to any of the people we saw in the factory, they would have scarcely been heard over the din of the machines.

At the end of the production line in a room (thankfully) lit by daylight, about 4 or 5 workers were packing the 沙 into cardboard boxes.  This 沙 is heading to Japan.  In this room we did a small amount of filming and we also spoke to one of the workers on camera who became immediately shy.  We did learn that she is from Ningbo and has worked here for a long time, perhaps about 30 years  So, she would have worked here when Weike was a state-owned enterprise.  Now it is partnership between state and private, we think.  Li Zhen will research this.  

I think Li Zhen and I had a good start on Friday, but the kind of filming I did felt like practice:  it was an opportunity to be in this environment for the first time, to get a visual understanding of the space, and to see what it is like for raw cotton to become a product. It was also a chance for Li Zhen and I to practice working together, and to get a sense of how we will proceed. I also had some technical trouble:  the factory floor is very dim; I had to boost gain and shoot wide open the entire time.  The florescent lights that vaguely lit the factory were also off ballast, so the images are pulsing with a fuzzy, black bar that scrolls from bottom to the top of the screen.  (Thanks to Mark Gamble for standing “on call” in Columbia to research how I might fix this problem next time!) We will ask Mr. Zhou if we can return to Weike Mian Fang, and we’ll also ask if they can enable access to the Port of Ningbo, so that we can see the raw cotton’s arrival and transport to the factory. Weike Mian Fang was using American cotton, by the way– the bales we saw were from Mid Valley Cotton Growers, in Tulare, California; gin number 96208.
 

This is snapshot I took of an image in a Cotton, Inc. pamphlet.  The Chinese characters say American Cotton.  The image is from the same publication where this map of the southern US came from.  I agree with Susan (thanks for your comment!) that it’s a fantastic map.  It’s startling to see the familiar shape of the southern US surrounded by Chinese characters.

It’s been a slow week for Cotton Road.  Every day I read news stories about the economy in Chinese papers and American papers; I read from books I brought here about China; I try to learn about globalization from multiple points of view; and I try to study some Chinese.  I also try to leave my apartment at least once a day and walk the streets.  Yesterday I was feeling a bit down about my progress, which feels much too slow.  I had to visit the police station to present them with my new residence permit, which I picked up on Monday, and so I decided to turn the walk there into an even longer one by wandering around my neighborhood with my pocket camera.  I still have not shot any video here– in part because I haven’t known what to shoot, but also out of fear that someone will stop me and ask what I’m doing and that I won’t be able to communicate.  This is something that I clearly need to get over. But having this feeling made me realize something:  I don’t know whether or not I’m a “good” filmmaker, but I do feel very certain that I’m quite good at communicating with people. And this is why I feel so incompetent this week:  I can’t communicate here much at all.  I have to rely on others to communicate for me, or I have to forego verbal communication altogether and rely on pointing and gesture.  When I was walking around with my camera yesterday I realized how differently I would feel about my image making here if I could speak Chinese.  For me, talking to people always comes first; image making is second.  If I could speak Chinese, I would have talked a lot more to people, and consequently I would have made many more images than I did.

And yet, it is more interesting to think about the images I didn’t make. Yesterday’s late afternoon sun was beautiful for pictures, streaming across at an angle between tall buildings and lighting up the faces of the people that passed me by on the streets.  I saw three things I wish I had photographed:  a man, asleep in the sun in front of his store, slouched down in a plastic folding chair, arms crossed against his chest.  [How can he sleep surrounded by the noise of traffic, construction, and commerce?]  2.  A woman, her reflection in a mirror, surrounded by the fruit on sale at her fruit stand.  She was pensive, looking down, and very still.  3.  Laundry, in an alleyway, lit brightly by the sun and framed by a rare blue sky; a woman stood underneath the line of clothes, looking up.  These 3 images won’t leave me:  they are clear and sharp and I can still see them so vividly, but they exist only in my mind as the vetige of experience.  And consequently they are emotional images for me even more so because I did not “take” them, or mark them with the shutter of my camera.  

I’m really grateful for my new friend Tineke who said to me last night in so many words:  maybe there’s another way you can communicate– not by voice, but another way.  I thought about this a lot today and I got out my video camera and started filming from my apartment window. I filled up an 8 gig card (30 min. of video) in what felt like 3 minutes.  I got lost in the images I captured– they were busy images, but ultimately they were silent to me:  I saw people playing golf on a roof; workers dismantling (or erecting) a building and someone untangling a pile of wire; a man sweeping; traffic; and lots more laundry (I love Chinese laundry). The filming today was a start: it was a sketch, a kind of note-taking that I plan to do every day from here on out.  The next step, of course, is to take myself and my video camera into the streets and see what transpires.  But before that day, I’ll keep making visual and mental notes about the nature of my image making here, how it feels different, how the experience of not knowing and not speaking might be a liberation instead of a hindrance, and how all of this changes me.

Yesterday I learned about one of the longest bridges in the world, the Donghai Bridge, which connects Shanghai with the Yangshan Deepwater Port.  [The longest bridge in the world is in the Hangzhou Bay; it connects Shanghai to the Port of Ningbo and beats the length of Donghai by about 2 miles.] Yangshan Deepwater Port continues to expand, but already includes berths for 16 ships.  It was built on a chain of islands in the Hangzhou Bay.  I understand that it is possible to drive out to this port for a sightseeing visit, which I hope to do next week.  Recent articles speak about the fog and mist at the port, which delayed over 700 hundred vessels last week, and also an explosion yesterday which killed one worker. 

I learned from two foreign reporters last night that Shanghai is also holding job fairs for migrant laborers who have lost their jobs (approximately 20 million people are now without work, according to the Shanghai Daily). I think one of the best ways to begin my shooting here this month is to try to document the fact of rising unemployment. I continue to hear about factory closings; manufacturing is hit hardest, but the textile industry suffers as well.  I can not yet document the closing of textile mills in news stories; I so far only hear about it through word-of-mouth.  Unemployment and factory closings are very sensitive issues in China. Here is an excellent report I found on YouTube about media coverage of economic trouble that mentions Shanghai Textile Mill #9 and its transformation from factory to restaurant.  [This report is long, but well worth watching; it touches on media coverage and changing attitudes at CCTV about the documentation of subjects like generational change and economic trouble.] Many textile mills are no longer located in Shanghai, so specific accounts will be difficult to locate anyway. The center of the textile industry has moved north, to Jiangsu Province.  A longer trip to this location is something that I anticipate in the near future, maybe in March.

纪录片 are the characters for documentary film.  All have the fourth tone; the pinyin is ji lu pian.  I have know the pinyin for a while, but I didn’t look up the characters until today.  I think the characters 纪录片 have a meaning that appeals to both the poetic, imaginative and the factual, “evidentiary” aspects of documentary.

The first character - 纪 - means to remember.**  The second character - 录 – means to record.  The third character is what is called a measure word, a word used with an object to classify it.  Here, the character 片 denotes a flat or thin thing, or things that are in slices. I like the duplicity of the meaning of slice here:  to slice a film could mean to “cut”; each frame is also a “slice”, or element, of time (24 frames per second; or 29.97 fps, etc).  Another way that 片 is used is to define expanses or stretches of ocean, fog, mist; it can also reference atmosphere or moods.  These meanings of 片 are all perfect in defining the documentary.  Documentary is expansive; it is an allusive mode as well as a factual one. When I’m making a documentary I often feel like I am in a giant fog, feeling my way through a misty landscape; I rarely know what’s right around the corner.  Whether or not the completed documentary captures this state, it certainly feels “atmospheric” (i.e., emotional, aesthetic) to be in the process of producing one.

**Note!  Thank you to Ge Laoshi, who provided a correction to the above.  片 here is a shortened form of 影片 yingpian, which means “to film”.  So the use of 片 is less a measure word in this context than it is a shortened version of “to film”.  Also, “to remember” is actually 记 and not 纪;  纪 means “to record” something in writing, especially history.  So the meaning of 纪录片 is similar to “document(ary)” in the sense of making a record.  Even so, I like the poetry of my original post (albeit not exactly true), and I continue to like the definition of documentary as a creative treatment of actuality. (2-10-09)

Yesterday I visited the offices of Cotton, Incorporated in Shanghai. You have seen their logo just about everywhere– on t-shirts and other cotton products, and of course on the plastic bag that each cotton bale is wrapped in at the gin. The Shanghai office was opened just over 10 years ago, which coincides with Ms. Xiaobo Lu’s description of the dramatic change in the textile industry here.  I met with Mr. J.R. Wang, the Director of Cotton, Inc. in China, and with Ms. Angela Chen, a manager for consumer marketing in China. They described Cotton, Inc.’s role in the textile industry here and described specific initiatives they are developing to promote cotton products to consumers in China. They were also helpful in explaining technical differences between yarn dyed woven fabric, piece dyed fabric, and weaving and knitting. There are even more steps to the textile production process than I originally thought, depending on the type of cotton fabric that results– whether it is knit or woven, whether the cotton fiber contains special technology, etc. I also learned from Mr. Wang that during my time in Shanghai there may be a cotton exposition, which would be great for the film. Mr. Wang and Ms. Chen also mentioned an eco-conference that will take place in Hong Kong in May. “Sustainability” has become a big word in just about every industry lately, including cotton of course.  And filmmaking.

The most exciting thing I learned yesterday was that indeed, Wai Gao Qiao is the port in Shanghai where a lot of cotton is imported from around the world.  There are special storages places at Wai Gao Qiao called “bonded warehouses” where cotton often sits, waiting for a buyer.  As I understand it, anyone can approach one of these warehouses to purchase bales.  This method of export carries a lot of risk; once the cotton is here in China, it can’t be sent back.  This, coupled with the notion (image) of thousands of bales of cotton sitting, waiting for buyers of all sorts– big and small textile producers– is fascinating to me.  From a filmmaking standpoint, this is very exciting because there are many unknowns.  If I were to film at a warehouse at Wai Gao Qiao over a period of a month, all kinds of people might show up.  And each one of these individuals would have a story.  I also think that if some of Carl Brown’s cotton grown in Aiken, SC can be sent to Wai Gao Qiao this way, it would be relatively easy for me to track.