cotton road 棉花之路

Blogging has fallen by the wayside for a while. There were three successful shoots not documented here– one with Emma Zhang, a young woman who used to buy clothes at Qi Pu Lu to stock her own online boutique, and another at Shen You to spend time with workers there, and another return visit to Yuan Tian. Li Zhen and I then both took a break; she traveled to the U.S. and I traveled to Yunnan to see more of China. We’ll be back in production together by early next week, I hope.  We’re anticipating a shoot any day now with Mr. Chen at Wai Gao Qiao.  A shipment of cotton is arriving (or has already arrived) from the United States to his warehouse.  We’re hoping to film as much of the process as possible at the port: unloading, inspection, transfer to warehouse and then hopefully to buyer. Another good contact came a few days ago when I met someone who is involved in the export of clothing products back to the United States to a large, very well known retailer. He works primarily with a factory in Suzhou to source the clothes. We are waiting to see if we will get permission to film at this factory. Even if not, our new contact will enable us to film the tail end of the export process.  Since I will be here in Shanghai for three more months, I’m hopeful I can document the export of clothing that I will easily be able to see in stores in South Carolina.

While waiting for Li Zhen to return from her travels, I’ve started parsing through footage and am thinking about the structure of the documentary. It’s shot very out of order, in terms of the production process, but this fits the sense I have of living in Shanghai — that of a dense, constantly moving environment. At any moment there is cotton arriving, production taking place, shipments coming and going. It’s all a continuous flow that I have been dropped in the middle of, trying to make sense of it all.