A Swede in Rural China

August 12, 2019 9:25 AM

Miriam Follin is a Swede who fell in love with a Chinese man, and in the process fell in love with rural China. Her videos document her life in the forests, mountains and farm villages of Qinghai and Shaanxi provinces. They have a dreamlike quality layered on top of an intense curiosity and devotion to nature and family.

A good example of her work is how she prepares for and celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival with her family in their village. Shades of Li Ziqi.

posted by serathen (3 comments total)

Thanks for this! These sorts of videos are my jam, apparently. I also studied abroad at Fudan University in Shanghai (a very long time ago) and her blog post about all the awkward meetings and the Korean friends from school (lots of Korean students at Fudan) and language barriers felt so familiar.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:09 PM on August 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

So that was touching and wonderful
posted by Auden at 7:53 PM on August 12, 2019

I’m a total sucker for stories of intercultural love, especially involving language-learning.

My wife is Finnish and I’m Icelandic. Those two societies are a whole lot closer, geographically and culturally, than China and Sweden, but a lot hit home.
posted by Kattullus at 11:51 AM on August 14, 2019