Chen Xiaoqing: Introducing the World to A Bite of China

Chen Xiaoqing was born in Lingbi, Anhui province in 1965. She was admitted to Beijing Broadcasting Institute and studied photography. After graduating with a master's degree, she joined CCTV.

In 1991, the south flooded, and the Huai River basin water enclosed the village into several islands. Chen Xiaoqing was ordered to shoot a film about the flood, named "Island Chronicle", in the CCTV broadcast after the evaluation is good. The State Council Information Office also instructed it to be made into an English version, and while he was working on the English version in Anhui, he and his colleagues in Anhui began planning a new film, "Far Away from Home in Beijing."

This is to reflect nanny life, about this theme Chen Xiaoqing as early as in the wide school when moved thought. Several times on the train home, Chen Xiaoqing was intrigued by the way girls who worked as nannies in Beijing deliberately rolled their tongues in the Beijing dialect when they spoke, and wanted to reflect on the significance of the change on camera.

With the help of the Wuwei County Women's Federation in Anhui Province, Chen and her film crew tracked down 22 girls who were going to Beijing to work as nannies for the first time. They followed them from the moment they left home until they entered Beijing to work as nannies for a family. The crew was improvised on shoestring, traveling by train and often paying their way. Filming was done in my spare time, and to stay in touch with the nannies, I sometimes went to see them without filming. Chen Xiaoqing showed the rough compilation to Zhu Yujun, who was moved to cry. In 1993, "Home IN Beijing" WAS sent to the Sichuan International TELEVISION Festival and won the documentary award.

Since then, Chen Xiaoqing in the documentary industry's reputation, and film contracts. When he made "Forest Song" in 2006, he wanted to make documentaries as he did abroad. "You know how writers in Hollywood sell scripts? To sell a 100-minute screenplay, you have to convince investors and directors in three minutes. That's what we do -- you have to move me in three minutes, and then you tell me what you're going to do, where the plot point is, where the climax is, where the setup is." From the beginning, he told his men to make it attractive. As a result, every writer got hit back at least four or five times.

With the script, Chen Xiaoqing asked the directors to determine the shot script, down to the shooting, and strictly formulated the daily shooting process, which day to shoot the animal's paw, and which day to shoot the animal's fur. The details were detailed, but accidents still happened. To take pictures of wild boars in the Changbai Mountains, the film crew dropped thousands of kilograms of corn into the area where the wild boars were found and set up a shelter nearby. Soon the boar did appear. Never thought, suddenly a gust of wind blew, the shelter was immediately blown down, and people and camera equipment were completely exposed to the boar. The boar saw the situation was not good, turned, and ran, "faster than Liu Xiang hurdle".

Life's 'Super foodie'

Chen Xiaoqing has won many international and domestic TV awards. He is a famous documentary director, but few people know that he has long been a food columnist, and as early as ten years ago, he has been a guest on the food programs of seven or eight TV stations. He loves to taste and study food at ordinary times. In addition to countless food selfies, Ms. Chen's phone contains data on hundreds of restaurants in Beijing and across China, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, and even a list of their signature dishes. He has a surprising "food map".

Chen Xiaoqing, nicknamed "Sweep Street Mouth", searches every street in Beijing for a chance to try any restaurant that looks good, and carefully writes down the name and address of the restaurant. Chen Xiaoqing said it was Liang's writing that made him interested in Beijing snacks.

Chen Xiaoqing's food column is scattered in many magazines and newspapers. He is keen on civilian food, so many of his articles are about street food, such as lucifer, beef noodles, and boiled gravy, but these are the most common snacks, which shine brightly in his pen.

Chen Xiaoqing's "foodie" ability, as a good friend of Zhejiang Satellite TV documentary senior editor Xia Yanping, experienced many times. When he was worried about food in Beijing, as long as Chen Xiaoqing sent a text message, the other side would take the trouble to send more than a dozen recommendations. But Chen Xiaoqing never recommends the food in restaurants, mostly roadside stalls and private dishes.

In life, anyone with a friend like Chen Xiaoqing will have inertia. As it neared dinner time, phone calls and text messages flooded in seeking the restaurant's address. All you have to do is name a street in a city such as Beijing, Chengdu, or Guangzhou and what kind of food you want to eat, and he can instantly provide the best solution. Once, Chen XIAOQING'S FRIEND WANG XIAOSHAN SHOULD ASK A COLLEGE CLASSMATE TO HAVE A MEAL, CALL TO ASK TO HAVE WHAT GOOD RESTAURANT, Chen XIAO QING NOT ONLY RECOMMENDED RESTAURANT, STILL MAKE A PHONE CALL TO THE RESTAURANT DIRECTLY, BY THE WAY, THE DISH WAS ORDERED.

Cooking A Bite of China

As a "foodie", Chen Xiaoqing has always wanted to make a large-scale documentary to show the state and wisdom of Chinese people's life from the perspective of food. Unexpectedly, just caught up with a good time, in 2011 CCTV documentary channel was established, in need of various types of documentaries. Chen Xiaoqing reported the topic to Taiwan and was quickly approved.

Before filming, Chen Xiaoqing had an in-depth discussion with gourmet CAI LAN and Shen Hongfei and reached a consensus that gourmet food is a way to love life, and it doesn't have to be in a temple. They decided to set the tone for the shoot. Therefore, the search for a simple and safe attitude to Chinese original taste runs through "A Bite of China". "Chinese people love food because of their love for life. The big taste is always weak. You can taste the best taste of the world in the most remote and isolated kitchen." "Chen Xiaoqing said.

Finding a story about food and who it's about is the biggest headache for the team. Zhang Minghuan, one of the directors, described the process as "looking for a needle in a haystack." In the episode "Taste of Time", the original plan is to go to Tai O Island in Hong Kong to film salted fish. However, when they arrive on the island, they find that they cannot find the original person, so they have to find someone new. After some difficulty, Zhang Minghuan found a small, remote workshop on the island through the most popular brand of shrimp paste, with an elderly woman sitting in front of the door. "Grandma said what, I did not understand, but I saw a lot of pictures hanging on the wall of the workshop, looking at the pictures, grandma suddenly cried. It turned out that the person in the photo was her late wife. They had been making shrimp paste all their lives, but the husband left first."

Shot all over the world food, but rarely personally taste. Chen Xiaoqing says filming is as hard as being a chef. "You don't cook for yourself; I make movies to make people happy."

On May 14, 2012, the night the first episode of A Bite of China was broadcast on CCTV's general channel, Chen Xiaoqing made a modest recommendation on her blog: "Watch everything you have tonight. It's not ugly."

Not only Chen Xiaoqing, but also CCTV officials did not expect that the food documentary would beat the hit TV series. "A Bite of China is about food, but it's more touching," one netizen said. Looking at the bamboo shoots dug out, the ham hung up, the glistening in the fishing nets, the steamed buns with white flowers and steam, the crisp sound of the ramen falling on the cutting board, and the simple smile of the people carrying the yellow steamed buns, all make people feel excited and want to shed a little tear. What a lovely China."

To the surprise of foodies around the world, Chen Xiaoqing will shoot the second and third parts of A Bite of China starting this September. This bigger "feast" is undoubtedly worth looking forward to!