Chronicling the disappearance of a village for posterity

Qiao Xiuling, a 53-year-old librarian from Zhangbu village of Yangqu county, Shanxi province, did not know what "film director" meant until the more than 700 short clips she has shot of her hometown went viral in October, earning her that "nickname".

"I am only an amateur," says Qiao. "But my love affair with this village runs deep."

The village has a history dating back 600 years, when a tribe fleeing war arrived there to build a stronghold against possible attack.

In the late 1990s, the village had about 5,000 residents. Once urbanization set in, the young people there migrated to the cities in search of work, leaving only dozens of elderly farmers behind today.

Qiao, who was born in the village and has been working in Yangqu county library since the 1990s, noticed the decline that was setting in her hometown every time she visited her parents after 2000. She is one of the few people to have left the village who still visits it regularly. That gives her the distance to observe changes in her hometown more objectively.

In 2013, the village primary school shut down, another turning point for the village. This happened as parents were taking their children away with them to go to school in the cities they were migrating to.

"One day over the weekend in 2020, I saw fruits on jujube trees in the yard of my home turning red. While my mother was pulling branches of the tree, my father was plucking the fruits, the warm afternoon sunshine shining on their faces. I took a video of them and posted it on a short video-sharing platform," Qiao said, recalling the start of her meaningful journey using cameras.

To Qiao's surprise, the video attracted huge attention, particularly from migrant workers who were missing their hometown, which, they claimed, could not accommodate their bodies, while the cities could not hold their souls.

After she uploaded more videos from the village and its left-behind inhabitants, Qiao's account on the video-sharing platform has become like a home for the former residents of Zhangbu village; her posts feed their nostalgia.

Many village residents look up her page to check out what their parents are up to. Every time they visit her page they find something new. Encouraged by her followers, Qiao has been systematically recording every aspect of village life.

"I'm the only one who has been doing this. The faster the urbanization process, the greater its impact on the countryside, where many old people are poor," says Qiao.

The village will disappear one day, and so will its old inhabitants and their lifestyle. These things make Qiao feel that her work is helping this large village record its memories.

Viewers also love how farmers have been arranging life in the village according to the seasons — plowing, planting, weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, drying and preserving grains for winter. Also, photographs of people eating food cooked from crop grown in their own fields means a lot more to these migrant laborers who these days eat things they buy in the supermarkets.

What adds to the beauty of the video is Qiao's voiceover, as she tries to tell plain stories in simple language, always focusing on the details and supplementing it with background information and trivia. Many people compare her to a village writer who is good at writing village stories.

Qiao attributes the popularity of her videos to her proximity to the people and their lives.

She wants to do more to protect the cultural heritage of her village and even the county.

"I am nearing retirement age," said Qiao. "In the future, I would like to collect the folk songs of Yangqu. My grandmother is very good at singing them, but there are not many old people in the village today who can sing them. These are the things I want to record for my children and grandchildren.

"I have found a mission for my retired life and that gives me a strong sense of responsibility," Qiao said.

The villagers feel good when Qiao captures their daily life for their families in the cities to watch online and they know Qiao is doing something meaningful for the village, whose disappearance is only a matter of time.