Documentary fosters deeper cross-cultural understanding

She was not trained as a director. She has no stars in her crew, or even people with acting experiences. However, her documentary has become a big hit, especially with audiences in China and Africa.

Hodan Osman Abdi, a Somali academic who has lived in China for about 12 years, says she is trying to show the diversity of Africans in the eastern parts of China with her recent documentary film Africans in Yiwu.

The six-episode documentary film, which took more than two years to showcase the daily lives of more than 20 people from 15 African countries who live in Yiwu, an export-oriented city in East China's Zhejiang province.