I recently completed a short about Western Sichuan in China. The film is a series of short pieces I filmed whilst traveling through the region. On the whole I am quite happy with the film. There's a few glaring issues, such as changes in exposure during shots, camera shake and also I am sure that zooming with a manual lens is just not possible for smooth shots. But overall I feel it captures a lot of my experience in the area.
The scenes are taken from Serxu, Xiewu, Dege and Tagong. You'll notice the film also shows the local Tibetan people cleaning caterpillars. The caterpillars are known locally as Yartsa Gunbu or "summer grass winter worm". They caterpillars crawl into the roots of plants in the surrounding hillsides to die as they are then consumed inside out by a fungus. The fungus is said to have unique healing properties and is prescribed in traditional medicine to cure cancer. Yartsa Gunbu now represent the fastest growing economy in the region, valued weight for weight with gold.
