A taste of the simple life
Unlike filming restaurant owners or chefs who are easier to find, Wang and his crew had to work hard to find interviewees for their documentary.
One key factor for Wang when selecting an interviewee was their kitchen, as he required a traditional setup with a firewood stove.
The first reaction of those selected was often one of surprise. "They always said, 'I'm not a good cook; why would you want to film me?' But when I'd ask who likes eating their food, they would proudly tell me which dishes were favored by which family members," Wang explains.
Wang says the crew tried not to interfere and just recorded the cooking process as it happened. Usually, it would take around two days for the family to get comfortable with the film crew and start acting naturally in front of the camera.
"If they were going to collect corn in the fields, we would follow them and help them to collect it," he says.
Left: A cameraman on site [Photo provided to China Daily]
When recording the preparation of pan-fried hairtail fish in Lianjiang, Fujian province, the cook, Lin Qiuda, was perplexed as to why the crew wanted to film a man of his lowly financial status.
"It took a long time to persuade him that his relaxed lifestyle of half working and half enjoying life is interesting. He likes to perm his hair, but he wouldn't let us film him getting it done, until one day one of our directors went with him to get it done as well," Wang says.
Most of the dishes that appear in the series use ingredients from the cooks' own fields or backyards.
Wang knows that living in the city, people might buy a week's food in a supermarket and put it into freezers and fridges. "Fridges are getting larger, but people know less about where the food comes from," he says.
"In this documentary I want to show that all ingredients have their source, whether it's the pigs raised by those in show, or the vegetables grown in their fields."
In Wang's mind, city life cuts people's time into minutes and seconds, while in villages, time can stretch. They will eat tomatoes when they are ripe. If not, they will just wait.
