Ticket to write

"Writers create soulful communication through words, which these days are what everyone needs," he notes.

Wang says that what impresses him about Liu talking to a dog or a dandelion is his sense of imagination.

"Once he came across a few pieces of a broken beer bottle in the desert, he assembled them and conjured up the idea of a shepherd passing through the wind-swept place and spending a night there with a bottle of beer. He's like a child.

"Every writer is different, but they do have one thing in common-even though they seem mature, they're innocent and have a child's curiosity of the world."

Wang says it can be a challenge for him to film the writers, because he regards each of them as being stronger than him. Meanwhile, what the crew finds hardest when filming is to understand what the writers are saying, he says. It may take them a few minutes to cotton on and begin to think about what images can be used to match the writer's narration.

This difficult production process turns out to be very fruitful, Wang says. He has read Landscape Kasaya, the collection of prose written by Li Xiuwen, the writer in the third episode, three times, and he says that he is impressed by how Li writes about daily life in such an arresting way.

"His book made me realize that I can't wait for dramatic things to happen to make a documentary, and that I can learn to find the poetry and drama in daily life. He's my favorite writer," Wang notes.

The highlights of the second season are friendship and wandering. The loneliest person usually has the most persistent friend, while most writers stay alone in their spiritual garden, Wang says.

"Once you find the right friend, a writer can open his (her) mind," he says, adding that he thinks writers' charm is truly revealed only when they speak from their heart.

The first season was filmed mostly in the writers' homes, whereas in the second, Wang asked them to go out with their friends, and as their journeys progress, the topics they discuss become more profound.

"Sometimes there is no specific destination, they just wander, and they are relaxed," Wang says. "I don't want the show to become a class, in which the writers talk about a bunch of major principles. This should be the bedtime conversation in a college dorm between friends, one that is all free thought and expression."

Writer Li Xiuwen says he had long planned to travel to Dunhuang in Gansu province with his friend and fellow wordsmith Han Songluo. The third episode of the current season chronicles that trip.

Li says he used to be very camera shy, but his admiration for Wang's way of expressing himself persuaded him to be filmed.

"Wang is able to let you forget that the camera is there," Li says.

"I had planned to revisit Dunhuang, where I would go once or twice a year before the pandemic, so the trip with Han has long been on the cards."

Han lives in Lanzhou, Gansu's capital. Visiting a place with a local friend rather than alone makes a lot of differences to the experience, Li says.