I work from listening, participation, and return visits. From the changing rhythms of Xi'an drum music to the everyday stories of the NingShan County Natural Reserve, I trace how culture and place become lived relationships.
This documentary follows inheritors and younger performers of Xi'an drum music as they negotiate cultural authenticity alongside the practical demands of making a living.
Rather than treating tradition as fixed, the work attends to rehearsal rooms, performances, and the choices that allow a living practice to continue.
Through rehearsals, conversations, and reflective notes, I moved from observer to participant. This ongoing fieldwork asks how a tradition crosses generations and gradually becomes a language one can speak from within.
I came to this national wetland park expecting to learn about its efforts to protect the local environment.
Instead, I discovered another form of conservation. The park opened the door to nature education for children at a nearby under-resourced school, enabling them to study and curate natural specimens for their school museum.
Drawing on fieldwork in Ningshan, Shanxi, this paper compares a crested ibis rewilding station and a secondary-school specimen museum.
It explores how care, participation, and memory can connect local nature with personal attachment to place.
Through anthropology courses and related learning activities, I connect historical questions with contemporary social change—moving beyond received knowledge to form questions of my own, while contributing thoughtfully to a shared learning community.
To understand a place is to stay long enough for its questions to change your own.