Zou Dehuai's collection of old photographs of Huang Na Ting
In 2012, Zou Dehuai did an oral history in Cambodia
German officer's wife and daughter pushing a stroller with Chinese maids on the streets of Qingdao (Zou Dehuai collection)
On August 13, 1937, after the Japanese army occupied Peiping, the army entering the city passed through the Zhengyang Gate through the large old photo (Zou Dehuai collection)
During the German colonial period, Laoshan Daoists did things on Dabao Island in Qingdao (Zou Dehuai Collection)
In the black-and-white documentary, on the eve of Nazi Germany's defeat in malmö, sweden, among the refugees who were demobilized from the Nazi concentration camps, there was the face of a Chinese woman, and her stubborn eyes looked directly into the camera. Who is she? Why is she here? What has she been through? Not long ago, a video called "Looking for Nadine Hwong" swept the screen in the circle of friends, and the story of the blogger using old photos touched many people, and people remembered the strange woman under the storm of that era - Huang Nating.
On January 27, a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily interviewed zou Dehuai, a popular science blogger, and listened to him talk about the story behind the video. Prior to this, he collected old photographs related to China for many years, and at the same time wrote about historical themes. At present, the total number of old photos in his collection has reached nearly 100,000.
The café's huge transparent window is full of blue skies and the grass is melted by the residual snow. Zou Dehuai is dressed casually, speaking at an unfast pace, permeated with spontaneity, and polite. Collecting and digging into the character stories behind old photos is not an easy task. In his detective-like storytelling, you can feel the unique sense of depth that he is touching the old photos with his heart, "in the old photos, the fate of mankind is condensed so thickly."
Two days after the video went live
I remembered to check the background data and was shocked
Reporter: In recent days, "Looking for Nadine Hwong" has become a video number hit, what kind of feedback do you have?
Zou Dehuai: About two days after the video went online, nearly a million people watched it, and I realized that I should go backstage to see the data. As soon as I opened the data, I was shocked. Because only the dots shown above are dots, there are no numbers to show. At that time, there were almost a thousand unread private messages, which was completely beyond my expectations. There's a lot of feedback of all kinds. Thankfully, the comments are basically expressed in gratitude. Others left messages about their family history and how they resonated with the story.
I really didn't know how many people would like the video after it came out. The result has given us a lot of confidence and encouragement. Because the number of reads of the two data of the video number and the b station is not double-counted, a person opens 100 times, it is also counted as one. I just watched the background, the video number is already nearly 2 million, the b station has been nearly 700,000, I think this means that more than 2 million people have seen this story, very happy.
In this video, I found that there are many overseas Chinese turning, such as miss Zhao Si's niece, who lives in Hawaii all year round, and she saw this video from her friend's circle of friends. Although her Chinese is not very good, she still added my WeChat and said that she wanted to provide me with some photos or something. There is also Singaporean director Peng Wenchun, the god of the Chinese advertising circle in the 90s, who saw this video and contacted me through Gao Xiaolong, the director of the 2010 China National Image Propaganda Film.
Reporter: How did you first come up with the idea of using old photographs to create this story that almost no one knows?
Zou Dehuai: On April 25, 2019, I bought a photo of Huang Nating from a private collector in Pennsylvania, USA, and I have been looking for her story ever since. At the end of 2021, my friends and I spent four months, in the research left by many friends and predecessors at home and abroad, from the clues of various newspapers and periodicals, and even found the warehouse of a distant museum, slowly restoring this almost completely forgotten Chinese legendary girl.
In fact, the main attraction of this story is that the protagonist Huang Nating is not the kind of traditional woman who teaches her son and lives a good life in peace, she is a great woman. Famous bridesmaids, colonels, language geniuses, diplomats, prisoners in concentration camps... Her experience is so rich, but in the end she was torn apart by the tide of the big times. Because of this, her story is more like a tragedy with too many legendary experiences. Perhaps her greatest tragedy is that she has been forgotten by the world. But I think privately, who says women can't be a little adventurous? I especially want everyone to know about her and learn about her story.
The friends who work together do not earn money, "generate electricity for love"
Reporter: Can you share the behind-the-scenes story of video production?
Zou Dehuai: I am very honest with everyone that this is not my own credit, it is inseparable from the small partner's power generation for love. They felt it made sense to do it, so they were willing to do it with me. What we have in common is that we are all history lovers; second, because this is not a job, nor a task, and everyone wants to get together, listen to the passion of the heart, and do it well. Third, we all love to watch movies and love to watch documentaries.
My friends all have their own specialties, ranging from those who know English and French to those who know Spanish. They have graduate students in East Asian history at Cambridge University, graduate students who studied art museums in Spain, graduate students in the history department of Princeton University, and some friends who are students of domestic universities. The reason why I say "power for love" is because I occasionally invite people to dinner, but I don't give people money, and sometimes I do worry about this.
Reporter: "Power generation for love" works smoothly, and how to solve the contradictions encountered in the middle?
Zou Dehuai: We all feel that no matter the length of the video, the most important thing is to sink down and make something different. I firmly believe that there are many people who still like to watch long texts, like to watch quality content, and like to watch documentaries. So we wanted to give it a try, and use a little longer to tell this story clearly.
This time I experienced very deeply, people with similar interests are doing one thing together, very harmonious. I originally made friends who valued character, knowledge and work ability the most, and they could all be put in second place. There is absolutely no quarrel or contradiction between the small partners, everyone recognizes this matter, and the content is slowly grinded out. Like this video, there are Chinese newspapers, English newspapers, French newspapers, Spanish newspapers, Portuguese newspapers... Searching and translating are very complicated, maybe these two days of information is stuck, we will do some other videos. In the middle, there are also two short stories of "Unit 526" and "Factory Rescue Four".
The place that is not smooth is that everyone's own work and our own affairs will have some time conflicts. In the four months of preparation, collection, shooting, and production, some of the small partners work overtime every day, and even on Saturdays and Sundays, we take some time to do this every day or every week. Almost all of them are WeChat group contacts, and I will coordinate and catch up with the progress.
Reporter: There are your own appearances and narrations in the video, and it has also received the attention of many people in the comment area?
Zou Dehuai: The starting point of all my stories begins with my collection of old photographs. I actually wanted to make this video distinctive, different from some historical marketing numbers made into slideshows. There is another reason, now that the video has its own appearance, the video platform has the possibility of recommendation, which is also our own groping out, and everyone now likes to see the feeling of real people appearing on camera. And this video has a lot of information, and there are real people interspersed with narration, which feels clearer.
The whole video was recorded for more than 30 minutes, and finally cut to 22 minutes. We really care about every detail, like the Spanish nursery rhyme at the end, and it took a long time to determine the song. I think that being able to make people watch it is the most important thing; being able to make people interested after reading it is victory.
With his own collection of photo albums, he made ten groups of atlases, and the number of hits exceeded 100 million
Reporter: When did you start collecting old photos?
Zou Dehuai: When I studied Cambodian history, I was always looking for old photos, which were particularly niche and could only be found by myself. By 2015, there were more of these kinds of stuff, so I bought some online. Later, it was also bought at an auction house. I remember the first time I went to the auction, I bought a signed photo of Prince Sihanouk.
2015 is the 70th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance, and I am also very interested in the War of Resistance, so I began to pay attention to the relevant information. The first time I bought an old photo of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, I bought two photo albums of the Japanese army invading China on a certain treasure. In fact, now it seems that the content of those two albums is very empty, but when I first met them, it was really strange, I bought two copies at once, which is quite expensive, equivalent to paying tuition. Later, I thought, these sellers can find it from Japan, why don't I find it from Japan? Anyway, many of my classmates are studying in Japan. Later, they helped me find it, changed several groups of people back and forth, and slowly "entered the pit".
Reporter: I didn't expect you to collect old photos so young and have been studying history.
Zou Dehuai: In fact, I studied art myself, I began to learn painting at the age of four, first learned Chinese painting, and then learned sketching, and in 2008, I took the college entrance examination for the art major.
I was a representative of history for six consecutive years in junior high school and three years in high school, played Weibo when I was in college, often forwarded some historical things on it, and also interacted with Tang Jianguang, and later I went to his responsible picture column to do some history column. I spent some time in Looking at History magazine.
In 2013, Sohu created the history channel, and at that time, I felt that the future must be the era of the Internet, so I went to Sohu to work for a year, and then I did a year in the history channel of Phoenix Network. To be honest, at that time, history was very caring for each other, like me from Sohu to Phoenix, it was not a job hopping, that is, there was often someone to help, and then it passed.
In the three years from 2012 to 2015, I would take time out of my time to go to Cambodia and Vietnam every year, go through all the cities, interview Chinese there, and do oral histories. At that time, the editor-in-chief of the history channel of the Phoenix Network was very supportive of me, and he said that if he gave you half a year off, you would go back to Qingdao to finish writing this, and then return to the Phoenix Network.
After returning to Beijing, because I was already famous in the circle for doing Southeast Asian history, there was an opportunity, NetEase was about to create a history and culture channel, and Chen Xubin, the editor-in-chief of Tencent History, recommended me to go to NetEase, and I later became the editor-in-chief there, which was the youngest editor-in-chief of NetEase at that time. I used my collection of albums to make ten sets of atlases, and the result was that the number of hits exceeded 100 million. I joined in June, and later gave me a Employee of the Year Award, which was a special award for one or two years, and I received a prize of 10,000 yuan.
Once Ding Lei flew to Beijing and made a special appointment with me. Since then, the editor-in-chief has given me a relatively high standard of contribution fees. At that time, I also had a column dedicated to telling stories with old photos. Many people watch, sometimes the comments can reach more than 100,000, and many people know me through that column.
Reporter: Do you have any direction for collecting old photos?
Zou Dehuai: I have always been alone in the sorting and purchasing of photos, and the total number of photos should be 100,000 now, hundreds of photo albums. Originally, the earliest collection was some photos related to the war during the Republic of China period. Then I slowly began to expand, because I was from Qingdao, Qingdao is the only place in the Far East that has preserved the site of the First World War, so I will collect photos related to the First World War and Qingdao, especially the photos of the German colonial period from 1897 to 1914, as well as some photos from 1920, 1930 and 1940. The third is that I especially like to receive some images taken by foreigners coming to China.
Reporter: What is your working method of collecting old photos?
Zou Dehuai: Every time I receive old photos, I will look through them first, then take a few photos, record them, and list them in my file. That's all I can do so, because I still have to work most of the time.
The problem was that I later found that I couldn't put it down at all— my home in Beijing and my home in Qingdao was already stuffed.
Fortunately, there is an entrepreneur in Shenzhen who is very affectionate. We met once in Shenzhen at that time, he was a very open person, and I was also a very straightforward person. He said he would have stored the photos in his museum. I went to see him, all of them are imported from the United States constant temperature and humidity equipment, especially professional, so it was a hit. Later, I sent him all the photos and sent him thirty or forty batches. At home, I buy that kind of big sealed box, and I seal every photo album with a sealed bag, and one of the advantages of Beijing is drying.
Collecting old photos is very expensive, I don't smoke, I don't drink, basically my salary savings are used on this. The photos in my collection are almost 100 years old, and even earlier, they are all tattered, some are moldy, some are torn, some are moths, and sometimes they get photo albums, and there are termites crawling back and forth, which requires some repair costs. When I was writing at NetEase, I was actually trying to make money, and later my family felt that this was a very meaningful thing, and they were more supportive and would also fund me.
Vision is the most important, and travel also brings the opportunity to do oral history
Reporter: Are you interested in history, does it have anything to do with family influence?
Zou Dehuai: My ancestors were in Shandong, and my grandfather came to Qingdao to do business when he was in the Republic of China, and his calligraphy was very beautiful. My grandmother is a big showgirl. My grandfather was a cadre who liberated Qingdao, and at the beginning of the founding of New China, he was selected to study maritime management in the Soviet Union.
I was born in 1990, and since I was a child, I have loved to read biographies and world history books. My parents were very busy, they bought me a lot of books since I was a child, I remember that every New Year's Festival, my mother would issue a 100 yuan coupon, and she let me go to Xinhua Bookstore to buy books. When I buy a book, I will soak there and read a book. Or go to the cinema and watch a movie. The winter and summer vacations are basically these two activities.
Reporter: At first glance at the name Zou Dehuai, I thought it was an old gentleman, but I didn't expect it to be a post-90s generation.
Zou Dehuai: My name was given by my grandfather, and until now, our family still uses the name of the characters. For example, my mother is of the Muzi generation, and my grandfather named her Mu Tong, which is the name of Mencius's mother, hoping that she would teach her children like Meng's mother. Later, it was also quite coincidental that our family really moved three times before I went to college. Now that I think about it, when I was in elementary school and junior high school in the 90s, it coincided with the large-scale development of Qingdao from the old city to the west and east, and step by step also let me see the imprint of the development of the times.
Since childhood, my family has believed that in addition to grades, vision is the most important. My father ran through many places with the boat and saw different things. My mother also advised me to read more, that is, the phrase "read ten thousand books, travel thousands of miles", before I was in elementary school, she bought me "History", or a simplified and ancient version of the comparison.
When I was a little older, my family encouraged me to say that as long as I went out on a trip, you came to explain, and we would pay for it. So I did a lot of homework by myself, and I found a place to go directly to the local area to play. Like the United Kingdom, Mexico, India, Nepal are all going this way. Some of the tour guides are not right, so I will tell him. On that trip to Cambodia, I met a local female tour guide, and the two of us had a very good conversation, so she introduced her boyfriend, a Chinese from Cambodia, to me, and he took me to interviews everywhere, which also led me to go to Cambodia to do oral history.
As a bystander, I don't want to do something too pretentious
Reporter: Your hobbies and experiences are very interesting.
Zou Dehuai: My hobbies are almost all related to history, and I usually like to travel, like to make friends, and make friends from three religions and nine streams. When I go out and travel, I like to talk to the tour guide about a lot of customs, historical sites. When I went to Nepal, I met a local dragon, and the two of us became friends, and in the third year he came to China to study. Later I learned that his uncle was Nepal's minister of defence. He knew that after I did interviews and write history, he especially wanted me to go to Nepal to write a book, and invited me many times, but I was unable to make the trip with limited energy.
This time, there are a lot of people who buy and sell photos who are also forwarding videos, and I didn't expect that. Equivalent to the opponent before, now also in the same way. I cherished it, in the process of fighting, I found the shining points on each other, and slowly became friends. For example, there is a person in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, who sells old materials of the Republic of China, and it turns out that he also sold me photos. He had a very strange temper, and at first we were very incompatible with each other, but later I found that he studied the military history of the Republic of China and studied the Whampoa Military Academy very powerfully, and I admired him. He also felt that it was very meaningful for me to do this, and he also wanted to support me, he found some old photos, archives and the like, sold to me at the original price at the first time, and sometimes gave me things for my birthday.
Reporter: Do you think that studying the history of war will inevitably fall into pessimism, but I don't think you are heavy.
Zou Dehuai: I am a bystander, and I don't want to do things that are too pretentious. If I don't have an optimistic mindset, it may be difficult to sustain. I met many people in the interview, crying and collapsing, but I saw a hope for survival in them.
In fact, I think that studying history, of course, is to bring yourself into history, but first you have to overcome it, not because this history is too pessimistic, and then you are also defeated by pessimism.
Reporter: It's not easy to do this, what are your plans for the next step?
Zou Dehuai: I didn't think about it so much, and the old photo story I'm digging up now may be only one in a thousand. It's not that after making a hit, I look forward to immediately monetizing and making money. And I don't have confidence in my own entrepreneurship either.
If it is possible in the future, I would like to make Huang Nating a separate book or a documentary. But no matter what, I want to get more information about her. When I was interviewed by the European Times the other day, I said that there was a condition that I asked the reporter to help me get the contact information of the documentary director at the Berlin Film Festival. Because the director found a lot of information about Huang Yeting, I wanted to talk to her. Text/Reporter Li Zhe Courtesy photo/Zou Dehuai