Nomad’s Land

“On a windless, cloudy day, I spent half the day shovelling thick snow, trying to clear a path from my home to the entrance of the village. But I was exhausted after shovelling 10 meters of snow. So, on the coldest day of that winter, there were no footsteps leading to my home.”　

Adapted from award-winning Chinese author Li Juan’s 2010 essay collection My Altay, the eight-episode drama documents the writer’s childhood and adolescence in Altay, a mountainous prefecture tucked into the far northwestern corner of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.　

Directed by Teng Congcong, the series follows Li Wenxiu (Zhou Yiran), a young Han woman who aspires to become a writer but has struggled in the city for years. After being fired from her waitressing job, Li Wenxiu returns to her mother’s home in a remote, impoverished village predominately inhabited by China’s Kazakh ethnic group.　

There, she meets a young Kazakh man named Batai (Yu Shi), and their encounter gradually enlightens her to the beauty of nature and the richness of Kazakh culture, deepening her sensitivity toward love, literature and life.　

Subtle, nostalgic and engaging, the show offers an idyllic portrayal of the nomads in Altay, inspiring millions with a philosophy encapsulated in a quote from its first episode: “To love, to live and to hurt.”　

Adapting Li Juan’s plotless essay collection into a miniseries was a challenge for the production crew. “We were feeling the way as we went,” producer Qi Kang said.　

Director Teng told NewsChina that every aspect of the project – from shooting to post-production – met feature film standards. This attention to detail stretched shoots to seven days per episode, an unusually slow pace in China, where it typically takes three days to film a TV episode.　

To grasp the essence of Li Juan’s book and Kazakh culture, Teng made two fact-finding trips to Altay in 2020 and 2021.　

Known for its rugged beauty, the region is considered the birthplace of skiing, evidenced by cave paintings of skiers dating thousands of years discovered in the area. But since Li’s time in Altay in the 2000s, when she left at 21 to find factory work in Xinjiang’s capital city of Urumqi, urbanization and technology have profoundly changed the region and its people.　

Young Kazakhs, educated and city-dwelling, hesitate to return to the harsh nomadic life. Meanwhile, the older generation of herders, who live in yurts and migrate with their animals, is aging and traditions are disappearing – an issue many ethnicities face worldwide.　

Teng was deeply impressed by the hospitality. She noted that meeting one Kazakh often led to warm introductions to many others. Unlike in urban areas where connections are more transactional, interactions on the grassland are depicted as pure and simple.　

In one scene, Li Wenxiu’s mother, Zhang Fengxia, tries to buy a sheep from a local herder. After a day of bargaining, they fail to agree on a price. Despite this, the herder hosts her that night with a feast, using the very sheep Zhang wanted to buy.　

Alima Mayutian, who plays Batai’s sister-in-law Tuoken, is a Kazakh woman from Altay. She told NewsChina that this scene captures the essence of Kazakh hospitality. “As the saying goes, about half of the property of every Kazakh family belongs to guests,” Mayutian said.　

To authentically present the culture, nearly 50 percent of the dialogue is in Kazakh. Actor Yu Shi, who plays Batai, spent six months learning the language.　

Upon its release on May 7, the show quickly garnered acclaim from audiences and critics. It topped the ratings on CCTV-1, the flagship channel of State-run China Central Television, with a 1.96 percent viewership for its time slot, and was the most talked-about show on the streaming site iQiyi in May.　

By July 2, the hashtag “To the Wonder” had 4.87 billion views on Douyin. More than 249,000 users of Douban, China’s leading media review site, gave the show an 8.9/10 rating, an exceptionally high score for a domestic production. It was also selected for the Long Form Competition at the 2024 Cannes International Series Festival.　

Filmmaker Zhang Dalei, known for his award-winning feature The Summer is Gone (2016) and director of miniseries Why Try to Change Me Now, is a self-proclaimed fan of To the Wonder.　

“I love the show and was deeply touched by it. I can feel the creators’ sincerity and kindness,” Zhang said.　

According to Zhang, creators’ sincerity is the most crucial factor behind a film or TV work’s success. “Audiences can tell if a work is sincere. They can tolerate a sincere director’s lack of skill, but not the other way around,” he told our reporter.　

Matriarch Zhang Fengxia is a rare female figure in Chinese films and TV shows. Distinct from the typical portrayals of Chinese women or mothers, she more aligns with the strong female characters increasingly prevalent in Western cinema. The last character of her name, xia, means “hero” in the realm of martial-arts fantasy fiction and films.　

True to her name, Zhang is free-spirited, independent and wise. She lives life fully, unbound by social roles and expectations. As a mother, she respects her daughter’s independence, supports her literary dreams and never imposes pressure on her. Viewers have called her “an ideal mother.”　

Tuoken, Batai’s sister-in-law, highlights women’s struggles in a patriarchal society. Widowed after her alcoholic husband’s death, Tuoken wanted to remarry but her parents did not approve. Kazakh tradition dictates she should marry her husband’s younger brother and remain in their family, and Tuoken remarrying for love was out of the question. Her experiences with widowhood, child-rearing, remarriage and slut-shaming resonate with many female viewers.　

A public bathhouse scene has won significant praise for its subtle yet poignant portrayal of women. In the scene, Zhang takes her daughter to a humid and yellowing bathhouse, where women of all ages happily sing Kazakh songs together while washing. They tenderly scrub each other’s backs, despite not knowing one another. A shy child leans close to her mother.　

Many netizens have declared this the most touching scene of the show, fully manifesting women’s natural beauty and feminine power with a heartwarming aura of maternity.　

The third episode features a talk between renowned writer Liu Haibo and a talented female writer, who admits she had to give up writing to care for her three children and because her husband was unsupportive. Liu Haibo responds, “Virginia Woolf said every woman should have a room of her own.”　

But what if a woman does not have one? Director Teng shared the story of the show’s other screenwriter, Peng Yining. After college, Peng worked as a journalist and wrote in her spare time. However, after marrying and becoming a mother, she found she had neither free time nor a quiet place to write. She retreated with her laptop to a small balcony corner to continue writing, where despite the hanging laundry and scorching sun, she finished the screenplay for To the Wonder.　

A key reason for the success of To the Wonder, as many critics and viewers have noted, is its clear antithetical rat-race message.　

A widely circulated clip of the series on social media shows Li Wenxiu discussing with her mother about whether she is a “useful” person. Her mother responds, “You were not born only to serve others to be ‘useful.’ Look at the trees and grass on the prairie: they are ‘useful’ when fed to cattle or used by humans. But if nobody uses them, they can stay on the prairie any way they like, carefree.”　

Xiao Xiao, a 28-year-old woman from Kunming, Yunnan Province, recently quit her high-stress job as a middle school teacher. “I’ve been overly critical of myself since I was very young. If I achieved little, I felt useless. I felt useful only when I performed well at school or work, and when I was needed by others,” she said.　

“The quote about ‘usefulness’ relieved my long-held anxiety and stress. I realized that being useful is not important to the meaning of an individual’s existence. What is meaningful is existence itself. We need to believe that our existence itself is beautiful,” Xiao told NewsChina.　

With the show’s popularity, Altay has become one of China’s trendiest tourist destinations, as stressed and city-worn workers seek refuge in its idyllic pastures. According to tourism authorities, Altay has received 2.67 million visitors since May, an 80.6 percent year-on-year increase, with revenues reaching 2.2 billion yuan (US$303m), 93 percent growth compared to the previous year.　

During one of their fact-finding trips, Qi and Teng met a Kazakh boy who mentioned what he called the most beautiful village in Altay’s Fuyun County. Their interpreter translated the village’s name as “Caihong Bulake,” which sounds like “Rainbow Village” in Chinese. Qi and Teng spent days searching for this Shangri-La. They poured over maps and books, all to no avail.　

Determined to track down the village, they consulted with an ethnologist in Kazakh studies. He posited the boy was talking about Sayihan Bulake, meaning “Village of Springs and Valleys.” Their interpreter likely mistranslated the first half of the name (Sayihan) for the similar-sounding Chinese word for rainbow (caihong).　

Finding the translation error beautiful, Qi and Teng kept the name Rainbow Village for the show, a decision that turned out to be prophetic.　

Qi shared a story with our reporter about their crew encountering a large hailstorm the day before wrapping up filming. While they hastily sought cover, the sky suddenly cleared and a beautiful double rainbow appeared. The whole crew stood in awe. “We were right in Rainbow Village,” Qi recalled.　

“We all know Utopia doesn’t exist. We also know idealism is fragile and vulnerable. But there are always some miracles that might happen in life, and you can’t help but believe that Rainbow is just right in your heart, and you’ll find it around the next corner,” Teng told NewsChina.