The Sound of Shanshiping

The Sound of Shanshiping

LI Dekang • 2025

Duration: 01:27:05
Language: Mandarin
Subtitles: Chinese, English
Country/Region: Mainland China

There is a village with a clear founding date: 1953. Its residents share a common identity: they are all leprosy patients. This village was built for the isolation of leprosy patients, backed by deep mountains and facing the Pian River. How did they experience a life of isolation from the world for half a century since they entered the hospital in their teens? Many people grew up with the village and left it one after another. Years later, their descendants continued to live here, no different from thousands of other villages. The burial of the last batch of elderly residents marked the rebirth of the village.

AWARDS & FESTIVALS

2022 ARFF Barcelona International Film Festival, Spain2023 New Vision International Film Festival, Netherlands

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

LI Dekang

LI Dekang

Director

Leprosy once spread to the hot and humid regions of Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou. The story begins with the establishment of a sanatorium in the mountainous area of Shanshi Ping in Yunnan after the liberation of the province. This place is backed by deep mountains, facing the Pián River, and is isolated from the outside world. It was called the “leprosy hospital”, where patients had to expand the houses, build roads and bridges, and be self-sufficient. By the late 1980s, leprosy was eradicated, but the rehabilitated patients who had been isolated for decades faced a changed outside world and families, along with severe aftereffects. Most of them chose to stay. Over 460 people were treated here. In the new century, their descendants expanded the village, cultivated land and farmed beside it. The lives of the grandchildren’s generation gradually improved, and they carried on their tenacious lives.

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