“Getu Corn Harvest” was shot in September 2014 on a rest day during a rock climbing trip in Getu 格凸, Guizhou 贵州 Province, China. I went out for a walk with my camera and followed a path that lead in to the hills. On the path I met two local farmers in their late sixties who were walking up to harvest corn in a little cornfield situated up in the hills. I asked if I could follow them and film them, they agreed.
Communicating with them proved to be a challenge despite my average Mandarin skills as they spoke a very thick local accent which was heavily influenced by their local language or fangyan 方言, the Miao Dialect 苗族语. My solution for this problem was to ask Chinese friends in Beijing to help me translate their accented Mandarin into standard Mandarin, but their accent was so thick that I could only get a full transcript after finding someone from Guizhou. She also could also not understand the Miao Dialect.