Film Screening and Discussion: 农家乐 Peasant Family Happiness

The Stanford University Center for East Asian Studies presents a screening of Jenny Chio's "Peasant Family Happiness," which depicts the everyday experience of “doing tourism” (搞旅游) in two rural, ethnic minority villages in contemporary China.

Peasant Family Happiness (2013), 70 min., DV, color
Distributed by Berkeley Media, LLC.

A film by Jenny Chio
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Affiliated faculty, Film & Media Studies and East Asian Studies
Emory University
Website: www.jennychio.com

Synopsis:
Peasant Family Happiness depicts the everyday experience of “doing tourism” (搞旅游) in two rural, ethnic minority villages in contemporary China: Ping’an and Upper Jidao. Focusing on the perspectives of village residents, this film portrays how modern, rural ethnic minority Chinese negotiate between the day-to-day consequences of tourist arrivals in their communities and ideal projections of who they are and what their lives can achieve through tourism as a form of socioeconomic development. This ethnographic film won the 2013 David Plath Media Award given by the Society for East Asian Anthropology and has screened at festivals and universities in the US, China, and Europe.

Filmmaker Bio:
Jenny Chio is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and affiliated faculty in Film and Media Studies and East Asian Studies at Emory University. She completed her Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009. Her written ethnography of ethnic tourism and rural development in China, titled A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China, was published in 2014 by the University of Washington Press in the series “Studies on Ethnic Groups in China.” Her new research explores ethnicity, rural documentary media production, and discourses of community development in Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Qinghai. More information on her research and publications can be found at www.jennychio.com.

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