Samantha is a blogger from Australia whose lens focuses on China's intangible cultural heritage (ICH).
She has explored Suzhou embroidery, paper cutting, shadow puppetry, oil-paper umbrellas and lacquerware, learning from inheritors. Chinese ICH is "living treasure", she says.
Samantha documents craft processes in detail: how a silk thread is embroidered, how paper is folded, how an umbrella is made. Her videos let young people rediscover the beauty of traditional crafts.
Many ICH crafts are fading, she says, and she wants to help them "go viral" in her own way. From Sydney to China, she became an "international volunteer" for intangible heritage.
Samantha is an Australian intangible-heritage lover who visits Chinese crafts, apprentices with masters and films the beauty of Chinese craftsmanship for the world.
Her journey: footprints across China - Suzhou embroidery, Shaanxi paper-cutting, Fujian woodcarving, Beijing opera masks in Beijing. "Every craft is like a window."
Content: "an Australian learns Suzhou embroidery", "learning with a paper-cutting master", "visiting heritage inheritors" - recording the stories behind every craft.
Going viral: her "first day learning Suzhou embroidery" video spread - crooked stitches yet a month of persistence; viewers moved by her seriousness, cheering her on.
Insights: "the most moving part of heritage is craftsmen persistence - a lifetime on one thing, perfected to the extreme."
Significance: an international promoter of Chinese heritage - showing its preciousness and reminding people to protect and pass it on.
Plans: she is building a "China heritage map" organised by region, planning a travelling exhibition.
For readers: her videos move you with craftsmen persistence - every heritage craft is a crystal of time and patience.
She also records her failures: ruined paper-cuts, lacquer-covered hands, off-key opera singing. "Failure is part of learning - masters also began with failures." She keeps the imperfections in her videos; viewers love it more - "this is real." She notes many inheritors are elderly - "I want to film as much as I can while I still can" - that urgency gives her videos special weight.
Her deepest thanks go to the inheritor teachers - "they taught me craft and how to be a person: endure ten cold years on a bench, write not one hollow line." She wrote that Chinese saying on the first page of her notebook. She plans to return twice a year to learn new heritage crafts - "China treasures are so many; I want a lifetime to see them slowly." Her videos carry the warmth of Chinese craftsmanship to every corner of the world.
"Craft has no borders, and neither does beauty" - her videos help more people see China treasures.
