How does the sexy underwear workshop in Jimei, Xiamen, design and produce underwear? For truck drivers who spend most of their time on the road, who is going to design a mattress that fits the cramped dimensions of the truck? What kind of existence is the Dounan Flower Market, the place where the 5 bouquets of flowers for 20 yuan we bought on the live broadcast? Whenever everyone wants to buy some cute little dolls and it is difficult to achieve, why is there always "pressure on Yiwu"?

In the current era, consumers have shown great enthusiasm and vitality, and parcels arrive one after another to satisfy our insatiable desire for consumption. But maybe you occasionally wonder how these commodities are produced, seen and come to us.

"Where did this thing come from" poster

"Where did this product come from", which started broadcasting on February 22, tried to answer the above questions. This is a documentary about small commodities and small business people. The director of this documentary, Chen Yingjie, who is also the director of "A String of Life", introduced that the title "Where did this product come from" was inspired by accident, and it also fits the film's theme. Jianghu temperament, in his opinion, goods are clues and handles, "Using a question sentence is intended to create a sense of retrospect."

A journey of tracing the origin of goods

"Where did this thing come from" is also a journey of tracing the origin of goods: in an era of increasingly abundant materials, people's perception of things, imagination and happiness when using them are gradually fading. People understand that "goods are made by pairs of warm hands". Chen Yingjie described the stories of these small sellers as "capillaries made in a big country". Some of them may seem insignificant, but they constitute our current life. important part of .

The main creative team of "Where did this product come from" took several major needs of contemporary people as clues, and named the six episodes as: aesthetic hypermarket, decent pick-up point, funeral and rescue station, ritual training class, interesting grocery store and comfort. supply chain. In the specific selection of materials for each category, the team reflects a variety of broader social scenes through the differentiation of goods.

Director Chen Yingjie (right)

Chen Yingjie introduced that the first function of a documentary is to provide information, "you have to tell something you don't know." People have a feeling of "darkness under the lights", but there are actually many stories to be discovered.

In addition to providing the amount of information, Chen Yingjie also hopes to present in the documentary the doorway, exquisiteness and local traditions and customs of each industry. For example, in the part of the first episode talking about sexy underwear, the director uses a parallel editing to describe the local night scene The lively and high-pitched traditional Xiang opera staged next, while presenting the scene where the sexy lingerie designer holds candles to take photos in an ambiguous atmosphere, the Xiang opera that resounds throughout the town is also continuously spread to the ears of the young sexy lingerie designer. This way of life is even more tense in hedging.

"Where did this thing come from" stills

Exploring how a certain industrial belt is formed in a city and what kind of noise they present are also the interests of the directors. For example, to explore the industry of small household appliances, the directors went to Cixi City, Zhongshan City and many cities around Suzhou Towns; for some things that are planted and cultivated, the director team will go to the places where they are grown and sold, such as the Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, Yunnan, which is one of the best flower markets in Asia.

"Where did this thing come from" stills

Focusing on the huge industrial chain, the documentary also focuses on those things that we tend to ignore. The director of the episode mentioned the case of making mattresses on trucks. There are 30 million truck drivers in China, and more than 90% of China’s land transportation is carried by 30 million trucks. Drivers assume they pretty much sleep in their cars, hence the fact that there are businesses that specialize in custom mattresses for the oddly sized trucks.

"Aesthetics Store"

Watching "Where did this stuff come from" is like shopping in a variety of shopping malls. Its colors are extremely saturated and the editing is crisp. Among them, there are flashing mobile phone cases, wigs, stainless steel sculptures, fish tank landscaping, funeral supplies... thousands of goods on the assembly line, mirroring all kinds of life.

According to the director, what is presented in this documentary is a vast ocean of objects. For example, the selections in the first episode "Aesthetics Hypermarket" are all visually good-looking, and sexy underwear is a good-looking part. The second episode "Comfortable Industry Chain" talks about Cooking machines, cyber chefs, etc. can liberate people physically.

"Where did this thing come from" stills

"In short, it is to find interesting products from the six needs of people and tell their stories. We have three clues in each episode. How to interpret these three clues is a very particular thing." Chen Yingjie said.

For example, the first episode has three clues: one is that it only talks about the leftovers in mobile phone cases that will be eliminated. There are a group of people who collect leftovers in mobile phone cases and sell them on the platform. In fact, it saved some leftovers that were about to be destroyed; the second is to pay attention to the fact that the mobile phone case is the clothes of the mobile phone, "the clothes of the mobile phone are worn outside, and there is a kind of clothes worn inside, so we lead the clue of sexy underwear"; The third is the stainless steel sculpture that is often overlooked by us. "We pay attention to where are the large quantities of stainless steel sculptures produced by real estate and garden companies? Later, I found out that this place is Quyang, Hebei. It turned out to be a stone carving capital. Well, foreign exports are also good, stainless steel things are gradually stealing the limelight of stone carvings." Chen Yingjie introduced.

Thus, the three items of mobile phone case, erotic lingerie, and stainless steel sculpture constitute the episode "Aesthetics Hypermarket". These three commodities also have a common feature, that is, they have a large market share, which also corresponds to the " Hypermarket" theme.

human resilience

When fruit, seafood or handicrafts from afar come to us, it should bring us a lot of satisfaction, but we always feel less happy than before.

Therefore, in the work "Where did this product come from", Chen Yingjie and the directors of the team also focused on the small businessmen in the big era-in the era of rapid change, every transaction is the epitome of their daily life. Some of them are very thoughtful and open-minded, such as designers and manufacturers of sexy lingerie; there are also those who can empathize with them because of their personal experience. But they are all firm and optimistic, courageous, and wise. They keep their products from being overwhelmed by the torrent of the times, and even become regional domain cards with their own styles.

"We hope that by tracing the source, we can let everyone see that every object is made by a pair of warm hands. When you get such an object again, you may look at it twice, or even Think about whether there is a story behind this thing, which may eventually make you feel happier." Chen Yingjie said.

They are faced with orders, expenses, logistics, and materials every day. Every day is a matter of life and death. They need to work hard to adjust the rhythm between business and life. "This is a very strong personality strength, or human resilience." Chen Yingjie said.