Blossoming: A Beautiful Journey of Kids with Down Syndrome and Art

It is tempting to create a powerful story.

‍I aspire to be a storyteller. Be it a music video, a short film, or a documentary, for the multiple film projects I’ve worked in, I enjoy using visual arts to narrate—I trust its power to provoke emotions, to educate and inform the audience.

But different from telling a story, it can be a pitfall to create one. When I first volunteered to tutor Chinese calligraphy for children with Down syndrome, I took the chance to make a documentary for them through the vision of a storyteller. I almost fell in that pit.

I decided to make this documentary with the hope of provoking the emotions of my audience for them to care more. The children I tutored have been practicing calligraphy for almost three years, yet most of their writings still looked crooked and unsatisfactory. Practicing Chinese calligraphy is a challenging task. While I was moved by the children’s effort, I wanted them to be embraced by a wider audience through creating this powerful story of passion and commitment. The filming schedule was set. We would start with Fei as our protagonist, who would demonstrate her love for calligraphy as our filming crew followed her from home to class.

Yet nothing went as planned.

Fei was already late for calligraphy class when the camera started rolling early that morning. Although being a passionate learner, the young Fei rubbed her eyes in dismay, snoozing in her comfortable bed. Once at the classroom, Fei swiftly switched her attitude. “I like your hairstyle today! When I grow up, I’d like to have the same haircut!” She jumped in front of her calligraphy teacher. The teacher smiled, heartened by the remark. Fei then went on to express her excitement of spending time with her friends for the rest of the day.

Something was different. It was obvious – the footages stored in our camera memory card were not what we expected to show in the film, but watching her greet other children in the room and feeling her enthusiasm, I questioned my initial plan. Hesitant, I slowly crossed out the rest of the filming bullet points from my notepad. After that day, I often found myself in the editing room pondering on my responsibility as a documentary filmmaker, and on what content I should bring to the screen.

It is tempting to create a powerful story. The craft of visual storytelling often calls for filmmakers adding adjustments to the materials at hand, thus in the process carefully choosing to present information that suits best for the story to take shape, to provoke emotions, and to reach climax; but these things never guarantee a real story.

We were not able to create our film as planned, but we succeeded in capturing the often-ignored side of the story. The Down syndrome condition never stopped children from demonstrating their personalities: Fei hides under the table when meeting strangers; Wang’an grins whenever her eyes meet my gaze; Xinwei loves to offer facility tours while speaking his quirky combination of Chinese-English; Qiang loves reciting poetry. When they sang together during class break, their voice was by no means in unison, but much like the way they were not bounded by the same identity of children with special needs, they glowed with their individual characteristics.‍

These interactions freed me from creating a single-sided documentary from my perspective. I chose to tell a story, a real story that captured the human moments connecting us with the children, who shared the same bonds with friends and families, yet still differentiated by individual dreams and struggles.

Sitting down with Fei and watching her write each stroke, I practiced along and witnessed her every improvement. During the break, she could not stop talking about her school life, sharing every detail with a bright smile.

I knew I made a new friend.