Exploitative Expat Explosion

Last week, I added the short documentary my classmates and I made for our class last semester to Letterboxd's database. Subsequently, my friends asked me to send them the video. The general reaction was very positive; however, one comment truly stood out to me. Cait, my beloved Welsh friend, mentioned that "it doesn't feel exploitative at all; it feels so genuine and has integrity." This remark made me think about my previous attempts to make a short video about China, and there was a pattern: I am not visible in any of those videos. Our documentary was about public square dance (广场舞), a phenomenon that none of us had seen in our countries before coming to China. Yet, apart from the narrator, there is no "foreign presence" inside the video. Besides, I did not use my own image or voice in the short video I made last year about my life in Shanghai. My opinion is that when it comes to foreigners' content in China, there is usually an unavoidable factor, one that reproduces an exotic…