I Filmed the Shamate

Story of Li Yifan

I Filmed the Shamate

Hello everyone, my name is Li Yifan. I’m a documentary filmmaker and also a teacher at an art academy.

I first learned about Shamate in 2012. I was thrilled. When I saw those colorful hairstyles and explosive looks, I thought, China finally has punks! We have hippies! I felt that people were actively resisting the spectacle of consumerism. To me, that was a kind of aesthetic consciousness — truly remarkable.

01 — Searching for the Shamate

I decided I had to find them — and film them properly. But I had no idea where they were.

Where did the Shamate on the internet come from? There was no information, no specific address, not even one on-site report.

The only thing I knew was that they had many QQ groups.

So I began leaving messages in all sorts of Shamate QQ groups, saying I wanted to join. No one responded.

Then I thought, maybe I’m too old — maybe my language is outdated, maybe I don’t understand their slang. So I asked my students to try joining for me. But they all failed too.

Only later, after filming, did I understand why Shamate groups were so hard to enter.

They had two kinds of groups: one for screening, and one official group.

You couldn’t even enter the screening group unless you had a Shamate hairstyle, Shamate aesthetics, and a QQ space filled with Shamate symbols — Martian text, decorative codes, and all their visual “gear.”

I asked every possible friend to help me find Shamate. For four or five years, I found nothing. Not a single response.

Then in 2016, a friend in Shenzhen told me he knew Luo Fuxing — the legendary founder of Shamate.

I hadn’t even found one Shamate, and suddenly I’d found the godfather. I thought — this is it.

When I contacted Luo, he agreed to meet, but he was very nervous.

By then, he had already cut his hair short. I could feel he had things he wanted to say but was full of fear. We were three people; he asked my two friends to leave. Then he booked a small hourly room in a motel and only spoke with me alone.

It was sweltering hot in Guangdong. The air conditioner in that room was broken. We didn’t manage to talk about anything serious. But before we left, we exchanged WeChat. He said we could talk slowly later.

I realized afterward why he had agreed to keep in touch. He had asked me, “What exactly are you doing? What do you want to film?”

I told him, “I just want Shamate people to tell their own stories — what they do, what Shamate is.”

I think that was what made him willing to talk to me.

We chatted on and off online, though rarely in sync.

He talked about his father, his family, the warmth of his “Shamate clan,” about gaming — while I wanted to talk about cultural resistance, about how they transformed their bodies to defy consumer society.

Sometimes the conversation died. But both of us kept trying, making compromises, meeting halfway.

At the end of 2017, the Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture gave me a small grant, and I decided — it was time to film Shamate.

02 — Meeting Real Shamate for the First Time

Making a documentary usually requires a central character — a perspective to anchor everything. I thought Luo Fuxing would be that person.

But Luo was actually a homebody. He didn’t know a single Shamate offline. All his connections were online — people he had never met in real life. What could I do with that?

Even worse, the few people he managed to contact refused to show up.

After 2013, society had branded Shamate as “vulgar.”

They were mocked, beaten, and checked for IDs everywhere. After years of humiliation and zero ability to resist, they had developed a deep fear of mainstream society — fear had entered their DNA.

Once, Luo arranged a meeting with a Shamate in a remote industrial area. We walked for two hours to get there. But when we arrived, he insisted we were scammers from the same city — and refused to see us.

This kind of thing happened again and again.

But the hardest part wasn’t rejection — it was time.

These were factory workers working ten to twelve hours a day, sometimes more, with only one or two days off each month.

Every Shamate I met, I met after 10 p.m. — when they got off work.

Afterward they’d shower, blow-dry their hair, eat a late-night meal. By the time they were ready, it was too late for anything else.

Outside the factories, the streets were pitch-dark. There was nothing to do.

I thought, Even if I find them, I can’t film anything. This might be impossible.

Still, those nights of talking were invaluable.

We discovered that almost everything said online about Shamate was false.

We learned Shamate had originated from the online game Audition (Jin Wu Tuan) — one of countless non-mainstream online clans.

Shamate was just one small group among many. Bigger ones, like “Funeral Love,” “Residual Blood,” “Visual Kei,” and “Royal Clan,” were much larger.

Shamate became famous after 2007, when a big split occurred in the non-mainstream scene.

Urban players refined their tastes and stopped playing with rural ones. The rural groups — left behind — went in the opposite direction: embracing exaggerated aesthetics. That’s when the Shamate, with their flamboyant hair, exploded in popularity.

After they went viral, outsiders thought any person with an exaggerated style was Shamate — confusing them with other groups.

But there’s one key trait: upright hair. If your hair doesn’t stand up, you’re not Shamate.

Before 2013, Shamate were everywhere. Workers told me that on a single production line, there might be seven or eight of them.

In the industrial zones of Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian — the streets were full of Shamate.

In those factories, being Shamate was fashionable.

One boy told me that when he returned from Dongguan to his hometown in Yunnan, he stayed awake for three days and nights, afraid his hairstyle would collapse before his old friends could see it.

Yet all the Shamate Luo introduced were “former” Shamate.

I thought the film would become just a nostalgic recollection — until one of them told me that in Shipai Town, Dongguan, there was a roller-skating rink called Jinfeng, where living Shamate still gathered.

That was unexpected — and thrilling.

I drove there immediately.

For the first time, I saw real, living Shamate — kids with bright, proud hair skating confidently.

They loved their hair deeply.

And I realized everything I’d thought before was wrong.

Online, Shamate had always seemed self-mocking.

But here, there was no self-mockery — only pride and joy.

They even had a saying: “Self-mockery is not Shamate.”

All those “self-deprecating” posts online weren’t theirs — they were made by others chasing clicks.

That realization hit me hard. I was the ignorant one.

I saw how little I understood — not only workers, but young people in general.

03 — Living in Shipai

The first phase of shooting took three months.

We drove over 4,000 kilometers across the Pearl River Delta, meeting every Shamate Luo could reach.

We discovered that all Shamate were post-1990s migrant workers — second-generation rural laborers, most of them left-behind children.

Nearly all had dropped out of middle or primary school, and most started factory work at around age 14 — some as young as 12.

I realized that every Shamate’s story was intertwined with the factory.

To understand Shamate, I had to understand factory life.

So we moved to Shipai, once the densest Shamate area.

Shipai is a small town, filled with factories on every ground floor. The air smelled of engine oil. Machines thundered day and night.

Living there, I learned which salons they liked, that they loved Wanzhou grilled fish, that the best-selling phones were OPPO, and that everything revolved around low-cost consumption.

Another reason we stayed was that during the National Day holiday, they held a large annual gathering — their only leisure time.

I believed it would be the film’s key moment — a scene to define their story.

So we filmed the 2018 gathering at Shipai Park.

After joining their QQ, WeChat, Kuaishou, and Douyin, my entire online world changed.

Even my phone’s algorithmic recommendations changed — suddenly full of job listings and factory ads.

I realized I was seeing a world I had never been shown before.

The cultural gap between social classes in China, I realized, was wider than the income gap.

And digital algorithms only made it worse — feeding each class its own “destined” content.

Our perspectives were shrinking.

The Shamate themselves didn’t understand the outside world either.

When they first went to work, they thought they were already the trendiest people alive.

Many told me they had no idea what was really happening beyond their factories.

That thought terrified me — how narrow our collective vision had become.

Without stepping into their world, without adding them as friends, I’d never have seen those pushes at all.

04 — Why They Became Shamate

Only then did I begin to understand why they became Shamate.

Many came from mountain villages — tight-knit, trusting communities.

When they first left home to work, they were often cheated, bullied, or robbed. Some lost their luggage the moment they stepped off the train.

Most were left-behind children who had longed for recognition and care.

In factories, they were surrounded by strangers; even if they came with fellow villagers, factories often separated them across shifts to prevent unrest.

So they were lonely — painfully lonely.

Working endless hours, many developed depression.

In that context, something bright and flamboyant — a wild hairstyle — became self-therapy.

Another factor was economic despair.

Every day their phones showed headlines: “A small project earns 100 million,” “A TV show costs 50 million,” “An endorsement pays 20 million.”

Then they looked at themselves — twelve-hour shifts, three or four thousand yuan a month, one or two rest days.

They felt hopeless.

Unlike their parents, who saved diligently to send money home, these young workers wanted to stay in the city — but knew they never could.

Luo Fuxing often said, “I never look up at tall buildings — they have nothing to do with me.”

There was another reason, too.

On assembly lines, female workers often looked down on male workers.

So boys styled themselves to seem cooler — hoping to attract a girlfriend.

Many came from families that couldn’t afford a bride price; finding love, even modestly, was a triumph.

Living in the factory zones taught me many things.

For example, job ads boasting “No social insurance, no medical insurance” were considered perks.

When I talked to workers, I learned 80–90% quit every year and didn’t know how to renew their insurance.

Staying in Shipai was essential. Without being there physically, I could never gauge how central the factory was — both to their lives and to Shamate aesthetics.

I used to think I understood migrant workers.

But living among them showed me what their 12-hour days, one-day breaks, and 3,000-yuan wages really meant — not just numbers, but exhaustion, spiritual poverty, and despair amid rigid class barriers.

People expected me to capture an exciting story about Shamate — but there was no excitement, only bleak lives.

I knew the factory was key — but how could I film it?

Factories wouldn’t allow cameras. And if I used connections to enter one or two, my yellow safety vest would distort everything.

So we brainstormed.

We decided to hold a Factory Video Contest, inviting workers to submit footage.

Luo scoffed at us: “No one will understand your rules,” he said. “Let me write it.”

He wrote just two sentences:

1. “No deposit required.”

2. “Earn 1,000 yuan a day — not a dream.”

   Then we added our technical specs below.

Immediately, videos poured in like snowflakes.

We bought them all — 915 clips shot by workers themselves.

05 — Visiting the Shamate’s Hometowns

By the time we had those factory videos, the film could have ended.

But I wanted to see where they had grown up.

I knew many former Shamate had already returned home.

So that winter, I went with Wuya, Luo Fuxing, and Professor Li Renqing from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — traveling through Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi to visit them.

Most who returned home genuinely hated factory life.

They wanted to find something to do locally.

Some, like one young man we met, went back because their parents were ill.

But the biggest reason was their children.

They didn’t want their kids to repeat their fate as left-behind children — raised by grandparents, estranged from parents, burdened with resentment.

Yet that wish was almost impossible. Most had gone out again to work, leaving their children behind once more.

They told me endless stories about their childhood loneliness — the grievances, the longing for their grandparents, the bitterness toward absent parents.

They showed me photos and short videos from when they first left home — twelve, thirteen years old — faces so young it broke me.

I rarely cry; after years of filming, I have a high threshold.

But there, I couldn’t hold back.

I reflected on myself — how naïve it was to think “self-negation” was resistance.

These people hadn’t even learned self-protection. How could they resist anything?

They were the most vulnerable people, merely decorating themselves as a small act of self-defense.

But society was brutally intolerant.

Just that tiny difference — those hairstyles — made them national outcasts.

Feeling they had committed a grave mistake, most shaved their hair, went back to work, and returned to lives of quiet poverty.

Before my interview, Luo had been interviewed by many media outlets.

In all those reports, his most frequent phrase was:

“I’ve reformed. I’m starting anew.”

06 — What Was Hidden

After all filming was done, I began editing.

Our material came from three sources: our own interviews, the workers’ videos, and the Shamate’s QQ-space photos and footage.

Editing was agonizing. For months, I couldn’t find the structure.

Traditionally, I’d use a strong director’s perspective — starting with the park gatherings, showcasing visual spectacle, then introducing characters one by one. That’s the “proper” way, matching my education and cinematic habits.

But it felt wrong.

Something essential — the hidden part — was missing.

In documentary work, one principle matters: you must include the most important truth your footage contains and let it speak fully.

All my usual approaches failed.

Then one day, I decided to write a song — a closing theme for the film.

I imagined myself as a Shamate, writing in the first person.

After finishing that song, I suddenly knew how to edit.

I could let the Shamate speak for themselves.

Their experiences were meager compared to their dazzling hair — but that meagerness was precisely what had been hidden.

To reveal it, I would sacrifice drama and spectacle — and give them voice, however plain.

So I abandoned the strong structure — discarded my timeline and perspective — and made a weak-structured film.

I let them ramble, telling their own stories in their own words, full of small details.

I thought it would fall apart — but the opposite happened.

Suddenly everything fit.

The footage was theirs; the factory scenes were theirs; the spaces were theirs.

As they spoke, I could patch any material together freely — without dissonance.

And just like that, the film was finished.

07 — Two Questions

To end, I want to answer two questions I’m often asked.

First: people ask if I made a “History of Shamate.”

No.

I didn’t film the history of Shamate.

I filmed Shamate telling their own histories — their personal and spiritual histories — which are also a part of the history of post-90s migrant workers.

Second: people ask if I make documentaries out of “idealism.”

In 2002, I put down my books and went to the Three Gorges to film Disappearing (Yan Mo) because I wanted to understand what was happening in rural China.

There, I saw the cost of modernization — the upheaval of rural–urban relations.

I wanted to find their roots.

Later, I spent two years filming Village Archives: Longwang Village Files, trying to understand why such drastic change occurred — and what it might bring.

All my works — films, photographs, social art projects — share a single research focus: rural–urban relations, especially the human cost of urbanization.

The greatest unresolved issue of the twentieth century, I believe, is precisely this — the relationship between city and countryside.

A nation striving for modernization must handle it properly, or chaos will follow.

A sociologist once asked why World War I and II happened — and said it was because Germany failed to solve its rural–urban conflict.

As mechanized agriculture displaced peasants, millions flooded into cities that weren’t prepared — lacking housing, jobs, education, or welfare.

When economic crisis hit, society collapsed. To divert the crisis, Germany turned to war.

Each of us lives within society.

Our personal condition is society’s condition.

Our personal history is social history.

The best way to understand yourself is to **under…understand society.

Only when your gaze upon society has no blind spots will you realize — you are not living in a peaceful illusion like Westworld’s “serene world of still waters.”

Thank you.