Twenty students from Irvine and Shanghai spent the summer photographing everyday life, exploring communities and challenging the assumptions they had formed online.
By Keyang Pang | Irvine, California
When U.S.-China relations are often framed by tension and competition, 20 college students from California and Shanghai began their exchange with something much simpler: walking through each other’s cities and taking photographs.
This summer, students from the University of California, Irvine and Fudan University in Shanghai participated in “Seeing Each Other,” a photography and storytelling project designed to take students beyond the images of China and the United States they encounter through social media and news.
The students met online before traveling, discussed their interests and then explored Shanghai and Southern California with their student hosts. Instead of focusing primarily on famous landmarks, they photographed neighborhood markets, senior communities, immigrant neighborhoods and ordinary people going about their daily lives.
The project was initiated by the UCI Humanities Center with support from the Cyrus Tang Foundation. It is directed by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, associate dean of the UCI School of Humanities and professor of history and Asian American studies, with documentary photographer Mark Leong serving as a mentor.
For Wu, photography was chosen as the medium in part because of her own experience during the pandemic, when taking photographs gave her a reason to go outside, walk and pay closer attention to her surroundings.
“When you share a photograph, you are actually sharing the way you see the world, what you value, and what you find interesting,” Wu said.
That idea became central to the project. Rather than asking students to decide in advance what “China” or “America” should look like, Wu wanted them to start with people and places that genuinely caught their attention.
Seeing Shanghai Beyond the Skyline
For UCI MBA student Jose Benitez, curiosity was a major reason he joined the program.He was working full time during the day, completing his MBA studies at night and fitting the trip to Shanghai into an already busy schedule.
Before traveling to China, Benitez said most of what he knew about the country came from Western media and information he had seen online. He knew about China’s importance in the global economy and its extensive economic ties with the United States, but he wanted to see what those larger stories looked like in everyday life.
What surprised him most was not Shanghai’s skyline. It was the students he met. “I was surprised to find that my Chinese peers were very similar to me. They have very similar hopes and dreams,” Benitez said.
He was also impressed by their backgrounds. Some spoke three languages, while others had come from smaller cities in China and made their way to Fudan University, one of the country’s leading universities. Benitez said he saw in them people who, like him, were working hard to get a good education, plan for their futures and figure out what comes next.
Shanghai itself also challenged some of his expectations. “I didn’t expect China to be this advanced,” he said. Rather than spending most of their time visiting famous tourist sites, he and his classmates went to local markets, neighborhoods and older shopping centers. “I saw a completely different China,” he said.
When Fudan students later visited Southern California, Benitez’s group introduced them to Chicano culture, including the history and communities of Mexican Americans in Orange County and Los Angeles.
His goal was to show them a side of Southern California that could not be reduced to the familiar images of California found online.
Looking at Home Differently
For UCI student Yang Lu, the trip to Shanghai was more personal. Lu was born in China and moved to the United States with his family when he was 10. He is now a fourth-year student at UCI’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts, where he studies classical percussion.
In Shanghai, one of the experiences that stayed with him was a visit to a senior community. He saw younger workers spending time with older residents, while seniors danced, practiced calligraphy, played chess and played table tennis. For someone who left China as a child, the scenes brought back a familiar sense of community.
Photo by Fang Yi, Fudan University
After returning to Southern California, Lu turned his camera toward Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, as well as Latino, Indigenous and other communities, exploring how different generations and cultures make their lives in the region. “I hope not only to see the older generation, but also to see how they live in such a diverse Southern California community,” he said.
The project, he said, gave him an opportunity to look not only at two different countries, but also at his own cultural background and identity.
Fudan graduate student Cao Yuxuan, who studies international journalism and communication, found that some of the most memorable moments were even more ordinary.
Language was one of them. Chinese students worried that their English was not good enough. American students told them they also needed to improve their Chinese. Both sides were learning how to communicate. “That was the moment I felt that we were equal,” Cao said.
She also remembered a taxi ride when the students were trying to decide who would sit in the cramped middle seat in the back. Everyone instinctively wanted to make things more comfortable for the others. “These small things really touched me,” Cao said.
In Southern California, Cao visited Santa Ana and Asian American communities, trying to understand everyday life beyond the image of the United States she had formed through news, movies and social media.
After the program, she plans to travel to Kenya for a six-month internship. “I hope to continue carrying a pair of eyes that discover things, and to see ordinary people in different societies,” she said.
Photo by Tabitha Jang, UC Irvine
Learning to Talk to Strangers
For documentary photographer Mark Leong, who mentored the students, the project was also about teaching them how to observe.
Most college students, he said, already know how to use a camera. The harder part is approaching someone they do not know and asking for a photograph. “Can I take your photograph?” can be a difficult question for a young photographer to ask a stranger.
Over several weeks, Leong watched the students become more comfortable approaching people and starting conversations.
The experience taught them that documentary photography is not simply about taking technically good photographs. It requires spending time with people and building enough trust for them to allow a camera into their lives.
Leong has spent years working in both China and the United States and has photographed different generations of Chinese young people. He said the similarities between the UCI and Fudan students were striking.
“Time is a bigger obstacle than geography,” he said.
The students were separated by the Pacific, but spending days together — walking, eating, talking and photographing — gave them opportunities to discover similarities that were difficult to see from a distance.
Beyond Social Media Images
The exchange had been nearly two years in the making.
Jing Wu, director of Fudan University’s master’s program in international journalism and communication, said UCI first contacted Fudan in the winter of 2024. The two sides spent nearly two years developing the project before launching the exchange this summer.
Jing Wu said young people today often form their impressions of other countries through social media and algorithm-driven content.
“On social media, when you search for Shanghai, the first things that usually come up are the Oriental Pearl Tower, Lujiazui and the Shanghai skyline,” she said. “Those are certainly part of Shanghai, but they are not the whole city.”
During the exchange, Fudan students took their UCI counterparts into alleyway neighborhoods and local communities. They visited Lu Xun Park, watched older residents dance, visited senior dance halls and explored a bird-and-flower market.
In Southern California, the Fudan students visited downtown Santa Ana, learned about Chicano culture and spent time in Asian American and other diverse communities.
Judy Wu said that is ultimately what she hopes students will take away from the project: not a fixed answer about China or the United States, but their own observations and experiences.
She wants students to notice what surprises them and, after returning home, to look differently at the places they had previously taken for granted.
The students’ photographs will be exhibited in Irvine and Shanghai, followed by a virtual exhibition.
