Seeing research through a new lens: Q&A with Pei Yuan Zhang

This June, hordes of filmmakers flocked to Sheffield, England, for the country’s largest documentary film festival, Sheffield DocFest. Among them was Pei Yuan Zhang, who had just received her Ph.D. in cognitive science at New York University and was the only amateur to present.

Zhang’s film, “The Opposite of Dying,” follows Tang, an entrepreneurial hermit who lives in the caves surrounding Dali, China, a picturesque enclave for hippies, artists and digital nomads. Zhang documents Tang’s attempts to package and commercialize his unusual lifestyle—and his unflappable optimism as his business proposals are routinely turned down.

Zhang filmed, edited and produced the film herself, with help from her husband, Jinglong Pang. The experience, she says, opened her mind to new ways to approach her life and work—unbound by judgment or a need for answers—when so much of her scientific training had taught her to view things as right or wrong.

“A lot of research treats everyone as if they are the same; it’s just data. But in real life, there’s so much diversity in people. I think I now care a lot more about individual differences when it comes to research,” Zhang says.

Now a postdoctoral researcher, Zhang says she plans to split her time between the University of California, Los Angeles and New York University, in Wei Ji Ma’s lab, where she completed her Ph.D. She plans to continue her doctoral research on procrastination and its connections with depression, anxiety and other aspects of mental health. But, she says, she’s not done making documentaries.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Transmitter: How did your documentary work begin?

Pei Yuan Zhang: I am really interested in understanding people. In cognitive science and in psychology, that means using people as data to understand their behavior. It is all about mass rationality. I knew I wanted to try documentary to explore something more personal.

TT: How did you learn how to film a documentary?

PZ: To be honest, I’m not really interested in all the technical details of making a film. That was not my goal; the goal was to record a person’s life. But I did need the technical help to make it, I realized. I sought out free online courses, and by reaching any resource I could.

I volunteered at a summer camp in China to teach high school students about liberal arts. I was teaching cognitive science, but the summer camp had several courses, and one was filmmaking. I asked the teacher if I could audit it, and she said OK—so I participated in all the assignments of the class and made my first short film. Through her, I was also able to connect with other students and film directors who are in the industry.

TT: How did you connect with Tang to make your film about him?

PZ: With COVID, NYU closed, so I went back to China, where my mom is. I had heard about this city called Dali. It’s where the Chinese hippies and international hippies go.

I began volunteering there, and I heard a lot of people talking about Tang, the hermit and businessman, who ended up being my protagonist. He lives in a cave, but he has big dreams to be a successful entrepreneur. He wants to package his lifestyle to make a business and make products—such as yoga mats or shoes more suited to his mountain lifestyle.

One day I met him on the street very randomly. In the wintertime, he wears shorts and T-shirts and is barefoot, so it’s very easy to notice him. I approached him and said that I wanted to tell his story in an integrated way, rather than short video clips like TikTok. I thought we could have something more authentic, more profound.

TT: What was it like presenting as an amateur at Sheffield DocFest?

PZ: There was a screening of the film and a hosted Q&A. ​I felt very respected—and like my work was very respected—because the hosts watched the film and prepared really good questions.

The audience had really good questions, too—philosophical questions, like what’s the relationship between Tang and moneymaking, and what was the underlying motivation for him to have such a life? I really appreciate that, because the aim of my film is to help people have these conversations about the meaning of life.

TT: Did you share the response with Tang? 

PZ: My husband recorded the whole Q&A session in Sheffield, because Tang could not come to the film festival. Afterward, I visited him in his cave in Dali and played him the Q&A session on my phone. One moment after the Q&A ends, tears came to his face. He told me that it was not because of any specific question; it was because of the atmosphere. It was the first time in his life that he felt seen and respected.

TT: How did your work on the documentary change how you think about the world?

PZ: People are always looking for the correct way to do science, and the correct way to write. In art, it’s very different; it’s free form. The philosophy of Tang is also very different in that way.

In the beginning, I was having trouble fully understanding him because of that difference. He just tries random things; he doesn’t really judge or measure or calculate what is possible this way versus that way. He would just say, “My spirit tells me to do it, and I don’t care whether it is correct.”

And he has a different perspective about the outcome of his business efforts. I interpreted his attempts as a failure: Some people rejected him; he failed in the collaboration. But he didn’t see it that way. He was like, “This is a temporary position, and it could be that something still happens in the future.”

TT: How did you manage to finish your Ph.D. while filming this documentary?

PZ: It was hard, but the good thing about being a scientist is that there’s a lot of flexibility. Sometimes I will be very intense and very focused on my science, and sometimes I want to take a break and switch my mind to something else, like my documentary. My thesis advisor [Ma] was very understanding of this.

It also helped that there is a 12-hour time difference between China and the USA. I could film for the documentary in the morning and then do my research at night.

TT: What are you working on next? 

PZ: After the documentary festival, I went back to China to start my second documentary. I am profiling my friend. She is a poet and a painter with schizophrenia.

People with schizophrenia have distorted audio and visual perception, which can be a source of their creativity in their artistic work. They can see two kinds of worlds. They can suffer from hallucinations, but at the same time they can benefit from their distorted perception to be a little bit creative.

I want to use new forms of visual representation to mimic the distorted visions that my friend experiences. I couldn’t find materials online that could mimic those distortions—it was always a very simplified version, so I was inspired by an artificial-intelligence presentation at Sheffield to use new innovative audio and visual language to tell that part of the story.

I didn’t have the budget for a large team doing animations. But I know how to code, and I was using AI tools in my research, so I was influenced to try.