When a person goes missing, the long period of uncertainty about what has happened to him or her is perhaps the most excruciating time their friends and family has to go through. When on June 9, 2017, college student Yinying Zhang goes missing after a missed appointment about a lease for her apartment, this cycle of waiting and hoping begins for her friends and her family, who come all the way from China to help the search and the investigation in what soon turns out to be an abduction and later on a murder case. One of her best friends, Jiayan “Jenny” Shi had graduated the same year as her, and began documenting the search for her friend, Yingying’s family trying not to lose hope and the eventual trial against the man responsible for their suffering.
“Finding Yingying” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival
Within her documentary, director Jiayan Shi follows three axes which often intersect. While the first one portrays the kind of person Yingying was, with the help of her journal entries and through the interviews with friends and family, the second narrative strand concentrates on the actual search which eventually becomes a murder investigation and a trial, which also had a political aspect to it, since Chinese media and politicians closely observed the way the case was handled by the US judicial system. Many times the perspective switches between the personal sphere of the family and Yingying’s closest friends, to the broader context of the case, highlighting the impact the case had on the university as well as the image of the US in China.
While it becomes quite clear the director herself is emotionally affected by the events, the overall structure of the documentary remains fact-driven, combined with a passionate statement about the appeal of the USA to foreign students, especially from Asia. This is the underlying, third axis of the story, which highlights the view of the US, expressed through the aforementioned journal entries and the statements by friends and family, as well as how the case has influenced their image of the country, considering the concept of safety within the public sphere. Apart from the individual questions regarding this specific case, her documentary tackles questions of justice and the measure with which it is defined.
“Finding Yingying” is quite an impactful documentary about the abduction and murder of Yingying Chang. Emotional gripping and quite disturbing at times, Jiayan “Jenny” Shi has managed to make a film about the repercussions of the case on Yingying’s family as well as the effect it had on the image of the USA for many students coming from Asia to start an academic career abroad.
