Post video wins Online Journalism Association award, YouTube channel subscribers top 3 million

Name: Chinese couple keep afloat a community kitchen serving cancer patients and their families
Uploaded: 2022-10-17T11:21:11.000Z
Duration: 9 min 31 s
Description: Chinese couple keep afloat a community kitchen serving cancer patients and their families

The Healing Kitchen, by Shanghai-based video producer Thomas Yau, tells story of couple making difference in lives of families of cancer patients

Judges praise video as telling ‘universal story through beautiful cinematography and raw, authentic interviews’

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Chinese couple keep afloat a community kitchen serving cancer patients and their families

SCMP Reporter

Published: 7:21pm, 17 Oct 2022

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The South China Morning Post’s video team has won a prestigious Online Journalism Award for the second year in a row, just as its YouTube channel surpassed 3 million subscribers.

The Healing Kitchen, a film by Shanghai-based video producer Thomas Yau, won in the “Digital Video Storytelling, Medium Form, Large Newsroom” category at the annual competition organised by the Online News Association.

Thomas Yau made the film amid restrictions to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in mainland China. Photo: SCMP

The nine-minute mini-documentary profiles a couple in the city of Nanchang in China’s Jiangxi province who run an open-air kitchen in an alley near a cancer hospital, so family members of patients can make home-cooked meals for their loved ones.

“The Healing Kitchen was able to convey a universal story through beautiful cinematography and raw, authentic interviews,” judges said in announcing the award. “The piece demonstrated how a story can move you, make you laugh, bring you to tears, and open the window to a culture, a community and life they know so little about.”

Yau made the film amid restrictions to fight the Covid-19 pandemic in mainland China. He lost a day of filming when one of his trips to Nanchang was cut short because of an outbreak that forced him to return to Shanghai earlier than planned. Yau overcame the challenges, using video he had already shot to craft a compelling and uplifting story.