A Leaf’s Sea Road

一片叶子的海路

One tea leaf leaves the Thirteen Factories in Guangzhou, is packed into a chest, carried across the sea, and sold in London. The film follows it the whole way with a single narration line, a score, and two rows of subtitles. A hundred and nineteen seconds.

Type: Historical short
Finished: October 2026
Length: 119 seconds
Language: Chinese / English subtitles
Frame: 16:9
Versions: Six exports

A Leaf’s Sea Road · 119″ Click to play · no autoplay

Process　制作过程

Six versions · four days

Early Cut

from rough cut to final

The film took four days and left six exported files behind. The first three sit within hours of each other, each one adding to the same timeline: the voice track, then the subtitles. The fourth was opened a day later, and ran a hundred and fourteen seconds instead of ninety-five.

Export	Written	Length	What changed
final	10-25　23:18	95.2″	first rough cut
final_vo	10-26　00:19	95.2″	voice track added
final_sub	10-26　00:25	95.2″	Chinese subtitles added
成片_v1	10-26　22:11	114.5″	re-cut +19.3″
成片_双语	10-26　22:35	114.5″	subtitles became bilingual
成片_带BGM	10-27　00:00	119.0″	score added, final +4.5″

Narration & Subtitles

voice and subtitles

The voice track was exported on its own at ninety-five point two seconds, exactly the length of the picture at the time. Chinese subtitles came first; English was added the next day, as a second row. The same line, two versions:

Chinese-subtitled version: the Thirteen Factories, one line of Chinese subtitles — **Chinese**final_sub · 95.2″

Bilingual version: the same shot, subtitles in two rows — **Bilingual**成片_双语 · 114.5″

Same line, same frame. The English is not a literal translation; it is pressed shorter so it does not compete with the Chinese above it.

Re-editing

nine at the head, ten at the tail

What the re-cut actually changed was the head and the tail. Take the tenth, twenty-fifth, fortieth and fiftieth seconds and look for the same frame in the later version: every one lands nine seconds further in. The ninety-fourth second, the old close, is the hundred and third, near enough frame for frame. Not a single shot in the middle was touched. The old film was pushed back nine seconds, a new opening went in front, a new ending went after: nineteen point three seconds in total.

Before final_sub　95.2″

Old cut, 60s: a ship under a night sky — **60″**night ship

Old cut, 72s: a pencil-drawn harbour — **72″**harbour sketch

Old cut, 84s: a white porcelain bowl in sunlight — **84″**porcelain bowl

After 成片_双语　114.5″

New cut, 60s: a ship on a dusk horizon — **60″**dusk at sea

New cut, 72s: a ship under a night sky, bilingual subtitles — **72″**night ship

New cut, 84s: the pencil-drawn harbour, bilingual subtitles — **84″**harbour sketch

Read down a column and it is the same shot, nine seconds apart. The night ship at 60″ in the old cut does not appear in the new one until 72″.

Typography Study

the English title face

Three serif faces were set with the same line, “One leaf, grown on a mountain.”, and judged on whether the period was right: for eighteenth-century British trade, Garamond of 1540 sits a little far; Baskerville of 1757 sits closest. The thinnest of the three goes soft at small sizes, so the decision was made on how it actually read on screen.

Type comparison: Baskerville Old Face, Bell MT and Garamond set with the same line — Baskerville Old Face　1757 · England　／　Bell MT　1788 · England　／　Garamond　1540 · France

Final Assembly

the last four seconds

The score added four and a half seconds at the end. They go to an open book with a leaf pressed inside it. The subtitle there reads: “Twenty thousand miles, resting on a single page.”

An open book with a pressed leaf, subtitled — 成片_带BGM · 01:52

Stills　剧照

Tea pickers among the bushes — 00:25 · picking

The harbour, drawn in pencil — 01:28 · harbour

A Leaf’s Sea Road

Process 制作过程

Stills 剧照

Process　制作过程

Stills　剧照