Guangzhou International Documentary Film Festival 2019 (GZDOC) that opened Tuesday in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province has shown an impressive field. The annual event has drawn 695 film industry organizations from home and abroad, including 95 professional international forum holders and 128 exhibitors. In addition, over 3,000 works from 130 countries and regions had been registered for the festival. Foreign documentary films took up more than 80 percent of all the films entered.

During GZDOC's major event, the "Day of Guangdong" South China Documentary Symposium, the country's first reality experiential history documentary "The Thirteen Hongs" was released.

"The Thirteen Hongs" is a 4K ultra high definition documentary series with seven episodes, each lasting 50 minutes. It took three years for the pre-production and one year in filming over 80 figures and stories at more than 30 cities in nine countries and regions on three continents. Its producers wish to let the public enjoy this sole official documentary in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Macao's return to China.

Based on the history of Guangdong's Thirteen Hongs, the documentary series traces the relics of the trading posts in Guangzhou under the single trading port system and probes into the historical significance and influence of the Canton factories to today's economy, culture, art, and many other aspects.

The stories that took place during the Thirteen Hongs period caused a butterfly effect and have affected the current lifestyle in China and at the rest of the world. Macao was the forefront of global trading over 200 years ago. Frequent cultural fusion and economic interactions have laid a foundation for this international metropolis long time before.

In the face of the blooming Greater Bay Area and the 20th anniversary of Macao's return to Chinese sovereignty, the film crew hopes to use some real stories of this ages, novel language, and expression to inspire more audience and youths, in particular, to fall in love with this meaningful and interesting history.

Over a hundred years during the 18th and 19th centuries, less than 100 merchants were appointed by the imperial court to manage tens of trading firms engaging in conducting trades with foreign countries in Guangzhou, the only port in the country opened to the outside world.

The 13 trading posts drew over 20 percent of the global wealth than to the port of Guangzhou. Among those involved in these business deals, there were emperors, officials, merchants, and even ordinary people of the Qing Dynasty, and British, American, French, Spanish, to name a few. In a word, most of the G20 countries today have benefited from business with the thirteen hongs.

In "The Thirteen Hongs," the "Kitty Thirteen," mascot of the documentary recounts the tales of the thirteen hongs and stories about money. Adopting the experiential reality method, the series referred to the scene mentioned in the historical records two centuries before.