I'm Ricky Qi, a filmmaker, photographer, and National Geographic Explorer.

I was born in Kunming, China, and immigrated to the United States at two. Growing up Chinese in America, I often felt that I was caught between two opposing cultures, each asking me to pick a side. Years later I would realize that I didn’t need to choose.

Inspired by my studies with China scholar Paul G. Pickowicz at UC San Diego, I moved to China and spent years working as a filmmaker in Beijing and Shanghai. Many see Eastern and Western thinking as opposites. My time there began to teach me a third way, one that draws from both. I now take this perspective with every story I seek, looking beyond simple explanations to find enduring truths beyond binaries.

My documentary Under One Roof, supported by a National Geographic Explorer's Grant, follows the Mosuo, China's last matriarchal tribe, as they face an impossible choice between isolation and modernity.

My narrative film Year of the Rat—which premiered at Hawaii International Film Festival, won the Golden Angel Award, and has been viewed over 650,000 times—explores a Chinese immigrant mother reaching across an unbridgeable distance to her American daughter. I believe it resonated because it captured not just the loneliness of belonging fully to neither world, but the hope of wholeness beyond that divide.

Everywhere, I'm drawn to showing how seemingly separate worlds connect. My work with National Geographic work has taken me across East and Central Asia, the Pacific, and Antarctica. I’ve shot for the National Geographic Chinese edition of the magazine, and I've lectured at universities and events worldwide, including TED.

Currently I'm developing two projects: East of West, a documentary series tracing the New Silk Roads from Xi'an to Istanbul, and The Watchtower (烽之子), a feature film about a group of Tang Dynasty soldiers keeping watch over their forgotten corner of the world as their empire collapses. I’m deeply passionate about discovering what’s worth holding onto when old frameworks fall apart.

In my spare time, you'll find me with a fly rod in the Eastern Sierras or on a surfboard along the California coast, anywhere there's moving water.

East of West is a documentary series following the New Silk Roads from Xi'an to Istanbul, tracing how cultures transform when they encounter the unfamiliar.

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East of West