WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- American photographer Peter S. Crosby's reunion with a Chinese family who offered him food and shelter during his bicycle ride from Beijing to Hong Kong in 1994 was among the incredible, touching moments captured by a newly-released documentary.

Crosby first came to China as a freelance writer and photographer for the Los Angeles Times in 1988. And six years later, he went back to China with a friend to take a 3,000-km-odd bicycle ride from Beijing to Hong Kong, through provinces including Shanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi and Guangdong.

"Just the first time I went to China, I fell in love with it. I wanted to be able to take photographs and video, and tell stories in an integrated way," recalled Crosby in the 48-minute documentary My China Story premiered in the U.S. this week on YouTube.

The trip was obviously difficult. But for Crosby, the Chinese people in front of his camera were the most lively memories of the experience: "It's amazing to see all those people who let us film and photograph them so up-close and very personally."

During the fourth month of their ride, Crosby and his friend got lost in the mountains in Badong, Hubei Province. They became hungry, cold, and desperate until local farmer Yinghua Liu received them with hospitality though the family lived a poor life then.

"They lived in a dirt house, literally a dirt house by the side of a mountain road. And this was by that time like October," said Crosby. "It was starting to get cold and it was rainy. Anyway, we were lost and they say, 'Come in. Have some tea. Have a hot potato.'"

"As it got dark, they wanted to make us a meal. They had to borrow the pork from the neighbors ... They cooked over woodfire, coalfire in their home and they made us such a big feast pretty much in the dark and they let us stay," said Crosby, who had videotaped the unexpected experience that turned out to be his best memory of the trip.

Crosby took a family photo of Liu's family before they resumed their ride to Hong Kong the next day. He always remembered the family who didn't know him but still offered to help though he had been unable to visit the family until over two decades later.

"I'm going back to say thank you, in my way, in a little way," said Crosby who had managed to relocate the Liu's through friends' friends via WeChat and paid them a visit in summer 2017.

And Crosby was moved to find Liu and his family still considered him part of the family though the small family got much bigger and almost everything around has completely changed as the other parts of China in the past two decades.

Like the rainy night 23 years ago, Crosby and Liu's family, again, sat around a table, not at that dirt house but at a grand restaurant. The family have already moved to live in a nearby city. His host Yinghua Liu also armed himself with a translation app to communicate with him.

"It's amazing how included I'm being, even though my language skill is so bad," Crosby said.

Crosby is one of the four Americans filmed in My China Story who shared their unique experiences of China.

The other three are Lois Conner, a photographer who is obsessed with the Chinese landscape; Liu Heung Shing, first Time Magazine photojournalist stationed in China, where he captured the country's image with his camera in the early 1980s; and Max Horne, a Harvard freshman studying Chinese for 6 years who is most amazed by China's diversity and acceptance. Enditem

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