Wang was born in a small, rural farming village in 1985 in Jiangxi Province, China.[3] Her parents named her "Wang Nanfu" (Chinese: 王男栿), as Nan (男) means man and Fu (栿) means pillar in Mandarin, hoping that the girl would grow up strong like a man.[4] She has a younger brother who is several years younger; growing up, she felt ostracized by her classmates for having a sibling as most of her classmates were only children as a result of the One Child Policy in place at the time in China. When Wang was 12 years old,[note 1] her father (33 years old at the time) died from congenital heart disease which their family could not afford to get medical treatment for. She was forced to drop out of school to work so she could support her family. Wang's family could not afford to send both her and her brother to secondary education.[5] Instead, she enrolled herself in a vocational school and eventually started working as a teacher for primary school-age children.[3]
Hooligan Sparrow was Wang's first feature documentary. It tells the story of Chinese human rights activists, including Ye Haiyan (the titular "Hooligan Sparrow"), fighting to bring accountability to government officials who allegedly sexually assaulted several young girls. As Wang films the activists, she herself becomes the subject of harassment from state actors responding to her efforts to document the activists' work.
Wang has stated that she created the film because, “I was interested in many, many topics like the healthcare system and the educational system in China because I didn’t go to high school or college in China. Another topic that interested me was sex workers because, like I said, I grew up in a village and I had seen a lot of women from the village who didn’t have access to education and they end up becoming sex workers because they did not have skills, they did not have education and they were really discriminated against. So, I wanted to make a film about the poorest sex workers in the country, but I also knew that it would be hard to get access to them. I’ve known Hooligan Sparrow–her name is Ye Haiyan–for a long time through social media, but I had never seen her in person at the time.”[7]
When creating the film Wang was not aware that this would make her a target for government surveillance, later stating that she "knew very little about the activist world".[7] Wang has noted that her family and friends were followed and interrogated by officers who questioned whether or not they knew her, her whereabouts, and her current actions.[7]
Wang directed Mind Over Murder, a 2022 documentary which examined the case of the Beatrice Six, a group of six individuals falsely found guilty of the rape and murder of a Nebraska woman.[8]
^Kim, Ji-won (24 August 2021). "부산영화제 지석상·비프메세나상·선재상 심사위원 발표…미래 이끌 신인 찾는다" [Busan Film Festival Ji Seok Award, BIFF Mecenat Award, Son Jae Award Jury Announcement… Looking for new talent to lead the future]. Ten Asia (in Korean). Naver. Archived from the original on 24 August 2021. Retrieved 24 August 2021.
