[Network World China Style]
It plays an important role in reflecting the life of the times, recording the rhythms of reality, highlighting traditional styles, meeting the diverse and personalised aesthetic needs of the people and promoting the prosperous development of socialist culture, and has become a vital and creative part of contemporary literature and art.
It plays an important role in reflecting the life of the times, recording the rhythms of reality, highlighting traditional styles, meeting the diverse and personalised aesthetic needs of the people and promoting the prosperous development of socialist culture, and has become a vital and creative part of contemporary literature and art.
Throughout the ages, writers and artists have turned their praise for their hometowns and their longing for them into musical notes, scrolls, poems or stories, resulting in countless artistic masterpieces. Anyone can use the new media to produce images of their hometowns, and by forwarding and commenting on online literary works, or through secondary creation of images, they can turn their hometowns into hot topics and netflix attractions, a drama can set a city ablaze, an online hit can make a "hometown" popular, and online literary works The creative expression of hometowns is unique.
Love your hometown and shout out that familiar name loudly in cyberspace
In 2020, the internet discovered the Tibetan boy Ding Zhen. He filmed a promotional video for his hometown, Litang, Sichuan, entitled "Ding Zhen's World", and became an ambassador for tourism in his hometown. At the same time, topics such as "'Ding Zhen chose to speak for his hometown' were praised", linking Ding Zhen's image to his hometown on an ongoing basis. Ding Zhen became a growth point for tourism in his hometown, and the following year, during the "November" Golden Week, Litang welcomed over 130,000 visitors and received 152 million yuan in tourism revenue, an increase of 72% year-on-year.
The traffic that Ding Zhen has brought to his hometown is obvious. The use of short internet videos to "score points" for his hometown (a term used by the internet to refer to the activities of gamers who improve their ranking and tournament points by winning games) has attracted continued attention. A month before Dingzhen Fever, a video of a horse galloping through the snow made He Jiao Long, then deputy governor of Zhaosu County in Xinjiang, popular on the internet. The following year the number of visitors to the Yuhu scenic spot she promoted rose five or six times. After that, many cities, states and counties in Xinjiang have opened short video accounts, cultural and tourism bureau cadres from behind the scenes to the front of the stage, competing to produce short videos, "hot na director said Shaya" "charming Pamir" "Yumin mountain flowers for you to open "and other accounts are known for promoting their hometowns, sincerely recommending the beautiful scenery and food, living customs, customs and local conditions around Xinjiang. In a series of short videos by Genna Guli, the director of the Shaya County Culture and Tourism Bureau shows netizens Xinjiang dance performances, local food culture, and attempts to drive a motorbike through the Hu Yang Highway or drive off-road in the Taklamakan Desert, among other things. These accounts are kept regularly updated, allowing the beauty of his hometown, hidden in the Gobi and snow-capped mountains, to be on full display.
Another popular "hometown" is Cao County. 2021, a short video "Shandong Heze Cao County 666, my baby! In 2021, a short video "I'm from Yunnan, from Nujiang in Yunnan, Lushui City in Nujiang, Lushui City in Luku ...... "Open the whole network to compete in the hometown mode, become the whole network dialect competition, "I am from Guangdong" "I am from Hebei" "I am from Gansu" ...... Tiannanhai and northern netizens including many public figures have joined in, all to "score" for their hometown, joyfully shouting out their hometown's name in cyberspace, on a video platform this topic has been played more than 3.5 billion times.
However, the short video makes the hometown popular, in addition to accidental factors, but also the platform to algorithm recommendations, tilt traffic to create heat and other factors, coupled with the limited length of the short video, in the attention and expression of the hometown, too late to mature thinking, polished, and even some vulgar "rustic war songs". Some video bloggers just want to use the name of their hometown to get out of the circle and take an overly entertaining approach, without strategy and logic, which brings negative impact, which is contrary to the original purpose of promoting their hometown.
Web documentaries are also part of the "score" for home. Food is a memory of home and hometown engraved in the body, and delicious food appeases nostalgia. Different regional food documentaries such as "Taste of Xinjiang", "Taste of Sichuan" and "Flavours of Origin - Gansu" activate the memory of the stomach with a visual feast, as well as all kinds of emotions about home, family, family love and youth. Time- or taste-focused food documentaries such as "The Late Night River", "The First Meal", "Sweet China" and "Spicy Tales" nourish more nostalgic taste buds in a low-key but extensive way. Online documentaries excel at attracting young users with their small volume and delicate content. For example, the documentary "Is it good to go to your home for dinner", in which a video blogger invites a friend to his hometown for a home-cooked meal with his family in each episode to talk about the youth and affection surviving in his hometown, is particularly friendly to nostalgia amidst the slightly noisy online voices. Hometown is a vast and inclusive spiritual home, as well as a concrete and detailed memory of people. Web documentaries excel at finding the smallest aspects under the grand themes, close to the audience and easy to empathise with those who miss their hometown.
A hometown that showcases the charm of the Chinese land
Web dramas have also brought fire to their hometowns. Many of the web series that have had a wide impact in recent years have become the city's strongest "propaganda films", and are gradually becoming an important means of creating urban IP. The web series Twelve Hours in Chang'an has made the director's hometown "new" again. Set in the Tang Dynasty, this 24-hour crime solving story is suspenseful and tightly paced, meeting the expectations of internet viewers for a narrative. The film is also well produced, from the careful selection of costumes, architecture, artefacts and food to the highly recreated scenes of the 108 workshops in Chang'an City, from the "tongue of Chang'an", such as lamb in water pots, persimmons in fire crystals, beignets and noodle soup, to the cultural Chang'an, where grandeur and beauty intertwine with the everyday atmosphere. Through the exquisite pursuit of props and scenery, and the restoration of historical images, the audience will be able to enjoy both the pleasure of watching and the pleasure of intellectual research. Viewers discussed the Tang Dynasty's li-fang system, fork-hand rituals and tea-making tools online while following the drama, and "Tanqi's make-up" was a hot search item, sparking a "national style make-up competition". The creator's "obsessive-compulsive" pursuit of details added to the artistic creation and entertainment of the drama, and the charm of ancient Chang'an heated up with the intellectual archaeological enthusiasm of online users.
The director had said, "In case this play is a hit, so many people travel to Xi'an, they have to land and they have to find something to eat." So the play arranged for the famous Xi'an snack, mutton bun, which had not yet appeared at the time, to come online. Behind the literary creation is the director's emotion for his hometown as an Xi'an resident, and his grasp of the laws of online literary creation. In the Internet era, the inclination to detail, the examination of knowledge and other entertainment interests are the new needs of users of online literature and art. Stemming from network empowerment, the internet medium gives users the convenience and freedom to retrieve knowledge and voice interaction. The creation of high buzz topics in the year of the broadcast of The Twelve Hours of Chang'an was associated with the high density of knowledge points in the episodes and the huge archaeological voice created on the Internet. And this huge voice eventually drove a large number of internet users to hit the ancient city of Xi'an.
Punching cards, given a new meaning in the new media era, refers to online users using self-media to mark their own traces in time or space. People have become accustomed to clocking places of interest and food on social media platforms, sharing their daily routine while brushing up their presence. Punchcards are also a new form of image production, a shot that presupposes physical presence - "I am here" - and is a marker of people's mobility in physical space. Through the online user's own image practice, the punch card completes the reproduction of meaning in the landscape.
The web series "The Hidden Corners" draws viewers into the plot in a disjointed manner, while discovering the hidden Guangdong province of Zhanjiang in the episode. Zhanjiang people instantly recognise "Ningzhou" as their hometown. The street scenes such as the old well doughnut shop, Xinhua Bookstore, Children's Palace, Xiashan Flyover and Fisherman's Wharf, as well as the everyday food such as natural fish soup and Zhanjiang crab, are real and tangible enough to bring Zhanjiang people back home in seconds. Just as the audience was once enamoured by the actors because they loved the characters, they now "support" their hometown by "punching the clock". Fans boarding a green train to roam to Kaili, Guizhou, is a spin-off not designed by the creators of the art film. But the web series "Twelve Hours in Chang'an", "The Silent Truth" and "The Wind Rises in Luoyang" have been aired, sending audiences on trips to cities such as Xi'an, Chongqing and Luoyang, not just as a windfall, but as a function of online art and literature as a way to create urban IPs.
Return home and spread the beauty of your hometown far and wide
The digital development of society is behind the short videos and web series that have brought home fire. Various mobile devices, such as large and small screens and smartphones, have connected people to data systems. People carry their smartphones and wander around city streets and fields, filming landscapes and food, uploading, forwarding and interacting and discussing them via the internet, which generates attention on social media, with the result that more people are arriving on the scene as tourists to experience the scenery and delicacies. Every hidden corner can be extended through new media image production, in the Internet information system, and may even become an Internet attraction. Internet media and digitisation have changed the creation strategies and dissemination methods of online literary works and pan-literary products, cutting through urban and rural life, and the flow of online literary art has generated considerable economic productivity.
In recent years, the digital transformation of the countryside has continued to deepen, and the Internet has continued to help build the countryside. 2019, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Outline of the Digital Countryside Development Strategy", proposing to strengthen the guidance of rural network culture and support the creation of high-quality content for network culture on the theme of "three rural areas". 2022, in January, the Central Internet Information In January 2022, the Central Internet Information Office and other 10 ministries issued the Action Plan for Digital Rural Development (2022-2025), deploying key actions in eight areas, including the revitalization of rural network culture. The policy guides short video platforms to open up their traffic to promote the dissemination of rural images, showcase rural ecology in all aspects and bring fire to rural scenes and good things. For example, in spring 2022, on a video platform, more than 4,000 people recorded tea picking in Fengqing County, Lincang, Yunnan Province, on the same day, and more than 2,000 farm machinery operated in the fields of Gongzhuling, Jilin; more than 10 million people posted videos related to spring farming, with the number of plays breaking 49 billion. More promisingly, the hometowns that were once left behind have now become destinations for many young people to explore innovation and entrepreneurship.
Among the young people who have returned to their hometowns to start their own businesses, some of them like to record scenes of rural production and life at any time, creating poetic idyllic images. Zhang, a young man from Yingkou, Liaoning Province, and Bird, a handsome farmer from Xinchang County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, have returned to their hometowns to explore the entrepreneurial path of new media video production with the logic of Internet short video operation. Peng Chuanming, a young man from Nanping, Fujian province, who has been dubbed by netizens as a "Netflix purist", made an 8-minute video of the ancient process of making ink that took two years; put the whole process of growing rice for one year into a 14-minute video; presented the ancient bamboo papermaking technique in Fujian province with a cycle of eight months in 10 minutes; from the production of the four treasures of the literary house, to the ancient method of brewing wine From the making of the Four Treasures of the Writing House, to the restoration of ancient watermelon cream and ancient flower dew rouge, more than a hundred short videos are dedicated to documenting the rural life of their native Fujian. There are no dazzling production techniques, no so-called net-sense performances, but they convey a touching power that resonates strongly among viewers, and the videos have been liked more than 50 million times. In the calm, simple video, people feel the simplicity and sincerity of their hometown, and experience a respect for labour, traditional culture and folk culture.
Hometown is a poetic recitation of "looking up at the bright moon, thinking of my hometown", a true narrative of "a golden full moon hanging in the deep blue sky, below the sandy land by the sea, all planted with endless turquoise watermelons", and a moving narrative of "a green hill close together, a white cloud around the mountain, a terraced field with layers of greenery, a song with the wind". "It is also a film and television production that inspires love and longing. Through the talent and creativity of artists, the theme of home has enriched the artistic landscape of different times. Today, intelligent algorithms, digital images and virtual reality have profoundly influenced the creation and dissemination of online art and literature. Online art and literature eagerly reflect and reproduce the charm of hometowns, explore the spiritual meaning of expressions about hometowns, connect real hometowns with the virtual world of art by means of new media image production, construct hometowns with images, and open up new landscapes of hometowns in a different way.
(Author: Zhao Lijin, Professor, School of Communication, Northwest Normal University; this article is the result of the National Social Science Foundation project "Research on Intelligent Innovation and Social Impact of Online Literature and Art Driven by Algorithms" [21BZW057])
Source: Bright Daily Editor: Jiang Shuai
