The Ningxia Night Market in Taipei recently announced the holding of the "Subject Three Dance Competition", which was nicknamed "Dance to Unify Taiwan" by netizens on the island.
Not only "Subject 3", more and more mainland pop culture elements have become popular in Taiwan in recent years. Behind the scenes, some mainland social software is winning the favor of young people.
Learning makeup at Xiaohongshu, catching up on TV dramas on Station B... now form the daily life of many young people in Taiwan.
Image source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
A media literacy survey by the Taiwan Golden Che Cultural and Educational Foundation showed that the information platform most commonly used by 50.7% of Taiwanese teenagers is TikTok.
According to a survey by the island's online media READr, TikTok, Xiaohongshu, and Weibo are among the top ten popular social software "favoritely used" by Taiwan's young generation.
In addition, mainland apps such as Bilibili, Taobao, Zhihu, Meitu Xiuxiu, etc. also have many fans.
"Which city in mainland China has the most delicious food?" "Can I pay with cash?" "I want to work in mainland China after graduation. Can you share your experience?"... There are many "Taiwanese people ask, mainland people answer" in Xiaohongshu. In the posts, young people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait leave messages and interact in the comment area on topics such as life, culture, food, etc.
Of course, young Taiwanese people also showed up to answer questions about the situation on the island, and they also received enthusiastic comments.
Some Taiwanese college students shared that the popular short video soundtracks on TikTok can often be heard on campus. Students recommend each other’s favorite creators, and they also imitate the video plots and action arrangements, and apply their editing methods to school assignments.
Some students use popular mainland Internet terms such as "kin" and "bao" to address their friends, and words such as "Zou Xin", "Video", "Channel" and "Camera" pop up unconsciously every day.
"(Xiaohongshu) feels like our own world... There are still some elders on Instagram and Facebook, but there are very few on Xiaohongshu." A young man from Taipei mentioned that most Xiaohongshu users on the island are of the same age. .
Image source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
In fact, youthful content production and user positioning allow Taiwan’s Generation Z to easily find their favorite topics in mainland apps.
The friendly community atmosphere and accurate algorithm recommendations encourage continuous exploration and spontaneous interaction.
Taiwanese commentator Wang Yuqi wrote an article in "Wind Media" and pointed out that the viewing mode based on "music" and "short videos" has become the viewing orientation of today's young people. The videos on TikTok and Xiaohongshu are not lengthy and have story-telling, which attracts Taiwanese young people love it.
Absorbing new knowledge from the community has become one of the motivations for Taiwan’s Generation Z to use mainland social software.
A high school student in Taipei City mentioned that he usually likes to collect notes on photo poses, lipstick color test "planting grass" and other notes from Xiaohongshu.
“Look at other people’s experiences and make up for your own shortcomings.”
Enriching your leisure time is also a reason to choose mainland social software.
"I'm interning in a restaurant in Taipei, and the work is quite tiring. In my free time, I can watch interesting videos on TikTok and Bilibili to relieve fatigue." A Taiwanese college student said that fragmented content does not hurt the work rhythm and makes leisure time more enjoyable. Fulfilling and interesting.
Ren Dongmei, an associate researcher at the Taiwan Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that the popularity and popularity of mainland software in Taiwan is due to the inherent cultural affinity between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and the same language and species.
The time-honored traditional Chinese culture.
Similar values and humanistic emotions allow "interaction" that returns to daily life issues to generate a sense of identity.
According to Jia Xuening, a doctoral candidate at the School of Social Sciences at National Taiwan University, the proliferation of mainland social software among Generation Z in Taiwan is essentially a comprehensive display of mainland China’s hard power and soft power.
The competition between large-scale markets and innovative technologies has made many network software stand out and become closer to users.
At the same time, the quality of life of the younger generation on the mainland has improved, their ideas are trendy, and they are increasingly in line with international standards, which has also increased their appeal to young people in Taiwan.
However, the embrace of mainland apps by young people on the island has been misinterpreted by the DPP "legislators" as "infiltrating Taiwan's young people" in a daily life way.
Recently, the Taiwan authorities’ legal department has established a so-called “Cognitive Warfare Research Center” to focus on preventing mainland short video apps.
Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, once said that online exchanges have built a platform for young people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to display their diversity, providing greater space for self-development and creating more opportunities for young people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to understand each other and have positive interactions.
Deliberately obstructing cross-Strait people-to-people exchanges, in the final analysis, is because they are afraid that compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will get closer and get closer, and that they are afraid that the Taiwanese people will understand the true situation on the mainland.
As a Taiwanese high school student said: "The mainland we see through Little Red Book and TikTok is completely different from the mainland the old people say."
People-to-people exchanges are irresistible.
The Democratic Progressive Party's abuse of the rhetoric of "cognitive warfare" may hardly prevent young people on the island from getting closer to the mainland.
Occupying a place in Taiwan's youth market, mainland social software has not only become a quick way to understand the mainland, but also brought young people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait with different growth backgrounds into the interactive context of daily life issues, subtly breaking down the deliberately created "stigma" wall. barriers, so that the real and beautiful scene can be seen by more and more Taiwanese people.
Author: Xia Zhi
(China News Service WeChat official account)