The younger generation tells Chinese stories like this
"You have visited China many times in the past few years. What impressed you the most?"
"I love Chinese history and culture. I visited the Palace Museum last year. They are celebrating the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City. I was amazed. It's great to be able to experience it myself..."
This interview comes from an English conversation between 22-year-old Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications student He Shijie and Apple CEO Tim Cook on February 18.
This college student’s name on the Bilibili video network is "Hello teacher, my name is classmate He". This interview video has more than 5 million views and ranked first in the rankings of the day.
Young, confident, and thoughtful, more and more "post-90s" and even "post-00s" have such characteristics.
They are the younger generation of China, and they are also the newest force for telling Chinese stories well.
The way they talk about China has many differences compared with the past, and it is attracting more and more audiences at home and abroad.
In videos and animations, Chinese style is my favorite
In the ink painting style, accompanied by exciting music, a wonderful fight begins... This is the original Chinese animation.
From the character image to the storyline, to the overall style of painting, and even to the dubbing, there is a strong Chinese style.
This cartoon called "Five Elements in the Fog Mountain" has been shown more than 100 million times after it was released last summer.
Lin Hun, the director of "Five Elements in Wushan" bluntly said that they are a very young team with no more than 10 people at most, but everyone likes Guofeng Chinese painting very much and hopes to incorporate what they love into their work.
Many classic works are also revitalized in a brand-new way under the pursuit of young people.
In the summer of 2020, Bilibili Video posted the four major TV dramas filmed in the 1980s and 1990s-the 1998 version of "Water Margin", the 1994 version of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the 1987 version of "A Dream of Red Mansions" and the 1986 version of "Journey to the West". Notes.
The original TV screens, coupled with the "barrage" of young viewers (commentary subtitles that pop up when watching videos on the Internet), give past TV shows a brand new viewing form.
In recent years, barrage has gained popularity among users, especially young users, with its unique immediacy, interactivity, and novel visual experience.
After the four major TV dramas went online, Zhang Fei’s "Me too" in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Monkey King’s "I call you, do you dare to agree" in "A Journey to the West", and Jia Baoyu’s "This Sister," in "A Dream of Red Mansions," "I've seen" and so on, have become the scenes with the most comments on the barrage of young audiences.
"It's a surprise for netizens, and a respect for our main creators." Wang Chongqiu, cameraman of the 1986 edition of "Journey to the West", said with emotion after watching the bulletin: "The lines of messages above often make me very happy."
From song and dance to opera, culture is the original intention
On New Year’s Eve, in the live broadcast of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2021, Wang Yuan and Sister Moon appeared, cooperating with virtual singer Luo Tianyi to perform the children’s song and dance "Listen to Me", cleverly combining ancient poems and cattle, as well as diligence, economy without waste, and thrift. When the virtues are combined, it creates a beautiful and touching situation for the children.
Luo Tianyi, who has assembled modern science and technology and Chinese classical aesthetics, has allowed the two-dimensional culture to enter the public's field of vision through the Spring Festival Gala.
The virtual singer Luo Tianyi, who appeared on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala for the first time, has been a frequent visitor to many galas in recent years. This character with a strong Chinese style is very popular among young people.
Previously, the character sang popular songs with singer Zhou Huajian and sang excerpts from Peking opera with Peking opera actor Wang Peiyu.
In fact, it is the choice of many young creators to use song, dance, and opera to show a brand new image of China.
On Douyin, a young man uploaded more than 200 videos of his "walking show".
Unlike ordinary catwalks, the stage he walks on is not a "T stage", but country roads, grasslands, courtyards, etc.; the clothes he wears are not big names, but wings made by leaves and carried on his shoulders. A broom, a straw hat on the head, colorful silk scarves, a black net cover in a plastic greenhouse, a blanket covered by grandma, a robe designed with linen pockets...
The young creator of the screen name "Lu Xianren" is only in his early 20s, whose real name is Lu Kaigang, is just an ordinary young man in the rural areas of Guangxi.
Since childhood, he had the dream of becoming a model, but this dream has never been realized.
With the help of a brand-new social media platform, he found a stage to show himself.
On the Douyin platform alone, his number of fans is close to 5 million, and the number of likes exceeds 60 million.
Not long ago, Lu Kaigang was finally invited and embarked on the real "T stage".
Nowadays, the catwalk video of "Xianren Lu" has become popular on overseas social media platforms and has been liked by many foreign netizens.
"He is much higher than the average level of the supermodel industry" "He is better than James Charles" "I feel that his face and eyes are already at the supermodel level"...
And all this is just done by a two-person team of himself as a model and a cousin as a photographer.
In Bilibili Video Network, a cultural community that gathers young people, creators are called "UP Masters".
Although they are young, they have a special liking for Chinese culture and have their own unique understanding of how to display Chinese culture well.
On the streets of France, a young man named "Pengpengpengpengpeng" by a netizen can always attract people's attention.
This Chinese student, whose real name is Peng Jingxuan, is dressed in a Han costume with a guzheng in front of him. He plays repertoires from "Ambush on Ten Sides" to "Croatian Rhapsody", from "High Mountain and Flowing Water" to "Big Fish", from "One Cut Plum" to Kunqu Opera ……Always cause passersby to stop, countless foreign audiences picked up their mobile phones and posted her performance on the Internet after filming.
There are also many foreigners who bring their children to appreciate Chinese culture.
"When I was studying in France, I often saw some street artists performing on the street, but we rarely saw our Chinese musical instruments, and never saw Chinese performers. So, I want to try Chinese folk musical instruments." Speaking of the original intention of creation, Peng Jingxuan said.
This novel approach has brought national culture out of the country.
On the Bilibili video network alone, her videos have been viewed more than 130 million times.
On Douyin, she also gained a large audience.
Dissemination of Chinese culture in innovative ways
In the spring of 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic in Hubei is raging.
Among the more than 42,000 medical personnel supporting Hubei, more than 12,000 are "post-90s", and a considerable number of them are "post-95s" and "post-00s."
There are many young people living in Wuhan.
The stories they recorded touched countless people.
A group of students from Qingying Studio of Tsinghua University saw that on the short video platform, countless people shared scenes during the Wuhan epidemic.
They organized, in the videos of Kuaishou Shanghai, specifically looking for videos taken in Wuhan during the epidemic prevention and control period, and finally found 112 short videos of 77 authors. After communicating with each creator and obtaining authorization, they edited Published a charity documentary "Wuhan New Year in Mobile Phone".
Once this 18-minute short documentary was launched, it caused a sensation.
There are 140 million views on the Weibo platform alone.
The lifestyle and attitude of young people are best demonstrated in the young people's own narration.
"Hello everyone, I am Li Xueqin..." Li Xueqin, a 26-year-old graduate of Peking University, showed a different life path from his classmates on Douyin.
Her short video shows the true feelings of the young generation about life, both the catharsis of work pressure, the exploration of lifestyles, and more happy moments.
The graduates of this prestigious school, with a particularly simple and local language style, coupled with a northeastern accent, showed a strong contrast.
So far, she has nearly 9.5 million followers on Douyin.
China in the eyes of foreign young people is equally colorful.
“This is Lishui’s rice, fish and rice. It grows up with fish on the mountain terraces. It is very fragrant and unique.” Next to the pavilion by the small river in the village, the 32-year-old Russian boy Demi Ri is focusing on a live video broadcast. , Introduce local special agricultural products to netizens in Chinese.
In August last year, he was studying for a doctorate in business management at Donghua University in Shanghai and came to Songyang County, Lishui City, Zhejiang Province. Here he found that many small villages have very traditional lifestyles and original rural scenery.
He was passionate about making creative short videos and decided to stay.
In less than half a year, Demi Ri has used short videos to show hundreds of rural life scenes. As a result, he has gained more than one million fans and won over ten million likes. He has become a famous video blogger.
In 2020, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the local Hengzhang Village's agricultural products were unsalable, and Demi Ri used his video account to start live broadcasting to help villagers increase their income.
Over the past few months, he sold 20,000 catties of navel oranges, 8,000 catties of dried sweet potatoes, and 600 catties of honey... His efforts were praised by the villagers.
There are many more examples like this.
British musician Sean, because he likes Chinese traditional culture, has created songs with Chinese style and Chinese words. In his songs, there are both Tang poetry and electronic music, as well as drums and traditional Chinese musical instruments. What he plays is a combination of Chinese and Western. American Annie gave herself the Chinese name "Tang Bohu". She can sing many ancient songs and she is fluent in Chinese. She has attracted many fans on Douyin...
I can tell a good story because I have love in my heart
Twice-cooked pork with garlic seedlings, stir-fried bacon with garlic stalks, cold ear root, garlic white meat, garlic chicken feet, garlic braised pork, sophora japonica rice, roasted garlic, pear egg rolls, wine-stuffed yam peach balls, purple sweet potato radish cakes, fried peas, peony Rice balls, crystal sakura bowl cakes, salted egg yolk and pork liver, preserved claypot rice... In the video, the process of making these dishes from the start of growing vegetables has attracted viewers from all over the world.
If this is not enough, then make blue calico and Shu embroidery on site, or brew soy sauce and bean paste from scratch, or use wood and bamboo to build a thatched shed and swing, and spend more than a year to restore how to make in ancient China. The "Four Treasures of the Study" makes people sigh.
The protagonist in the video is called "Li Ziqi" on the Internet. This "post-90s" young girl has become one of the most famous Chinese on overseas social platforms.
The programs she uploaded to overseas video websites aroused the interest of countless viewers around the world in Chinese culture.
A single video has more than tens of millions of views, and the number of English comments in each issue will reach tens of thousands.
On February 2, 2021, the Guinness Book of World Records announced that Li Ziqi broke the Guinness World Record of "Maximum Subscribers to YouTube Chinese Channels" with 14.1 million YouTube subscriptions.
In the eyes of many people, the popularity of Li Ziqi itself has become a phenomenon, representing the love and recognition of Chinese culture from all over the world.
Ma Jiaolong, a young artist who graduated from the Beijing Dance Academy, chose to go abroad to show off the skills of Chinese dance on the streets of London.
As a professional dancer, his superb spectacle of his movements and the charm of both rigidity and softness make most of the passing British people can't help but stop and watch.
When he met curious foreign children, he also carefully guided and imparted his experience.
He told the foreigners who watched, "If you want to see our Chinese dance, come to the theater to support us, with lights, props, and costumes, so that you can feel the visual feast of Chinese culture."
Chinese culture is very popular, and Chinese technology is also attracting attention.
A test of "Good teacher, my name is classmate He" made people intuitively aware of how fast China's 5G network is.
In the video, he mainly showed the experience of 5G in daily life.
Faced with such an abstract theme, he didn't talk about great principles from a science background. Instead, he borrowed a mobile phone to show people the speed of 5G with the most intuitive picture.
"Scientific exploration, there is me in Antarctica, please rest assured of the people of the whole country!" When the scientific expedition team shouted this sentence under the five-star red flag at Zhongshan Station, Antarctica, the full screen showed "Respect to the Chinese Antarctic expedition team!" On the summer solstice on 21st, the expedition team members stationed in Antarctica for more than 200 days told about their extreme survival experience and scientific expedition daily life in Antarctica through the screen.
Ordinary young workers also have their own wonderful lives.
Ren Hailong, a young man from Xinxiang, Henan, shot a video casually after work when he was working in Dalian, and expressed his ordinary wish: "I hope I can earn 300 yuan a day. If I can achieve this goal, I must bring I worked so hard to take my uncle I raised up out to travel and experience planes, high-speed rail, and ships..."
Unexpectedly, it was such a simple wish that quickly became popular on Douyin.
"Do your best to make your family live a better life" is the wish of many young people, and this young man speaks everyone's heart.
Today, he has more than 1 million fans on Douyin, and almost every video has attracted tens of thousands of likes.
A netizen’s comment was particularly pertinent: “You are so sunny when you laugh, and it makes people feel that the whole world is working hard.”
This is the smile of a new generation of Chinese young people.
This is also the fast-changing Chinese story told by the new generation of Chinese young people-only good stories can be told because of love.
Author: Liu Shaohua Li Su Tong