It has attracted more than 16 million fans in two months, and controversies, imitations, and onlookers have also gathered. Who is Zhang?
A hometown constructed by short videos for returning youth
Our reporter Yu Li and Wu Jiangmin
Accompanied by magical music, Zhang jumped up from the northeast big kang, opened the pink printed curtains, put on the socks tucked under the pillow, got out of bed to feed the dog, raise chickens, "grill meat", cook... It started a day that seemed rough, but in fact elegant and free and easy.
With the high-frequency quick-cut video style, Zhang has quickly attracted more than 16 million fans within two months on the Douyin platform.
Topics related to him have repeatedly appeared on the hot search lists, and a series of controversy, imitations, and onlookers have also come to the fore.
"Who is Zhang classmate?" "How is his hometown?" "What does he want to express?"
With this question, Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter came to Songshu Village, Jianyi Town, Dashiqiao City, Liaoning Province.
Hometown and Old House
As soon as you enter the village, you can see the golden fields, big and small piles of straw, and the faint smoke of cooking in the distance diffuses between the village and the mountains.
Walking deep down the smooth concrete floor, the winding paths are dotted with modern houses with white walls and gray tiles.
The old house Zhang often photographed, the red-tiled brick house, sandwiched between the white tiled houses, looked a bit dilapidated.
In the room, the red-brown wooden cabinets, old DVD players, glass bookcases covered with stickers... These chronological displays and furnishings maintain the appearance of the 1990s.
"This is my grandfather's house, and it's the place I used to shoot. My own house is actually in the front yard." Zhang explained.
He wore an old blue cloth cotton jacket, and the flushing round face plate was printed with deep or shallow wrinkles. Under his flushed eyes there were eye bags, slightly tired, and there was a touch of toilet paper between his nose and just wiped his face. Crumbs are really "rough".
The day before, he had just accepted three media interviews. Every day, nearly a hundred fans came here to take photos with him.
Many of them are from other provinces.
In order to prevent the epidemic, his friends set up a table next to the old house, and visitors must sign, take temperature measurements, and wear masks.
The once lonely old house suddenly became the "net celebrity attraction" of the village, and there were several cars with foreign license plates at the door.
Homesickness and Short Videos
Facing the reporter's interview, he began to resist, with his hands in his pockets, sitting on the upper side of the kang facing us.
He didn't gradually relax until he finished smoking a cigarette, and the smile on his face increased.
Zhang Kai was originally named Zhang Kai. Unlike all speculations on the Internet, he is a native of Pine Village.
Now 36 years old, he has experienced many twists and turns.
After dropping out of school in the third grade, he worked as a big car driver and drove a car repair shop in partnership with a friend, but none of them "has achieved a major event."
The auto repair plant also lost more than 300,000 yuan due to mismanagement and accidental fire.
"At the time I was living in a 5 square meter room in the auto repair factory, with a wooden bed, a TV and a DVD player." Student Zhang said that at that time he always had insomnia and often repeatedly jammed the disc. Enter the DVD player, squeeze into the wooden bed to watch, only to fall asleep after 4 o'clock in the morning.
In 2014, after the repair shop was completely closed down, he returned to Pine Tree Village with his luggage.
"I just walked to the entrance of the village, and my heart suddenly opened up." Brick by tile, grass and wood, still familiar.
After a period of precipitation, he started his business in the village again, but it ended in failure.
The 5,000 chickens he raised in the open land caught chicken plague within a year.
"I really wanted to do something at the time, but I just couldn't do it well." Student Zhang said that in the spring of 2015, he followed his friends to open a shop in Shandong to work, earning about 10,000 yuan a month.
In July 2020, because he had a second child in his family and needed to be taken care of, he returned to Pine Tree Village and began planning to shoot a short video.
"I like watching Zhou Xingchi's movies the most. Many of his shots are very tricky. Every time I imagine myself as a photographer, from which angle I would shoot this effect." Zhang said. He called a few at first. I'm taking pictures with my friends who are at home.
This group of men and women in their 30s are sometimes in the open space in the village. The "drummer" knocks on the bucket with wooden sticks to act as drummers, and the "guitarist" cuts the cardboard box into a guitar shape and fiddles with it at will.
Student Zhang acted as the lead singer and enthusiastically performed music in the rain.
Sometimes they would run into the mountains, pretending to be the four masters and apprentices in Journey to the West, giving a nonsensical performance.
Every time the filming is over, a few people will always "cack meat" in the room warmly, drinking a drink in comfort.
The dilapidated old house, eating with the brothers, watching DVD every night... Classmate Zhang projected his past self in his video.
In his opinion, this is his deep nostalgia for his hometown as a rural child.
In addition, the seemingly remote scenes of urban people, such as carrying a basin to wash clothes in the river, picking up the fire on the kang, going up the mountain to chop wood, and digging cellars, are still the normal life of most elderly people in this village.
For Zhang, the discussion on the "is it real" of rural life in the video is meaningless.
He is more like a non-professional "rural director". Because of the need of the plot, he combines memories and reality to construct a hometown he understands and misses through short videos.
Popularity and the future
In reality, the lively village in Zhang's childhood memory is slowly aging.
In Songshu Village, although most people have built clean and tidy houses, washing machines, computers, and underfloor heating are all available.
But like some rural areas in China, Songshu Village is facing the problem of aging.
Due to the mountainous land in the village and the average cultivated land area is less than one mu per capita, many young people choose to work in nearby towns and villages, and the resident population in the village is mainly the elderly.
It was not until the explosion of classmate Zhang, that the local license plate cars flooded into the village, and the fans who came to punch in and take photos, made the small mountain village "young".
Student Zhang’s post on Xiao Ertao added hundreds of people’s WeChat accounts in one day, including agents, partners, and fans.
After all, the pursuit from the Internet is a temporary noise, and this small mountain village must always return to tranquility.
Aunt Li, who lives not far from Classmate Zhang’s old house, said that everyone had high hopes for the once simple and honest folks for Zhang’s explosion.
"Zhang Kai is very honest. I'm not afraid that he will go bad. I hope he can sell all the agricultural products of our nearby villages in the future."
For Zhang, when the spotlight suddenly focused on a rural man, he was also lost.
"I'm not sure what I will do in the future, but selling some agricultural products from my hometown to make my hometown richer and more lively is what I have always wanted to do."
At 4:30 in the afternoon, the reporter and Zhang said goodbye to Songshu Village.
As the dusk deepens, the fans in front of the old house are much less.
The sky outside the car window was so gray that it was not real.
Only in the dwellings at the foot of the mountain, shining a little bit of light, can people feel a little relieved.