Text | Jiang Xiaoqiao
For Chinese, there is no more important collective memory than the New Year. But now every Spring Festival, the taste of the New Year has become a "metaphysical" feeling Chinese.
Some people feel that the taste of the year is getting weaker and weaker. This voice has been around since a hundred years ago. In Chinese New Year's Eve 1917, Shen Yinmo, a 35-year-old professor at Peking University, wrote: "I remember when I was seven years old and eight years old, the New Year's Eve was happy, happy, happy, just like caramel." After the age of fifteen, compared to before, more than a year, happy to lose one point; is not happy? It's not as good as it used to be. ”
Why do we always think that the Spring Festival when we are young is happier? On the one hand, it is a change in lifestyle, and on the other hand, it is also due to the sense of the passage of time.
But as Shen Yinmo said, times are different, and happiness is also different. The times are changing, the taste of the year is also changing, and the ways and carriers of expressing and transmitting the taste of the year are also changing.
Even at the moment of the Spring Festival affected by the epidemic, you can see on Douyin that the fusion of traditional and modern New Year flavors is everywhere and the weather is endless. Those human fireworks, traditional culture and human warmth, under the blessing of endless creativity and technology, are building a rich and diverse New Year's flavor, and are carefully recorded and transmitted one by one.
In TikTok, I saw the taste of the Chinese and saw my heart at peace
What is The Taste of the Year? Maybe everyone has a different answer.
During the Spring Festival in 1934, Mr. Lu Xun, who had not lived through the old calendar year for twenty-three years, also rarely released fireworks for three consecutive nights. On the second day of the Chinese New Year, he also wrote an article called "New Year" with great interest, "... It became the only joy I had in the year. ”
Zhu Xi, a scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, also described the taste of the year as joy. Except for the new year, "when this time is not happy, then the sun and the moon will abandon me and go away."
The new taste in the Qing Dynasty's "Jingshi Customs" is the aroma of the reunion dinner. "Chinese New Year's Eve, people, rich or poor, have a lot of food in the city. Family feasts, young and long are happy. Children play all night long. Women eat and drink, and the sound of their knife anvils is heard near and far. ”
Contemporary Chinese the taste of the New Year in memory, the bustling temple fairs and a variety of New Year goods, the light and shadow of the festival and the sense of ritual of the New Year. A firework, a big red lantern, a reunion meal, a red envelope, a new dress, or a melody and a New Year's greeting, these rich details containing sight, hearing, taste and touch, constitute the so-called "New Year's taste" of our hearts and minds.
In the past many years, we often hear the sound of "the taste of the year fades". But in fact, what we lack is not the feeling of "year", but the new way and new carrier of "year". The way the new year flavor is expressed and transmitted has changed, and the Internet has become the largest fermentation pool for Chinese new year flavor.
TikTok is writing a kind of nian flavor answer. The "watch" of Douyin has always been to find and present those that seem to be far away, but in fact, have never left.
Last year's Spring Festival, the normalization of the epidemic made many migrant workers in foreign lands become "original people", and more than 100 million people were forced to give up their reunions with their families and choose to celebrate the New Year on the spot. But another kind of reunion is also happening, Douyin launched the "DOU to the cloud New Year" activity, using short videos and live broadcasts to provide them with an online gathering space, so that this year of reunion, living a valuable reunion. The "cloud" gathering scene created by Douyin in the new year has also become a New Year's flavor that crosses the physical gap in the Internet era.
What Douyin hopes this year is that these precious New Year flavors that carry local sounds, folk customs, rural scenery, and nostalgia that occur in short videos and live broadcast rooms can also be opened up. Therefore, this year's Spring Festival theme activity "Warm Chinese Year" launched by Douyin allows users to participate in the Spring Festival activities through a variety of ways to play such as New Year's flavor cards, fireworks, Spring Festival Gala live broadcast, and video red envelopes between friends, and at the same time, they can discover, express and transmit the New Year's flavor, and these rich records about the New Year's flavor will eventually converge into a broader New Year's flavor over the country.
Douyin found a suitable incision - the Vibrato camera.
Throughout the Spring Festival, users play spring festival-related special effects and record and publish videos, that is, they have the opportunity to get the New Year flavor card, set "press the year money", "paste the Spring Festival", "do new year goods", "Chinese New Year's Eve meal", "new year" and "fortune", "good luck", "harvest", "reunion", "peace" Ten annual flavor cards, you can participate in a total of 700 million yuan.
In addition to the red envelopes of the Nian Wei card, the guidance of the Douyin camera gameplay triggered the enthusiasm of the public to record, express and transmit the Nian flavor. More and more people are using vibrato to convey the warmth of the Spring Festival, and at the same time, they have also discovered the joy of recording life with cameras. Under the topic of #I am in Douyin, we can see that many people are recording their New Year's life on Douyin. The Chinese's New Year flavor is converging on Douyin.
@ Zhang, who is popular in China for filming rural life on Douyin, used his own shooting method to regain the traditional rural New Year flavor in the "fried fruit" necessary for the New Year every year; the food blogger @ Spicy Dezi, who became popular with fireworks and spoiled his wife, told people with a rich cabbage that the New Year's taste was on the New Year's reunion table; and the firefighters of the @ Urumqi Fire Rescue Detachment sang while playing musical instruments, telling people that the New Year's taste was "peace".
Nian Wei is not only a tradition, but also a new collision fusion. @Lingyun, the representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage Emei martial arts, collided with a new spark with the "Kung Fu Spring League" and found a new way to open the new flavor of the year.
The taste of the year can also be full of the times. Clay sculpture craftsman @ Shangyi clay sculpture used clay sculpture to create a new spring image of Wang Yaping, astronaut of "Shenzhou" 13, and made a new dress for her for the New Year. This year's taste connects the land under our feet with the sea of stars overhead.
These are just a microcosm of this Spring Festival Douyin Shanghai Volume Year flavor video. More Nian wei symbols spread on Douyin, from the icy northeast to the Tibetan people's homes, from Chinese New Year's Eve rice to spring leagues, to emotional connections across space... In this Chinese Year with mixed content, Douyin not only holds up nostalgia; in the macro, it is also a platter of people's "New Year's Taste" in different regions, different identities, and different cultural backgrounds.
In this Spring Festival, we especially need the support of these years. Under the epidemic situation, the temple fairs have pressed the pause button, the number of door visits has decreased, and the physical distance between them has gradually widened... At this moment, the taste of the year is more related to nostalgia. Fading the prosperity of the "year", in the final analysis, there is only one "home" word, and the new year we miss is not only joy, humanity and ritual, but also, in essence, it is also the rest of my heart for all Chinese.
This is also the meaning of the title of Douyin's "Warm China Year" activity this year. In Douyin, everyone's New Year's flavor sharing releases warmth, and in Douyin, it gathers into the entire Chinese New Year's flavor, becoming the best container for us to place warmth, hope and emotion.
Let the taste of the year be everywhere
This is not all of Douyin's "Warm Chinese Year".
If Douyin uses the camera to launch the public to find and collect the New Year's flavor, let us see the whole Chinese New Year's taste, let us have a personal feeling of the New Year's taste into the group, and now Douyin also wants to make the joy of this group more abundant, with technology and imagination, Douyin has created more New Year's flavor.
Under douyin's new special effect sticker "AR Chinese Year", you can use the Douyin camera to turn any scene into a strong Spring Festival atmosphere. The original ordinary landscape of daily life presents various wonderful effects under the rear lens of Douyin - "good luck" and "Fulu Shou" and other festive neon lights shine, symbolizing the golden jade hall and the annual 3D cartoon goldfish moving through the streets.
Open your mobile phone anytime and anywhere, you can see the spread of the New Year's flavor as mr. Feng Zikai's "Spring Festival Greeting New Life" once described, "Whether it is eating, playing, watching, using, all are fiery red and green, bright purple and bright yellow, bright and bright, life seems to be lit up at once." ”
This imaginative special effect has also attracted the second creation of trendy artists. @Qishan Zhao Combined with the "AR Chinese Year" special effect, he repainted the night scene of Chongqing with his own brush. The famous crystal corridors of the mountain city are in harmony with the brilliant starry sky and fireworks in the sky, just like the taste of the year becomes paint and then descends to Chongqing; @Super White Uncle's pen, the canopy boats and ancient bridges in Gusu City float on the water, the koi carp swim around on the water, the red lanterns and couplets on the shore and the reflection in the water reflect each other; @Mire Ray Rag uses ink to outline the quaint character of Xi'an, the ancient capital of the thirteen dynasties, and the koi and big red lanterns in the vibrato special effects naturally exist in the paintings. And @Ding Wenyao is on top of the ancient drum tower, decorated with countless modern lines.
Douyin's "AR Chinese Year" creates a confrontation and fusion of tradition and modernity, illusion and reality, breaking through the scene restrictions of traditional New Year's flavor and realizing the ubiquity of Nian flavor.
Compared with the creation of trend artists, although the creation of ordinary users has less artistic content, the emotion is more intense. What happens when grandparents meet the vibrato effect? @Little Naughty Boy Grandpa's old house has a lot of little people, in the grandfather to pay tribute to the New Year; @ Xiao Guo his grandfather is "wearing" a cute tiger head hat, wearing a playful tiger head shoes. The videos created by these children for their grandparents are not only the outward release of the new year's taste, but also point inward to the warmth of emotion.
The warmth of "year" actually has a rich dimension. Along the horizontal field dimension to examine, there is culture in the annual taste, there is economy in the annual taste, and there is a sense of home and country in the annual taste; along the vertical time dimension, we can see that each era has the annual taste of each era, and the annual taste is a mirror, reflecting the change of the times and the impact of technology on people's lifestyles.
The new taste of the New Year is constantly growing from the new way of life of the Chinese. Now, what Douyin wants is to embrace all new life and let the warmth sprinkle in all possible directions.
For example, in the past 40 years, it has become the most indispensable part of the Chinese's New Year's flavor of the Spring Festival Gala. Douyin reached a cooperation with the 2022 Spring Festival Gala of China Central Radio and Television Corporation. Chinese New Year's Eve night, users can watch the 2022 CCTV Spring Festival Gala through douyin live broadcast, and there are hundreds of media and many celebrities in douyin to share, interpret and interact in real time, #央视虎年春晚 and #一年一度致春晚等53个话题登上抖音热榜.
For example, the most vital red envelopes in the disappearing and emerging new and old Customs have also taken a new form with the transformation from gilding profits to Internet red envelopes. Chinese New Year's Eve this year, Douyin launched multiple rounds of red envelope rain and mysterious interactive red envelope activities, and users can get up to 2022 yuan in red envelopes. But in fact, for a red packet, the most important thing is not the amount, but a warmth, care and blessing behind it, and the video of Douyin likes the red packet, which conveys the emotions in social relationships.
In order to better create a New Year atmosphere, Douyin also launched a chat emoji with a tiger age limit, which not only has dynamic effects, but also full-screen animation effects, among which tigers and tigers are mighty, lion dances, fireworks and other expressions with new customs characteristics help convey the taste and happiness of the new year.
Watching Spring Festival movies is also becoming one of the customs for people to celebrate the festival. Douyin, which is constantly exploring new models and new scenes, is also constantly trying to better connect movies and users. Douyin has in-depth cooperation with 8 movies such as "Changjin Lake Watergate Bridge", "Miracle Stupid Child", "Four Seas", "This Killer Is Not Calm", "Sniper" in depth, using the "Douyin Invites You to Watch Movies" activity to allow users to receive value-added movie coupons, while also using video content expression, talent challenges and stickers and other innovative gameplay and immersive interaction with film creators in the theme live broadcast room, allowing users to understand the story behind the scenes of the movie and narrow the distance between users and the movie. In addition, Douyin also continued to invite netizens to watch movies during the Spring Festival activities, on February 1, the first day of the Chinese New Year, the national family carnival movie "My Father and Me" co-directed by Wu Jing, Zhang Ziyi, Xu Zheng and Shen Teng was broadcast for free on watermelon video at zero o'clock, and Douyin and Today's Headlines were jointly broadcast.
It is these rich interactions, and the warmth of "Nian" has been expanded unprecedentedly under the attempt of Douyin.
The huge "camera" of Douyin not only makes people see the warm Chinese New Year
In the small camera of tens of millions of Douyin netizens, what we see is a long scroll of Chinese. In the Douyin Warm Chinese New Year theme activity, netizens spontaneously created many video content full of New Year's flavor, and as of the afternoon of February 7, the topic of #温暖中国年 reached 14.53 billion times.
While recording, Douyin also travels to the depths - providing users with tools such as cameras and specific scenes and symbols, stimulating users' desire to share and express more, enhance interaction and participation, and also allowing people's emotions to be carried and practiced, completing a process of reproduction. In the collection and transmission of this new year's flavor, the New Year's flavor that combines modern life and traditional New Year's flavor is constantly born.
Vibrato is not only for people's eyes to "see", but also for people's emotions to "touch" each other. In addition to recording daily life and connecting online and offline, Douyin has been looking for new ways to connect and interact with people in the era of short video + live broadcast. This time douyin warms the Chinese year, and douyin continues to amplify this connection with a series of rich gameplay.
The power of recording and dissemination also leads to more emotional connection and release, and thus extends more value. In this year's "Warm Chinese Year" Spring Festival theme activity of Douyin, users can also participate in the public welfare activities of the Douyin Natural Siberian Tiger Project while participating in the New Year's wei task, donating the energy obtained from watching the video to the protected area, and Douyin will fund the restoration of wild Siberian tiger habitat, ecological corridor construction, habitat patrol and other work according to the amount of energy donated by users. As of February 6, more than 25 million people have participated in the guardianship. When "warmth" spreads and ferments to "thousands of miles away" through the Douyin content ecology, this is the irreplaceable value of douyin content public welfare.
Essentially, the internet has reshaped our lives, but it has also inherited the value of "people." In the Douyin Warm China New Year event, we can see everything about the taste of the New Year. Once upon a time, the fear of emotion being diluted by technology has always been the anxiety of the modernity dilemma of the internet age, but TikTok proves that the internet not only did not ruin our festivals, but also made it richer.
The forms of the new era are ever-changing, but the core of the new year has never changed, that is, the reunion and beauty that linger in the hearts of the Chinese people. For Douyin, this is where the real value lies: not just festivals, but every day to record a good life, show good things, transmit good ideas, and connect beautiful emotions.