Image source @ Visual China
Text | The Tao always makes sense
When the fireworks in the night sky were extinguished, many people looked up to the sky and lamented that the "new year's taste" was gone.
From the first to the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, through the city center of the fire tree and honeysuckle, on the edge of the tourist-congested ancient city scenic spot, a simple circus stage rises up so stubbornly and lonely. In recent years, the town, which was originally the most lively for entertainment activities in the New Year, has a year's taste that is not as good as a year, and the lush circus tents on the gravel ground around it are particularly eye-catching.
Circus belongs to a very old entertainment activity, into the tent, countless plastic chairs and snack bags on the ground to make a strong sense of the age, with the increasing penetration of online entertainment, as well as offline consumption of the attack and attack, this once full of spectators circus has long been in the corner of the dust.
But there is no shortage of active people, still carrying the weight of the crowd in the third and fourth-tier cities. Li Shuai (pseudonym) is one of them, magical magic, clever bears, funny clowns, well-built lions... These sounds interesting performances are his daily work, and even gradually mixed into life.
In 2020, the 36-year-old Canadian national treasure circus "Cirque du Soleil" was rumored to be bankrupt, casting a heavy haze on the industry. Seven days of annual leave, Li Shuai and his team in shandong population city Linyi various regions, when asked about this line is still good? Li Shuai smiled, still silent.
There is no such thing as a perfect performer
The most common circus may be very simple, sometimes a monkey, a gong and drum, once placed on an open enamel bowl, now upgraded to a two-dimensional code, the streets and alleys of a roar, is a walking "circus". In the glory days of the circus, both adults and children enjoyed the sensory stimulation obtained in fantasy performances, and now, more and more performers are gradually losing their voice on the stage.
At the glittering Casino Royale of Monaco, Cirque du Soleil founder Larry Bette was hailed by many media as the "perfect performer", but after a long 36 years, Cirque du Soleil suffered a global performance shutdown, laid off more than 95% of its employees, and collapsed financially... LarryBert's perfectionism was finally shattered.
The giants didn't fare well, and 2020 was a turning point in the crisis for all offline entertainment, with Cirque du Soleil stopping its domestic shows in January, and Larrybert selling his last 10 percent stake in the company; and in March, it announced the suspension of a total of 44 tours around the world, including a regular performance at the Las Vegas Theater.
According to Reuters, Cirque du Soleil is facing cash shortages and about $900 million in debt. In March 2020, Cirque du Soleil had only 259 employees left. In a way, Cirque du Soleil is a microcosm of the rise and fall of the global circus industry, and in this context, it is obviously more difficult for those folk "grass stage teams" without the aura of stardom to live.
Larry Bette was Li Shuai's idol since he was a child, and since he was sent by his parents to wuqiao acrobatic art school at the age of 6, the slogan "Be a perfect performer" has been pasted by the teacher on the wall of the practice room. Large performance troupes like Cirque du Soleil are overwhelmed, is it okay to do well in 2020? When faced with such a question, Li Shuai's answer is very frank: even if there is no epidemic, grassroots performers like us will be doomed.
Li Shuai's "going abroad circus" outing tour tickets are generally 20 yuan for adults and 10 yuan for children, like when the New Year is the most popular, a night of performance can sell more than 10,000 yuan of tickets, but usually when no one cares, it is common to earn one or two thousand yuan per night. "Everyone is holding their mobile phones now, wanting to see what is not, who still drags the family to see us this kind of thing."
Domestic circus performances were once very popular, once comparable to the foreign Cirque du Soleil's "Chimelong Circus" A statistic ten years ago showed that chimelong international circus performed 400 times in a year, at least one per day. The average audience per game in the off-season is 2,000 people, and in the high season, there are nearly 10,000 people per day. According to the calculation of 120 yuan per ticket and an average of 3,000 people per day, the annual income exceeds 100 million yuan.
Li Shuai is from Suzhou, Anhui. This small city of less than a thousand square kilometers is known as the "circus town", and in Li Shuai's own words, his circus kung fu is ancestral. At its most brilliant, Li Shuai's circus could have a revenue of 2 million yuan, but after excluding venue fees, animal feeding fees, actor salaries and various costs, it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
In Li Shuai's eyes, even if the industry is declining, but the annual income of hundreds of thousands of people is more than part-time work, in his circus, there are only three or four fixed personnel, leaving two lions, a few monkeys, and a bear. Actors are difficult to find, is the most headache for Li Shuai, this circus does not have too much artistic style, and there is no high-end stage technology, which can attract the audience with nothing more than two words "technology".
Because it is a tong zi gong, Li Shuai can turn over twenty heels in one breath, stand upside down on stacked chairs, trapeze artists, and walk tightropes, but the skills of the extras in the troupe are really worrying. In an evening performance in Linyi on the sixth day of the Chinese New Year, the actors of the top water bowl made three mistakes, and what embarrassed Li Shuai the most was not the audience cheering, but the crowded audience below was always indifferent.
(Li Shuai's team performed at height, source author)
"Now few children love to learn this, and they can't bear the pain." In order to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the audience, most of the high-altitude programs of the folk circus are not safe ropes, which is a diversion gimmick, and Li Shuai will even repeatedly emphasize it on the radio. This leads to the problem that the unexpected can never be circumvented.
For example, in April 2018, Cirque du Soleil actor Yann Arnaud fell to his death while performing in Florida, USA. Li Shuai said with a bitter smile that they didn't even want insurance companies in this business.
Short videos don't help the circus
On Douyin, performances such as circus are popular among young people.
During the Spring Festival, circus short videos from all over the world have been played nearly 900 million times, and with the circus such as jittering bamboo being included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list, young people are more and more interested in cheering for street performers. According to the "2019 Douyin Data Report", in 2019, 93% of the national intangible cultural heritage projects had relevant videos in Douyin, and received more than 3.3 billion likes.
Have you considered entering the short video, or live broadcasting the performance in the group? For this question, Li Shuai once considered it very seriously. These thrilling performances can indeed make waves in short videos, especially acrobatics and magic. In Li Shuai's view, going to the vibrato circle powder is very simple, the recent fire of the Tian Kan magician - Lin Changgui with a "one-eyed fake" magic quickly sucked powder nearly 500,000.
Another one became popular on Douyin because of the secret magic, and a secret video was played 1.6 million times on Douyin, which gained 420,000 fans in just 7 months. But Li Shuai somewhat despised this kind of performance, "revealing the secret of magic will deprive it of its amazing ability, what is the difference between this kind of thing and robbing its peers of their jobs." ”
Li Shuai is from a circus family, loves to read martial arts novels, and always hides in his bones the chivalrous dream of wanting to fight the sword. In Suzhou, Anhui, there are countless circus "descendants" like Li Shuai, it is said that more than 80% of the country's circus performances are from Suzhou, the data show that at the peak of Suzhou, there are more than 300 circuses of various types in Suzhou's Wanqiao District, with more than 20,000 employees and an annual income of more than 400 million.
"Circus is a cultural heritage that we need to inherit and carry forward. Those vibrato are all sensationalism, honest performance on the line, do not want to be the whole moth. In the dim performance studio, Li Shuai was holding his mobile phone and watching "Knife Line in the Snow". In fact, looking carefully at the major social platforms, in addition to the audience's own uploads or acrobat circle fans, few circuses open accounts on social platforms for marketing.
As for the reason, it may not be as righteous and awe-inspiring as Li Shuai's reason. First of all, most circuses inevitably animal performances, in this era of pet economy, young people's mentality of animal appearance has long transitioned from hunting for freshness to pity and love, and in November last year, Yu Zheng's new drama was widely boycotted by netizens for suspected harm to animals.
In a word, the traditional animal circus performance on the Internet may not have received applause, but a round of insults.
At present, the world is protecting the life and dignity of animals, according to statistics, there are 36 countries in the world, a total of 389 cities prohibit or restrict animal performances, for example, Cirque du Soleil can survive for more than 30 years, one of the reasons that can not be ignored is that animal performances are never used.
But for folk grassroots circuses, it seems impossible to outlaw animal performances. In recent years, the domestic requirements for animal performances have become more and more stringent, which is a fatal blow to the survival of circuses, it is reported that due to the lack of domestication certificates, the number of circuses in Suzhou has dropped sharply from more than 300 at the peak to more than 100.
(Li Shuai team lion performance, source author)
Li Shuai repeatedly stressed that the animals in the regiment are formal channels. It is said that many circus performances in Suzhou are not only ancestral in technology, but even animals are "ancestral", and Li Shuai has a friend who has more than a dozen tigers in his family, all of which are descendants of the tigers that his great-grandfather and grandfather used when engaging in circus performances.
But do these circus animals have a "certificate"? In fact, it is difficult to say that there are many case judgments related to keywords such as "Suzhou circus tiger" on the Chinese judgment document network, and in January 2021, the Suzhou City Yanqiao District Court ruled on a case of illegal acquisition of rare and endangered wild animals.
In the face of netizens' doubts about animal performances, Li Shuai said he did not understand. "We have to eat beef and chicken racks every day, and we have to feed vitamins and calcium tablets, and some little monkeys drink milk powder and drink imported ones, just like you have pets, they are all raised as their own children, how can it be abusive?"
But when the tiger jumped into the ring of fire and the bear climbed onto the gymnastics platform, no one wanted to accept this statement. Trapped beasts are not so much used to describe animals as the situation of these circus performers themselves.
How did the town of Nianguan suddenly become deserted?
Li Shuai's team spent a total of seven days in the ancient city of Linyi Yizhou, which is one of the most crowded scenic spots in the city, and it takes half an hour to stop just to stop during the Spring Festival. The north and south districts of the ancient city were not yet fully planned, the circus site was chosen at the unfinished end, the ground was rugged, and there were several excavators parked not far next door.
"It's cheap here." Li Shuai explained that from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., when the circus had the most traffic in the day, outside the tent where the clowns were painted, there were shredded pieces of tickets everywhere, and several circles of plastic chairs inside, lining the central wire fence stage with a hint of desolation.
Rather than talking about the status quo, Li Shuai obviously prefers to reminisce about the past.
According to him, the circus was the golden age in the nineties. At that time, the lack of cultural life made them hug everywhere they walked, "The queue can be tens of meters long!" Li Shuai described following his parents to a park performance when he was a child, without exaggeration, "Every day I can perform 10 consecutive performances, each one is full, there is no audience standing, the actors are afraid that they will break the net." ”
Although we can't imagine the crowded scene at that time, in the era of mediocre monthly wages, when Li Shuai's family business was booming, the daily income could exceed 1,000. In 1993, a circus contributed more than 1.3 million annual revenues to a zoo in Guangzhou.
"The taste of the year has become weaker, our life is even more difficult, and we have been counting on the new year to come to money from the previous year." Coming to Linyi this year, Li Shuai's biggest sigh is that the market is almost gone. It is undeniable that the entertainment activities of the town are slowly shrinking, and the market that Li Shuai has in mind has long evolved from a multi-functional place such as trade, culture and entertainment to a single-function trade place.
Nowadays, traditional new year entertainment activities such as dragon and lion dances and circuses have long been replaced by short videos and grabbing red envelopes, and the entertainment consumption places in the town have shifted from offline to online, which is an irreversible trend. The data shows that by 2021, Taobao e-commerce and logistics transportation will increasingly penetrate into the countryside, and 309 million rural netizens and 55.9% internet penetration will suddenly desert the once lively town.
For young people, it is better to go out against the cold wind to watch acrobatics than to lie in bed and play with their mobile phones. In addition, the country's annual customs consumption is declining, and data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that as early as the seven days of the Spring Festival in 2019, retail and catering enterprises across the country achieved sales of about 1,005 billion yuan, an increase of 8.5% over last year's Spring Festival Golden Week, the lowest growth rate in recent years.
In addition, in recent years, fewer people have returned to their hometowns for the Chinese New Year, and a questionnaire showed that 86.95% of people said from 2020
More inclined to stay at work for the New Year, on the one hand, the capricious epidemic, on the other hand, subjective factors such as marriage and blind dates have made young people begin to resist the New Year, on Weibo, "how happy a person can be in the New Year" There are nearly 8,000 discussions.
Perhaps these people are not Li Shuai's target group, but there are fewer people, the taste of the year is faded, looking around the entire ancient city of Yizhou, after the seventh day of the first year, it is like an empty city, leaving strings of colorful lights and dust and sand, and his dream of wandering the rivers and lakes may not be able to continue.
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.