"First of all, you have to be happy before you can create happiness."
Wen | XuYan
Edited | Mulberry Willow
Photography | Wang Jiayu (ASTUDIO)
Video | small full video
Corner of the world
The sound of motorcycles arrived first. "Boom boom", in the early autumn morning of Beijing, the motorcycle lifted a field of fallen leaves, braked, took off the helmet, and The new hot curly hair and round face of Yan Hexiang, a cross-talk actor of the Deyun Society, were exposed. The first night he finished work at two o'clock, and in the morning he rode a motorcycle around the fifth ring road, throwing off the morning rush hour car.
In recent years, cycling has been Yan Hexiang's greatest hobby. Not just talking, in May 2019, he spent 3 months riding a motorcycle across Eurasia, from Beijing to Paris. There are still many ideas about motorcycles, and when recording the Deyun Society Roundup, he planned to ride to the ancient city of Xi'an with Yang Jiulang and several other division brothers, or simply ride out.
Yang Jiulang also likes to be outdoors, and recently, he went straight to Huairou camping on the outskirts of Beijing with a tent and barbecue ingredients. On September 17th, the two brothers talked about these things in the studio, they all felt fresh, their topics from outdoor mosquito repellent to the charm of creation, they also felt that the magic of outdoor activities is to broaden the dimension of body perception, experience wind, rain, moisture and temperature changes, and experience the richness of the world.
More importantly, they feel that life "has to be fun". The cross-talk industry is widely involved, and everything that was known before and not known now has to be known. "More contact, more play, in order to understand, or sit in the house to make up, or from life." 」 Yan Hexiang said that this is the experience he got from the gentlemen, Master Guo Degang likes to sing opera, Yu Qian likes to raise birds and animals, these hobbies can be integrated into cross-talk, into fun things, "First make people interesting, your works can be interesting." 」
How can I play more? After the deyun society's "Exploring The Clear Water River" clip caught fire in 2018, Yan Hexiang said that he only knew that there was a short video platform. Now, he has developed the habit of watching vibrato before going to bed, "not looking at it for a while and feeling like a disadvantage." He has some strange concerns: Chinese who repairs cars in Pakistan, people who tell stories of jade, people who analyze photographic equipment... In the short video he watched, he glimpsed fragments of the vast world, "I can't go, but through them they can pay attention to every corner of the world." 」
Through the attention of other creators, he knows what is Yucui and what is Chengcai, and these new knowledge will be integrated into works similar to the theme of the Republic of China or "Dream of the Red Chamber", "With the audience, this insight and vision are absolutely different."
Yang Jiulang felt similarly. The difference is that the things he focuses on are closer to specific hobbies, and the most watched are sports and food celebrities visiting the shop, which are like sources of fun and keep him alive.
Xiangsheng is a traditional trade, this trade retains the rules and etiquette left over from a hundred years ago, Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang grew up in these rules, talking and acting with the traces of tradition, but they need to talk to the present. The rise and development of short videos in recent years has brought new impact and thinking to their creations.
On September 17, Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang filmed a video in Beijing, which is perhaps the best interpretation of their current state .
In the light and shadow, two cross-talk actors wearing long shirts play allegro and throw their robes and dance fans, forming a wonderful cross-talk shadow puppet play. After the dance, bowing down from the stage, Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang, dressed in suits, appeared from both sides of the stage, "You are coming", they greeted, and both walked to the front of the stage. From the tradition, to the real world, what kind of connection should there be between tradition and reality, this is the question they need to answer the audience and answer themselves as creators.
First of all, you have to be happy to make happiness
When encountering a kind of video, Yang Jiulang must be crossed out, that is, the video of his own cross-talk, sometimes he will point "not interested", and later found that it is useless, and can always be seen.
He knows that if it weren't for the emergence of short video platforms, non-crosstalk enthusiasts wouldn't know their names. Change happens quietly. In 2017, Yang Jiulang suddenly found that there was an audience in the theater dedicated to his performance. In the past, this was something that was unimaginable. He said that it is like a foreigner going to Beijing to eat roast duck and thinking of going to Quanjude and going to the four seasons of people's welfare, but he will not specify which chef must roast this duck. In the past, the audience came to Deyun Society, just wanted to listen to crosstalk and have fun, but they wouldn't come to him.
But new mediums emerged, and the vague liking of the audience became a specific liking, focusing on the specific actors. During that time, he ate a barbecue late at night, sat there, and found that the mobile phones around him were all directed at him, and he knew, "Something is different."
The audience's state of listening to crosstalk is also different. In the past, the audience just sat offstage and listened, he said on stage; the current audience is not satisfied with this, they need to interact, they need to express, they need to participate, they need to have real communication with the actors.
Yang Jiulang found that the audience would even enjoy capturing their looks and movements tirelessly, and the subtle sparks between the actors, even if there were some small flaws, the audience could be happy. "It's fun to see everything, and I think that's a very cute audience."
The new audience made him feel the new vitality of crosstalk. Saying that crosstalk is to create happiness, listening to crosstalk is to get happiness, Yang Jiulang said, in the garden, it is the encounter between a group of happy people and another group of happy people.
Of course, sometimes the collision that happened to this encounter made him a little overwhelmed, he was sensitive and uneasy. When he came out, a wave of applause and screams, light signs and cheers came in waves, and Yang Jiulang used three words to describe the feeling, "avoidance, shyness, and self-respect."
He said he wasn't a person in his life who was always happy. I often feel that there is a bottleneck in my creation, and I worry about it every day. The inner "unconfidence" and "dissatisfaction" are his deepest concerns. Offstage, he is not good at interacting with people, and "will look very stuffy" in a group of strangers. Only on stage, "the second the baggage rings" is a second of his real happiness. The audience laughed, rejoiced, it was complete relaxation, utter joy.
As the pace of life gets faster and faster, people need to be happy more and more. Yang Jiulang said that when he was a child, he played games and played for 10 minutes to know the outcome of the victory or defeat, and now many games, one minute to decide the winner or loser. Not only the audience, but also as a creator, he is also eager to get pleasure from the outside world more quickly.
He feels that this is one of the reasons for the rise of short video platforms: people need to be happy, and they need more and faster happiness. He found that the driving force of many creators is to relieve their own pressure, always have a place to go, there is a place to take on some bad emotions, showing themselves is also a kind of release, at the same time, those creative videos have become another person's happy place.
This interactive form, which is completely different from the traditional creation method, also affects Yang Jiulang's thinking about his own creation. He said that it will speed up the pace of creation, but it will not disrupt it, "In the past, the old gentleman turned three or four shakes, and now we may turn two or three shakes, speed up by one point, but it will not become a direct shake." 」 After all, the beginning of creation has not changed: "First of all, you have to be happy, you can make happiness." 」
That side of human nature
Yan Hexiang, who was 8 years older than Yang Jiulang, thought of something farther than happiness, which was an exploration and relief of life.
A few days ago, Yan Hexiang went to Universal Studios Beijing for a walk. At first, he didn't dare to sit on the Decepticon Roller Coaster, "the thief was afraid," and after sitting, he felt, "Okay, this is the growth of this year." It was his birthday, and he bought himself an Optimus Prime and tweeted, "The second half of my life has begun, and I want to reconcile with my obsession."
He often laughs at himself at the age of 40, and he can't participate in the Deyun Society Run but is a young man, and he only wants to retire, but in addition to crosstalk, Yan Hexiang is the one who will find fun for himself.
He participated in the variety show, and was laughed at by the audience as "the first person in the Solo of the Deyun Society Boy Band", but he felt that there was no "broken circle", and there was no difference between cross-talk and talk show, in the end, it was "a person talking, the audience loves to listen". A good stand-up comedian will say it well when he talks to cross-talk, and in the same way, a good stand-up actor says talk shows and is "no problem".
Or go back to life. Yan Hexiang said that Xiangsheng was originally written as "Xiangsheng", and as the name suggests, it needs to be more like life, closer to life. What the audience needs is a performing art closer to life, which has not changed in any era.
Just tell the story in a different way, Yan Hexiang said.
"Everyone is telling a story, and how to tell a new and interesting story is what matters." Ten seconds to a few minutes of short videos about jade, mechanical maintenance, but also storytelling. Such a length of time prompts creators to come up with the most attractive content more quickly, and Yan Hexiang feels that this is also an impact on traditional crosstalk.
In the past, everything was slow, the baggage was shaking slowly, and now everything is fast, "can't wait", this is Yan Hexiang's most intuitive feeling for the audience. He said the "can't wait" is because the audience has become smarter, picking up their phones to know what's going on in the world, "five elements, eight works, everywhere in the world can see." You can still see hundreds of baggage, "Maybe you haven't said a mouth yet, you haven't shaken this baggage, he already understands." At this time, creators need to be faster and know more than the viewer.
But this is not simply an acceleration problem.
Yan Hexiang mentioned Yang Bo, a stand-up comedian who is quite eye-catching this year. One day, Yan Hexiang accidentally saw a video, in the video, when Yang Bo talked about being a screenwriter of Yan Hexiang, he found that Yan Hexiang's speech speed was obviously slower than that of the talk show actors, and he found that the original slow pace also had its own charm. In an era when everyone is looking for speed, it will be special. Yang Bo's slow pace has also received a lot of praise in the talk show. Therefore, Yan Hexiang feels that there is no right or wrong between fast and slow, and creators can go fast with the big trend, or they can stick to a kind of slowness against the trend. In the end, what attracts the audience is the charm of the speaker himself.
Charm comes from the forging of life. When the creator is detached from life, it becomes boring. "The blessing of our profession is that we live to open our eyes to see the world, to feel the world, and to project this feeling back into the audience in one way." 」 Yan Hexiang said that participating in variety shows, filming vibrato, and trying talk shows are all new things outside the theater for him. "It's the same as a doctor's surgery, you have to go through a lot of cases to be able to do it."
The more you explore outward, the richer the things you have inward. The essence of creation is that the creator reveals himself - the spelling is "human nature", the spelling is "which person is more cute."
The sincerity of people
At the end of 2020, Deyun Society opened the enrollment of "Dragon Character Section", which was also the last large-scale enrollment of Guo Degang. In particular, the enrollment of Longzike is not held offline, but in the douyin live broadcast to select cross-talk newcomers. Recruiting cross-talk actors through the Internet is probably the first time in history.
Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang were both disciples recruited by the Deyun Society to recruit students from the society, when they saw the news from the Internet forum, filled out an application form, pasted an inch of photo, wrote down their home address and telephone number, and sent it to Beijing. Yan Hexiang remembered that only a few dozen people came to the interview at the end of his session, and there were only a few left.
For the Chinese cross-talk community at that time, this was already a very big change. In the past, without the introduction of acquaintances, ordinary children from non-quyi families such as Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang had no chance to enter this industry. Because Guo Degang is recruiting students from the society, people who like cross-talk in the north and south of the world have taken a step forward.
Live enrollment is another step forward for Deyun Society. "Looking at TikTok, you suddenly want to learn crosstalk, and then 'boom' you sign up." Yan Hexiang said, "We will not waste or delay every talent."
Yan Hexiang interviewed several female cross-talk actors, and he was very shocked. In the traditional cross-talk performance environment, the road for female actors is difficult. In Yan Hexiang's view, women need to find their own perspective and enter the male-dominated cross-talk circle, "with a lot more effort than us." It's hard to do it again, but it's also very good."
Yang Jiulang was most impressed by a live interview, the other party is a novice father who is taking a child in the confinement center, trying positively, suddenly saying "the teacher waits a while", put down the mobile phone, and went to coax the child. Yang Jiulang felt particularly funny, if it were not for douyin, not live broadcasting, he would not have met such a student. "I don't think people are making trouble, but I think that when I wait for the confinement, I still have such an interview, and I really love crosstalk." 」
Those who have never had anything to do with crosstalk can stand in front of the stage through the screen. At this moment, the stage of cross-talk becomes open and becomes related to everyone.
Not only crosstalk, but all language arts are changing in this era. While the boundaries are expanded, creators are facing a more complex and diverse audience, and how to respond with creation is not a simple matter.
They are happy about this "not simple". Yang Jiulang said that the current life is very similar to a lyric from Dada's "South", "Every day there are new problems." As content creators, they answer these new questions every day.
Inspiration is anytime, anywhere, interesting things are recorded and stored in memos. The communication with other creators on Douyin and the communication with the audience will bring new feelings. Yang Jiulang likes to read hot reviews, and both he and Yan Hexiang mentioned that the sense of humor of those comments is a good nourishment.
They are also happy to share their humor on TikTok. Yan Hexiang often shoots scenery passing by on a motorcycle, and Yang Jiulang likes to interact with netizens with the funny special effects of Douyin. They say that these are fun, and life needs to be played. They also mentioned the popularity of "Yu Qian's Everything" on Douyin some time ago, which triggered a national co-production fever - "At that time, everyone was a creator, and everyone could participate in the creation." Yang Jiulang said.
People with a sense of humor "fight" fun on TikTok, "It must be that no one obeys anyone, he is good, I think I am better than him, and Douyin is the same." 」 In such a warm creative environment, they believe that what can be left to the end is the sincerity of people. Yang Jiulang said that anything can be performed, only "sincerity" can not, "can not deceive the audience at all, the audience is smart."
Yan Hexiang also thinks so. In his view, Douyin has built a new way of chatting, "people will show extremely interesting and rich things between people, but also let people closer to each other, more need both sides of the sincerity." 」 Everything must return to the three-dimensional, real person, which is also the light and power that the creator can illuminate others and illuminate himself.
In order to become such sincere, happy and lovely creators, they still have a lot of wishes to achieve in life.
Yan Hexiang thought about riding another bike to Tibet this year, yang Jiulang participated in the marathon, and the next time he plans to challenge the whole horse. They're also preparing a podcast show to talk about crosstalk and create. It is always necessary to experience a new life in order to discover new problems and create new works. "Life, how to live is very important." Yan Hexiang said, "As long as I live happily through this year and perceive this year, it is the most important thing." Because all the works are made by us."
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Yan Hexiang and Yang Jiulang: Creation allows us to meet
Human beings' pursuit of happiness and their heartfelt feelings about life will become an indispensable force in creation. Yang Jiulang, Yan Hexiang and other creators have formed the "Douyin Annual Highlight Moment", allowing outward exploration and inward thinking to converge into light and illuminate the distance. To this end, on the eve of the wonderful day and night of Douyin, we invited them to open a dialogue about creation, through their perspective, to re-appreciate the world behind creation.
People: In 2021, did anything happen that made you feel accomplished?
Yan Hexiang: I dare not mention the sense of accomplishment, for me, the year of 2021 has not changed from 2020, 2019, 2018, but it is of the greatest significance to learn to spend this year happily and richly.
Yang Jiulang: That's it, like fitness, I squat legs may squat a number of kilograms, in the past has not been able to squat, this year squat one, up, I think it is very good, very happy, very satisfied.
Yan Hexiang: Life, how to live is very important.
Yang Jiulang: Right. The WeChat signature of Brother Head (referring to Yan Hexiang) is "to live is to see", which is particularly important. We have to feel life, don't be coerced by life, don't coerce life, we must do something, set up a particularly large flag for ourselves, that is only needed when we speak. We still have to savor our own lives, to taste good friends, to taste our lovers and relatives, and that's it.
People: When did you have a special desire to create?
Yan Hexiang: As a creator, it is difficult to say when there is a desire to create, and it should be created at any time.
Yang Jiulang: The desire to create on the stage may be stronger.
Yan Hexiang: Similar to the current hanging, this is also the soul of our line, some things are created on the stage, left after the end, some may not be good, the next time to change, and even sometimes eager to perform a few years of a work, you find that all the essence is created on the stage.
Yang Jiulang: That's it. I may have acted particularly well today, this baggage is very likeable, and I will play it again next time. In the end, creation is still about skill, about how big your way of thinking and how big your brain hole is, and we are expanding our brain hole, not expanding baggage.
"People": Some netizens call Yan Hexiang "the first solo of the Deyun boy band", Yang Jiulang has recently soloed more, leaving the original partner, how do the two see this change?
Yan Hexiang: Cross-talk is an art of collaboration, and the main speaker of the comic actor said that the actor who supported the actor to help the actor complete this work will not change in any era. If we want to solo in this collaborative process because of various selfish intentions on the stage, it is against the level of art and the standards of art. In addition to this, we have been loved by the audience because of crosstalk, the opportunity of various media, and we have all kinds of solo on other platforms, and there is no problem at all. Just remember that back on the stage of two people, the actors are at the service of the work and not for the individual.
Yang Jiulang: Well said, well said.
"People": In the past two years, everyone has said that the Deyun Society is out of the circle and the cross-talk is on fire, what do you think?
Yan Hexiang: I don't think so. I think sometimes it's technology that changes something. Now you can open it at any time to listen to crosstalk, brush the bowl at home, drive the car to listen, it occupies your usual space, but in fact, the expression and desire of young people are different, they help you spread twice. Not only us, but every industry I feel is thriving, but the language industry is very grounded, especially to show that this is the case.
Yang Jiulang: It may be that middle-aged people don't express this thing so strongly and like it more, and it will pass.
Yan Hexiang: It is that everyone's participation and expression are stronger.
Yang Jiulang: Yes, but this industry has appeared in the media again. Whether it is young people, middle-aged people, middle-aged and elderly people, I am really grateful to be able to give us some cross-talk in this era.
On October 15th and 16th, Douyin Wonderful Day and Night and Douyin together, see the light of creation