The left-behind women in the countryside living in the short video, out of their misery and like unrestrained children|I see it in the New Year

Top news reporter He Yushuai

In the rural areas of eastern Henan, on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year, the Spring Festival relatives have gone, and many people who went out to work have also returned to the city, and the countryside has returned to its normal state again, quietly.

My mother, who has been busy for about ten days in a row, is temporarily called Lao Li, a rural woman, called her best friend in the village, Grandma Yan, and went to the wheat field to shoot a short video.

I remember the last time I accidentally swiped her short video, it was a few days of heavy snow before the Spring Festival, when I was still in the city, and I saw her and Lao Yan in the wheat field, in the snow, wrestling, chasing each other, like unrestrained children at that time.

Shooting short videos and brushing short videos has become Lao Li's way of life, in addition to housework, her attention is on short videos, and she can basically post one per day.

The content is very rich, basically involving her daily ordinary life, going out to play, photographing flowers and plants, visiting the village to shoot with her best friends, cooking a meal, having a meal with relatives and friends, celebrating the birthday of the elderly, she will shoot short videos to share, and sometimes I need to cooperate with her to appear.

According to the National Radio and Television Think Tank, short videos have replaced text and pictures as the main medium of knowledge dissemination, and more and more knowledge creators and users are flocking to short video platforms. The number of daily active users of Douyin has stabilized at more than 600 million, and the daily active users of Kuaishou have reached 376 million.

The number of short video users has increased from 648 million in December 2018 to 1.026 billion in June 2023, reaching a new record high, and the user usage rate has increased from 78.2% to 95.2%, making short video a national application.

According to the data, from 2018 to 2022, the proportion of users who have posted self-made short videos has climbed from 28.2% to 46.9%, and nearly 475 million short video users in mainland China have participated in content creation to varying degrees, and short videos have become an important form for ordinary people to record their lives and express themselves.

When he lived with me in the city, Lao Li often complained, saying that he didn't have any friends in the city, and he was in prison in the building every day, except for the occasional phone call with friends in the village, most of the time he relied on short video dynamics to pass the time and contact old friends.

Like has become her simplest social expression, Lao Li often excitedly told me that her video has hundreds of likes, and she has increased a fan, she is very frank to express her joy at getting likes.

Every time she swipes a video of her friend, she will also give a like, so that even if there is no specific contact and communication, it can be regarded as keeping in touch with the other party.

Cooking at home, going out for a walk, can be used as material for short videos, and then add a few special effects with one click, what Lao Li sent out, in her opinion, is an outstanding work, but I often complain about her, don't open so many beautiful faces, add too many plastic special effects, but to no avail.

It is very difficult for the two generations to communicate, and the difference in aesthetics will be greater, Lao Li's insistence on the style of short videos finally convinced me that I can only let her go, who doesn't want to live in the world of their imagination, just be happy.

Lao Li's feelings for rural life and memories of his generation are also reflected in short videos, when cooking at home, she often opens the video platform, watches some operas that she often listened to when she was a child, and finds live broadcasts of rural chatter, watching with relish.

I was once very puzzled about who placed the order for shopping on the short video platform, and it wasn't until I lived with Lao Li for a while that I discovered the mystery.

Lao Li will be interested in watching the anchor bring the goods, compared to going to offline shopping malls, the anchor looks much cheaper, a cotton dress can be bought for twenty or thirty yuan, I accompanied her to see thousands of yuan of down jackets, she said that she didn't want anything, but the clothes in the live broadcast room were very skillful, and it was probably a portrayal of a lifetime of thrift.

The so-called opening eyes to see the world, I think for Lao Li, short videos have a similar effect, most of his life lives as a wife and mother, the hardships of part-time work, daily boredom, the indifference of men in the family, and the society's requirements for women's virtuous duties, so that most of their lives are lacking in color and fluctuations.

And the Yingge Yan Dance in the short video, strange people, and the world of flowers, let Lao Li see a scene that she has not seen for decades, plus she can record her life casually, so that friends around her and strangers who are thousands of miles away can see herself, every praise is a small blessing.

After I finished shooting a short video with them that day, Lao Li's best friend Lao Yan said that after living for most of his life, he found that happiness is the most important thing, regardless of other people's gossip, how long can we live, how happy and how to live.

It is said that short videos are fast food, but for them, it may be a kind of liberation.