·Introduction

City identity constitute the core of the cultural tourism economy. As a concentrated expression of the city’s individuality, cultural heritage has an obvious contribution to the cultural tourism economy. After the new archaeological discovery of Sanxingdui in 2021, the comprehensive income of Sanxingdui Museum Scenic Spot has achieved four times that of the same period in 2019 and six times that of the same period in 2020.¹ Therefore, questions related to how to use cultural heritage build city identity have attracted a large share of attention in debates.

·Question

For cities with relatively less rich cultural heritage resources (such as Sanxingdui in Guanghan mentioned above), as long as a good grasp of a cultural heritage can be established, a distinct city identity can be established. But for Nanjing, a city with 300 intangible cultural heritage², it has become a difficult problem to establish a distinct city identity.

This study contributes to use the cultural heritage of the Qinhuai River to build Nanjing’s city identity to combat the current problem of cultural homogeneity and promote the cultural tourism economy in Nanjing.

·Research Methodology

Aiming to understand how to use the cultural heritage of the Qinhuai River to build Nanjing’s city identity, this study principally conducts a research methodology of interpretivism. Based on interviews with stakeholders and target audiences and observations of moderately successful attempts in this field, this research employs the perspectives of hermeneutics, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism to conduct discourse and case studies. However, since interpretivism is easily subject to the subjective bias of researchers, in order to solve this shortcoming, this study also extensively refers to related philosophical viewpoints, such as Global City³ and Holographic Urban⁴, to avoid overly subjective value judgments.

·Research

Although cultural heritage is an important embodiment of city identity, it’s often borrowed from popular culture in the process of dissemination. Among the many cultural and entertainment activities in London in summer 2022, several events with the theme of East Asian culture, such as the MIK Korean pop music festival from July 30 to 31⁵, and the HYDE JAPAN Japanese animation culture festival from July 22 to July 24⁶, are all based on pop culture, but It is worth noting that these activities are still interspersed with cultural heritage-related content, such as traditional costumes and food; another example is the 2.4 version of the Chinese game “Genshin”, which has received extensive international attention in recent years. The character “Yunjin” which designed based on Chinese opera culture, its tag ranked fifth on Twitter’s trend list after the game version was updated, and reached the second highest.⁷ Although its popularity is not all affirmation of Chinese opera, it makes more people have direct contact with Chinese opera. Popular culture brings more exposure to cultural heritage so that it is possible to gain recognition and acceptance. Therefore, the establishment of urban personality through cultural heritage should be combined with the form of popular culture.

Under the background of global urban theory, city identity is no longer only limited to the local, but needs to be combined with the background of globalization and metropolis, and consider the issues of mutual influence between countries and regions.⁸ From the perspective of holographic urban theory, cyberspace has also become a composite space-time outside of urban space, which is no longer “tangible” but a civilization that gradually tends to “invisible”.⁹

Therefore, the use of cultural heritage to establish urban personality should take into account the popularity, internationality and contemporaneity (The Internet age) in concrete practice.

·Intervention

The intervention of the research would like to be a system which combine short videos, online curation and cultural creative design.

Short videos is the way of story-telling. Using short videos as a carrier, combined with popular trends (such as memes, hot topics, etc.), tell the story of the Qinhuai River cultural heritage.

Online curation is a platform to integrate the narrative of the short video, explain the cultural heritage involved in the short video, and build a connection with cultural creative design.

Cultural creative design is the final destination, as a possible path for the project to extend to the cultural tourism industry.

·Audience

The project is mainly planned to be carried out on Douyin and tiktok, mainly for people who interested in culture and tourism.

·Concluding

The advantage of this project is that it solves the problem of fragmentation of short video creation, the overall idea is more systematic, and it can achieve interaction and transformation. The disadvantage is that short videos are in the form of popular culture, and there will still be a certain degree of restrictions on conveying the serious connotation of cultural heritage; in addition, because it is necessary to borrow popular hot spots as an attractive way, it may sometimes cause the target audience to pay attention when watching short videos. The point deviates from the cultural heritage and the urban personality of Nanjing.

At present, the project has completed the preliminary investigation, determined the list of cultural heritage, and has started the shooting of a series of short videos.

With the improvement of short video production technology, presenting narrative content in a few minutes-long works has increasingly become the pursuit of short video creators. If short video is regarded as a new text and narratology research object of fusion media, it can be found that the narrative form, narrative time, and temporal and spatial characteristics of narrative flow of short video have their own distinctive characteristics.

Short videos present a strong hybrid narrative feature. As far as narrative space is concerned, short videos focusing on family life are mostly based on three meals a day and warm interaction with family members. Waiting for performing arts to be integrated into family members’ conversations, taking a funny route; VLOGs of daily life record streams, mostly switching to different time and space scenes such as commuting to work, shopping parties, fitness and leisure, etc. to switch and collage the imagination of prosperous urban life; traditional cultural themes, Most of them win with ancient style and artistic conception, put appropriate characters in the corresponding landscaping and carry out related labor behaviors. In short, whether it is the rhythm of the beginning and the end, the contrast between the front and the back, the foreshadowing and flipping, or the close-up of the “highlight moment” of people and objects, the short video accommodates a variety of narrative art with great creative freedom and flexible space. The characteristics of the combination of culture, folk culture and popular culture.

With the improvement of short video production technology, presenting narrative content in a few minutes-long works has increasingly become the pursuit of short video creators. If short video is regarded as a new text and narratology research object of fusion media, it can be found that the narrative form, narrative time, and temporal and spatial characteristics of narrative flow of short video have their own distinctive characteristics.

In terms of narrative time, although many themes are devoted to deliberately imitating the natural time sequence (such as the growth of animals and plants, the spring planting, autumn harvesting and winter storage of agricultural civilization, etc.), the short video mainly rewrites the speed and slow performance of natural time, and its time rhetoric mainly includes: Two: Press the “accelerate” key, which imitates “slow” time. The former, such as reading movies and TV shows in three minutes, experiencing the beauty of a city in tens of seconds, and visiting famous mountains and rivers in tens of seconds, compressing and synthesizing the time of the scene changes over a long period of time with the technology of delayed photography, fully excavating And occupying the remaining fragmented time of people is the symbol of “occupying and depriving human beings of the last breathing space” in the era of attention economy. The latter, in addition to the not-so-new daily life narrative of slow time and slow life, is also about magnifying and decelerating details: the soft and shiny fur of a cheetah running becomes visible frame by frame, and the beautiful six sides of snowflakes fall. The shape is slowly frozen, or the sight is fixed on the “autumn in the old capital”, “the snow in the northern part of Saibei”, and so on, so that people can gain slow and quiet spiritual power from the deceleration of time.

The rhetoric about time and space in the short video is an image construction of the real society, which reflects the emotional configuration of modern people. Compared with the hysteresis of literature and art representing the emotions of the times, short videos can be called “instantaneous” art. It preserves countless “moments” closely related to ordinary people’s lives in a visual way, both as a way of socializing and as an emotional outlet. However, when modern people are in the anxiety of the “acceleration era”, they are afraid to take a step behind them, and they can grab short-term knowledge, skills and experience from short videos and quickly put them into practice in the workplace, family and life. The pursuit of efficiency has given birth to the desire for short videos to pursue “fastness” in their “shortness”. After all, the human mind is not a machine. For the alienated rebound, let it pursue a rhythm that conforms to the natural circadian rhythm, and “slow” becomes the real need of the mind. The time and space rhetoric of short videos are subject to human’s understanding of speed and the need for individualization of life.

In recent years, with the rise of new media sociology, new media represented by short videos are regarded as field investigations and ethnographic texts with the color of media landscape. In this sense, short videos construct and represent a clearer and more concrete “imagined community”, which is nothing less than an ethnographic expression in the digital age. In this field, although users have the freedom to express their personal emotions—they can laugh and scold in their own video works—there is no doubt that individual emotions receive collective emotional calls from countries, nations, ethnic groups, and regions.

The ardent and deep feelings of family and country, the self-confidence and tolerance of national feelings, the heroism of sacrificing one’s life, etc. are once again magnified and highlighted in the short video, like a huge magnetic field, attracting ordinary people to express the emotions of individual freedom subtly and merge into the collective. the sound of. Whether it is from the archaeological excavation of Sanxingdui, showing the long history of civilization of the diverse and integrated Chinese nation, or the ordinary fire hero who saves lives despite the danger, the short video highlights the characters with narrative time and space rhetoric, accumulating strong and fiery emotions strength. For example, in May last year, a 15-second short video on the “CCTV News” account sending off Yuan Longping, the father of hybrid rice, received 35 million likes and nearly 4.5 million comments. This brings together the gratitude of tens of millions of ordinary people to the “father of hybrid rice”, the mourning for the death of Yuan Longping, and more deeply the love and tribute to the scientists, role models of the times, heroes and other figures represented by Yuan Longping. .

In the era of national video, short videos are not only the records of events, the exploration of daily life, but also the engraving and engraving of emotions. In the short video world, the trickle of individual emotions exists, and will eventually merge into the emotional river of the community, the collective, and the family, and condense into a close “emotional community” in the virtual space.

2014 is regarded as the “first year of short video”. However, in the first few years of the rise of short video, its user base often published works of “brutal bottom stories”. From the perspective of cultural criticism, as the presentation of social “spectacles”, the alienated, bizarre and exaggerated visual symbols created by short videos bring users extremely shocking sensory stimulation. Over time, short videos have become synonymous with inferior content on the Internet.

From the earthy videos at the beginning of the short video, to the professional and high-quality works in planning, scripting and shooting technology in recent years, at the content level, the short video tends to be broader from the “spectacle” display “Landscape” presentation. Guy Debord believed that, in a society where modern production conditions are omnipresent, life itself is presented as a vast accumulation of spectacles. The accumulation of landscapes is more concentrated in short videos in the form of visual culture, because people today need to understand the world through various landscapes rather than real life itself. Regarding the subtle difference between “spectacle” and “landscape”, some scholars believe that the spectacle has the characteristics of rarity and unfamiliarity. With the repetition and dailyization of the landscape, people’s experience of the spectacle will gradually attenuate, and the spectacle will be enriched in the conventional landscape. and cognitive system, become its component. This can explain that the spectacles of bloggers’ eyeballs, such as “vulgar”, “killing Matt” and “LOW”, which were initially labelled, were gradually submerged in short videos, while more diverse and extensive content was produced with vertically segmented Internet content. The pattern is known to the majority of users. In addition, with the standardized management of short video content, themes, forms, etc. by national regulatory forces, the successive introduction of policies and regulations, and the entry of more and more professional media into the blue ocean of short videos, the content of short videos is superficial and vulgar, excessive consumerism, etc. The mixed situation has improved.

On the short video platform, the trend of art sinking is obvious, which has provided assistance to the public’s aesthetic edification and popularization of aesthetic education. For example, “Shanghai Opera 416 Women’s Group” became popular because 5 girls in the same dormitory performed different performances of Lao Dan, Cheng Pai Tsing Yi, Mei Pai Tsing Yi, Xun Pai Hua Dan, and Hua Dan to perform classic drama excerpts and popular ancient songs. The short video In a more intuitive and low-threshold way, popularize the differences between different opera genres and different roles, and achieve the objective effect of popularizing education in traditional drama. Whether it is cover singing of niche operas, or using cucurbit flute, pipa, suona, banhu, matouqin, dulcimer, konghou, shakuhachi and many other types of folk music, it often gets a lot of likes and fans.

The “2021 Short Video User Value Report” shows that the diversification of short video content not only enhances the user’s sense of companionship and spends fragmented time, but also provides a window to explore and understand the world. From the perspective of content type, the demand for short videos of pan-knowledge and pan-life is still strong, and the reasons for users such as “affordable and useful”, “deep and connotative” exceed “interesting and fun” for the first time. The “Knowledge Inclusive Report 2.0 – Research Report on Short Video and Knowledge Dissemination” also pointed out that short video has lowered the threshold for the public to access knowledge, enriched the form of knowledge expression in a vivid form, and made the creation and dissemination of knowledge easier. Convenience, diversified, all-round and high-level demands for knowledge have become an integral part of the growing public demand for a better life. With the development of Internet technology in recent years, the change of content and the improvement of innovation, the local culture in the public cognitive bias such as killing Matt and Kuangdakuku in the short video world has been reduced to a very small part. Pan-culture and sub-culture exist in their own way, and through the ultra-high-speed dissemination of popular culture, they together constitute a “image China” in the 5G era of the Internet.

Short video has become the core content of current Internet life. According to the 49th “Statistical Report on Internet Development in China”, as of December 2021, the number of Internet users in China reached 1.032 billion, of which the number of short video users was 934 million, accounting for 90.5% of the total Internet users in China. For short video users, short video is not only a social way of life, but also constitutes a rich landscape world. People not only participate in this vast video practice as a creative subject, but also passively suffer as an object. The influence of media on people’s cognitive abilities, thinking abilities and emotional patterns. It can be said that with the help of the “acceleration” of the 5G era, short videos based on the new media form of the Internet industry platform constitute a rich new media narrative style and construct a holistic cultural landscape.

Short videos combine languages, symbols, pictures, images, sounds and other codes in a more personalized, randomized, and pop-like collage. Therefore, on the basis of a huge user group and massive data, it can be It is regarded as a kind of flowing mass culture visual log form. In recent years, the constantly updated digital media has made it possible to record a wide range of daily life practices in ultra-large-scale digital records. It contains the collective expression of social creativity, the activation and release of individual creativity, and reflects the interaction between the overall social creativity, public life, and extensive social participation.

A fluid visual journal of popular culture

Based on the typical UGC (User Generated Content) model, short videos are used by Internet users to record all aspects of their lives. Short videos combine languages, symbols, pictures, images, sounds and other codes for a more personalized, randomized, and pop-like collage. Therefore, on the basis of a huge user group and massive data, it can Seen as a fluid form of mass culture visual journaling. In recent years, the constantly updated digital media has made it possible to record a wide range of daily life practices on a large scale. It contains the collective expression of social creativity, the activation and release of individual creativity, and reflects the interactive relationship between the overall creativity of society, public life and extensive social participation.

Although Benjamin’s criticism of reproducible art in “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is widely known, in fact, Benjamin’s other meaning is often overlooked: although the cultural products produced by reproduction technology have lost their uniqueness, they are “all things are The equal way gives the copied object a realistic dynamism”. In the late 1990s, Nicola Negroponte predicted in “Digital Survival” that the fundamental feature of the post-information age is personalization, “the individual is not buried in the universal, or as a demographic Subset, what the development of cyberspace seeks is to give ordinary people the opportunity to express their needs and hopes.” Peng Lan, a communication researcher, believes that the rise of short video image expression has a revolutionary change, and its birth is a subversive On the other hand, the “New Culture Movement” presents the power of novelty and wildness from the folk, the bottom and the fringes, infiltrating the rich life background, and showing a more open and diverse social life.

In the era of short videos, users can enjoy the great rivers and mountains from all over the country, Internet celebrities or niche people, and understand the details of daily life in different cultural units and different ethnic areas without leaving home. For example, the short video blogger “Ajing” is rooted in the rural town of Guangxi with karst landforms, and draws materials from authentic rural life, completes contrasting costumes, and inspires the public to reflect on the beauty of the rural world from a modern aesthetic perspective; travel bloggers ” “Fang Qi” combines the beautiful scenery of heaven and earth, the insights of life in different moods, and the golden sentences and quotations with an average length of three or four minutes. The audience can not only enjoy the beautiful scenery of the mountains and rivers, but also feel the language Brings comfort to the soul. Niche local operas such as Guizhou Nuo Opera and Anhui Lu Opera have also received more attention in the short video media, giving off new vitality.

In addition to daily expressions such as “seven things to open the door, firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea”, daily life themes such as the change of seasonal solar terms, the presentation of local scenery, and the transformation of labor scenes are also the core of the short video content. In recent years, with the popularity of Li Ziqi, Ding Zhen, etc., under the encouragement of the platform’s traffic support mechanism, a large number of short video bloggers focusing on immersive rural life have emerged. become the carrier of their daily life. The rural family life of “Sister Taozi in Shuzhong” shows a strong local color, Sichuan dialect with Zigong accent, a series of typical Sichuan home-cooked dishes such as Bobo chicken and Mala Tang, as well as killing pigs to sell meat, and raking the ground to grow buds. , dig sweet potatoes to make jelly and other particularly real and down-to-earth agricultural presentations, attracting a large number of users to watch and interact.

With the help of Douyin’s(Chinese ticktok) “New Farmer Plan”, “Classmate Zhang”, who became popular, showed the simple and simple life of a bachelor in the northeast countryside from a first perspective, which triggered a wave of collective memories and spoofs; “Shan Village Xiaojie” in his hometown In the quaint villages in southern Fujian, traditional skills are presented with ancient methods, such as traditional food production, iron farming tools, bamboo rafts, waterwheel construction, and even the renovation of ancient villages. At the same time, grand narrative themes such as family and country feelings, heroism, poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, new rural construction, technological rejuvenation, and non-genetic inheritance have become important themes in the creation and production of short videos. The above themes are related to present their understanding of grand and simple emotions from a detailed, personal, and life-like perspective.

All in all, a large number of related topics are presented in the short video field, and because of the diversity and richness far beyond the text and audio carriers, they constitute a “non-archival” visual log of popular culture, and daily life in popular aesthetics is also Presentations are elevated to new interpretive contexts. It can be said that short video, as a new type of image dissemination carrier and social and cultural landscape, is shining brightly at the moment.