\u201cLet\u2019s go get some saplings,\u201d said a villager. Then a truck \u201crumbled\u201d out of a village; villagers carefully selected saplings at a stall; and then the saplings were planted with the help of crane.<\/p>\n
These realistic scenes come from a short video showing country life on Chinese short video-sharing platform Kuaishou. <\/p>\n
What\u2019s so special about the video, which has been viewed over 700,000 times, is that the people and settings in it are made from mud.
\nThe short video was made by Zhu Fujun, a clay sculpture maker in Sixiatou village, Xunxian county, central China\u2019s Henan province.
\nZhu has posted short videos on Kuaishou to tell stories about his hometown with mud figurines, vehicles and houses he made. Known as \u201cNibage\u201d on Kuaishou, which means \u201cthe guy who plays with mud\u201d in Chinese, he has attracted more than three million followers on the platform.
\nMaking clay sculptures, also known as Mud Cuckoos, is a long tradition in Xunxian county as well as national intangible heritage in China. Villagers in the county knead the premixed mud over and over again, paint patterns on it, and then color it, eventually creating lifelike clay sculptures.
\nIf people blow at the little holes in these clay sculptures, they will make quick notes that sound like the call of cuckoo, which is why the sculptures are called Mud Cuckoo.
\nAs more and more young and middle-aged residents of the village leave their hometown to seek work in other places, the inheritance of Mud Cuckoo making once faced serious challenges.
\nFortunately, a short video of clay sculpture made by Zhu unexpectedly drew wide attention to the traditional handcraft and led to its revitalization.
\nIn 2017, a video of clay sculpture made by Zhu received over two million views, which made him pleasantly surprised and ignited his passion for creation. He began to busy himself with scripting his short videos, making clay sculptures and interacting with netizens.
\nGradually, more and more people joined him in making the videos. \u201cWe learned from online courses how to move the camera and dub the videos and what kind of stories netizens like. As our videos become more popular, many people come to seek advice from us on shooting techniques,\u201d Zhu said.
\nWhile the quality of his videos has been continuously raised, Zhu has also improved his craftsmanship for making Mud Cuckoos. \u201cWe also learned from Wang Xueren, a provincial-level inheritor of the national intangible heritage,\u201d Zhu said, adding that although clay sculptures are small artworks, they still require plenty of skills.
\nAs his short videos receive increasing \u201clikes\u201d, Mud Cuckoos have also become more widely known.
\n\u201cDuring my first livestreaming show for selling clay sculptures, nearly 200 orders were placed and all the products I prepared for that show were sold out within seconds. I never expected clay sculpture to be so popular with netizens,\u201d Zhu recalled.
\nZhu has also motivated his fellow villagers to join him in promoting Mud Cuckoos. He introduced the history of the traditional handcraft in his videos and recorded how senior residents in the village make clay sculptures at their homes. \u201cWe have helped more than 100 craftsmen sell nearly 100,000 clay sculptures,\u201d Zhu said.
\nShort videos have revitalized rural culture. \u201cWe encourage young people to make high-quality short videos and promote the digitization of excellent rural cultural resources,\u201d said Zhou Xiaohan, vice president of Kuaishou pan-knowledge and paid business.
\n\u201cNowadays, videos of intangible cultural heritage are posted on Kuaishou every three seconds, with a cumulative views exceeding 224.5 billion,\u201d Zhou said, adding that more than 190 million monthly follow and learn agricultural knowledge through the platform.
\nDigital technologies have injected impetus into rural culture and brought folk crafts, customs and other forms of excellent rural traditional culture back to life.
\nChina has called for efforts to pool data resources including rural cultural relics, intangible cultural heritage, regional opera varieties, and agricultural civilization sites to enrich the reserves of Chinese cultural heritage and realize digital preservation of core rural cultural resources.
\nDuring the country\u2019s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period, the central government of China will continuously support the implementation of projects for the construction of national smart library system and digital construction of public culture to further facilitate digital public culture construction.
\nWith continuous improvement in digital information infrastructure, the increasingly wide application of digital technologies in rural areas will help more traditional handcrafts brim with renewed vitality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cLet\u2019s go get some saplings,\u201d said a villager. Then a truck \u201crumbled\u201d out of a village; villagers carefully selected saplings at a stall; and then the saplings were planted with the help of crane. These realistic scenes come from a short video showing country life on Chinese short video-sharing platform Kuaishou. What\u2019s so special about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-262188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n