Go to a city for an experience, a scenery, and a kind of food. In the first half of the year, county tourism has become an important growth driver of the cultural tourism market, and the term “county tourism” continues to be popular on social media.
“County Tour” became popular, and behind it was a two-way rush. On the one hand, with the diversification of tourism consumption concepts, tourists pay more attention to local experience and slow down to experience the unique customs and fireworks of the county; on the other hand, the county continues to improve supporting facilities, upgrade business formats, and improve services to better meet the needs of tourists.
Nine departments including the Ministry of Commerce recently jointly issued a document to further stimulate the vitality of the lower-tier market and activate consumption in counties. The vast county has a lot to offer. This edition launches a series of reports on “What to Visit in the County” to share the unique experiences of characteristic small towns and the active exploration of innovative business formats in various places.
——Editor
Go to Hengdian and shoot a short play
Jinhua Daily reporters Cai Wenjie and Wang Lei
Put on your costume and go onto the set. The lights come on, the director says “go”, and the short play starts shooting – this is the daily routine of some tourists in Hengdian during their holidays.
Not long ago, Hengdian Film and Television City in Dongyang City, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province launched the “Short Play Shooting Experience” project. Visitors who spend an average of two to three hundred yuan per person and take about one hour can shoot their own vertical screen short play on a live-action set.
August 29, Hengdian Film and Television City. Putting on ancient costumes, Shanghai tourists Fu Yue, Zou Qiong and Hu Nan transformed into characters in the play and prepared to perform an ancient “family recognition” drama.
Not long ago, after seeing the experience video on social platforms, they came all the way to “be the protagonists”. It was the first time for all three of them to act, so they were a little nervous after changing into costumes. On-site director Xu Liangqiao, who has many years of experience in filming crews, repeatedly encouraged: “Pay attention to your eyes, the emotion just now is particularly in place.” He picked out the lines line by line, adjusted the state frame by frame, and added the two assistants to foreshadow the emotions and take over the scenes, and the three of them gradually got into a good mood. After the filming, the three of them said with emotion, “It was fun and stress-relieving to have so many people accompany me.”
Hengdian’s “Short Play Shooting Experience” project provides more than 40 scripts, the most popular ones are “Shuangwen” short plays and famous scene reenactments. Generally, the pieces are delivered on the same day, and for large orders, they are delivered within two days. After the short drama experience product was launched, young consumers accounted for 70%.
According to Wu Yizhuo, director of the “Short Play Shooting Experience” at Hengdian Film and Television City, the popularity of the “Short Play Shooting Experience” project is the result of more than 10 years of iterative upgrades. In 2011, Hengdian Film and Television City launched “Star Dream Factory”, focusing on team micro-film business. In 2016, the local area promoted immersive tourism, and tourists could be seen everywhere taking selfies and self-cutting photos with their mobile phones, which gave rise to the idea of providing professional shooting services to ordinary people. In that year, Hengdian Micro Film Company was established, moving towards standardized and corporate operations. In 2024, following the development trend of vertical screen short dramas, the project further streamlined the shooting process and optimized equipment configuration. The original half-day shooting was shortened to about one hour, and the consumption threshold was also lowered from the thousand yuan level to the hundred yuan range.
Today, this model is becoming increasingly mature. The “Short Play Shooting Experience” project has been online for nearly a month, and more than 2,000 people have experienced it.
If you only watch individual short dramas, the profit potential is limited. “But it plays the role of a ‘hook’ in the entire cultural tourism consumption in Hengdian.” Wu Xiao, head of the short drama experience business of Hengdian Film and Television City, said that the immersive experience can retain tourists, lengthen the consumption chain, increase the number of overnight tourists, and activate comprehensive consumption in the county such as accommodation, catering, performing arts, and cultural creativity.
Today, transforming professional film and television production capabilities into cultural tourism experience products for the public has become an important direction for Hengdian’s development. Hengdian selected more than 500 people from grassroots film and television practitioners to form a professional interactive performing arts team to provide tourists with acting services. Wu Xiao introduced that during this year’s National Day holiday, Hengdian plans to upgrade some NPC (non-player character) studios to short drama experience studios, with the first batch of 19 planned to be opened.
Making white porcelain in Dehua
Quanzhou Evening News reporters Lin Lubo Song Yao
The gauze is as thin as cicada wings, the hair is clearly defined, and the skirts of “Princess Yushu” are fluttering. If it weren’t for the display cabinet, it would be hard to believe that this was made of porcelain clay. At the “CHINA White” temporary exhibition at the Shanghai World Skills Museum, the white porcelain sculpture “Myth” from Dehua County, Quanzhou, Fujian Province became popular. Its author is Lian Deli, the representative inheritor of Dehua porcelain firing techniques.
Before school started, Ms. Chen, a Shanghai citizen, took her son to “chase” to Dehua. “After watching the exhibition, the children asked every day: Is such a thin gauze really made of mud?” This “star chasing” is chasing the fingertip skills of the intangible cultural heritage master, and it is also the thousand-year-old maritime silk culture code hidden in the porcelain clay.
Dehua is a living millennium-old porcelain capital – for more than 3,700 years, the kilns have never been extinguished. In 2021, the Dehua Kiln Site (Weilin-Neishan Kiln Site, Qudou Palace Kiln Site) was included in the World Heritage List along with “Quanzhou: China’s World Marine Trade Center in the Song and Yuan Dynasties”. The four kilns of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties were stacked one on top of the other, which is known as “a thousand years of sight”. 239 similar ancient kiln sites have been discovered in the county, spread across 18 towns.
The rich history is being put into new scenes one after another. In the Yueji kiln, visitors can add a handful of firewood to the kiln entrance with their own hands. When the kiln is opened, “the white is green, the ash has fallen and the glaze is different,” and the crowd is amazed. Visitors can read the story of “China White” among the soil, fireworks and mountains and rivers.
In Hongqifang on the weekend, the red brick factory buildings and old chimneys contrast beautifully. The workshop that roared with machines in the 1950s has now been transformed into a workshop, exhibition hall and cultural and creative shop; deep in the factory, the live-action scripted drama “Porcelain Craftsman” was full of people. Tourists pretended to be craftsmen and relived the journey of a piece of exported porcelain from clay to the ocean. Ms. Lin, a tourist, took her daughter to sit in front of the drawing machine, and the porcelain clay slowly “grew” on her fingertips. “I used to see white porcelain in the museum, but this time my child made one with her own hands, and she discovered that ceramics have temperature.”
In the park, young people are always gathered in front of the “Thirty-Two Generations” cultural and creative shop. Shop owner Yan Jinduan has been making porcelain for generations in his family, and now makes white porcelain into earrings, bracelets, and small ornaments. “Old craftsmanship must also be close to the aesthetics of young people.” Old kiln workers have returned to the park to teach skills, and young makers have settled in to start businesses. The industrial heritage has become a living cultural space that can be experienced, consumed, and co-created.
In Dehua, “One City, Hundreds of Pavilions” is spreading new scenes like this across the city: “Artifact Coffee” blends white porcelain with country coffee, Porcelain Light Night Market lights up the night economy, thousands of ceramic companies, hundreds of master exhibition halls and tourist factories are strung together into a chain – the city is a pavilion, and there is a city within the pavilion. In 2025, the county will receive 14.2 million tourists and generate tourism revenue of 14 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14% and 14.6% respectively.
In the future, Dehua will connect thousands of companies and hundreds of exhibition halls, implement the “cultural tourism + hundreds of industries” integration project, and promote the development of industrial tourism, event tourism, health and wellness tourism, night tourism, and film and television tourism.
The fire in the kiln never goes out, and the stories are always new. When tourists leave with hand-made white porcelain and share their memories of Dehua, the story of “China White” is taken further.
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