One day in May, Shang Qinjie was painting a national tide pattern on a wall in Xiaotun Village, Hui County, Henan Province, with his fingers and clothes stained with paint. When the phone rang, he carefully pulled out his phone to see that Hua Chunying, director of the Information Department and spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, introduced her story on Twitter: a Chinese graffiti artist went to his hometown in Henan and turned an ordinary village into a fairy tale world. Before he could share it with the people around him, he slammed his toes against the wall with his hand, but this time, his fingers were dislocated.
National tide patterns and anime characters are all painted on the courtyard walls of the countryside, and an ordinary small village in the Central Plains has a new look. This young man who gave the wall a color to look at was on fire, and Xiaotun Village in Hui County, Henan Province, which was only lifted out of poverty in 2018, became a net red village, and tourists who came to punch in the clock were endless.
This period of recuperation gave Shang Qinjie a rare vacation and also gave him the opportunity to think. The village is hot, and the tourists who "punch the clock" come, but as soon as the freshness passes, the tourists disperse, and everything returns to the past. In recent years, like Xiaotun Village, there have been many Internet red villages that have led the way, but few have continued to be popular. New rural areas, of course, need new ideas, but the soil that allows them to take root, blossom, and bear fruit is even more rare. When he first entered the village, Shang Qinjie only saw himself as a painter; now that he has completed the wall painting and left the village, his thinking has far exceeded the painting.
Shang Qinjie is painting on the wall. Zheng Ziyu
In the countryside, there are paintings of the national tide wall
Shang Qinjie has loved to draw since he was a child. When his parents opened his textbook, several Ultraman motifs were impressive on the paper, often making them cry and laugh.
In high school, his father dragged him to the construction site to move bricks to urge his son to study well. Shang Qinjie, who was in his adolescence, was very rebellious and left after a few days of work. Soon after, he received a phone call, and his father flashed to his waist while working and went to the hospital. "It turns out that people are really vulnerable." It was also after that that Shang Qinjie changed his sex in the eyes of his elders and lifted the paintbrush again.
After Shang Qinjie was admitted to the university as an art student, he met a project that his mentor was doing rural wall painting, and he signed up to join. At that time, most of the motifs were based on landscapes and farming, implying a good harvest and a better life. Shang Qinjie had a thought: Why can't animation be painted on the walls of the countryside? Take Ultraman, for example. The teacher said: "Rural wall painting must be in line with the actual situation, animation and other things, the villagers obviously can not accept." ”
Shang Qinjie did not dispel the idea of "bringing anime into the village and creating a dream village", but instead took root in his heart.
After graduation, Shang Qinjie went to Beijing to engage in art education and training. Most of the students in the training class aim to further their studies, and he tells the students to draw what they like and enjoy the process of painting. This is contrary to the thinking of the leaders of the agency, who did not do a good job.
In 2019, Shang Qinjie and several friends were invited to a village in their hometown, Xiaotun Village, Hui County, Henan Province, to engage in wall painting. Yuan Wen, a peasant entrepreneur in the village, asked Shang Qinjie and his party to paint some forest and farming patterns to decorate the newly built rural research base. But painting, Yuan Wen found that if only one or two walls on the periphery of the research base had wall paintings, it seemed thin, but it was better to let Shang Qinjie paint the entire street, and then expand the scope to the entire Xiaotun Village.
Shang Qinjie is adding details to the wall painting. Zheng Ziyu
Outdoor wall painting is a chore. In the summer, Shang Qinjie painted in the scorching sun, his skin tanned; in winter, he had to pack a few more thick clothes to start work, and the frozen paint had to be roasted with fire. Winter nights are hard, and he has to cover three layers of quilts to fall asleep. "It's cold, but the quilt is wrapped in a lot of blood." Shang Qinjie said. When he painted, he always wore a national tide sweatshirt, because it was embellished with paint, this colorful dress simply became his overalls, his hands and face were also stained with paint, and washing clothes became the most troublesome thing outside of painting.
There are also real problems in front of us. Before coming to Xiaotun Village, he had a salary of up to 30,000 or 40,000 yuan a month, and Yuan Wen could not give much remuneration. Friends have left Xiaotun Village one after another due to the sharp decline in income, the epidemic and other reasons, and Shang Qinjie has thought about it countless times - after painting this painting, he will leave, because he feels that he "may be the most unproductive in the painting".
In order to keep Shang Qinjie, Yuan Wen offered to "paint casually", as long as the design draft allowed himself to take a look. "Then draw anime and national tide!" Shang Qinjie stayed.
After a while, Shang Qinjie painted his favorite wall paintings on the walls of the village, large and small. From the familiar comic image to the national tide style phoenix, waking lion, Nezha, all jumped on the wall, Xiaotun Village Guochao Wall Painting Street was born, shang Qinjie painted the paradise of dreams.
This is a wall painting of the theme of the movie "Totoro" painted by a foreign painter for Xitouying Village. Villagers stand in front of the wall. Zheng Ziyu
He occasionally posts wall paintings to short video platforms for record-keeping. In October 2020, the movie "My Hometown and Me" was released. Among them, Ma Liang, played by Shen Teng, gave up the opportunity to study at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, the highest school in Russian art education, and instead took root in the countryside and helped beautify the countryside. Shang Qinjie felt a sense and sent a short video, he hoped that Xiaotun Village would be on fire. However, for the fire matter, Shang Qinjie had no confidence, and the video was finally released in a private form.
The village of Xiaotun was on fire suddenly. In November 2020, he posted the completed Nezha Wall painting on the short video platform, and the next day received tens of thousands of likes, and the local media also discovered the beautiful Xiaotun Village. Coincidentally, on the day the report was released, ding zhen, a 20-year-old Tibetan boy from Litang County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province, was also on the hot search, and Shang Qinjie, who had the same skin color as Ding Zhen because of exposure, was slightly inferior in heat, and he also laughed that he and Ding Zhen debuted on the same day.
In May 2021, Hua Chunying posted a social media post to like Shang Qinjie. Shang Qinjie was overjoyed and injured his hand.
Shang Qinjie, who went home to recuperate, had time to spend with his parents. After learning that her son was liked, the happiest person was her mother. She is one of Shen Teng's fans, and let her son connect with Shen Teng through live broadcasting. Shang Qinjie did not agree, he did not want to "consume" himself. Father admonished: "Don't forget why you started this road. This woke up Shang Qinjie, who wanted to decorate more villages with wall paintings.
Wall Painted Village 2.0
In late September this year, Xitouying Village in Chengde, Hebei Province, invited Shang Qinjie. Rushing from Hui County, Henan to Chengde, Shang Qinjie drove for more than ten hours. "When you left Henan for Hebei, didn't you leave your hometown?" Someone asked. Shang Qinjie only responded with a smile.
Xitouying Village is a very ordinary natural village in northeast Hebei, with a population of less than 2,000, due to the lack of industrial support, the young and middle-aged people in the village go out to work, leaving the elderly and children behind. The houses and courtyard walls in the village are made of red brick, bare and inconspicuous from a distance. During the day, the old people sit around the village and chat is the hustle and bustle of the village; when it is dark, the old people and children rest early, and there are few places in the village with lights.
Bao Liguo, a peasant entrepreneur, is a "capable person" in Xitouying Village, and he wants to make his village from childhood to adulthood glow with a new style. After Li Ruyi, a village cadre, heard about the "wall painting", his first reaction was to search on the Internet. This is the same as the street art in the United States in the 60s of the last century, but the pattern is strange, Li Ruyi can't understand it, "Does this really make the village catch fire?" "The success of Xiaotun Village is really there, and the villagers finally agreed to cement the red brick wall, paint it white, paint the wall, and make the village a facelift."
Villager Li Zhong's home is at the entrance of the village. The newly built village road is facing his door. Before the road was repaired, Li Zhong opened the door to the other side of the house. Because in the local area, the avenue is facing the door of the house is guilty of the taboo of "piercing the heart arrow". The new road can make the door change direction, and the trendy paintings on the walls of the village are also taboo - there are "little people" at the door.
The village invited Shang Qinjie and painters through a public welfare organization. Someone was invited from outside the village to beautify the village, but there were still villagers who would not let the painting, which made Li Ruyi sad. He visited every household on the village road several times and told them about the grand plan to beautify the village. When he came to the door, he drew up his words: these are anime images with names and surnames and provenances, collective memories of young people's childhood, and rely on these to attract people who come to visit the village. Finally, the villagers were moved.
After the door repair was completed, Li Zhong caught up with a wave of fashion in the village. Before the wall painting, Li Zhong looked at the design draft, which is the goldfish shape in the domestic animation, and he gladly accepted it. Now, his courtyard wall is based on blue, and a goldfish swims on the wall. Opposite the door of Li Zhong's house, there is a street painted with various "villains", including Japanese anime cherry pills, American anime sesame street and SpongeBob SquarePants. One of them is the "faceless man" in Miyazaki's film Spirited Away, who is completely black and wears a white mask, and has a high popularity among young people. But where did the old man in the village know this, he only felt that this image was a monster.
The wall painting of the courtyard wall of Li Zhongjia, a villager in Xitouying, is a goldfish shape in domestic animation. Zheng Ziyu
The village committee cadres and painters told the villagers the story, this "faceless man" is to a certain extent the symbol of the "god of wealth", in order to allow the villagers to retain this image, the painter added a belt to the faceless man, which means a waist.
The wall is painted with "a faceless man with a lot of money". Zheng Ziyu
Shang Qinjie found that from the time Xitouying Village agreed to let the comics into the village, to the comics on the wall, the scenes of déjà vu were staged in Xiaotun Village. He believes that it is possible to try to find a balance between the interests of young people and the concepts of villagers. This time when he came to Xitouying Village, he wanted to paint a wall painting on the wall of the courtyard wall of the villager Li Junchen, with the theme of sunflower fields. He mixed latex paint with blue color paste to make pigments, used a roller to spread out the sky, and then used yellow, orange and green to outline hundreds of sunflowers, a dashing and one-stop posture to attract villagers to stop and watch, and within 3 days, a wall painting was completed.
After the painting, Li Junchen slowly stepped out, saw the new appearance of the courtyard wall, and grinned. When Shang Qinjie was collecting the painting materials, Li Junchen stuffed a pack of cigarettes into him and said: "There is nothing to entertain, you must accept this." The villagers' thanks were simple, and Shang Qinjie accepted with a smile.
Shang Qinjie (left) and villager Li Junchen pose for a group photo in front of a sunflower wall painting. Li Junchen couldn't help but give Shang Qinjie a thumbs up on the side. Courtesy of respondents
Once, shang Qinjie was walking on the village road, and the villagers knew that he had come to paint, so they directly asked him if he could stay at home for two nights and paint a wall painting by the way. Most of the villagers, like Li Junchen, went from initial doubts to later welcomes.
As the wall paintings increased, the people in the village became more and more excited. "Dolls in the city aren't used to dry toilets." One person in the village donated 10 yuan to prepare to rebuild the toilet for the people who came to the village to paint. It's not just for the people who come to the village to paint. In the future, when the Xitouying village is on fire, more people will come to the village, and the toilet will be able to be used.
The villagers are looking forward to it: if people often come to the village, there are more small restaurants and homestays in the small village, lively and lively, how good! The old people chatting at the mouth of the village have a lot of topics: there are two small rivers in the village, and since the people who have come to paint in the village, the river that was originally dry is now rising. "The meaning of water is rich." The people in the village thought so.
Can you copy the creativity of other net red villages, can you make Xitouying Village catch fire? No one knows.
"First inject culture, and then use industry to drive the economy." Baoliguo is confident in the future of the village. Xitouying Village has its own unique advantages, Hebei Chengde itself is a tourist city, there are summer resorts, paddocks and other tourist attractions, There are hot springs near Xitouying Village, and the traffic is much more convenient than the small tun village that has been on fire. Bao Liguo is very confident, and always dances when he tells his ideas. He also invited planners with study abroad experience to plan a linkage through re-planning and nearby villages. In order to be different from other wall painting villages, they also designed a wedding wall, and the first to punch was the elderly in the village, who put on their wedding dresses again and took a group photo in front of the wall.
Wall paintings of villagers' homes. Zheng Ziyu
Not long ago, under the arrangement of the public welfare organization, they put on their wedding dresses and took a group photo in front of the wall. Courtesy of respondents
The wedding wall has become a must-have location for wedding photos in the village. Courtesy of respondents
Li Ruyi has his own understanding of the revitalization of the village. "The most important thing is people." He was worried that the actual situation in Xitouying Village would not be able to retain people. What he wants to keep is two groups of people: First, the people who come to the village to paint, they are young, creative, and willing to contribute to the "rural revitalization", but what capital can Xitouying Village have to meet their real needs? Second, people who may come to visit the village in the future, just relying on wall paintings can make them stop for half a day at most, and not being able to keep them also means that the economy cannot rise.
For now, he insists on this difficult road. "Good walks are all downhill." He cheered himself up.
People who can't stay
Xiaotun Village is not the first village to catch fire because of the wall painting. Before Xiaotun Village, more than ten villages, such as Wangjialing Village in Zhejiang, Maoxiangyi Village in Sichuan, and Sanlian Village in Jiangxi, had "gone out of the circle" with the help of such unique visual space designs, attracting tourists to patronize, and now many of them have gradually faded their former glory. This shows that if the villages that are on fire lack the core industries of sustainable development and cannot retain tourists, then there are few that can escape the end of "flowers without 100 days".
Just past the National Day holiday, Xiaotun Village will welcome two or three thousand tourists every day, and Yuan Wen will be busy until 10 p.m. to send away the last batch of guests in the village to have leisure.
But Xiaotun Village has cooled down. Yuan Wen said that the beginning of this year was the highlight of Xiaotun Village. People who come to the village will post the video of punching in Xiaotun Village on the short video platform, and they can get a lot of likes and comments, and then pass ten, ten hundred, and more people come here to visit. On the Internet, entries about Xiaotun Village will be played more than 100 million times a day. When the crowds are surging, more than 70 buses carry tourists to the village entrance every day, and the parking alone is 2,000 meters away from the village entrance. The small village where the drone flies to a height of 200 meters and can take a panoramic view will receive 30,000 or 40,000 people every day, and tourists will rub shoulders. The villagers have a wealth economy. In the past, there was only a small supermarket in the village, but now in order to meet the needs of tourists, the villagers have opened new convenience stores, and some have set up food stalls and bought small trains for tourists to ride. Some villagers make more profits for a few days on holidays than they earn from farming for a year.
The problem that the village has to face has not improved significantly – tourists punch in and go, just a few hours before and after. If you want to further develop cultural tourism, you must find a way to retain people. From the daily passenger flow at the beginning of the year to the current daily passenger flow, Yuan Wen attributed this to two reasons: one is the heavy rain at the end of July, and the other is because the villagers have no time to take care of tourists during the busy agricultural season.
Li Junchen admires Shang Qinjie's wall paintings. Zheng Ziyu
In order to retain people, the village has raised funds to build light shows such as "World of Light and Shadow" to attract tourists. In the future, Yuan Wen plans to invite Shang Qinjie to Xiaotun Village from time to time according to the interests of tourists, so that tourists can continue to patronize Xiaotun Village. The villagers also expect Shang Qinjie to stay in the village, because so far, the traffic is concentrated on Shang Qinjie's short video account, and there is no other traffic carrier in the village that can compete with it. Shang Qinjie sent a short video to bring traffic.
When painting in the village, Shang Qinjie occasionally went to the villagers' homes to rub rice, and the villagers also changed from initial doubts to take the initiative to take care of the guys who beautified the village, and there was a deep friendship between them. However, this love makes him a little stressed at the moment. Some fans came for Shang Qinjie. Someone specially took a plane from Xiamen, Fujian Province, to Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in the morning, and then took a car from Zhengzhou to Xiaotun Village for more than an hour, just so that they could see Shang Qinjie, who was painting, in the village, and take a picture with him. After the fact, the man walked around the village for a while and then left. Many popular punch card videos write that "one person changes his hometown" and "one person drives the GDP of a village". In the eyes of many tourists, the beautification and heat of this village are entirely from the hands of Shang Qinjie. "It's a bit overdone." His heart was full of mixed feelings.
Villagers of Xitouying and Shang Qinjie take a group photo in front of the painting of the nine-colored deer wall in the painting. Zheng Ziyu
Shang Qinjie also does not know how long he can fire, he positioned himself as a "grassroots", and there are many examples of grassroots Internet celebrities. He wanted to be like Ding Zhen and use his own traffic to really seek some welfare for his hometown. He also warned himself that after some people became popular, they brought traffic, they would start live broadcasting, bring goods, etc., actively or passively embark on the road of pursuing interests, but did not do the initial thing. He is reluctant to bring goods, and the occasional live broadcast is also to chat with his fans.
During the chat, he also talked to fans about his future plans - there are still a few wall paintings left in Xiaotun Village that need to be painted, and then continue to paint wall paintings in other villages. He asked himself: he could not be similar to Xiaotun Village, but painted something fresh, such as a movie theme. He was in contact with a village, a small village on the edge of the Yellow River, and he wanted to put the Yellow River culture on the wall. What if it's not on fire? "Then go home and be a teacher."
The road of the past is not walked out by one person, and the road of the future is the same. After the village caught fire, Shang Qinjie felt the obvious change in Xiaotun Village. In order to welcome the flow of passengers, the village is renovating a village road and is close to completion. The appearance of the village is also much cleaner than before. Shang Qinjie feels that Xiaotun Village can try to go out of its own way, rather than a road that relies solely on "traffic".
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zai Fei Text Editor: Zai Fei
Source: Author: Zheng Ziyu