When you think of Chaoshan, what do you think of?

I think most people will think of food.

In 2012, "Sanlian Life Weekly" published a cover story about Chaoshan - "The Taste of Chaoshan in Nostalgia", which brought Chaoshan cuisine into the mainstream vision of China's mass communication. Later, "A Bite of China" was broadcast, allowing more people to understand Chaoshan and local cuisine.

The city’s cultural output relies first on communications and secondly on food.

Chaoshan Beef Hotpot has become the evangelist of promoting Chaoshan food culture. In 2015, more than 300 Chaoshan beef hot pot restaurants popped up on the streets of Shanghai overnight. From then on, Sichuan hot pot no longer dominated the market. People have a new place to queue up, and they rush to hot pot restaurants to taste beef balls and various parts of beef with different scientific names; they post on Moments to check in and discuss which beef balls are the best and which hot pot soup is the best. typical.

The peripheral extension of catering is packaged food. As the domestic e-commerce industry develops, express e-commerce has helped Chaoshan delicacies move northward smoothly. Among them, Chaoshan beef balls have become the best representative.

A random search for "beef balls" on Taobao will pop up hundreds of brands. Most beef balls have to be added with "Chaoshan" (or Shantou, Chaozhou) as an attributive. Whether these beef balls are truly "produced in Chaoshan" cannot be verified here, but what is certain is that the combination of the two has given Chaoshan's food culture a more concrete label when it is spread.

Following the Matthew Effect, more and more brands are entering, hoping to increase their profits through the name of "Chaoshan". As everyone knows, they have virtually boosted the brand communication and popularity of "Chaoshan".

This year’s National Day, many self-media people invariably reported on the local specialties of Chaozhou and Shantou, which attracted countless people from other provinces. As a result, Chinese people began to be dissatisfied with tasting this cuisine in their own city. Many people took advantage of this and chose to go to Chaoshan to experience a food trip.

Among them are my friends and I. We first checked in to Shunde, another gourmet capital in Guangdong, and then took the train to Chaoshan.

Fortunately, compared with established food tourism cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing, Chaoshan is relatively unpopular and does not have many tourists. "There are not so many tourists from other provinces" makes us who speak Mandarin look a little out of place, but this does not prevent us from eating 8 meals a day in Shantou.

How to summarize the food there?

Probably because the ingredients are fresh, delicious and not greasy, and paired with Kung Fu tea, you won’t feel burdened even if you eat a lot. This is the best differentiation of Cantonese cuisine compared to other cuisines. In comparison, how much oil is there in my favorite Shanghainese local dishes, braised pork with shredded eels and noodles with scallion oil?

(Friendly reminder, there are high-definition uncensored food pictures at the end of the article, please scroll down carefully)

From the perspective of marketing, the success of a brand must not only have a positive label, but also a positive label. For new users, when a brand can be personified or describe a dozen words related to it within 10 seconds, its brand image will be full in your mind, which also indicates that it is a successful brand.

Chengdu is a successful brand:

Hot pot, grilled brains, Chuan Chuan Xiang, Spicy, Giant Panda, Beautiful and Handsome Guys, Basin, Taikoo Li, Jinli Wuhou Temple, Mahjong, Earthquake...

Hangzhou is a successful brand:

West Lake, Leifeng Pagoda, Lingyin Temple, Hangzhou cuisine, West Lake vinegar fish, grandma's house, traffic jam, B&B, Alibaba, NetEase...

Most Chinese people don’t actually know Chaoshan yet. How many people always mistakenly think that Chaoshan is one city?

If the Chaoshan region is regarded as a brand, it seems that it still lacks some momentum. It has too few positive labels. Even when you are in Chaoshan, you will still feel this way.

Shantou is a city where there is nothing to see but eat. Taking a taxi from Chaoshan Station to the hotel, we were full of questions about this special economic zone. Is this what a special economic zone should look like? The dilapidated infrastructure and mottled houses always make me feel like I have traveled back to the Republic of China during the Anti-Japanese War.

If you are not a sincere foodie, you may be shocked and turn back.

Public transportation is not developed, which is very unfriendly to foreign tourists. The infrastructure is not in place, which also raises the threshold for tourism development.

Those food bloggers will probably not tell you that a “food tour” in Chaoshan is more difficult than imagined.

Compared with Shantou, Chaozhou culture is more complete.

Most of Chaozhou’s historical monuments and traditional snack shops are concentrated in the old city, especially around the Paifang Street area. There are not only typical ancient buildings such as Kaiyuan Temple and Yongji Bridge dating from the Tang Dynasty; Food center: Kueh juice, beef offal, candied scallion cake, mung bean juice, sesame tea, old medicinal orange...

We went to a teahouse called Qian Ting Teahouse for a break, this teahouse has also been It is an ancient building to browse down and enjoy tea. This venue is also a place for tourists to understand Chaoshan culture.

Walking in the old city, your heart will naturally calm down and you will lose the impetuousness in the city. This is the valuable experience of this trip.

Compared with Shantou, Chaozhou has more flesh and blood.

It will have more potential to shape it into a cultural brand, with diverse labels and full images. It’s just that these elements haven’t spread yet.

How to make the city brand more comprehensive?

It is said that Hilton is about to open in Chaozhou to make up for the lack of good hotels in Chaozhou. Improving the city's infrastructure and creating the characteristics of a certain neighborhood can improve regional tourism to a certain extent. Let more people experience local culture. This is an internal approach. I personally think that what is more important is the external output of the brand concept.

In 2015, media person Li Zixin founded the Chaoshan cultural and creative activity brand "Tingchao" in Shanghai and held two large-scale activities, which caused quite a splash in the circle. In addition to better promoting the culture of my hometown of Chaoshan (especially Chaozhou), it is also to connect more Chaoshan people who are working hard for business outside, and to create more opportunities for cultural exchanges to be introduced and exported to the hometown.

Help the export of Chaoshan culture and let more Chinese people understand Chaoshan.

Regarding the brand building of Chaoshan culture, Teacher Li believes that food is only a part of Chaoshan culture, and handicrafts, dramas, local folk customs, etc. have not been explored, so it can be made into a cultural and creative industry. Otherwise, If these traditional cultures are not improved and upgraded, non-Chaoshan people may not be that interested.

In comparison, food is the easiest vehicle to spread Chaoshan brands. Currently, among the many Chaoshan delicacies, only beef hotpot and beef balls have truly “go global”. Express packaging products can help Spread, but this is not enough. Although there are restaurants like Chaotang and Jiafu in Shanghai, they are not universal. The only ones that are universal are chain snack bars.

If Chaoshan beef rice noodles can one day spread across the land of China like Guilin rice noodles, then this may be an important step in laying the foundation for Chaoshan cultural brand.

Finally, I would like to recommend some good places that we visited in Shunde, Shantou and Chaozhou in the past few days. I would also recommend foodies to experience the food, which is different from local cuisine and Sichuan cuisine, and is more extensive and profound. The Cantonese food and local food are the epitome of the culture of this place. May local culture and food coexist and never disappear:)

Written by: Rui Qiu

Typesetting: Ding Mao

Credit: "Listen to the Trend"