British scholar Taylor once wrote in his book "Primitive Culture" published in 1871: "Culture (civilization) includes knowledge, beliefs, art, moral laws, laws, customs and the abilities and habits acquired by any person as a member of society.

"In short, culture is all the results of human social practice.

Different ideologies and economic foundations determine that countries have different cultural differences.

The culture of the entire human society can only flourish through migration, exchange, and integration.

So, we go to the cinema to indulge in Star Wars and Marvel heroes, and Western foreigners go to the Confucius Institute to learn Chinese and Chinese medicine... The concrete symbols of cultural externalization are constantly colliding in the process of communication.

Among them, some are even folk elements that we did not expect, but they have become "unable to extricate themselves" in the eyes of foreigners.

In 2014, American Kevin Kazad spent six months in a row on the "Wuxia World" website to read 15 Chinese online martial arts novels such as "Coiling Dragon" and successfully quit his drug addiction.

Starting from this case, what we did not expect is that the Chinese online fairy tale novels have popularized a considerable amount of Chinese culture to a large number of foreigners aged 18-25.

In the first year since its establishment, Wuxia World gained millions of English readers, and its website traffic ranked 1,378th in the world.

Today, it has about 4.8 million average daily hits and 510,000 average daily visitors.

As a rising star, Qidian International, a subsidiary of China Literature Group, has launched 38 online works for overseas markets. As of 2018, it has more than 20 million visitors.

China has a long history of five thousand years. Many cultural symbols are too complicated and profound for foreigners to understand. However, if you start from the plot of the online novel and slowly appreciate the taste of China in the magnificent background, it will be "just right"

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In the same way, there is Li Ziqi, “China’s No. 1 Internet Celebrity” on YouTube, who can be described as another representative of foreigners appreciating the taste of China.

As a traditional Chinese food blogger, she won the Silver Medal Award just three months after joining YouTube. In the following two years, she released 104 videos, gaining more than 7 million followers, and almost every video has more than 5 million views.

Americans, Australians, Vietnamese, Brazilians, Russians... because of the idyllic life in her videos, they fell in love with China.

In Li Ziqi's video, she grows flowers and vegetables by herself, uses ancient cooking utensils to cook food according to ancient methods; she also specializes in Sichuan embroidery, tries movable type printing, and makes traditional four treasures of the study... Some time ago, she was invited

He visited Malaysia, met with members of the royal family, and presented the Four Treasures of the Study to the old king. This was reported by the local online media "Malaysiakini" and the Chinese media "China News".

While the Internet was hailing her as a "little national princess", at home, Chinese netizens who had seen countless Internet celebrities making fortunes relying on their teams rationally pointed out that she was not worthy of the title of exporting Chinese culture to the outside world. On the contrary, they believed that she was just a

In order to realize traffic monetization and positioning for hype, content is constantly produced to cater to the stereotype of “backward rural China” in the minds of foreigners.

Perhaps Li Ziqi himself never thought that one day his personal IP, which he has been operating for many years, would become a hot search topic on Weibo due to a topic like #李子柒是文化综合#.

▼In fact, aside from commercial marketing factors, Teahouse Master believes that beyond this topic, it reflects that some of us have confused the connotations of "cultural communication" and "cultural export" due to a lack of cultural confidence.

What is "cultural export"?

From a diplomatic standpoint, the purpose of cultural export is to improve overall national strength and protect the national culture.

Competition between great powers has always placed a serious emphasis on grasping the right to speak culturally and enhancing cultural soft power.

In ancient times, Chinese culture once had a profound and lasting impact on neighboring countries as a "strong culture".

Now in the 21st century, we emphasize adapting to the times, creating a new realm of cultural development for the Chinese nation, and realizing the Chinese Dream.

If culture is subdivided into three categories: "practical culture", "artistic culture" and "ideological culture", under the support of the national One Belt and One Road policy, we have always been good at exporting practical culture.

It seems that further exploration is needed on how to export art culture and ideological culture by telling Chinese stories well.

This is why some netizens have suggested and resented that "Li Ziqi fits foreigners' stereotyped pastoral impression of China."

Because nowadays few of us live alone in the countryside and live a self-sufficient farming life.

Most of us don’t want to continue to emphasize the appearance of China’s farming life to the Western world, because these are synonymous with “backwardness” in our eyes. Obviously, China in the 21st century is no longer like this.

But we have lost our cultural confidence, so we have completely ignored it - in the eyes of foreign friends in the 21st century, there is no backward farming in Li Ziqi's video, only the fairyland and beauty of "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence and leisurely seeing the southern mountains".

Healing the soul, marveling at the uncanny craftsmanship of nature and the ancient craftsmanship and wisdom of Chinese civilization...these are the fundamental reasons why foreign netizens are obsessed with this "little national princess".