"Small-town youth" is a cultural proposition that continues to be popular all year round. For those who later became artists, writers, and successful businessmen, their "small-town" origins were often described in terms of a warm and affectionate search for their roots. Today, In the era of super business, the vast second-, third- and fourth-tier markets with deep potential have also become a growth point that businesses are eyeing. According to the statistics of iQiyi’s hit drama "School Beauty in White and Long Legs", 70% of the devices used to watch the drama For devices priced below 3,000 yuan, 72% of mobile devices are Android models. The top three Android brands are Xiaomi MI 2S, Xiaomi MI 3 and BBK VIVO X3t.
Currently there is not enough data to interpret the detailed identities of these device holders, but based on relevant analysis, it is believed that a large number of them are "young people from small towns" and "youth from small towns" located in areas with relatively developed information. This is in line with the business rules of the mobile Internet era.
As a youth culture market researcher, in the past six years, due to my work, I have had the opportunity to go to many second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities in China and come into contact with various types of young people, such as Tangshan, Zhaoqing, and Xuzhou , Fuyang, Changde, Mianyang, Pingdingshan... Whether the purpose of the business trip is purely anthropological research or business research, in every city, I need to go to local young people’s homes, shopping malls, Internet cafes, KTV, and all the places they often go. , do the things they usually do with them, go shopping, eat, sing karaoke, play games, mahjong...
Three young people from a small town
The first one I met in Xuzhou The skateboarding young man who arrived was Wuming (his real name was Wuming). At that time, he had just graduated from technical secondary school and had not yet decided what he wanted to do in the future. He just vaguely thought that he would go to big cities to see. He got to know the United States through many American movies. He liked the United States and believed that the United States was "free and unrestricted." He fell in love with Douban, listened to the music of many Douban musicians, and started writing songs himself. Skateboarding is still a very niche hobby in this city, and Wuming doesn't have many playmates. Most of the time, he was lonely, "I didn't want to wake up every morning because there was no one to play with me when I woke up."
The second one is Shanshan, a young girl I met in Zhaoqing. Shanshan and several of her best friends had just graduated and relied on family connections to find jobs in local enterprises and institutions. I work from nine to five every day, and after get off work I go shopping, eat, and play mahjong. I go to the same shopping mall every time, eat at the same restaurants, and play mahjong all night. After they took me through the things they usually do, they said helplessly that our world is so small and these are the things we repeat every day.
The third story is about a technical secondary school student I met in front of a roller skating club in Zhaoqing. The boy named Hou Yi was only sixteen or seventeen years old and came from a smaller town than Zhaoqing. His dream was to make money and build a big house for his parents when he returned home. In fact, he was already making money at that time and used his holidays to work in surrounding coastal cities. "I have been to many cities."
On nights when school is required, going to the roller skating club to play roller skating with friends is a boy's favorite thing. He encouraged me, who couldn’t roller skate, to ride the streets with them. Holding his and his best friend's hands, I went through the whole process with them. In the dark night, in the city where cars stopped, Hou Yi accelerated on the wide road, shouting for excitement. At that moment, I did feel like him that we owned the city and the night.
Youth with no place to rest
In fact, in every small and medium-sized city I have visited, there are young people like Wuming, Shanshan and Houyi everywhere. What they represent , are actually three different living conditions and spiritual pursuits.
The nameless loneliness and depression are reflected in many young people who have returned to their hometowns from big cities, or who have some relatively niche hobbies in the local area. The Internet has flattened the world. They can learn and experience their interests through the Internet, but they cannot find offline communities to share their interests and hobbies. They see from the Internet that they can have freer ideas and a freer lifestyle, but it is difficult to gain understanding among their local peers.
In Ye County, Pingdingshan, I met Xiaomei, who was studying abroad. After graduation, she was "summoned" home by her family and arranged to work in a hospital. Xiaomei feels that her peers have too narrow horizons and cannot speak the same language as her.
She doesn’t like to communicate with her peers around her. WeChat is popular among her peers. She never posts in WeChat Moments. Instead, she opens a small account on Weibo to “say what she wants to say here.”
In Fuyang, I met a young man who had returned from Beijing and opened a cafe because he liked movies and folk songs. This cafe is located in a commercial area that looks a bit run down, and "the rent is not expensive." He decorated the cafe very artistically and regularly held events such as movies, folk songs, and poetry readings. I happened to catch up with a folk music scene, and twenty or thirty people came, basically friends bringing friends. What I sang at first was indeed folk songs, and then I slowly started singing the pop music in KTV. He shook his head, "Folk music is still a very niche hobby, and many people here don't understand it."
Shanshan people’s boredom and helplessness are more common in small and medium-sized cities. This kind of boredom is partly because young people naturally crave new experiences in individual life. However, the options that small and medium-sized cities can provide are very limited. In addition, the nature of work in enterprises and institutions is more routine and routine daily administrative and business work. There is no pressure on work performance and few opportunities for self-realization. Therefore, young people have little motivation for self-improvement. But at the same time, they have a lot of time. Many people go to work at 8 a.m. and get off work at 11 a.m. Go to work at 3pm and get off at 5pm. Extra time often has nowhere to kill and energy nowhere to invest.
Many young people play games, read novels, and go shopping to relieve their youthlessness. After broadband expansion, wireless networks, and smartphones become popular, watching TV series online has also become a mainstream entertainment. Way.
Social games, private online novels
Internet cafes are one of the places with the largest number of young people in small and medium-sized cities. I was on a business trip in Fuyang recently and walked into an Internet cafe, which was full of people. League of Legends is popular in small and medium-sized cities, and young people form teams to fight fiercely. Xiao Ai, a college student in Changde, hangs on the phone with his classmates in the dormitory all the time from getting up in the morning until going to bed at night. When 27-year-old Ah Jin comes home from get off work, the first thing he does is to go into his room through the living room where his parents are, close the door, turn on his computer, and open League of Legends. During the ten minutes of loading the game, he would also pay attention to the loading progress of the game while opening Tiantian Cool Run on his mobile phone to play two games. Recently, he likes this game very much. More than 20 of his friends on QQ are playing this game. He plays two games every day to collect gold coins to make his ranking higher. "I was able to play two games in ten minutes, and now I'm in fourth place."
Compared with the collective and social nature of games, online novels seem more personal. In Changde, most of the young people I met, from 20-year-old college students to 27-year-old married mothers, all have novel-reading apps on their phones.
20-year-old Xiaoying always reads novels for an hour before going to bed. She likes to read romantic love stories where the hero gives up everything for the heroine. In reality, she was in a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend. They turned on online videos every night, but each did their own thing.
Xi Jun, a 27-year-old mother, has a half-year-old child. She is woken up by the alarm at around 7 o'clock every day. After feeding her child, she rides her electric bike to work. I clock in at 8:30, process some reports, do some tax work, and go home from get off work around 5:30. Watching TV with her children and coaxing them to sleep is the most relaxing time of the day for her after 11pm. At this time every day, she would lie in bed, turn on the airplane mode of her phone, dim the brightness of the screen, open the Yuedu App, and start reading novels.
Xi Jun started reading novels when she was in college. For many years, she has been reading fantasy and immortality-style novels. "Although the plots are all the same after watching them too many times, sometimes the protagonist's experience is still very attractive to you." She turned sideways, put her phone on the pillow, and "substituted" herself while watching until she fell asleep.
“Bigger Shopping Malls” and “Mary Sues”
With the changes in the consumption environment in small and medium-sized cities, the popularity of online shopping, and more convenient transportation, young people in small and medium-sized cities are facing There are also more and more right consumption choices. Like their elders, today's young people still use "go shopping" to kill boredom, but it has new characteristics. Pingdingshan Ye County is a county near Pingdingshan. Many girls here go to Pingdingshan city once a week because there are "bigger shopping malls" there.
Xiaoning, a girl from Pingdingshan, goes to Zhengzhou once a week because there is a "bigger shopping mall" there.
Xiaoying, from Fuyang, browses Taobao every day when she has nothing to do at work, looking at new clothes and searching for some new gadgets that she has never seen before.
27-year-old mother Xi Jun will also take out her mobile phone to browse Taobao when she has nothing to do at work or when she is bored watching TV at night. Every time she would collect gold coins first. Although the amount of gold coins that could be offset was limited, she still enjoyed it. After receiving the gold coins, she will click on the trial center and apply for trial products when she sees the products she is interested in. The products she has applied for include TV set-top boxes, mobile power supplies, etc. Then she will click on "Juhuasuan" to see what products she is interested in. Xi Jun is excited by browsing Taobao, and she can't help but make impulse purchases, such as buying a cake maker or a machine for making breakfast burritos. All these allowed her to see the possibility of a new way of life.
Both shopping malls and Taobao allow local young people to find new opportunities in their boring lives and feel the freedom of choice in consumption. But shopping malls and Taobao have different meanings for young people in small and medium-sized cities. Shopping malls make them feel more connected to the urban life they yearn for, while Taobao, because it is rich and diverse enough, allows them to explore and learn new styles. , new lifestyle - in a sense, the satisfaction of new forms of consumption for them is somewhat similar to the Mary Sue idol dramas on iQiyi and Hunan TV, as well as the Internet that tells the story of "the hero abandons everything for the heroine" novel.
Houyi represents another group of younger people who come to small and medium-sized cities from smaller places. They have not yet been shaped by the city’s framework and relationship structure. They still believe in struggle and dreams. What I care more about is the pursuit of diverse experiences, and I am more willing to live in the present. Speaking of which, it reminds me that when I was in Zhaoqing, I accidentally passed by a roadside grassland and saw a group of young people singing and dancing in a circle on the grass with bare feet. They came from a nearby factory and it was their collective day off. They sang and danced so happily that it made the situation seem like a utopia.