Scienjoy’s “Livestreaming + ICH” Model Enables Mutual Empowerment between Internet and Traditional Culture

On Aug 7, Showself under China’s leading mobile livestreaming platforms provider Scienjoy initiated the “Charms of Porcelain” special campaign. As part of its “Rediscovering Intangible Cultural Heritages” project, the campaign focused on China’s porcelain culture and connected the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Jingdezhen Porcelain with the livestreaming form. During the special campaign, 12 streamers turned themselves into porcelain ambassadors to recommend exquisite porcelain wares from Jingdezhen, allowing the viewers to converse with the rich history behind fine porcelain as well as the Internet and traditional art to mutually empower each other.

Porcelain is born from the soil, and polished and refined with life. Under the joint effects of human hands, soil, water, and fire, porcelain wares undergo physical and chemical reactions before assuming a brand-new look. Porcelain is also an art of time, because to produce a perfect porcelain ware, craftsmen need to wait – they need to wait for the soil to dry, the fire to flourish, and the ware to cool. Today, we always feel sorry that life is so fast that we don't have time to mind the skills that have been passed down for thousands of years, and so fast that we don't have the energy to appreciate the porcelain art that gathers both warmth and elegance.

Celebrating the benevolence, wisdom and aesthetics of Chinese people, the “Charms of Porcelain” special campaign took advantage of Showself’s platform advantages to offer users a tour of Jingdezhen. By bridging livestreaming with the porcelain culture, it took users on a slow-paced journey to deeply appreciate ceramics as a symbol of traditional Chinese culture, and witness how Jingdezhen, whose kilns have been burning for thousands of years, writes half of the porcelain history, thereby enabling China’s ICHs to reach more users and arouse their interest.

Expanding the influence of ICHs such as porcelain needs to have them enter users' lives. Successfully integrating ICH with livestreaming and variety show, the “Charms of Porcelain” special campaign attracted tens of thousands of viewers, who left comments such as “We never thought we can explore the porcelain culture like this!”

Since Scienjoy launched its “Rediscovering ICHs” project at the end of 2022, its team has explored various ICHs such as the Jingxi Shadow Play and the Jingshan Tea Garden, using livestreaming to disrupt the traditional dissemination approach of ICHs and building on current trends to allow ICHs to be exhibited in a more approachable manner in livestreaming sessions. On the other hand, China’s timeless ICHs help enrich the contents of Scienjoy’s platforms, presenting users with novel audio and visual highlights and helping improve their user experiences. At the same time, ICH craftsmen take advantage of livestreaming platforms to showcase their crafts and skills, not only receiving recognition and feedback from fans in such forms as likes and rewards, but also forming a virtuous cycle that delivers win-win results.

An executive from Scienjoy noted that the company’s livestreaming platforms hope to present more ICH-related contents, engage more ICH inheritors, and allow ICHs to reach more young users through various technologies, eventually enabling the mutual empowerment between the younger generation and traditional culture.

In the future, Scienjoy will more deeply integrate innovative content, new technologies, and new media, making its livestreaming platforms richer in content and more diverse in user experience and exploring more possibilities of the "Livestreaming + Positive Energy" model.