Harbin's rise to fame is not accidental but the result of careful planning by the local cultural and tourism department. He Jing, director of the Heilongjiang Cultural and Tourism Bureau, once revealed that the local area had been preparing for a year, not only using new media platforms for comprehensive publicity and promotion but also inviting leading cultural and tourism bloggers to attract traffic for Heilongjiang's ice and snow tourism, continuously exploring the traffic code of cultural and tourism dissemination. Judging from the spiritual style and humanistic care shown by the city after its popularity, Harbin has indeed truly accepted this "massive traffic": using sincerity and authenticity as the city's foundation, providing tourists with a home-like experience by creating heartwarming scenes and services.

Image: Harbin City Scenery | Source: Public Network

The high-standard cultural and tourism experience demonstrated by Harbin has made the city a typical representative of tourist-friendly cities and provided an example for the creation of popular city hotspots. This is specifically reflected in the resonance between government decisions and the spirit of the citizens. From the behavior of Harbin citizens spontaneously organizing to welcome tourists, it can be seen that only by stimulating the intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm of the citizens can true urban friendliness be achieved, making the image of a hospitable city deeply rooted in people's hearts and promoting the sustainable development of local cultural and tourism.

A Bowl of Mala Tang Makes a City Famous:

Tianshui mala tang is a part of Gansu mala tang, a type of mala tang with regional characteristics, featuring hand-rolled noodles and spicy vegetables, generally including wide noodles, potatoes, and chili peppers. The popularity of Tianshui mala tang can be traced back to February 13, when a netizen, "A Cup of Liang Bai Kai," posted a video of the appetizing Tianshui mala tang on a short video platform, with the caption "It is recommended that Gansu mala tang be popularized nationwide." The short 7-second video quickly went viral, receiving 1.38 million likes, over 250,000 comments, and over 1.91 million shares in the following 20 days, with many netizens spontaneously promoting it, creating the first wave of popularity. In March, Tianshui mala tang became a sensation, and the local government took the opportunity to launch a series of "fancy customer pampering" measures, from providing a mala tang bus line to a limited-time return of social fire performances, attracting tourists from all over the country to visit Tianshui, bringing this bowl of fragrant and spicy mala tang to the tables of people across the country.

Image: Tianshui Mala Tang | Source: Public Network

A small bowl of mala tang, riding the wave of the digital age's traffic economy, has leveraged the large cultural and tourism economy of the small county-level city of Tianshui. The popularity of Tianshui mala tang is actually the result of the joint promotion of regional cuisine and the traffic economy, fully showcasing the city's regional culture and humanistic charm. In the torrent of online traffic, Tianshui mala tang has become a medium symbol carrying regional culture, bursting with strong emotional energy and consumer motivation in the dual interaction of online discussions and offline activities.

Image: Tianshui Mala Tang | Source: Public Network

Mala Tang, spread as a symbol, has become a focal point of netizens' attention. On the one hand, Tianshui Mala Tang uses eye-catching food as a mediating symbol, attracting traffic and sparking discussions through short videos and live streams, generating initial online popularity. Driven by novelty and trend-following, netizens convert online interactions into offline check-in behaviors. Emotional resonance emerges from their shared check-ins and exchanges. On the other hand, the local government seizes the opportunity, accelerating the exploration and promotion of regional food culture. By enhancing the sense of ritual in the food experience through tourism-related services, it activates the added value of Mala Tang's integration with tourism, injecting continuous impetus into the local tourism industry.

Travel with the Game:

In August this year, Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing game based on Journey to the West, was released. Upon its release, the game garnered global attention, becoming the single-player game with the highest concurrent online players in history and continuously breaking records for domestic games. Shanxi is one of the main filming locations for Black Myth: Wukong. According to incomplete statistics, 27 out of the game's 36 filming locations in China are in Shanxi, attracting "Chosen Ones" from all over the world to search for traces of Wukong amidst the exquisitely beautiful ancient buildings, quickly making this province of ancient architecture a popular city. Subsequently, the Shanxi Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism followed the game's popularity, launching the "Travel Shanxi with Wukong" activity and issuing a "Chosen Ones Gathering Order," inviting the first batch of Black Myth: Wukong players to visit Shanxi to admire ancient buildings and enjoy the local cuisine, diverting virtual world traffic to offline tourism.

Image: Official Poster of Black Myth: Wukong | Source: Public Network

Black Myth: Wukong is not only a vivid portrayal of the maturity of China's game industry but also an innovative case of the dissemination of China's excellent traditional culture. Culture is the content, and games are the medium. Games, as a new type of media, can innovatively express traditional culture in a more immersive and interactive way. For example, the game's visuals incorporate numerous traditional cultural landmarks from Shanxi. From the real-life replicas and models of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda in Shuozhou and the Xiaoxitian Temple in Siping County, to the detailed recreations of ancient pagodas, stone carvings, murals, and hanging sculptures, the game uses virtual expression and emotional storytelling to recreate a heroic legend full of oriental aesthetics, providing players with a multi-sensory experience.

Image: "Travel Shanxi with Wukong" Theme Route | Source: Public Network

Currently, the "Games + Tourism" model is becoming a new driving force for promoting tourism consumption and upgrading the cultural industry. Games, with their high-precision scene reproduction and immersive plot settings, have unique advantages in scene creation, cultural dissemination, and storytelling. The innovative practice of Black Myth: Wukong's integration with Shanxi's local tourism shows the multiple values and unlimited potential of games as an important medium for cultural dissemination and tourism promotion. In the future, domestic games should continue to explore the in-depth excavation of China's excellent traditional culture, helping to transform players into tourists and achieve a two-way rush between the virtual game world and offline tourism spaces.

Traveling to a City for a Drama:

After the broadcast of the 2024 New Year's blockbuster drama "Flowery," related scenes in the drama have become popular check-in spots for citizens and tourists, successively popularizing landmark buildings such as Huanghe Road, where "Zhi Zhen Yuan" is located, and Jinxian Road, where "Night Tokyo" is located. Scenes from the drama have even been designed into city walk check-in routes, allowing fans to retrace the locations where the story unfolds, sharing the same lifestyle as the characters in the drama and reigniting a wave of nostalgia. Furthermore, "Flowery" has also popularized a series of Shanghai delicacies such as Baozong congee, spareribs glutinous rice cakes, and Ding Sheng cakes. Many drama and book fans have traveled to Shanghai to experience the city's local customs and historical transformation, stimulating the "Flowery" effect.

Image: "Flowery" Poster | Source: Public Network

The "Flowery" effect spreading through Shanghai is a microcosm of the popularity of drama check-in tourism. Nowadays, more and more tourists are willing to visit real-life locations featured in dramas. Previously, "Go to a Place with Wind" brought about a resurgence in Dali's popularity, and later, "My Altay" brought forward the peak tourist season in Xinjiang. High-quality dramas are becoming vibrant business cards for cities, creating "Film and Television +" consumption scenarios through online film and television traffic diversion and offline tourism interaction.

Image: Huanghe Road Filming Location | Source: Public Network

Behind the phenomenon of "one drama making a city popular" is the deep integration of the content attributes of film and television IPs and the experiential attributes of tourism IPs. Dramas often create a strong sense of substitution in viewers through deeply moving stories and scene settings, promoting understanding and recognition of the city through emotional resonance, thereby stimulating viewers' desire for on-site experiences and consumption. In addition, local tourism needs to seize the short-term traffic effect of film and television dramas for long-term planning, continuously excavating the city's cultural genes, and using film and television IPs to promote the upgrading and transformation of urban industries.

After Note

Reviewing the paths to popularity of this year's popular cities, we can see the diverse forms of "Tourism +" under the background of high-quality tourism integration—the popularity of Harbin, the "pleasing city," reflects tourists' demand for emotional value under "Tourism + Emotion"; behind the "hot and spicy" Tianshui is the potential of "Tourism + Food" traffic dissemination with the collaborative efforts of social media and short videos; the dream linkage between Black Myth: Wukong and Shanxi tourism has promoted the innovation of tourism consumption experience in "Tourism + Games"; Flowery has triggered a wave of old Shanghai city walks, My Altay has boosted tourism in Xinjiang, and The Story of Roses has sparked "meme-style" marketing in various places. Behind this is the synergistic coupling of "Tourism + Film and Television" on city image.