Core points:
1. Rural men are more keen on gambling, fishing and keeping dogs, while women love playing short videos. The value of men’s hard work to earn money to support their families has been fully affirmed, while the contribution of women to housework at home has been underestimated. Rural women can make their value "seen" through short videos.
2. 54-year-old aunt Liu has 5000 fans and once brought goods for a merchant. Aunt Liu soon found that it was not easy to introduce products online and mobilize fans’ desire to buy. Aunt Liu has been busy for three months, and only sold two products. The sales volume is 150 yuan.
3. Rural women began to pay attention to Tanabata, Valentine’s Day and 520, and a wave of "middle-aged romance" arose. These romantic words enter the minds of middle-aged women through short videos. In emotional expression, they become more active and enthusiastic. The middle-aged romance of rural women caused her husband’s discomfort.
What happens when rural women encounter short videos?
Li Dan and his team have been conducting field surveys in rural areas for a long time. In the first half of 2023, he and several students shuttled through Xi Village in the North China Plain. The villagers were addicted to the sight of brushing short videos and caught their eyes irresistibly: in remote villages near the Yellow River beach, almost all left-behind women under the age of 75 brushed short videos and played selfies.
This scene also made Li Dan ask the following questions:Why do rural women embrace short videos so enthusiastically? In what way and strength did the short video shape the spiritual world of rural women? What impact does short video have on rural governance?
The following is Li Dan’s account.
Why are rural women "addicted" to short videos?
My 54-year-old aunt Liu impressed me deeply.
Aunt Liu is the leader of Aauto Quicker in the village, with 5,000 fans and 100,000 praises. She is truly the "Queen of Aauto Quicker". However, most people in the village don’t know her name, just call her "Zheng Quan’s" and "Little Grandma Pippi". A village network big V who has been married to the village for 32 years and started a kindergarten in the village for more than 10 years turned out to be an "unknown person" attached to her husband and children!
Xicun women brush short videos.
Playing short videos is a common phenomenon among rural women.
On the one hand, the number of rural men playing short videos is significantly lower than that of women. Rural men are more keen on gambling, fishing and keeping dogs, while women love playing short videos.
On the other hand, rural men just watch short videos, while women are keen to shoot short videos themselves. A few rural women are not so "addicted" to short videos, mainly because they are busy. These people will look at women who play short videos with envy and think that their lives are leisurely and fashionable.
I summarize the behavior of rural women playing short videos into three aspects.
First, zero cost becomes beautiful. The short video platform provides online "cosmetic box" and "cloakroom", so that rural women can experience beauty, beauty, body and filter at zero expense.
Second, daily appearance. Although they love filter beauty, they just play online and don’t buy cosmetics and jewelry specifically for selfies.
Third, low frequency update. Middle-aged women find it important to control the frequency of short video updates, otherwise they will be regarded as "idleness" and "doing nothing". At present, the 13 most active middle-aged women in Xicun basically only send a short video every week.
In this era of the whole people, rural women soldiers is a huge team. Rural women’s "addiction" to short videos is a way to kill their leisure time. Once they are free, women may pay more attention to their own emotional experience and feel empty and bored more easily. Nowadays, rural areas are becoming increasingly hollow, and rural cultural life is shrinking. The palace fighting dramas and urban emotional dramas staged on TV are out of touch with rural life scenes, while a few rural dramas are far away from the personal life experiences of rural women. Radio, film and television are all carriers of elite cultural production and expression. In the face of film and television works, farmers are only passive recipients of information and educatees in front of the screen. The short video platform provides a zero-cost and low-tech expression channel for grassroots creation. With the help of short video platform, rural women can not only see the rural reality closest to their life experience, but also create short video works according to their own wishes.
The deeper reason is that rural women have long been on the edge of the countryside. The short video of going to the countryside provides a historic opportunity for rural women to appear.
For a long time, in the patriarchal rural family culture, women have been defined as the supporting role of "caring for each other and teaching their children". According to the family division of labor, the value of men’s hard work to earn money to support their families is fully affirmed, while women’s contribution to housework at home is ignored. Rural women who have been struggling for recognition can make their daily life and life value "seen" through short video platforms.
Not only brush, but also shoot, and some also bring goods.
The theme of rural women’s short video creation can be divided into two categories.
One is the personalized expression of rural women.Rural women create short videos, or tell about the difficulty of life online, or show their virtuous, capable and talented, or use short video platform tools to become young and beautiful girls with "white skin, long legs and thin waist" in seconds.
The other is the life sharing presentation of rural women.In the video with the theme of sharing life, 97% of the scenes are fields, construction sites, small workshops and other labor production places, and 3% of the scenes are life ceremonies such as birthday parties and holiday dinners.
Screenshot of self-portrait short video page of Xicun women
Rural women play short videos mainly for daily entertainment. It is possible for rural women to make money by creating short videos, but this matter is not favored by villagers.
Aunt Liu, 54, has 5000 fans and once brought goods for a merchant. Aunt Liu soon found that it was not easy to introduce products online and mobilize fans’ desire to buy. Aunt Liu has been busy for three months, and only sold two products. The sales volume is 150 yuan.
There is a "online celebrity" in the countryside, but the villagers do not pursue "online celebrity".
21-year-old Tong Tong is good at singing and dancing. She was introduced to learn from a online celebrity "Sister Na" and joined her live broadcast team. After receiving the traffic blessing from Sister Na’s team, Tong Tong started her own live broadcast by singing and playing PK. Each live broadcast lasted about 3 hours. There were more than 8,000 people in the live broadcast room, with at least 20 people. In three months, the number of fans rose to 48,000, and the most earned live broadcast was 3,200 yuan, but the number of people was getting smaller and smaller. In June, they earned less than 1,000 yuan a month. Tong Tong had to reluctantly give up what one favours, turn off the live broadcast and go to Guangzhou to work. In the eyes of the villagers, even the young and beautiful, talented and well-run bunch ofred grapes have given up. It seems that it is not reliable to make money by becoming online celebrity.
In the villagers’ mind, "online celebrity" means "restless".Aunt Liu, the "Queen of Aauto Quicker" in the village, has more than 5,000 fans, but she is not regarded as online celebrity by the villagers. However, Yaju, with only 1,058 fans, was nicknamed "online celebrity in the Country" by the villagers. In rural discourse, "online celebrity" refers to those who have no job and want to make quick money by their faces. Xicun people have always pursued "hard work to get rich", but they don’t agree with the way of making money by attracting attention and flow, and regard it as "fooling around" and "fooling around".
Rural women play short videos, "not out of line"
There are significant differences between urban and rural areas when women play short videos.
From the perspective of time, urban women generally have fixed jobs and only have time to play short videos after work. Rural women have more leisure time and can play short videos for a long time.
From the perspective of meeting the needs of life, urban women have rich recreational channels, such as shopping malls, cinemas and concerts. Rural women are in a hollow village, and their material life and spiritual life are very scarce.
From the perspective of platform tools, there are more platforms for urban women to play short videos, including but not limited to Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker, Xiaohongshu, bilibili, WeChat video number and Weibo. The main platform for rural women to play short videos is Aauto Quicker.
A corner of hollow creek village
In China, which has a vast territory and a large population, the regional differences are very obvious. According to our team’s investigation in all parts of the country, the logic of rural women’s performance in short video platforms is quite different.
The experience of field research shows that in the rural areas of North China, where the village structure is strong, the online performance of rural women is proper and orderly. The creek village we investigated is located along the Yellow River in the North China Plain. Based on the observation of women’s new media practice behavior here, I summarize it as "not out of line".
In contrast, in areas with a high degree of atomization, the news that rural women have made vulgar and outrageous moves to gain eyeballs and save traffic is frequently seen in newspapers.
In my opinion, the online performance behavior of rural women is just the tip of the iceberg, and its roots are still there.Village social structure. When the authority and norms in rural areas are shrinking, rural women’s online performances lose the constraints of public opinion, and they are more motivated to maximize their income according to the market logic of realizing traffic.
Generally speaking, rural women who play short videos have some commonalities.
First, there is leisure.
There is age differentiation among rural women playing short videos. Middle-aged women under the age of 45 to 60 are the absolute main force. There are few young women in the village. They either go out to work or go to the county to accompany them. For middle-aged women, after their sons marry and have children, their main life tasks have been completed, so they can slow down the pace of life and begin to enjoy life.
Second, be willing to accept new things.
Older women over the age of 60 are usually illiterate and cannot operate smart phones. They are also reluctant to learn about new things, preferring to get together with their peers to chat, play mahjong and listen to plays. Middle-aged women have generally received secondary education, and they are also happy to learn about the information outside the village with short videos.
Third, be good at expressing.
Rural women not only like to watch short videos, but also are keen to shoot short videos themselves. For those optimistic and extroverted rural women, whether they are doing farm work, cooking, going to the market, or being in a daze, angry and crying, they all constitute reasons for taking short selfies.
"Middle-aged Romance" Sweeps Rural Women
By playing short videos, the frequency of interaction between rural women increased and their emotional identity improved. Anyone who has lived in the countryside knows that there were many opportunities for interaction between villagers in the past. Through visiting, watching movies together, cooking weddings and funerals, going to the market, helping workers, etc., the neighbors have close relations and frequent exchanges.
Nowadays, in the hollowed-out villages, there are fewer opportunities for everyone to get together, and interpersonal communication is sparse and cold. For rural women who play short videos, they show the characteristics of "holding a group to appear in the mirror". They encouraged each other and exchanged video shooting techniques, forming a "United front" for playing short videos.
By playing short videos, rural women become technically literate, romantic and expressive. For middle-aged rural women, there is a technical threshold for playing short videos. Their general education level is not high, and they have little contact with electronic equipment. By shooting short videos, their media technical literacy has been greatly improved. More crucially, with the help of short video platform, rural women can easily obtain knowledge and information about cities and distant places, and expand their cognition and imagination of a better life.
In recent years, rural women have begun to pay attention to Qixi, Valentine’s Day and 520, and a wave of "middle-aged romance" has arisen. These romantic words entered the minds of middle-aged women through short videos. In emotional expression, they become more active and enthusiastic. Whenever children, parents and husbands celebrate their birthdays, they will carry copies on the Internet, with pictures or videos, and express their blessings online.
Romantic Expression Course on Short Video Platform
Rural women’s playing short videos has a double influence on their family relations.
On the one hand, playing short videos by rural women helps to strengthen the emotional interaction of family members.
As mentioned above, through the short video platform, rural women who were not good at words began to pay attention to expressing their feelings. Rural women no longer stay in "knowing", but also begin to "have words in their mouths". From "I can’t open my mouth when I love you" to "I have to say it out loud when I love you", rural women show their self-confidence and calmness in front of the camera. As the connection point of family relationship, rural women make a small step forward in emotional expression, which can drive the emotional interaction of the whole family to make a big step forward.
On the other hand, playing short videos by rural women also has an impact on family relations.
The relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is the hottest topic in rural short videos. I was particularly impressed that several middle-aged women in their fifties were very anxious after watching some short videos of conflicts between their mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. They began to discuss "how to be a good mother-in-law" or prepared to live alone with their only son early.
Generally speaking, women in Xicun are "not out of line". However, there are still individual deviant incidents. A woman in her forties often sent short videos of herself, which attracted the attention of a man in a neighboring village. Later, they were caught red-handed when they opened a room in a county hotel.
Besides, the middle-aged romance of rural women has caused her husband’s discomfort. Middle-aged rural men don’t like buying gifts and sending flowers, thinking that these are wasteful and not affordable. They don’t think there is anything special to celebrate on May 20, and they can’t figure out what these fancy festivals mean.The asymmetry change of middle-aged couples intensifies the incomprehension and friction between husband and wife.
Country life is changing.
Under the continuous influence of working economy, the frequency of social interaction in hollow villages has decreased sharply. When the new media enters Xi village, it has a positive impact on the interpersonal interaction within the village, inside and outside the village.
Liu Aiping, 60, usually doesn’t send short videos, but she watches Aauto Quicker updates from other women in the village. She said: "We are all from the same village. Let’s give a compliment, and we are all closed. I don’t talk at ordinary times, so I can chat with others and say hello when I meet them. Many of them should call me sister-in-law. "
After a rain in the summer of 2023, Grandma Pippi shouted to her neighbors through Aauto Quicker video: "Yingying, come and look at my house. Look how hard it is raining." After seeing this video, the villagers outside commented: "It’s raining really hard in our house". When the villagers say "Zanjia", they temporarily break away from the real barrier of physical space and gain an emotional experience of "being present together".
The main road of the empty creek village
Playing short videos does not bring economic income to rural women and will not directly improve their family status.However, playing short videos has broadened rural women’s ideological horizons and life concepts, which is helpful to enhance their soft power to participate in family development.
It has become a daily pastime for rural women to play short videos. Children are "technical consultants" for middle-aged women to play short videos. In 2016, middle-aged and elderly people in the village got their children’s eliminated mobile phones. At the same time, the young people in the village have grown into "technical predecessors", and they have taught their elders through "digital feedback".
Husband has no objection to middle-aged women playing short videos in principle. The middle-aged man in Xicun thinks, "It was all taken by the talent of Niangniang Haw, holding his mobile phone to his face and plate, and you can’t tell what you want to say. It’s really boring." They don’t shoot short videos themselves, but they don’t interfere with their wives. The mother-in-law at home either plays short videos with her daughter-in-law, or is isolated by the "digital divide" because she has no account.
When the short video swept the whole village, the villagers released the news of the village online through "mutual powder and mutual customs", forming an "online village information station". In particular, it needs to be emphasized that the villagers have changed their old acquaintances into fans through "mutual powder and mutual customs", and the online and offline interpersonal circles basically overlap. The public discourse system of Xicun flooded into the online space, and the social structure of semi-acquaintances controlled the online self-presentation of women in Xicun.
Short video and new media reshape rural governance.
On the whole, new media is accelerating the pace of modern transformation of rural society, and it also brings opportunities for rural governance under the background of urban and rural China.
First of all, the new media activates public life and realizes the public recreation of village leisure.
From the perspective of media use, the whole village no longer gathers at the head of the village to watch movies, but watches TV and brushes their mobile phones at home, and the way to meet the leisure in the village is becoming more and more personal. However, the popularity of live chat in rural areas has brought about topic control and enhanced the publicity of chat content.
Secondly, the new media continues the community memory and realizes the "local reconstruction" of the mobile social process.
On the one hand, new media promotes interpersonal interaction within villages. On the other hand, the new media connects those who leave the village with those who stay behind. Under the connection of new media, the villagers’ consciousness of "one of their own" has realized online reproduction.
Finally, new media cultivate social mentality and shape open and inclusive public opinion.
New media provide more channels for villages to obtain information and express their opinions, and at the same time break the traditional barriers to information dissemination. In this process, the new media has promoted more open, inclusive and diversified village public opinion.
