Abstract:
The rapid development of new media platforms has objectively provided dialects such as Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew with new application scenarios in Guangdong. As the “darling” of new media, short videos are more easily accepted due to their visual and fragmented characteristics. The spread of dialect content through short videos not only allows these languages to inherit the wisdom of the group and achieve self-expression but also gains more opportunities for dissemination than before.
Keywords:
New Media has become the primary channel for people to access information, engage in social activities, and enjoy entertainment. Its quick spread, convenient communication, and bidirectional interaction allow people to connect with the world at the lowest cost possible. In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew are the three major dialects. Although the trend for dialects is towards decline, new media, particularly short videos, offer a new path for the activation and application of dialects.
1．The current state of the spread of Cantonese short videos
1.1 Original performance short videos attract the most attention
Among the numerous major internet platforms, Cantonese videos can be mainly categorized into four types: performance, singing, film clips, and language learning. Original and humorous performance short videos are most likely to attract attention and receive likes. For example, KOLs like “Liang Xiaoxiao,” with over 24.54 million followers on Douyin (TikTok) and KuaiShou, “Yue Zhi Yijiu” (Cantonese Knowledge) with over 14 million followers across the web, “Nao Teng Nanhai KC” with over 6.5 million followers on Douyin and KuaiShou, and “Guangdong Jing仔Feng Shao” with over 6.2 million followers on Douyin and KuaiShou, all belong to this type. Humorous or funny short videos, with their leisurely and entertaining nature, complement the rise of short video platforms of similar genres, making them the most popular category.
Singing short videos can be further subdivided into original singing video clips and KOL cover versions. These two categories are evenly matched in terms of attracting followers and view counts, without a clear advantage in any particular genre. For example, the original singing clip account “Yue Yue Jingdian (Car Music)” on Douyin has 2.207 million followers and 12.725 million likes; while a notable cover version account is “Xin,” a street artist in Chengdu with a license, who has 3.169 million followers and 23.967 million likes on Douyin.
Short videos of the editing type also include the large category of “film clips.” Cantonese movies and Cantonese songs, to be more precise, Hong Kong movies and Hong Kong pop songs, were the main forms of entertainment for people in the 1980s and 1990s, carrying many people’s collective memories. Therefore, short videos themed around this content are also more likely to catch people’s attention and resonate with them. One of the most representative accounts in the film clip category is “Zhou Xingchi Bar,” with 2.522 million followers on Douyin, 33.787 million likes, and over 100 million plays.
Under the wave of Cantonese pop culture driven by Hong Kong movies and Hong Kong pop songs, learning Cantonese also became a popular activity. To this day, such activities still retain some heat: for example, the Cantonese learning short video KOL “Mai Ah” on Douyin has 2.12 million followers and 42.68 million likes; while “Yue Jiang Zui Youwan” also has a significant influence: 2.447 million followers and over 5 million likes.
1.2 Attempts at dialectal short videos by traditional media
It is worth mentioning that some traditional media have also begun to find their place in new media. None other than the “Star Factory” – the TVB account under the Hong Kong Television Broadcasting Company Limited, has 6.28 million followers and 57.53 million likes on Douyin (TikTok).
Additionally, the N Video App’s Nian Nian Nǚ Nǚ channel, which focuses on promoting and spreading Guangdong dialects, including Cantonese, Teochew, Hakka, and Leizhou dialect, has launched nearly 400 videos in collaboration with dialect KOLs in less than a year, achieving over 50 million plays.
As an app under the Southern Media Group, N Video launched the Nian Nian Nǚ Nǚ column in November 2020, which was upgraded to a channel the following year.
Different from KOLs on other platforms, the Nian Nian Nǚ Nǚ channel continues to output content through the form of “internal diversified innovative production + third-party high-quality creators joining.” This video app incubated by traditional media uses its self-built platform and the content production advantages of the media itself to collaborate with dialect bloggers and jointly produce dialect videos, which is a relatively fresh and unique form of existence.
Within the Nian Nian Nǚ Nǚ channel, the types of videos are quite rich: there are “Cantonese Pop Culture Talk,” “Nian Nian Nǚ Nǚ Goes to School,” “Dialect Mini-Theater,” “Learn Local Slang Together,” “Funny Pronunciation Battle,” “Dialect Discussion,” and more, mainly targeting the youth audience.
In contrast, the major portal site focusing on long videos, Bilibili, has fewer Cantonese UPIs and original Cantonese video works, showing a preference for the short video model of original Cantonese content.
1.3 The MCN forces behind the top Cantonese KOLs
When we delve deeper into the major Cantonese KOLs, we find that each of them, without exception, has the backing of an MCN (Multi-Channel Network). MCNs, originally formed by top creators on American YouTube, are content alliances aimed at cross-promotion to expand the influence of each channel, thereby enhancing advertising value and commercial monetization.
Currently, Chinese MCNs are essentially talent agencies. Their operational process generally involves distributing the content produced by KOLs through channels that include social media, e-commerce, news, and short video platforms. This content is then packaged with services that can provide data monitoring, marketing services, and technical support, ultimately reaching B2B enterprises and C2C users who demand content, to gain opportunities for advertising monetization or live streaming sales. The four major Cantonese KOLs actually belong to two different MCN companies: “Liang Xiaoxiao” is a netizen incubated by the May Beauty MCN; “Yue Zhi Yijiu,” “Nao Teng Nanhai KC,” and “Guangdong Jingzi Feng Shao” all belong to the same MCN company, Chuan Shang Media in Guangzhou.
Taking “Yue Zhi Yijiu” as an example, according to the usual operations of MCNs, each episode of the channel is broadcast across all platforms on the internet, including online video websites: Youku, Tencent, iQIYI, Bilibili; short video platforms: Douyin, KuaiShou, Xigua Video; new media news platforms: WeChat Public Accounts, Weibo, Toutiao, and more, building a comprehensive new media communication matrix. Additionally, the “Yue Zhi Yijiu” team strengthens the connection and communication between the program and its fans through various online interactive sections and offline exchange activities, consolidating the communication effect of the work group.
In terms of content presentation, “Yue Zhi Yijiu” uses a talk show performance style favored by young people, poking fun at daily life topics in colloquial Cantonese, revealing comical phenomena in society. The content is both a light-hearted rant and an insight into modern society, popular topics, current culture, regional culture, dialect culture, and interpersonal relationships among the post-90s generation.
In content production and operation, as the third most influential channel in Guangdong (first in the Cantonese category), “Yue Zhi Yijiu” adopts a mode of production separate from broadcast and process modularization. The entire team divides production into four modules: writing, directing, producing, and post-production; and divides broadcast into two modules: editing and operation. Each part is independent yet collaborates with the others. The team releases programs almost daily. Backed by the luxurious WeChat promotion resource matrix pool of Chuan Shang Media: 100 million WeChat public account resources, 60 million people reached through friends’ circles, and 500,000 WeChat groups, “Yue Zhi Yijiu” has achieved an industrialized operation model integrating content distribution department + fan community department + traffic resource department + technical development department.
The slogan of “Yue Zhi Yijiu” is “Creating a New Cantonese Pop Culture.” Just like the Cantonese big account “Liang Xiaoxiao” also backed by industrialized production and operation, their Cantonese short videos are watched by millions of people simultaneously upon release, planting and embedding the seeds of Cantonese culture. However, in the context of new media, what truly plays a decisive role is the algorithm driven by the logic of traffic monetization on these major platforms.
2．The current state of dissemination of Hakka and Teochew dialect short videos
2.1 The dissemination potential of Hakka and Teochew dialects is weaker than that of Cantonese
The search intelligent aggregation display on Douyin shows that under the hashtag #Cantonese, there are 95 related topics, involving short videos with a cumulative play count of 6.823 billion. Of these, 40% are related to Hong Kong Cantonese pop songs, accounting for 2.79 billion plays, and 10.6 billion plays are related to original Hong Kong audio-visual works. This indicates that in the new media era, Hong Kong’s popular culture, especially Cantonese pop songs, still plays a crucial role in the spread of Cantonese.
In comparison, the spread of Hakka and Teochew is much weaker: there are 97 topics related to the hashtag #Hakka, with a cumulative play count of 2.27 billion; there are over 80 topics related to the hashtag #Teochew, with a cumulative play count of 2.21 billion. From the perspective of population proportion, the ratio of people who speak Cantonese as their first language to those who speak Teochew and Hakka is 2.66:1 and 2.35:1 respectively. The ratio of the play count of short videos corresponding to these three dialects is also significantly different in terms of quantity, which is in line with the language use phenomenon observed in daily life: many people who speak Teochew and Hakka also understand Cantonese—Cantonese videos have a broader audience.
In terms of fan numbers, Teochew and Hakka are also than Cantonese by one or two orders of magnitude. The top Hakka KOL “Dou Bi Jiulong” has 656,000 followers on Douyin, 11.41 million likes, and 23,000 followers on KuaiShou with 8.619 million plays. The top Teochew KOL “LiLi, passing by your world” has 600,000 followers on Douyin, 3.359 million likes, and 187,000 followers on KuaiShou, with an average play count of 150,000. As for the few other KOLs, their fan numbers are basically in the range of 100,000+ to 400,000+.
2.2 Original songs in Hakka and Teochew dialects receive more attention
In terms of content categories, performance and singing are the two most common categories in Hakka and Teochew short videos. For example, “A Lai,” who has 263,000 followers on Douyin, primarily creates short videos with dramatic performances，其中 four episodes in “Hakka” have garnered 21.53 million plays; on KuaiShou, “Teochew Zui Zui (New Song Mask)” has created 693 works of daily life scenarios，four-fifths are in Teochew, attracting 490,000 fans and accumulating tens of millions of plays.
Unlike the common “editing and production” or “cover versions” in Cantonese singing short videos, original songs in Hakka and Teochew are more likely to catch people’s attention. In Hakka, there is “Xie Zhongliang ((Guangdong Hakka))” on Douyin, with 210,000 followers and 3.427 million likes; in Teochew, the most prominent is “Teochew Singer Li Xu杰” on KuaiShou, with 418,000 fans and an average play count of over 100,000.
In the short video dimension, there is not much content related to Hakka language learning. One of the more representative examples is “Bread Alien,” a musician and rapper who has created some videos about Hakka dialectal expressions. He has 40,000 followers, 410,000 likes, and 8.038 million plays on Douyin. In comparison, there are more language learning videos in Teochew. Some who have systematically produced such videos include “Sui Zi Guai Guai” (Douyin: 266,000 followers, 18.734 million plays/N Video: 9,834 followers), while others are more scattered across the works of various short video bloggers.
2.3 The “Local Culture” Features in Teochew Short Videos
In Teochew short videos, another significant category is “local culture.” This category seems to be consciously promoted on video platforms: works by several KOLs who have clearly received professional broadcasting training, such as “Fang Yuan Says Teochew,” “Host Bing Li,” and “Li Cheng CultureANA,” all belong to this category. The platform’s conscious promotion or intention to guide traffic to dialectal works has also appeared on KuaiShou, for example, there have been cases where the play count of a single video suddenly skyrockets significantly higher than that of other works by the same KOL: like “Zhang Minna” has a video with 5.4 million plays despite having only 70,000 fans and an average play count of over 150,000; similarly, “LiLi passing By Your World”” also has a sudden surge in a single video with 2.79 million plays, matching the average play count of over 150,000.
It is also worth mentioning that many young people have started to try making vlogs in dialects. For example, on Bilibili, “leilason” has produced eight episodes of Hakka vlogs for his grandmother. However, producing such vlogs also faces a challenge: “Ningmengmengmeng Vlog,” with 186,000 fans, had to abandon继续 making Teochew vlogs after one episode because the subtitles system couldn’t recognize Teochew, requiring manual input.
Although there is no obvious information yet showing that the production of Hakka and Teochew short videos can reach the industrialized level of videos like “Yue Zhi Yi Er,” MCN institutions similar to industrialized production are starting to take root among some top KOLs. For example, “Dou Bi Jiulong” in Hakka is recruiting and training internet celebrities.
Conclusion
The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is one of the regions where multiple languages and dialects are used in parallel. Each language fulfills its own social functions and provides communication guarantees for the smooth development of the area.
The rapid development of new media platforms objectively provides new application scenarios for Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew. These languages, while carrying forward the wisdom of their ethnic groups and facilitating self-expression, also gain more opportunities than before to interact and collide with other languages, thus becoming a collective memory of a wider range of people across ethnic boundaries.
References:
【1】Erweijiao, “How did ‘Yue Zhi Yi Er’ attract 1.6 million followers in a year? Even those who don’t understand Cantonese become addicted,” 2018
【2】Wong Zan, “The Development and Decline of Cantonese Pop Music,” PhD thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2003
【3】Penguin Eye, “Weekly Character | Chuan Shang Media: Over 500 million monthly plays, seeing how MCN breaks the spell of monetization,” 2017
【4】Ye Jingyi, Huang Wenlan, Yang Chuyu, “The Communication Strategies of Dialect Talk Shows in the New Media Environment,” Journalist Cradle, No. 4, 2020.
Ke Xiaoming,
Group 549mi
