From an articulate compere, a travel blogger, to a rural development promoter, TikTok influencer Long Yan is constantly changing his identity, measuring the world with his feet: “I feel good as long as I am always on my way.”
Long Yan, with the stage name Letian, is a TikTok influencer. He has presented Guizhou’s marvelous natural landscape and folk culture in his more than 170 short videos, with the objective of helping record the beauty of the countryside.
Long Yan (left) is recording the intangible cultural heritage handcrafted Kala Birdcage in Danzhai County, Guizhou Province.
No Place Like Home
Being a travel streamer for more than three years, Long has given his best to every shoot, and just finished a tourism promotion recording of Luodian County in Guizhou Province, a short video co-created with China Central Television (CCTV).
Hardworking, dependable, and diligent are the words many people have used to describe him, but this post-90s young man once pursued another kind of lifestyle.
After graduating with a major in broadcasting and TV hosting, Long joined Guizhou Radio Television Station, but a strong desire to see the world outside led him to resign his position and go work in Beijing in 2016.
Starting from scratch at the age of 25, he has grown rapidly. As a shopping livestream anchor, he sharpened various abilities in the live broadcast industry. Then, he went to several Internet giants to do variety shows, live broadcasts, press conferences, and so on.
Despite having a well-paying job, Long was not able to settle down in Beijing, and in the end returned to his hometown Guizhou in August 2019. A long-lost calm feeling and sense of relief helped him finally find the direction of his life.
Not until then had he realized just how nice his hometown was, and as a result he became a short video blogger. “Guizhou provides me with a wide range of high-quality resources for filming, with its rich tourism resources and diverse cultures, and it has the original culture of many ethnic minorities,” he said.
Thanks to years of professional experience, his videos on TikTok were watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers. He clearly remembers the first short video that broke one million views was introducing Guiyang’s various delicacies. Since then, his team has successively produced series on gourmet in various areas in the province.
However, there were also difficulties with arduous challenges.
“The first challenge was finding financial support. It took about 10 months of creating content before we received our first advertising revenue,” Long said. He admits that in the very competitive travel blogger circle, high-quality content and the courage to persevere are indispensable. To him, every video release is a performance assessment, and he strives to constantly break through the bottleneck of creation.
Over the past three years, Long has traveled to 88 counties in Guizhou, and his content has shifted from simple travelogues to videos about ethnic customs, natural wonders, cultural heritage, and historical sites. In his opinion, these are the stories he wants most to show viewers.
A performance of Anshun Dixi Opera, which was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006.
Recording Intangible Cultural Heritage
At the end of 2022, Long came up with a new creative plan: recording 100 videos about Chinese intangible cultural heritage skills in three years. His goal was to help more people see the value of culture preservation and inheritance.
During his video shoot in Anshun City, the sense of urgency compelled him to speed up his videoing. Hearing the news that an inheritor of Anshun Dixi Opera which he interviewed in 2020 passed away, Long shed tears. “Intangible cultural heritages really need to be recorded while culture inheritors are around, otherwise they will really disappear,” said Long.
The shooting project gradually took shape during his more than three years of continuous filming. Long pays attention to many fascinating intangible cultural heritage items, and has met a group of hardworking inheritors.
Yang Li, the inheritor of leaf-vein embroidery, not only changed her family’s plight through her own hands, but also led the women in her village to achieve common prosperity. Huang Andong, the inheritor of the dragon head carving for the Dragon Boat Festival, has been working for decades. The more Long understands about the difficulty of inheriting intangible cultural heritage skills, the more passionate he has become about discovering them, feeling the urgency of recording them.
“In the early days of working as a short video blogger, I was as confused as others about how to continuously put out quality content. Then after shooting travel videos for about three years, I came to realize that beautiful scenery will always be here as long as there is no man-made sabotage, but craftsmanship will disappear if people don’t record or protect them,” Long said.
Nowadays, his recording is progressing smoothly, and he is also making plans to help preserve the intangible cultural heritage skills that are on the verge of extinction and try to generate economic benefits. He is pleased that the generation Z has now become a new force in promoting intangible cultural heritage, and their devotion is making the inheritance and development promising.
Helping Rural Development
At the end of 2021, Long joined TikTok’s program to boost rural development. However, the question of how to help protect and develop the countryside through his own creations has become a challenge.
This year, while recording the Grand Song of the Dong ethnic group in Guizhou, Long unexpectedly found the answer to this question.
“I went to Huanggang Village to shoot and parked my car in front of a villager’s house. An old lady waved at me and told me to drive the car away, I thought she was angry at me because I was blocking her door, but in fact, she was afraid that her naughty grandchild would scratch my car,” Long said. At that moment the idea of staying there for a longer period of time suddenly came to his mind.
More coincidentally, his seriousness and dedication inspired the local cultural and tourism department to invite him to be the honorary village chief, hoping to promote cultural tourism there through his travel blog. Thus, he happily took over the position with no salary.
In addition to shooting videos to introduce the scenic spots in the village, Long also helps villagers promote their specialties.
“My village is the birthplace of the Grand Song of the Dong ethnic group, where there are sincere Dong people and original ethnic customs. There are also top-quality agricultural products such as fragrant sticky rice and salted duck eggs. In the future, I will record more of their beautiful natural scenery and cultural customs, and promote the high-quality sightseeing tourism resources and agricultural products of our village. You are welcome to visit our village,” Long said.
From an articulate anchor to a travel blogger and then to a rural development promoter, Long is constantly changing his identity, measuring the world with his feet: “I feel good as long as I am always on my way.”
