Middle Earth - China’s cultural industry podcast

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China may have 5,000 years of history, but now it has to compete for clicks and eyeballs with short videos on Douyin. From martial arts to Confucian classics to architecture, find out how businesses focused on Chinese traditional culture marketing themselves for young consumers in the modern day. 

Featuring
AJ Donnelly : Co-founder of Cultural Keys Chinese Culture Company
Matthew Hu : Co-founder of The Courtyard Institute
Carol Yin : Project Manager at the Beijing Institute of Yangming Philosophy

 Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

Though streaming is on the rise, film festivals are still an important channel for creators to showcase their work. If you’re an indie filmmaker in China, the Xining FIRST Youth Film Exhibition has become the place to see and be seen. Started in 2006, it is now known as the “Sundance of China,” and it is where directors like Wen Muye, director of 2018’s Dying To Survive (the third-highest grossing film at the Chinese box office), was discovered. 

In 2011, the festival moved to the remote Qinghai province, a Tibetan region better known for its green pastures than its film industry. We invite three attendees from this year’s festival, which just wrapped up in July, on how FIRST helped them find their voice, the challenges of putting on an indie film festival in China, and how FIRST became a standard-bearer of quality for the industry? 

 Featuring 
Vivian Bao: Independent Producer
Khashem Gyal: Director
Tina Xu: Culture Editor at The World of Chinese 

 Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

A bonus episode where we will delve into the making of the movie Leap, which came out in September 2020 on the Chinese national women’s volleyball team. Director Peter Ho-Sun Chan and Academy governor-at-large Janet Yang, an award-winning producer, will talk about the incredible journey of the team, the evolution of China over the past few decades, and what it’s like working with acclaimed Chinese actress Gong Li. 

This episode was originally produced by the Asia Society Museum and Asia Society Southern California. 

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

This show is part of the World of Chinese Magazine’s podcast network. Order your latest copy at www.theworldofchinese.com or follow them on Wechat (ID : Theworldofchinese). 

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

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The Communist Party of China celebrating its 100th year anniversary this year, driving up tourism to revolutionary sites around the country. The “red tourism” sector has seen significant growth from 140 million visit in 2004 to 1.15 billion in 2019, and now the “Gen Z” is following the trend. How do red tourism sites stay relevant for a new generation?

Featuring
 Dr. Mimi Li : associate professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (PolyU)
 Michael Wang : VP of Content Dragon Trail International 

Made in partnership with The Chinese Tourism Podcast 

Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

With a market that will quadruple between 2013 and 2025, China’s animation industry is getting more and more assertive with success stories like Ne Zha (2019), currently the third highest-grossing films in Chinese box office. But what challenges do Chinese animators, producers, and storytellers still face? And how can animated Chinese stories find an audience abroad?

Featuring
Lulu Hansen: Creative producer
 Yi Yan: General Manager of Ju Pin Pictures
 Dalton Grant Jr.: Co-Founder Floating World Animation Studio 

Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

In February 2021 China’s cinemas sold more ticket than the USA—a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, but also of a population more and more eager to see quality movies on the big screen. Yet for every movie that comes to the silver screen, several others are released over the internet at the same time. Called e-movies, or wǎngdà (网大), they became a massive pop-culture phenomenon in China with a production peak of over 2,200 films in 2017. 

How did this industry evolve over the last decade, and what does it say about the growth of Chinese cinema? 

Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture, and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch!  

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

Not far from the Forbidden City lies Temple Dongjingyuan (Temple 东景缘), formerly knowed as the Zhizhu Temple. It was founded at the beginning of the 15th century, and the current buildings date from 1700. Centuries after it was founded, and decades after it was decommissioned for religious services in the 1950s, the place is miraculously still standing and is a center of culture in the neighborhood. 

In 2007, Juan van Wassenhove and Lin fan (林凡) decided to restore the place and run it as a cultural heritage enterprise. How do they manage to keep the place afloat and find a balance between preserving the history and making a profit ? 

Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture, and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch!   

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

If you are on this side of the Great Wall, you might have seen their shops and vending machines in malls: Pop Mart. This public company worth 11 billion USD sells “mystery” toy boxes containing a single cute figurine from a potential set of several characters. Buyers do not know which figurine they have bought until they open the box. The company is widely successful in China and has even led other companies to copy their marketing methods.

Joining Middle Earth Podcast are creative director Juan Tan, Pop Mart's representative Amaia Perea, and business journalist Jiang Yaling, who will talk about how Pop Mart became so successful, the process of creating their IP, and the dark sides of the mystery box craze. 

Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese (www.theworldofchinese.com). Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture, and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground.  

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch!

With thanks to Sean Calvo for music support. 

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

Middle Earth is now joining The World of Chinese magazine podcast network.

The World of Chinese (TWOC) is a bi-monthly English magazine and website dedicated to Chinese society, language, and culture. Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people on the ground. As Middle Earth focuses on the creation and distribution of art and content in China, we saw some common values and topics, that’s why we decided to join forces. 

More to come in the coming weeks. To find out more about The World of Chinese, go to www.theworldofchinese.com, link in the podcast description, and subscribe to the print or digital issue of the magazine.

The World of Chinese Magazine
A magazine about Chinese society, culture, history, arts, language, and more.

Send us Fan Mail

Ecommerce and short-video app Xiaohongshu (小红书 or RED), or RED,  has been booming in china. Yet what distinguishes this app from its competitor Douyin, how the nature of short videos has changed as a result of the pandemic?

Featuring
Miro Li : Founder of Double V. Consulting & CHINAble Academy
Rose Zhu : Xiaohongshu/KOL lifestyle influencer

Middle Earth is made by China Compass Productions and hosted by Aladin Farré. If you have a China-themed cultural project like shooting your next documentary or look for a specific talent, please get in touch! 

Recommendations
- The brand HEYTEA, which provides recipes and teaches followers how to make milk tea at home.
- The social influencer Alex 绝对是个妞儿.

Answers to the quiz
- Xiaohongshu’s founders are Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao.
- Because of some adult content, Xiaohongshu got the nickname Xiaohuangshu.
- Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 has the biggest account on Xiaohongshu.

With thanks to Brenden Gonsalves  for graphic design & Sean Calvo for music support.