Văn hóa truyền thống Trung Quốc hồi sinh dưới bàn tay một cựu nhà báo

Chen Jia trở nên nổi tiếng sau khi tham gia sản xuất chương trình đặc biệt chào năm mới cho đài truyền hình Hà Nam. Giờ đây, cô đang hướng tới đối tượng khán giả toàn cầu.

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Every year, cities across China mark the Lunar New Year with elaborate (công phu) light shows. The northwestern city of Xi’an festoons (kết hoa) its city walls — one of the best preserved (bảo tồn)examples in the country — with animal lanterns (đèn lồng) and holiday decorations. The small salt-producing center of Zigong, in the country’s southwest, builds such a lavish display of lights each winter that it has drawn visits from national leaders like Deng Xiaoping.

Visitors to last year’s Yuyuan Lantern Festival in Shanghai were taken aback (ngạc nhiên) when, in place of the expected rabbit-shaped paper lights (đèn giấy), they found themselves in a psychedelic wonderland (xứ sở thần tiên ảo giác) patterned off the more than 2,000-year-old mythological bestiary (thú vật thần thoại), “The Classic of the Mountains and Seas.”

The show was an instant hit on social media, and event organizers quickly asked its designer, Chen Jia, to pull double duty (nghĩa vụ) the following year. In addition to the 2024 Yuyuan Lantern Festival, Chen would be responsible for a monthslong lantern show thousands of miles away, in Paris.

For Chen, a 45-year-old former journalist and television producer with no prior experience in lantern shows, it was a chance to bring her idiosyncratic take on Chinese traditional culture — which has won tens of millions of fans in China — to an international audience.

1. 

Prior to becoming the most prominent (nổi bật) of a new generation of creatives putting a modern spin on traditional Chinese culture, Chen was an entry-level reporter and editor at a local radio and television group in the central province of Henan. A Henan native, she was born and raised in the ancient Chinese capital of Kaifeng. After graduating from Tianjin Normal University, she returned to her home province to take a job with the Henan Radio and Television Group in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou.

Chen soon rose through the ranks, jumping out of journalism and into production before eventually establishing a reputation (danh tiếng) as a talented director during the variety show boom of the 2010s. In 2021, her bosses tapped her to direct the network’s annual Dragon Boat Festival special.

...Chen spent the entire month of May and the first half of June overseeing every aspect of the production process (quá trình sản xuất), from the costume design and choreography (vũ đạo) to the post-production color grading. By the time the show — “The Fantastic Journey of Duanwu” — premiered (công chiếu) on the first night of the three-day Dragon Boat holiday, she was exhausted. As soon as it was over, she returned home and collapsed into her bed. “After the show ended, I stood on stage for a moment,” she recalls. “I looked online, and at least it seemed like no one was criticizing us, so I went home and passed out.”

2.

Local and provincial media groups have been tasked with promoting traditional culture for years. But in an era of declining (giảm) audiences for traditional media, their reach was limited. The viral success of “Fantastic Journey” was unheard of, and it instantly made Chen one of the biggest names in the cultural (re-)production business.

...Her new job offered her a chance to reinvent a long tradition, at least by Shanghai standards. The Yuyuan Lantern Festival — held to celebrate the Lunar New Year — has been around since at least 1849, according to historical records. It fell into decline and was eventually canceled in the second half of the 20th century, only to be revived in 1979. In 1992, its organizer, the Yuyuan Tourism Shopping Mall Company, went public, becoming one of China’s earliest listed companies, and in 2011, the festival was added to China’s national registry of intangible cultural heritage (di sản văn hóa phi vật thể).

The revived Lantern Festival was in many respects a success, but Chen saw a missed opportunity: the light show was both over the top and largely indistinguishable (không thể phân biệt được) from displays found in other big Chinese cities, which she likens to the occasionally gauche sacrificial items found in many of the country’s temples.

Six months after relocating, the Chen-designed 2023 Yuyuan Lantern Festival opened to the public. Ditching the traditional zodiac theme, she drew heavily from “The Classic of the Mountains and Seas,” turning the site into an eye-catching bestiary of light.

3.

Just eight hours after the Yuyuan Lantern Festival opened its gates, Chen oversaw the launch of the “Festival des Dragons et des Lanternes" in Paris’ Jardin d’Acclimatation amusement park.

...It was a major achievement (thành tựu), but Chen had already started thinking about next year’s show. “The opening time for this event was a bit late, actually,” she says. “If we hold similar events in Western countries in the future, it’s better to start in November.”

source: Sixth Tone,