Pay attention to the 2023 Beijing Cultural Forum
New things in Beijing culture
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In the process of building a national cultural center in Beijing, new policies and measures are frequent, and new things related to culture are constantly emerging in the lives of Beijingers. Behind these new things are Beijing people’s inheritance and thinking of existing culture, as well as their creation, acceptance and integration of new culture.
In fact, the construction and development of culture has never been one-way, on the one hand, it needs the government’s action and support; On the other hand, people who "update" their ideas will take the initiative to develop new ideas and make new attempts for culture.
In recent years, there have been countless new cultural events among ordinary people in Beijing, each of which reflects the inheritance and innovation of Beijing urban culture and the influence of Beijing’s urban cultural construction. On the occasion of the upcoming Beijing Cultural Forum in 2023, this newspaper launched a series of reports, telling new things about Beijing culture, observing and thinking about the changes brought by cultural development to the city and people living here from several aspects.
The holding of "October Literature Month" and the reopening of Ditan Book Market have once again immersed Beijing in the "book fragrance", and also highlighted the achievements of the construction of "book fragrance Beijing". Take bookstores as an example. As of 2022, the number of physical bookstores in Beijing has exceeded 2,000, and Beijing has also vigorously provided financial support to physical bookstores. In addition, Beijing has promoted characteristic bookstores through a number of activities.
On June 18th, 2023, the results of the first selection of the most beautiful and best series of physical bookstores in Beijing were announced. A humble bookstore in Miyun ranks among the most beautiful bookstores in the category of "integration and innovation".
The shop assistants in this bookstore are all dance teachers. They create some picture book stories on the bookshelf into musical dance dramas, attracting young readers to understand the ideological connotation in the picture book stories with beautiful dances. They feed back the bookstore by cultivating children’s artistic ability of dancing, and continuously "transfuse blood" to maintain the normal operation of the bookstore. Dance and read — — This "dancing" bookstore has become another living sample of Beijing’s physical bookstores.
Immersive experience reading and dancing
At 13: 00 on August 8, a musical and dance drama performance of the picture book "North Star" was being performed in the theater of Yuewu Yuedu Store. A parent-child reading group of more than 30 people, composed of 19 children and their parents, sat cross-legged on the stage and listened carefully to Pan Xiaolong’s vivid story.
"Everybody close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and follow me to the fairy tale world of Polaris: ‘ A gentle wind blew, and a little boy woke up and started his journey. He can crawl, stand, walk and run slowly. While walking, he explored and felt the fresh world. ’” Pan Xiaolong, 42, finished the story of this picture book in more than ten minutes.
Then, he made everyone stand up and did a warm-up exercise of pass the parcel’s digital game, which aroused everyone’s interest and started the rehearsal of the picture book story music and dance drama. The curtain hung low and the lights were dim, and the parents in the audience were full of expectations for the wonderful stage performance after the curtain was opened.
Finally, the curtain opened and the lights came on. The little actors came to a "shadow play" through the white tent. Some of them pretended to be patients and dragged their sick bodies along. Some make a gesture of laughing; Others are sad, weeping and sighing. In this way, after an immersive picture book story drama, the little actors scrambled to raise their hands and talk about their understanding and feelings about the characters’ stories in the drama.
Yang Yang, a parent who watched the picture book drama of Polaris at the scene, was deeply touched. She told the Beijing Youth Daily reporter that her child Wang Xinran had been studying dance in Yuewule Reading Store for more than two years. Teachers are very careful to create such a picture book story drama, "using beautiful body language movements to interpret the ideological content to be expressed in the picture book story, which further deepens children’s interest in learning. It can be said that this is an immersive reading dance experience." Yang Yang said.
What if the child can’t listen to the story?
"This is the first time we have tried to put the picture book story music and dance drama on the stage. This attempt is not a sudden whim, but to solve the problem that some children who simply tell stories can’t listen." Pan Xiaolong said that in the three years since the outbreak in 2020, he shared picture books and classic children’s novels on the online social platform every night, creating a brand of "Music, Dance, Reading and Reading Live Room".
Since the beginning of this year, the bookstore has resumed its normal offline operation, and Pan Xiaolong organizes offline picture book stories from time to time. He found that after attending the story meeting two or three times, everyone’s enthusiasm for reading dropped. By the third and fourth times, many parents stopped bringing their children to the meeting.
"In the face of the fact that this kind of story will not be so effective, we will return to the story itself, that is, after finishing the story, we will write a piece of material, so that everyone can read this passage together and find the resonance pleasure brought by reading. This effect is also quite good." Pan Xiaolong said that there happened to be a studio theater with good ambient lighting next to the bookstore, which provided him with a venue to put the picture book story music and dance drama on the stage.
Pan Xiaolong said that this is also a combination of the curriculum ideas of Italian and Japanese teachers he participated in before, using the divergent thinking of children, and everyone cooperates with each other to create a big background story, and then the expressions of the characters involved in this story are animated through body language movements, thus stimulating children’s desire for performance and enthusiasm for reading.
"After the performance of" Polaris ",I asked the children backstage if they had enjoyed it, and the children said in unison that they had enjoyed it. This kind of feedback is very important to me, and I will continue to develop picture books and dramas. " Pan Xiaolong said.
Previously, he also selected classic picture books such as Courage, Stone Soup, Guess how much I love you, Tortoise, etc., which are in line with children’s reading at present, as well as ancient poems such as When is the Moon, Mountain Walk and Grass, etc., and created more than ten music and dance dramas, which made reading interesting, three-dimensional and more direct to the soul.
The value of telling picture book stories online
Talking about his entrepreneurial experience, Pan Xiaolong said that he graduated from the Composition Department of the Conservatory of Music of Northeast Normal University. After coming to Beijing for development in 2005, he ran a recording studio with his friends, making behind-the-scenes recordings for TV variety shows such as "The Voice of China" and "I am a singer" until 2017, when his child was born. In order to provide a better learning environment for children, he wanted to set up a kindergarten, but because all the partners were dance teachers, he set up a dance training class first.
"At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic broke out, and the dance training I started stopped offline teaching and changed to online training. Many webcasts have disrupted children’s biological clocks. When I found my son’s work and rest disorder and it was difficult to fall asleep at night, I adopted the method of telling him a picture book story before going to bed. " Pan Xiaolong said that there are more than 5,000 picture books in a friend’s library. He selected some interesting picture book stories, recorded them as audio reading and played them to his children. Pan Xiaolong persisted for three months. He found that his son not only listened to audio reading, but also read with a picture book. His son’s super learning ability touched Pan Xiaolong.
Pan Xiaolong shared this "small fortunate" with his colleague Ouyang Jing. At this time, Ouyang Jing is also doing a live webcast of the picture book story. Suddenly one day, the live broadcast equipment broke down and stopped broadcasting, only some pictures stayed on the screen. More than 3,000 people in the live broadcast room stared at the pictures for a while, and someone began to leave a message impatiently in the comment area, "Aren’t you going to read the story today?" Ouyang Jing suddenly realized that not only the parents and children of the dance training class are paying attention to her live webcast, but also netizens of different ages all over the country are paying attention to her live webcast online, and even some regular old fans come to the live studio to listen to stories every day.
"Among them, parents are working outside, and children are listening to stories at home; There are also some autistic children listening to my stories. They like to release their emotions through such a space, and leave messages in the comment area of mobile phones to express their needs. " Ouyang Jing deeply realized the value and significance of picture book stories to children.
Online reading becomes a physical bookstore
In this way, Pan Xiaolong told Ouyang Jing that since the picture book story has such a market, he wants to truly turn online reading into an offline entity bookstore. Ouyang Jing was very surprised after listening. "We are all dance training teachers. No one is related to literary creation and book publishing. Can all laymen control it?" Ouyang Jing has been hesitating in her heart.
It was not until the cart drove into the Blue Mountain Cultural Industrial Park and the bookstore started construction that Ouyang Jingcai was convinced that this matter really had to be done. As a bookstore partner, she and Pan Xiaolong started the road of learning from the physical bookstores in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
"Every time we go to a city, we will sort out the top ten bookstores into documents and print them out through online search and public comments, and visit them one by one. Among the top ten bookstores in Shenzhen, we visited them one by one and found that only five were closed. My confidence was shaken. The bookstore industry is so depressed, are we still open? " Ouyang Jing was finally moved by Pan Xiaolong’s firm determination, and they were ready to "live to death".
The exploration road of music, dance and reading
It is worth mentioning that when Pan Xiaolong invested in opening a bookstore, he did not make a good book budget, and spent more than 4 million yuan on decoration alone, of which 1.07 million yuan was spent on theater lighting next to the bookstore. Faced with the dilemma of running out of ammunition and food after renovation, a friend of Pan Xiaolong’s who likes culture and art generously donated more than 100,000 yuan to open a bookstore and help him to bridge the gap with cultural publishing enterprises.
"So far, I still remember the embarrassing picture of purchasing books for the first time at Beijing Publishing Group. Several staff in the distribution department read me a book selected locally. They just laughed and said that this is not the way to choose an expert book. They gave me a very detailed book list and asked me which books I needed and how many kinds to wholesale them to me at the lowest discount in the industry. " Pan Xiaolong recalled.
In this way, Pan Xiaolong used online search to know the contents, sales volume and readers’ evaluation of those books on the book list, and finally determined the first batch of books to be ordered according to the inventory and discount given by the publishing house. In October, 2020, Le Wu Le Reading Store was successfully opened in the Blue Mountain Cultural Industrial Park.
At first, Le Wu Le Reading Shop was just a book corner for parents and children who came to participate in dance art training to read. Pan Xiaolong also planned to use the second floor as an office at that time. Later, there were more and more books, and the space on the first floor could not be satisfied. He opened the second floor into a children’s picture book library, while the first floor was filled with various adult humanities and social science books, life home books and health recipes.
"At present, our entire bookstore covers an area of about 950 square meters. In order to control the volume and keep a quiet atmosphere, we made a soundproof room so that children can immerse themselves in reading here. In this space, we have placed some children’s psychology books for children, as well as some story books to cultivate children’s reading interest. " Pan Xiaolong introduced.
The operation of the bookstore not only changes the children who come here to read, but also changes the dance teachers’ cognition of reading. Yan Shuang, who teaches Latin dance, is one of them. She used to have less contact with books. Since the opening of Le Wu Le Reading Store, she has read a lot of picture books and humanities books. She feels the charm and beauty of books and applies what she has learned to the arrangement of dance teaching programs for children. "For me, as a dancer, it is also a way of writing to integrate those perceptive thoughts in picture books into dance creation. I am subtly influencing and expanding children’s imagination." Yan Shuang shared her reading experience.
New experience
Provide opportunities for children to express their thoughts.
Open a bookstore at the age of 40, just for living? Pan Xiaolong has his own opinion on "forty puzzles": "After reading the book, you will find that your thoughts have changed more and the world has become more open, so I want to thank the reading itself for the meaning of my life." The original intention of doing these things is for the children, and it is more meaningful to leave a bookstore for the children than to leave other things. "I set a goal for two children, hoping that they will be bookkeepers — — A bookkeeper is not necessarily an operator, but to understand all kinds of stories, you spread the wisdom in the stories to others bit by bit. This creative value and significance has already exceeded the price marked by business. " Pan Xiaolong said.
When Pan Xiaolong was doing dance training, he never paid attention to the problem of profit, because this piece was relatively smooth and the plate was large enough. He had nearly a thousand students in Miyun. "Dance is a kind of body language. What it needs is good health and graceful posture. The most direct way to enhance and expand the dancer’s thoughts is books, so there is no conflict between reading and dancing, and it is a complementary relationship. "
Regarding the combination of dance and reading, Pan Xiaolong thinks that books are the root of thoughts, and the combination of reading and dancing can provide children with an opportunity to express their thoughts. The form of expression is dance. "I hope our children will have more ideas and more channels of expression. When they become thoughtful and less tired, they can stop and go and think about life while enjoying the scenery. "
New concept
Learn to slow down and not build online celebrity Bookstore.
In recent years, the government has increased its support for physical bookstores and introduced a subsidy policy. For Pan Xiaolong, to solve the operation problem of the bookstore itself, we can’t simply rely on the government’s support and wait for it. In his view, the government’s support is a kind of help. "After our bookstore was rated as the most beautiful bookstore in Beijing, it increased my motivation and confidence in opening a bookstore."
At the same time, Pan Xiaolong remained relatively calm about the popular concept of "online celebrity Bookstore". He thinks that at this time, he and his clerk should slow down, don’t forcibly turn the bookstore into a online celebrity store, and attract many tourists to just punch in and take photos. His bookstore will continue to popularize the public reading culture with colorful reading activities and picture books and dramas.
Pan Xiaolong hopes that the bookstore is more than just a reading space. In the future, he hopes to do more reading activities, revitalize his dance training resources and let more children participate.
This edition/reporter Zhang Enjie
Photography (except signature)/Reporter Li Na
Overall planning/full estate
