National Tide 1980.

Material things come first, then spiritual things.

Having already discussed the daily necessities markets that have been gradually eroded by foreign capital due to their cost advantages, we now need to talk about another market that has been completely conquered by imported culture.

It's important to understand that compared to the daily consumption habits of Beijing residents, the changes in mainland China's popular culture over the past year have been far more significant.

Take pop music for example.

In 1990, although the Asian Games promotional song "Asian Heroic Spirit" became a hit across the country, it seemed that our popular music had greatly expanded its creative style and broken through the limitations of the past.

However, the reality of the mainland music scene is not optimistic at all; on the contrary, it makes those working in the industry feel extremely disappointed.

Since last year, mainland musicians have lost their dominant position in the mainland music scene, and have gone from being the leading figures to supporting roles.

The trigger for this outcome was in 1989 when the national television arts and culture program "Jiuzhou Fangyuan" suddenly broadcast two episodes of a special program titled "Tide - Songs from Taiwan Island".

In this documentary, Taiwanese singer Zhao Xiaojun, acting as the host, introduces twenty popular songs from Taiwan, including her own works as well as those by Little Tigers, Wang Jie, Chang Yu-sheng, Jiang Yu-heng, Tsai Chin, Qian Baihui, Gao Shengmei, and other singers.

To be honest, almost no one knows how these clips were managed to get into the broadcast control room of the mainland's national television station.

However, the appearance of the three simplified Chinese characters in "Snow Is Burning" on the screen, which were clearly added later, marked a truly momentous event in the history of mainland Chinese pop music.

Whether you call it surpassing its predecessors or simply copying them, Taiwanese pop music, packaged in the style of Japanese pop music videos, is simply unbeatable.

Once it aired in mainland China, it became wildly popular among young people, and its impact on the mainland music market can truly be described as "sweeping everything away".

Following this, a large number of cassette tapes by Taiwanese singers were officially imported into mainland China, marking the second peak in the import of Hong Kong and Taiwan songs since Teresa Teng and Liu Wen-cheng.

Taiwanese singers such as Wang Jie, Tong Ange, Jiang Yuheng, Zhang Yusheng, Qian Baihui, Little Tigers, and Red Lips were once very popular in mainland China.

With the addition of Chyi Chin, Su Rui, and Hong Kong artists such as Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, and Anita Mui, who had already become popular in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music had gained an absolute advantage over mainland pop music, thus beginning a "dominance" that lasted for twenty years.

Faced with this situation, it seems that mainland singers, who are suffering repeated defeats, can only temporarily retain a place in the folk song genre, which is a continuation of the "Northwest Wind" style.

This year, apart from music albums like "Asian Heroic Spirit" that became popular due to major historical events, the works that mainland musicians can be proud of are all folk-style songs.

Li Lingyu's "Pastoral Love Song", Cui Haitang's "The Crescent Moon", Duan Pinzhang's "Mother in the Candlelight"...

Only these few songs had any influence and managed to make it onto the music charts that were just emerging in the mainland music scene.

In fact, even Ning Weimin, who once dominated the mainland pop music scene in the past few years with the help of Fei Xiang, Zhang Qiang and Cui Jian, still feels immense pressure at this moment. Facing the aggressive Hong Kong and Taiwan singers, he still has little strength left to fight back.

There's nothing we can do about it; he's never really cared about developing the domestic entertainment industry, only using a speculative mentality and the idea of ​​making quick money to fleece people.

Nowadays, due to his laissez-faire approach to signing contracts, two of his three cash cows in the mainland music scene have already left.

Not to mention the playful Zhang Qiang, who voluntarily gave up everything in China and went abroad long ago.

Fei Xiang, feeling that his development in mainland China was not progressing and that he could not see a better future, went to the United States to try his luck on Broadway last year after holding 65 concerts in 12 cities in mainland China.

Furthermore, Cui Jian's rock music is sensitive in subject matter and follows a non-mainstream route. No matter how popular it is among young people, it is impossible for him to perform on the stage of large-scale galas and major events.

So what can Ning Weimin use to compete with Hong Kong and Taiwan singers? And how can he possibly turn the tide?

Of course, Teresa Teng is still the queen of the Asian music scene.

Because of Ning Weimin's intervention in her performing career, he gave her many classic songs. Instead of being abandoned by the times and becoming outdated, she has achieved an even more brilliant performing legend.

Her first album in mainland China—the soundtrack to the movie "Crazy Rich Asians"—has already broken the record for the highest number of cassette tape sales in mainland China, currently reaching 14 million copies, and this number continues to grow, making her the undisputed No. 1.

Keiko Matsumoto also found suitable songs for herself with Ning Weimin's help, which not only helped her regain success in the Japanese music scene, but also helped her gain fans in mainland China by covering Chinese versions, thus opening up a broader market prospect.

The problem is that the success achieved by the two of them only represents the success that Ning Weimin helped Matsumoto Keiko's music production company, Taurus Palace, achieve.

This might also indicate that Japanese pop music production is of a high standard, as both Taiwanese singers and Japanese stars can easily achieve success in mainland China, and even Ning Weimin can enjoy enormous benefits from it.

But the biggest problem is that all of this has nothing to do with music creation and development in mainland China.

So from a personal perspective, Ning Weimin might be considered a winner.

However, from the perspective of the overall mainland music scene, he is also a loser, which is the key point that he needs to reconsider regarding the current mainland entertainment market.

Furthermore, this phenomenon of local creations being crushed by outsiders is not limited to the music scene; it has also spread to the film and television industry.

In 1990, mainland Chinese films completely degenerated from popular art to niche art.

Ning Weimin's act of injecting capital from Japan into the Chinese film industry may have made life a little better for filmmakers, and major film studios have indeed produced quite a few films.

Unfortunately, in the past year or two, few influential and commercially successful films have been released in mainland China.

This year is even worse than last year. In 1989, there were grand productions like "The Founding Ceremony of the People's Republic of China" and even the first domestic horror film, "The Black Building Ghost," which was a stunning release.

Although the film ultimately suffered the unfortunate fate of being forcibly pulled from theaters less than ten days after its release due to frightening audiences, the social attention and box office performance have undoubtedly provided ample proof of whether its experimental innovation is worthwhile.

But this year, only Jiang Wen's "The Year of My Birth" and Chen Peisi's "Father and Son's Old Car" have been box office hits so far.

However, due to differences in tastes between the North and South, even these two films failed to achieve nationwide success, with both box office results and audience reviews falling far short of the two films released last year.

Therefore, overall, the rate at which mainland Chinese film audiences are leaving the country continues to accelerate, which means that mainland films are increasingly failing to capture the hearts of their audiences.

This is by no means an exaggeration, nor can we shift the blame by using the excuse that "the entire film market is weak."

Because an undeniable fact is right before our eyes: the box office performance of domestic films is dismal and disheartening.

But at this very moment, the Taiwanese film "Mom, Love Me Again" swept the mainland film market, creating an astonishing miracle—grossing over 100 million yuan. To be honest, the plot of this story was almost entirely unoriginal in the Taiwanese film industry, where Qiong Yao's works were constantly being adapted for the big screen.

The film had a low production cost and did not feature any box office draw stars, so it had almost no selling points.

As a result, the film performed poorly at the box office when it was released in Taiwan, and was pulled from theaters after only a few days.

Under normal circumstances, even if such a film were released on videotape, it would be difficult for it to gain traction.

But the situation is different for the mainland Chinese market.

I wonder if it's because of the different cultural backgrounds of the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but for many years our filmmakers have been too fond of the main theme, too fond of exploring the weighty and bloody great themes of national righteousness and humanity, and have forgotten to express the basic emotions that have the most universal values, and have forgotten that in addition to the "greater self," there is also the "lesser self."

It's also possible that the mainland film market has been influenced by Hong Kong films in recent years, with a preference for kung fu, martial arts, and action films. Cinemas are now similar to video arcades, filled with fighting and killing all day long.

Just like someone who's eaten too much meat and wants to eat vegetables, a tearjerker about family and ethics suddenly appeared and became an instant hit.

The most common saying among the audience at the time was "one handkerchief wasn't enough," followed by "my handkerchief was soaked through after watching the movie."

So much so that this movie, which even Taiwan itself didn't have much hope for, first became a hit in Wuhan, then in Shanghai, and finally in Beijing, quickly sweeping across the country that year.

Even "Mom, Love Me Again" had a large number of group screenings back then, with many schools from high school to elementary school sending the entire school to watch it together.

Thus, with mainland movie tickets costing only one or two yuan, the film's box office eventually exceeded 100 million yuan, meaning that the number of viewers reached as many as 100 million.

If anyone still doesn't get a feel for this data, they might as well multiply the ticket price by fifty and recalculate it.

To be honest, even Ning Weimin's "The Bodyguard," which cost a lot of money to produce and starred Tomokazu Miura, and "Taken," starring Alain Delon, failed to achieve this after being introduced to mainland China.

For a film, what matters more than big stars and grand scenes is its ability to evoke emotional resonance.

In short, this film, which can be considered a box office dark horse, is enough to prove one point—it's not that mainland audiences don't like watching movies, but rather that mainland films are gradually becoming less worthwhile for audiences to spend money to see.

Besides movies, the family dramas that Taiwan excels at have also received a good response in the television drama field.

Compared to Hong Kong dramas, Taiwanese dramas in the 1980s and 90s left a stronger impression on mainland audiences by focusing on the portrayal of human relationships and human nature. In depicting urban life, they also emphasized conveying life's meanings.

Following "The Stars Know My Heart", "A Plum Blossom", "Several Sunsets", and "Moment in Peking", "Deep Courtyard", "Wan Jun", and "Spring Goes, Spring Comes Again" starring Ma Jingtao and Liu Songren have become the shows that have kept countless viewers on the edge of their seats and eagerly anticipating their return this year, keeping many viewers glued to their television sets every day.

In terms of viewership ratings, only the Hong Kong-themed dramas "The Rogue Tycoon," "Looking Back in Anger," and "The Greed of Man," which aired that year, could rival it.

At most, there are a few imported foreign TV series, such as the American series "Hunter" and "Growing Pains", as well as the Japanese TV series "Women's Stairs" produced by Fog Studios and starring Tomokazu Miura, which was not released in Japan but was broadcast in mainland China first.

And another one that Ning Weimin brought back this time was "Girl's Doubt," which was filmed by TBS in 1985 and starred two actors now under Matsumoto's agency, Kyoko Koizumi and Ken Utsui.

In comparison, the number of TV dramas filmed in mainland China that year paled in comparison.

Because whether it's "Ling Tangyuan" from Chongqing TV, "Dead Water Ripples" from Sichuan TV, or "Public Relations Miss" from Guangdong TV, these TV dramas, as dialect dramas, only have a slight influence in a certain area.

Nationwide, only historical dramas such as "Fortress Besieged," "Yang Naiwu and Xiao Baicai," and "The Anecdotes of Consort Zhuang," which are already well-suited to the mainland genre, have garnered attention and praise from audiences.

Clearly, in this era of urban upgrading, mainland China severely lacks outstanding works that can rival Hong Kong and Taiwan dramas, or even foreign dramas, in the urban genre, which is most likely to resonate with people.

That's not all. If we say that in terms of music and film and television, in the face of aggressive outsiders, mainland Chinese works still retain some ground and have some hope of revival, and have not yet suffered a complete and total defeat.

In the fields of animation and comics, mainland Chinese creators have undoubtedly suffered a complete defeat, losing the ability to retain audiences and generate revenue independently.

To be honest, this day didn't come suddenly. Due to problems with the system and creative mechanism, the great collapse of domestic animation actually began the moment "Astro Boy" and "Kimba the White Lion" were introduced.

Then this vicious cycle intensifies day by day, leading to an inevitable decline.

To be fair, Chinese animation creators have worked very hard over the years, creating many excellent works using outdated methods.

For example, there are "Black Cat Detective", "Calabash Brothers", "The Story of Afanti", "The Monkey King Subdues the Demon", and so on. Last year, even the ink-wash animation "Feelings Between Mountains and Rivers" won a major award.

However, the main problem is that China has not established the necessary animation industry or industrial chain.

Chinese animation creators don't need to worry about how to sell their films to the market; they only need to think about how to win awards.

Moreover, they are paid low wages and have no way to get rich through labor.

This led to a period of transition in 1990, with many animated films produced by the old Shanghai animation studio, such as "Half and Half", "The Forest Bird and Me", "The Deer and the Cow", "Buying a Horse", "The Monkey Playing Chess", "The Snow Deer", and "Lonely Lily", failing to withstand the test of the market.

Only "Shuke and Beta," adapted from Zheng Yuanjie's work, and another puppet animation, "The Great Thief," barely recouped their production costs.

Conversely, the only shows that children and teenagers on television are foreign cartoons.

Whether it's American shows like "Robotech," "Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Tom and Jerry," and "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe," or Japanese shows like "Dr. Slump," "Dragon Squad," "The Lion King," and "Star Wars," they all dominate the screens.

Domestic animated films seem to have been forgotten by the children of the People's Republic of China. No one remembers the domestic animated characters anymore, and no children are keen to discuss them.

This phenomenon and its negative effects have even extended to the field of children's books.

Those comic books that had accompanied generations of children in the Republic over the past few decades were abandoned by the children from this point onward.

Today's children no longer eagerly flip through picture books of traditional stories like their parents did.

They are enthusiastic about American works such as "Superman," "Batman and Robin," and "Transformers," as well as Japanese works such as "Dragon Ball" and "Saint Seiya."

Even though most of these books were unauthorized pirated copies, none of the children cared. They read them with an enthusiasm far exceeding that of their parents, eagerly anticipating new stories every day. (End of Chapter)