"The Peach Blossom Spring" And "The Garden Of Eden":Cross-cultural Readings Of Li Ziqi’s Videos

The success of Li Ziqi’s video on overseas platforms has aroused the attention of domestic people,media and scholars,and various parties have engaged in heated discussions on "Is the overseas success of Li Ziqi’s video a cultural export?" At the same time,Li Ziqi’s overseas success has also attracted the attention of Western media and scholars,and many of them respond to questions about "cultural colonization" and"cultural imperialism".With the improvement of China’s cultural industry,the discussion of "cultural export" in the international communication of Chinese culture has increased.However,existing researches focus on analyzing the reasons for the success of overseas export of cultural products from the perspective of texts,but seldom study from the perspective of audiences,and focus on how overseas audiences decode the meaning of Chinese cultural products.This,however,is the prerequisite for the"cultural export".This article uses a combination of content analysis and text analysis to analyze and compare the top comments of Li Ziqi’s video on Weibo and YouTube in Chinese and English.The study found that Chinese audience decoded videos in a way close to the encoding of video producers,presenting a "breaking away from fast-paced life,breaking through the shackles of human relationships and morals,living in harmony with nature,walking into nature and retreating into seclusion,and pursuing a flat state"kind of interpretation;The western audience decode the video with a negotiated code,presenting a "slowing down the pace of life,returning to the essence of life,holistic personal meaning,protecting the natural environment,establishing a connection with nature and curing the technological world’s occupation of the natural world" kind of interpretation.The two ways of interpretation are rooted in the cultural traditions of"Peach Blossom Spring" and "Garden of Eden" in Chinese and the Western tradition.Therefore,the overseas success of Li Ziqi’s video is not a one-way compulsory "cultural export" or "cultural imperialism".The successful global image is attributed to the openness of multiple interpretations.This article empirically compares the interpretation of Li Ziqi’s video by Chinese and Western audiences,and verifies the effectiveness of the "active audience theory" in a new social/historical/cultural context,and may help respond to the "new cultural imperialism" faced by international communication of Chinese culture,and it is more helpful to reflect on the expected effects of it.The communication pattern of mutual appreciation,mutual understanding,and mutual respect between cultures and the interpretation of the content of "harmony but not sameness" should be the pursuit and goal of intercultural communication.In addition,as an intercultural communication research,this article exploratively compares the understanding of "ideal life" and its realization methods between China and the West,and traces the cultural roots of "Peach Blossom Spring" and "Garden of Eden",which enhance the understanding of the"cultural distance" between Chinese culture and Western culture,and thus contribute to the field of intercultural communication.