The May Day holiday is just around the corner. Many are discussing the “mountain-moving” compensatory workdays where employees need to work 5 days as normal, have one day off on Saturday before going back to work on Sunday this week, so they can have the 5-day holiday between 1 and 5 May. Meanwhile, the culture and travel authorities across China are gearing up to welcome travellers to their homes or even go viral like Zibo and Tianshui. Among them is Handan, a city in Hebei in Northern China.
As early as April Fool’s Day, the culture and tourism authority in Handan prepared a jokey video to promote itself before the Qingming, or Tomb-sweeping Day holiday. The video follows the trend in city marketing that features the head of the local Bureau of Culture, Radio and Television and Tourism and building their personal brand. The Bureau head in Handan apologises in a “Versailles literature” (凡尔赛文学, inspired by the manga The Rose of Versailles) way, i.e. showing off while making negative comments like complaining or, as in this case, apologising.
The video depicts the official apologies for 3 things:
- Letting you (the visitor) fail your diet plan by providing too many local delicacies.
- Burdening you with too much sense of destiny, with its thousand-year-long history as the capital of the Zhao State during the Warring States period.
- Making you learn too much culture for being “the city of chengyu idioms” (成语) with 1,584 idioms about the city and “the home of Tai Chi”.
To emphasise its history, the city also launched a campaign for anyone wearing Warring States-period dress to travel free on its buses, as well as introducing a VR experience in the Xiangtangshan Caves, a group of historical Buddhist cave temples. Other than holidays like Qingming and May Day, the city is also promoting weekend trips for visitors from neighbouring Beijing. It’d be very interesting to see how the city marketing of Handan works in the coming holiday and summer periods.
Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.
