In 2021, Henan TV has gone viral by promoting traditional culture through Chinese dance. It produced seven dance pieces highlighting traditional culture, such as Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess(《洛神水赋》), a two-minute underwater dance, and Dragon Boat Festival and Guardian Warriors of Longmen (《龙门金刚》), a dance piece supported by AR technology against the backdrop of the Longmen Grottoes.

“The seven dance pieces have gained nearly 30 billion hits on social media platforms,” said Yao Wei, director of the TV station’s Innovation Center, at a three-day forum centering on the research of Chinese dance.

The pieces made an emotional impact on audiences, especially the young generations. “It’s been over forty years since the country’s reform and opening-up and the younger generations have grown up with a more open mindset. With plenty of resources and opportunities, they embrace Chinese culture and be proud of it,” said Yao. “What we need is to present Chinese culture and tradition in interesting ways for those young people.”

Yao added that Henan TV has been producing shows highlighting traditional culture, such as traditional operas and kung fu, for nearly 30 years.

“To appeal to younger audiences, we are also changing our shows. One of the keys is to produce content with strong visual creativity,” Yao said. “For example, the latest technology and unconventional (新奇的) stage settings, like underwater scenes, have become our new ways of telling stories about traditional Chinese culture, rather than simply narrating history with traditional video content.”

Another key to successfully reaching younger audiences is using social media platforms to promote their shows. “Social media is being shaped and driven by young people. It’s a powerful form of communication. When they take a quick scroll (滚屏) through their phones, they easily become interested in an eye-catching video.” Yao said.

People from East Asia tend to have more difficulty than those from Europe in telling different facial expressions — and a new report published online in Current Biology explains why.

Rachael Jack, University of Glasgow researcher, said that rather than looking at the whole face as Westerners do, Easterners fix their attention on the eyes only.

“We show that Easterners and Westerners look at different face features to read facial expressions,” Jack said. “Westerners look at the eyes and the mouth in equal measure, while Easterners prefer the eyes and ignore the mouth.”

According to Jack and her workmates, the discovery shows that human communication of emotion is more confusing than previously believed. As a result, facial expressions that had been considered universally recognizable cannot be used to reliably express emotion in cross-cultural situations.

The researchers studied cultural differences in facial expressions by recording the eye movements of 13 Western Caucasian and 13 East Asian people while they observed pictures of expressive faces and sort them into different groups: happy, sad, surprised, fearful, or angry. They compared how correctly people read those facial expressions using their particular eye movement plans.

It turned out that Easterners focused much greater attention on the eyes and made significantly more mistakes than Westerners did. “The cultural difference in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural difference in facial expressions,” Jack said. “Our study suggests that Westerners use the whole face to express emotion while Easterners use the eyes more and mouth less.”

In short, facial expressions are not universal to show human emotion. From here on, examining how cultural factors have made a difference to these basic social skills will help our understanding of human emotion. When it comes to talking about emotions across cultures, Easterners and Westerners will find themselves lost in communication.

When the day is dawning, the Center of Naxi Dongba Pictographs and Paintings of the old town Liliang welcomes his owner, He Runyuan, who is dressed in a traditional Naxi clothing. Every day, He explains Dongba culture to tourists and teaches them to write Dongba characters. “Dongba characters are not only the soul of Dongba culture, but also a treasure for the whole world,” said He. Enjoying a history of over 1,000 years, Dongba characters are an ancient system of pictographic glyphs (象形字形). They are praised to be the “living fossil (活化石)” in writing.

As a member of the Naxi group, He first learned Dongba characters at the age of 13. He loved them immediately when he first looked at the symbols. “These characters have pictographic drawings that look like humans, animals, plants etc.” He said. “They are usually colorful and recognizable.”

Though the characters are interesting, learning them is never easy. Dongba culture is always mastered by Dongbas, the Naxi priests (祭司). Without Dongbas in his village, He has to travel far to the Old Town, where many Dongbas are gathered. “In most cases, I need to walk for more than one day to the destination. To get more learning time, I always set off very early when the city is still in darkness,” said He.

But the love for Dongba culture keeps him going. For the past 30 years, He has been studying these characters every day. In 2016, He set up the Center of Naxi Dongba Pictographs and Paintings Where He beautified fans, glasses and even T-shirts with Dongba characters, hoping to pass down Dongba culture and let more people know about it.

“Our life is limited, but so long as everyone makes an effort, the life of a culture can exist forever,” He said.