Top 10 cities where ethnic costume photo shoots are popular: Who is left behind? Who is rising? Who is advancing?

This article discusses the popularity of shooting for folk costumes. How long will the popularity last? Is it a fleeting "Internet celebrity economy" or a "traffic code" that continues to be popular?

“How can you come to Pingyao Ancient City and not experience the life of a young lady from a Shanxi merchant in the Qing Dynasty and Han Dynasty?”

"In Quanzhou, you can experience the same Xiapu women's hairpin flower circle as Zhao Liying for 40 yuan."

“Is this the sense of destiny of the ancient Miao village? My dream of being a Miao girl came true in Qianhu Miao Village.”

"Come to Dunhuang Mingsha Mountain and be a princess from the Western Regions for a day."

Due to the popularity of folk costume photo shoots, the traffic and popularity of the National Day holiday have visited new popular tourist cities such as Guizhou, Taiyuan, Dunhuang and Quanzhou.

Take Dunhuang as an example. Since the beginning of the summer vacation, the number of tourists received by the Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Lake scenic area has exceeded 1 million. At a glance, all you can see are people wearing Western-style clothing riding camels stuck in the desert. The topic #“Dunhuang Princess” riding a camel “stuck” in the desert# has also become a hot search on various social platforms. According to the data released by Jimu News, the scale of the photo-shooting industry in Dunhuang alone has exceeded 100 million.

Various ethnic costume rental stores and experience centers have also sprung up in the ancient city of Pingyao, Shanxi. "Guanyun Beef" is a well-known specialty and a must-buy for tourists to Pingyao. Now this store, which was once used as a "beef museum" by Guanyun, has been replaced by "Ethnic Costume Travel Photography" during the National Day holiday, but the original signboard has been retained.

First, they used the "makeup + photo shoot" to shoot Hanfu, Korean costumes, Miao costumes and other ethnic costumes for a price of less than 100 yuan, attracting college students and special forces to check in, and then used the short videos taken by ordinary people to ignite the spark, so that the shooting landmarks with high adaptability to the city can be popular on the Internet, thus bringing a large number of new consumer dividends to the ancient city with ethnic monuments as its selling point. The ethnic costume photo shoot carnival has become a "living signboard" that is very attractive to tourists, especially young people.

How long will the hot wind last? Is it the fleeting "Internet celebrity economy" or the "traffic code" that continues to be hot? Experiments in different cities have shown huge differences.

Due to the overly single-minded "assembly line princess" model and backward service capabilities, Xishuangbanna and Yanji were already knocked down on the beach in the 1.0 stage; Luoyang and Xi'an, which successfully advanced to the 2.0 stage, turned the trend of ethnic costumes into a mature industrial chain, constantly upgrading services, content, and popular landmarks. A year later, their popularity has not diminished, and they dominate the national hot searches every now and then; Hangzhou, Changzhou and other Jiangnan cities have entered the more mature 3.0 stage, and have extended to the deeper level of brand festival IP creation.

The road to sustained popularity after becoming famous is difficult. The rising Guizhou, Taiyuan, Dunhuang and Quanzhou are in urgent need of a guide to avoid pitfalls and advance.

1. Dunhuang, Yanji, Xishuangbanna... Why do the "ethnic style photo shoots" in the 1.0 era always fail?

The 1.0 stage often appears in the form of a city’s popular landmarks using a model of “ethnic style photo shooting” adapted to local conditions. It usually requires users to have “unique ethnic minority costumes + the most suitable scenic spot”. For example, if you want to take pictures of “Flying Apsaras Western Region Costumes”, you should look for the Mingsha Mountain in Dunhuang, if you want to take pictures of “Miao Girls”, you should look for the “Qianhu Miao Village” in Guizhou, and if you want to take pictures of “Hani Princesses”, you should look for the Moonlight Night Market in Xishuangbanna.

Taiyuan, Shanxi, is a "special case" as there is no large-scale ethnic minority gathering . It does not have any iconic ethnic minority costumes, but it has taken a different approach by combining the "Pingyao Ancient City" with the Ming and Qing historical filters and the "Qing Han Women" (clothing worn by Han women during the Qing Dynasty), directly creating a differentiated perception among users that "if you want to take pictures of young ladies living in a walled courtyard, you have to go to Pingyao Ancient City."

But what cannot be ignored is that folk costume photo shoots bring their own natural traffic, but just as they became popular, social platforms began to receive occasional bad reviews.

First of all, “low-priced” makeup has led to overly monotonous internet celebrity makeup and photo-taking styles.

"Mingsha Mountain is crowded with 'Dunhuang princesses' who have all come here to take pictures. Their makeup, movements and locations are exactly copied at pixel level. There are seven or eight people around me holding pipa like me." Xiao Yi complained.

I still remember that these "Dunhuang Princesses" were once "Korean Princesses" from the northeastern city of Yanji and "Hani Princesses" from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan. They wore highly similar ethnic costumes, had similar exquisite internet celebrity makeup, used the same stereotyped photography style, and were produced in an endless stream like standard blue products.

On Xiaohongshu alone, there are many posts complaining about the "assembly line" rush of the business. Even the chief makeup artist uses the same technique, all of which are "dirty makeup for internet celebrities". The time from makeup to shooting is also very tight. The good-looking scenery has many people, and only the photographers with commissions will line up. The retouched photos are either rushed and rough, or they are not received for half a month. Many young people said that they would not go there again after paying for their lessons.

Secondly, the tourist carrying capacity of popular spots has exceeded the limit, but there are no new photo spots for internet celebrities to take over. The sand dunes of Crescent Lake Scenic Area are a popular check-in spot for internet celebrities, but there were so many people during the National Day holiday that people had to queue up for the ladder to climb the sand dunes, while other niche attractions in Gansu are unknown.

"Although Dunhuang's Mogao Grottoes, Yumen Pass, and Yulin Grottoes are far away and have inconvenient transportation, if the services are improved, they can actually be combined with hotel and travel services to create multiple locations for tour shooting. This can even directly drive the off-season traffic to niche attractions and avoid overcrowding. However, this places higher demands on the merchants' organizational capabilities and service awareness. The logic of many stores now is to circle a single popular spot to make money and take multiple orders at a fixed point a day, but if this continues, it will only damage the city's reputation." The owner of a homestay in Dunhuang told Doujiao.

Previously, Yanji's "Chinese Korean National Park" was criticized by netizens as a "photo studio" because the over-concentrated Korean photography and limited scenes made many tourists who came here have a bad experience, which also affected the long-term influence. "This folk park is not a traditional building, but a newly built photo-taking check-in base. Basically, photo shops and follow-up shooting services are concentrated near the national park. Everyone assumes that you have to wear Korean clothes to come here. During holidays, this place will be overcrowded, and it will become abrupt to take photos of Hanfu and other distinctive costumes at this time." Mimi, who has been to Yanji, was very disappointed with the experience.

In her opinion, many commercial buildings in Yanji, which is located on the border, have obvious Korean style, and a large number of store signs are in Korean. If the ethnic style photography can be extended to Korean girl style photography and expanded to commercial districts, it would be a good choice.

What is more serious is that the scenic spot has no strong control over ethnic style photo shoots, which leads to frequent "overcharging" by stores. Mimi mentioned that there are no Korean costumes in Yanji that are less than 100 yuan now, and all good-looking clothes start at 400 yuan. Mimi booked a 599 yuan package for fine-tuning online, but after finishing her makeup, she was told by the store that the discount was over and the price was directly raised to 1,000 yuan. "I spent two hours on makeup and spent the money, so I could only take the photo."

The problem of high premiums causing reputation damage has occurred in Xishuangbanna and Guizhou. Many young girls from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou were attracted by the short video of "experiencing Hani Princess for a day at a low price", but found that the price had increased temporarily, false eyelashes and painting were charged at a different price, and the experience and service were not up to par. In addition, Xishuangbanna itself is remote, with inconvenient transportation, scattered tourist attractions, and a small scale. The content and projects of the tour are also relatively monotonous, which is not worth it for tourists from first-tier cities.

"During the National Day holiday, the price of taking photos of Miao girls in Qianhu Miao Village has soared to 400 yuan, and there are long queues for makeup. Many sisters come to take photos of the famous pavilion in the Miao village, but they must stay at the Yunting Hotel or customize travel photography to take pictures of that scene, with a starting price of 699 yuan ," a tourist complained on Xiaohongshu. The village is full of travel photography shops, one every three steps, but in fact the photography effect is almost the same as that of ancient towns and streets across the country.

It is worth noting that the ethnic costumes in these popular scenic spots where the services cannot keep up are being "incorporated" by other tourist cities one after another. Now, in Luoyang, the White Horse Temple is called a smaller version of "Xishuangbanna"; in Suzhou and Hangzhou, small shops for photographing Crab Girls are opening one after another; in Xi'an, niche attractions such as Lanyue Mansion were also discovered by young girls during the National Day holiday and became substitutes for the "Ancient City of Pingyao".

In the final analysis, a city's "ethnic costumes + popular attractions" can only form a short-term consumer hotspot. If other tourist cities react faster and quickly replace their characteristic scenes, plus have more complete supporting services and facilities, the short-term "hotspot benefits" brought by ethnic costumes to these emerging cities will not be enough to attract a continued increase in passenger flow, nor will it be enough to transform one-time curiosity-seeking consumption and emotional consumption into long-term consumption.

2. Advanced version 2.0 of Luoyang and Xi’an: refined services and differentiated landmarks

In contrast, Xi'an and Luoyang, which have stronger cultural tourism genes, have advanced to version 2.0 on the road to "long-term success", becoming positive cases. Typical examples include Luoyi Ancient City and Chang'an Twelve Hours Street, which became popular last summer. They did not become outdated Internet celebrities as new cities joined the competition. Instead, they continued to iterate themselves, feeding back to surrounding attractions and chain industries, bringing sustained popularity to the city.

By observing these successful scenic spots, Doujiao has also discovered four major secrets of evolution. First, the ethnic costume photo shooting market has gradually matured, especially the service and price stratification, moving towards high-quality and diversified, creating irreplaceable urban differentiation attributes.

"Last year, all the girls were princesses wearing assembly line makeup like internet celebrities. Now we focus on restoration makeup , which requires that the aesthetics of the dynasty at that time must be restored from Hanfu to makeup. Now the Tang Dynasty painting of ladies with flowers in their hair is a popular makeup look." The owner of a restoration Hanfu shop in the City That Never Sleeps told Doujiao.

"Tang Dynasty Ladies with Hairpins and Flowers" restored makeup, source: Xiaohongshu

In Xi'an's Tang Dynasty City that Never Sleeps, you could get a "One-Day Tang Dynasty Princess Experience Card" for less than 100 yuan before. Now, it provides a one-stop service of "makeup-shooting-photography guidance-photo retouching" for tourists with high service demands, with prices ranging from 100 yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. At the same time, in order to meet the needs of price-sensitive users, it has launched a low-priced service of dozens of yuan, which only provides makeup, painting, accessories and props for tourists to take pictures freely.

Similarly, the Hanfu photography studios around the ancient city of Luoyi offer a number of couple costume + makeup packages for less than 200 yuan, as well as high-priced services that focus on Wu Zhou restoration costumes and one-stop shooting of the Tiantang Mingtang for more than 1,000 yuan. During the visit, Doujiao also found that the shop owner, who was not very familiar with men's Hanfu makeup more than a year ago, has now entered a new stage in the research of men's hairstyles, with a variety of men's long hair styles and hat styles, and the service has also been significantly upgraded. "Since this year, the demand for family photography and couple photography has increased significantly. We are now proficient in men's wigs and beard makeup. Tourists who are afraid of trouble can also use hats to complete a decent look." The owner said.

Only such price band upgrades and service upgrades can meet the differentiated demands of tourists at different times and distances, such as local tours, long-distance tours, off-season tours, and node tours.

Second, after the iteration of the population, the derived services must be thoughtful.

In Luoyang, there are not only tourists wearing Hanfu, but also a large number of primary and secondary school students, bus drivers, and free clinic doctors wearing Hanfu in their daily lives. Wearing Hanfu on the street has become a trend in the city, and after the popularity of Hanfu photo shoots, some scenic spots have introduced preferential policies such as free tickets for Hanfu wearers.

At the same time, the one-stop service of Hanfu photo shooting has not only swept the Hanfu rental market, but also the surrounding homestay and catering industries.

"Last year, people who came to Luoyi Ancient City were from cities around Luoyang. This year, the Hanfu craze has attracted tourists from all over the country to Luoyang. Their main purpose is to come to Luoyi Ancient City to take photos of Hanfu, from individual photos to family photos." Wang Peng, the owner of Yunhuali, a high-end homestay, discovered a business opportunity and built a "small Luoyi Ancient City" in the homestay. Several classic "market" scenes are no different from those in Luoyi Ancient City. At the same time, he also opened a Hanfu Museum, where you can wear high-quality, craftsmanship, and embroidery-quality Hanfu for an additional 99 yuan. He also provides photographers to take photos in the homestay, which controls the flow of people and avoids crowding, providing tourists with a better shooting experience.

The food street near the Twelve Hours in Chang'an district in Xi'an has also launched a large number of restored ancient-style food photo-taking and check-in activities specifically for the Hanfu craze. In popular restaurants, tourists wearing full sets of Hanfu can be seen everywhere. The waiters will also provide special straps for Hanfu tourists to prevent their wide robes and sleeves from getting dirty during meals.

Such targeted service upgrades extending to surrounding industrial belts can easily lead to continuous positive content delivery and tap water recommendations, creating a long-lasting word-of-mouth foundation.

The third is to constantly update the popular landmarks, and use the popular landmarks to lead the whole, highlighting the characteristics of each tourist attraction.

Currently, around the Hanfu photo shoot, Luoyang, with Luoyi Ancient City as the center, has extended a one-stop small scenic spot belt in the old city area, such as Lijing Gate, Yingtian Gate, Tiantang Mingtang, Jiuzhou Pond, and well-known large scenic spots in the suburbs, such as White Horse Temple, Longmen Grottoes, and Guanlin, making a series of internet celebrity landmarks popular.

"During the National Day holiday, the number of visitors to Luoyi Ancient City is still so high that the daily income is over 10,000. The difference is that other scenic spots will be chosen for shooting on the next day." Cheng Junhui, project manager of Luoyi Ancient City, told the owner that taking the entire tourist route built in Luoyang as an example, Luoyi Ancient City has a more lively atmosphere. You can experience the old city wall at Lijing Gate, Jiuzhou Pool is a garden style, Yingtian Gate is magnificent, and Tiantang Mingtang has a sense of Wu Zhou history. Each scene has a differentiated positioning, and there are check-in spots for Hanfu shooting everywhere.

Similarly, the White Horse Temple on the outskirts of the city is more suitable for photographing ethnic costumes because it gathers religious buildings of multiple categories. These popular cultural and tourism projects, which were already popular, have also been given new life because of the craze for photo shoots.

Interestingly, Xi'an and Luoyang, both ancient capitals of 13 dynasties, are also seizing the opportunity to gain popularity and divert traffic to each other. Many travel agencies have launched seven-day tours of the ancient capitals, offering one route to experience the different humanities and clothing culture of different dynasties in Luoyang and Xi'an.

The rich choice of tourist destinations not only avoids congestion caused by excessive passenger flow, but also presents richer shooting scenes, which is of great benefit to increasing the consumption frequency and amount of individual users.

Fourth, avoid a single tourist activity that would make tourists lose their sense of freshness.

In addition to Hanfu photo shoots, Luoyang is re-promoting "museum" tours. During the May Day and Dragon Boat Festival holidays this year, "unpopular attractions" such as the Luoyang Ancient Tomb Museum became popular on Douyin. Some videos shot by young bloggers were titled "Visiting more than 20 ancient tombs in a row, and no longer caring about life and death", which resonated with countless people online. The ancient tombs, which seem unlucky in traditional concepts, have unexpectedly become popular check-in spots in the eyes of young netizens.

Xi'an still chooses to bind cultural film and television IPs and make peripheral linkages. For example, after the popularity of the "Twelve Hours in Chang'an" block subsided, it developed four new performances such as "Dance of the Ladies with Flowers in Their Hairpins" and "The Tribute of All Nations" and more than ten NPC fixed-point interactions. For example, characters such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and the familiar charcoal seller in poetry, the scholar who just passed the imperial examination in Chang'an City, the embroiderer in the market, and the peddler selling goods will communicate with tourists and play games during the tour, which will promote the escalation of this year's craze.

These immersive experiences and projects with strong cultural attributes are all based on the city’s rich cultural tourism resources and cultural roots. They also have high reference value for cities such as Pingyao, Dunhuang, and Xiangxi that also have strong cultural and historical attributes.

In the final analysis, with the rise of young users' self-pleasure experience consumption and ethnic clothing, all cities with corresponding resources are facing new opportunities, but if they want to achieve long-term support rather than a temporary boost, they still need to have a longer-term operational vision, more professional urban resource intervention, and more sustainable development strategies. Otherwise, if they rush in for temporary benefits, all they will get in the end is a mess.

After all, clothing and traditional Chinese culture will drive the city for far more than two or three years. Judging from the current 3.0 era city samples such as Xitang and Yancheng, once the creation of urban cultural brands is realized , the commercial blessing and life cycle brought to local cultural tourism will be considerable.

Changzhou, which cooperated with ByteDance to create the super brand IP "National Style Festival" in the field of national style , has used the National Style Festival to accurately target almost all national style circle users in the country, and has also attracted many big brands to sponsor national trend marketing. Last year's Hailien and this year's Guyu both directly brought commercial brand resources to the local government.

Hangzhou has been hosting the "Xitang Hanfu Culture Week" for ten consecutive years , which has now driven the related industry revenue to exceed 300 million yuan. Currently, Xitang is working with the top domestic Hanfu brands to design a batch of Hanfu clothing and "Hanfu +" peripheral products, creating an immersive experience city for the traditional Hanfu culture. When the public thinks of Xitang, the first reaction is not the ancient town in the south of the Yangtze River, but Hanfu.

To transform a trend of "national costume culture" into a development chain, and then drive tourism consumption and even the manufacturing industry from point to surface, cities need to put in more internal efforts.

For several new ethnic costume landmarks, the advanced gameplay of the 2.0 era and the ultimate form of the 3.0 era can be emulated by their predecessors, and there are also opportunities to win through differentiation. Only by following the water and grass and taking advantage of the wind and clouds can the traffic brought by the ethnic costume craze be turned into "retention" and even converted into cash, thereby establishing local brands.

Author: 24, WeChat public account: Spicy