This special lecture on the characteristics and qualities of human culture was targeting all staff and student body, and it left a deep and favorable impression on the students. The speaker for this event was none other than Zhang Jiayu, a video director of Chengdu Plus.

Zhang Jiayu, born in the 1990s, is a talented female bilingual director. Having graduated from the University of Leeds in the UK, she has a profound understanding of the operation of overseas media platforms and has actively researched the videos that Gen Z is watching in order to find entry points for the young adults of today and tell stories of China properly. Her works have won many authoritative awards on national, provincial and municipal levels.

The topic of Zhang’s speech at Chengdu University was— “Yes and…Chengdu.”

We love our work and this city, and we support our partners who fight alongside us to provide excellent work for this city and share them with the whole world.

Ever since the beginning, Chengdu Plus has been objectively recording the real happenings in China and creating many videos that have become trendy overseas, presenting the world with a rapidly developing Chengdu and a new China.

Zhang Jiayu shared several of Chengdu Plus’ original short videos during her speech, including “How Fast is the High-Speed Railway in China? Is It Possible to Get Food Delivery on the Train?”, “A French Lacquer Artist in China”, “Hello, Gen Z”, to name a few.

Regarding how to tell stories of China properly, Zhang Jiayu analyzed the 5 major macro trends of global social media, while also combining different examples of trending topics in order to give further explanations to the students.

Zhang said that overseas social media platforms operate in a self-contained way, and the brilliance of Chinese culture can have a deep and profound influence overseas. How to combine the two and find our own way of story-telling in the ever-changing field of public opinion? That is a question Chengdu Plus has been tirelessly exploring.

In the past 7 years, we have accumulated more than 16,000 minutes of Chinese and English videos. We have also been to over 20 different countries and regions such as the US, the UK, Germany and France to make interviews and reports.

We have distilled the following key points of international communication and exchange: empathetic communication, telling stories from a specific angle, setting up topics and improving international discourse. Currently, we are independently operating 10 accounts both at home and abroad, including the ones on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Notably, our YouTube channel was officially invited to join the YouTube Partner Program, and is one of overseas accounts of Chinese cities that have the most followers.

In the Q&A session at the end of the lecture, Gen Z actively asked questions and participated. They were deeply interested in the story of Chengdu's international communication which Zhang Jiayu shared. We at Chengdu Plus are also very grateful for this face-to-face exchange with Gen Z, as we received direct and genuine feedbacks.