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Students use WeChat to promote local history
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While most teenagers in China turn to WeChat to get news about celebrities, TV shows or fashion, 18-year-old Shanghai native Wang Jiayi is using the popular messaging tool to delve into the city’s ancient past.
Wang, a 12th-grader at Shanghai World Foreign Language School, operates a WeChat account dedicated to the Guangfulin archaeological site in Shanghai’s Songjiang District. Wang opened the account in September 2014, and now devotes between three and five hours each weekend to posting information about the site.
“I chose WeChat because of its popularity and ease of access,” said Wang, an archaeology buff and the president of her high school’s history society.
The account, which has posted dozens of messages and essays about the site written by Wang and her partner Zhong Anni, has already found a sizable following.
“The account has accumulated 1,200 fans and many of them will read every post. As a result, the average page view is about 50 percent higher than the number of followers. I’m very proud of the account.”
So far, the Guangfulin archaeological site has yielded artifacts dating to as far back as the Zhou Dynasty (11th century BC-256 BC), and is believed to have been a site of human habitation as early as 5,000 years ago. In modern times, the area’s historic significance was first noticed in 1958, when local farmers dredging a waterway found ancient pottery shards. This discovery led to four excavations between 1961 and 2008. The site was designated as a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit by the State Council in May 2013. Construction is currently underway on the Guangfulin Relics Park. The park, which is now partially open to the public, is scheduled for a full opening in 2016.
However, the area and its history remains largely unknown to Shanghai residents. To help raise awareness, Wang and Zhong took it upon themselves to research the site and spread their findings on WeChat.
“The biggest challenge is to find information,” Said Wang. “Sometimes information is written in a very obscure style, like in research papers. And since this is a very niche topic, there aren’t many experts studying Guangfulin. Finding content is really like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
Wang, Zhong as well as their historical society peers, have already made weekend trips to the site to enrich their own understanding.
“We’ll spend most of the day on these trips, which always offer everyone lots of food for thought,” said Wang, who finds the work hard but rewarding.
“From the bottom of my heart, I am so thrilled and proud that Shanghai is home to such relics that are so filled with historic significance,” said Wang. “That’s why I spare no effort in running the WeChat account. The Guangfulin Relics Park inspired me to tell the story of Shanghai to more people.
“The biggest encouragement comes from people’s growing interest in Guangfulin. Now many of our readers, and friends around me, have visited the partly opened site,” she said. “The most popular post we’ve published so far is about our society’s visit to the park. We published many pictures that day so people could see how the site actually looks.
“My ultimate goal is quite simple: inform people so that they can come to the site themselves and learn more about local culture and history,” she said.
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