On September 15, the day after completing his swimming challenge across Nan'ao Island to Raoping Bay, Sohu.com founder, Chairman and CEO Zhang Chaoyang transformed into a travel and food broadcaster, visiting Shantou and Chaozhou to lead netizens on a virtual tour of Chaoshan cultural charm. The entire journey was live-streamed on the "Zhang Chaoyang" account on Sohu Video.
From the Zhongshan Memorial Pavilion and Guangji Bridge to intangible cultural heritage projects like Yingge dance and ceramic micro-calligraphy, and from specialty foods like Gongfu tea and oyster pancakes, Zhang Chaoyang explored Chaoshan culture firsthand, deeply experiencing the local historical heritage and cultural customs. "Seeing is better than hearing," he said during the live stream, expressing his intention to fully utilize video self-media to showcase intangible cultural heritage skills to more people, believing that tracing history is very meaningful for modern life.
**Shantou's Intangible Heritage Shows Inheritance, Tasting Oyster Pancakes Recalls Swimming Adventure**
At 10 AM, Zhang Chaoyang's Chaoshan cultural journey began at Shantou's historical and cultural landmark "Xiaogongyuan" (Small Park). Beside the Zhongshan Memorial Pavilion, a Yingge dance troupe performed a magnificent show. The vigorous dance moves inspired by "Water Margin" caught Zhang Chaoyang's attention. He watched immersively throughout and even learned the mallet-spinning movements from the performers, personally experiencing the bold vitality of this intangible cultural heritage project.
Subsequently, the 350,000-character "Zhenguan Zhengyao" ceramic micro-calligraphy and the "crab cage" intangible heritage artwork carved from a single piece of camphor wood displayed in the exhibition area amazed Zhang Chaoyang with the craftsmen's ultimate pursuit behind such precision. He reflected, "This is actually like spiritual practice - you can't have any distracting thoughts. The creator must focus, just like when swimming, you can't think about anything else."
Tasting Gongfu tea was the "highlight" of the Shantou live streaming journey. After the tea ceremony performance, Zhang Chaoyang listened to the intangible heritage master explain "sipping" techniques while using physics knowledge to analyze the intricacies of Gongfu tea cups: "Small thin cups dissipate heat quickly, and drinking with air can cool it down rapidly - I covered heat conduction in my second physics book."
At noon, Zhenbang Food Street became Zhang Chaoyang's "food check-in destination." He visited time-honored brands including Yinping Oyster Pancakes, Caixi Ji Beef Balls, and Zhuangxiong Thin Shells. The crispy-outside-tender-inside oyster pancake ingredients were actually harvested from the oyster farms where Zhang Chaoyang had his adventure the previous day at two or three in the morning.
This reminded him of the unforgettable experience of "escaping from the oyster zone" - during the September 14 swimming challenge, the high-speed ocean currents in deep waters kept pushing him into the oyster farming area, causing his hands to be cut by sharp shells attached to underwater ropes. Zhang Chaoyang once boarded the boat to avoid danger, but fortunately adjusted his condition in time to continue the challenge, ultimately reaching the finish line after 5 hours and 18 minutes. During the live stream, while tasting the delicious oyster pancakes, he joked, "Yesterday I fought with oysters for several hours, and today eating oysters gives me a feeling of revenge."
**Searching for History in Ancient Chaozhou City, Appreciating Millennium-Old Crafts and Marveling at Cultural Time Travel**
After leaving Shantou, Zhang Chaoyang headed to Chaozhou to explore the cultural heritage of this thousand-year-old ancient city. Upon arriving at the east gate of Guangji Bridge, one of "China's four famous ancient bridges," he was attracted by the Han River scenery and bridge architecture: "The width of this river is just right, water brings spirituality, and the river breeze feels very comfortable."
On the piers of Guangji Bridge, numerous intangible heritage inheritors gathered, showcasing hand-pulled teapots, paper cutting, wood carving, Chao embroidery, ceramics, and drawn work. Masters including hand-pulled teapot master Lin Chaoming, paper-cutting inheritor Huang Chaoyang, and embroidery inheritor Li Xiaodan each demonstrated their skills during the live stream. When Lin Chaoming demonstrated hand-pulled teapot making, mentioning this craft has a thousand-year history with the pot body, spout, and inner chamber all hand-pulled and perfectly fitted, Zhang Chaoyang transformed into a "physics teacher," pointing at the work and explaining, "Mathematically, this is cylindrical coordinates, all circular rotations."
Walking from Guangji Bridge to Guangji Tower through the thousand-year-old ancient city with Tang and Song dynasty charm, Zhang Chaoyang exclaimed, "The preservation of traditional culture here is excellent." At the Chaozhou intangible heritage exhibition in the tower, works like the wood carving "Yilongjianghai" and Chao embroidery "Suichaoqinggong" made him pause frequently. He admitted, "What I felt most today was the craftsmanship spirit - unhurried, creating fine works, this is long-termism."
Discussing this Chaoshan journey, Zhang Chaoyang described it as "cultural time travel": "Walking through the Chaoshan region feels like traveling through the Southern and Northern Song dynasties, it's a cultural journey." In his view, Chaoshan's "craftsmanship spirit" permeates the meticulousness of all aspects from cuisine to Chao embroidery, which left a very deep impression on him: "Attention to detail is a culture, a sense of ritual."
During the live stream, he stated that Sohu.com, as a self-media platform, will continue to report and spread Chaoshan culture. Additionally, he mentioned that there are very popular Hanfu competitions on the Sohu Video platform, and Chaozhou craftsmen can create the most exquisite Hanfu of Song dynasty court quality, potentially jointly promoting the inheritance and development of traditional culture.