On December 16th, the black comedy Mr. Donkey began to be sold at Yichang Cultural-Easy Card Online Ticketing platform.
With 400 sessions of show tour in one year, this popular comedy, known as Online Zero Bad Review, will make its Yichang debut in theatres on December 30th and 31st after the launch of Cultural-Easy Card. Residents with this kind of card will then enjoy a 50% discount directly.
Those who have a great a liking for art are attracted by its excellent work and tempting benefits. For just two days, 572 tickets have been sold.
Since its formal launch on December 1st and Online Ticketing on December 12th, Yichang Cultural-Easy Card has received 3668 registered users by the end of December 15th, and 2389 have enjoyed financial subsidies. As another important measure to benefit people culturally, this small card has promoted Yichang Cultural supply-side reform and opened the window closest to art for its residents.
High-end Performance Sold at “Cabbage Price”
Two reasons can be rated for the popularity and large audience of Mr. Donkey: one is the excellent comedy quality of itself; the other is great preferential policy. As long as people have such an “invisible” card, they can enjoy this art feast at a minimum of 30 yuan, even lower than the market price of an ordinary film. If they are local citizens, they can also enjoy government subsidies of 500 yuan, making the first high-quality performance a seeming “giveaway” as counted.
“Since the performance is good and prices are reasonable, who doesn’t want to be exposed to art constantly?” said the resident Xie Fang. She registered the Cultural-Easy Card on the Internet and purchased two diamond tickets for Mr. Donkey.
It is far from a minority for those like Xie Fang who are eager to go to the theater to experience the “Zero Distance” with fine art. However, in the past, factors such as high ticket prices, performance information transmission asymmetry kept people away from art.
The veil of art was uncovered as the Cultural-Easy Card was launched as expected. Suddenly people found that they could see the wonderful real-life staged scenery at the same price of dining out for one time or buying severalkilogram of fruit and vegetables. It was quite worthwhile！
Besides, by referring to various performance information listed on Cultural-Easy Card official WeChat public platform, Yichang residents can also choose to see whatever programs they like at any time and achieve real-time ticketing on their mobile phones. Xie Fang exclaimed, “It seems as if there had a small theater in the mobile phone, for we can buy tickets directly whatever we want to see.”
In order to further satisfy the demands of the residents, Yichang Traffic Tourism, the direct operator of Cultural-Easy Card, will launch 9 shows and altogether 22 performances in January, 2018. Residents can buy tickets one month in advance and more than 800 people have done so by far.
Cultural Supply-side Reform Based on Market Operation.
Zhu Yonghong, the director of Public Relations Department, said, “Cultural-Easy Card has opened another market, making the audiences of Peking Opera and Song and Dance Drama no longer limited to ‘insiders’ .” She also added that the launch of Cultural-Easy Card has helped to spread minority art in the market on a larger scale. This made more and more people willing to know the art and more willing to go to the theater.
But the more open the market is, the bigger challenge it means.
In the past, Yichang Municipal government allocated the cultural people-beneficial funds to the troupes directly, which weakened the latter’s marketing awareness to some extent. As a result, a series of problems cropped up such as “not being close to public life”, “emphasizing quantity but disregarding quality”, etc.
Melodious as “The Spring Snow”—a highbrow song is, it cannot be appreciated by the audience from the bottom their hearts; Pleasant to the ear as “High Mountain and Flowing Water”—one of Chinese ancient music is, it still lack an accompanist. It is difficult for the art troupe to strike a balance between “beauty” and “popularity”.
“The Cultural-Easy Card is a new attempt to integrate art and market, and it is more like a catalyst for the art troupe.” said Cheng Xiao, Chairman of the board of Yichang Traffic Tourism Group. He also added that government had changed its cultural investment pattern by granting the people-beneficial funds to the audiences to let themselves select their performances. This will not only mobilize their enthusiasm of going to the theater, but also make them the real leading power of the performance market.
Opening the market door means farewell to the history during which the cultivation of performance market all depended on “ticket delivery”. Now the audiences have the final say on the quality of those performances.
“Apart from ‘Made in Yichang’, we will also consider introducing works from other places to achieve market-driven competition.” said Cheng Xiao. He claimed that this will not only encourage the local troupes to create more popular fine works of art, but also let the common people have access to the domestic art performances and even the first-class ones in the world.
Challenge and opportunity coexist and in the troupe the reform springs up.
While busy with preparing for promotion works of “People-beneficial Performance Season”, the Song and Drama Troupe in Yichang also actively studied the audience’s taste and expedited the creation of fine programs. In the meantime, the Peking Opera Troupe has spread Beijing Opera to a larger market by expanding its influence via different forms, such as “Beijing Opera into Campus”, “Sending Beijing Opera into Countryside” and “Guoyun Grand Stage”, etc.
“Hot” Thinking behind “Cold” Launch
The planned number of the Cultural-Easy Card in its initial launch was 10,000, but the registered users are less than 4000 within 15 days after its launch. As one of people in charge of promotion, Cheng Xiao didn’t give up although the result was not so satisfied.
“It takes time to create the atmosphere of the local cultural consumption in Yichang.” He also cited examples that the initial launch of the Cultural-Easy Card had taken a back seat in big cities like Tianjin and analyzed that one of the reason why residents were slow to Cultural-Easy Card was that the overall cultural consumption didn’t take off.
Cheng Xiao thought, “Cultural products haven’t become necessities for people like rice and clothes.” To achieve this goal requires time and also proper ways to “stimulate”.
As a participant who had witnessed the circulation of Yichang Tourism Year Card developed from 12,000 pieces to the geometric growth, Cheng Xiao believed that the Cultural-Easy Card would also end up well after getting through the current difficulties.
The temporary cold shoulder the Cultural-Easy Card has suffered doesn’t mean that the cultural consumption market has cooled down. The next step of Yichang Traffic Tourism is to improve the cultural consumption market through Internet Big Data. “By pinpointing the targeted audiences via Big Data, we worked with the troupe to create performances that cater to the audience’s tastes so as to make them more willing to pay for those performances.”
It is worth mentioning that this is a new attempt to integrate the Cultural-Easy Card and Tourism Year Card for Yichang Traffic Tourism Group. By creating the brand new cultural tourism industry, we can cultivate residents’ awareness and habits concerning cultural consumption. The value of the Cultural-Easy Card not only lies in its revitalization of the performance market, but also rests on its huge additional value to help residents to fall into cultural consumption habits and create the related atmosphere.
Cheng Xiao also added, “The cultural consumption atmosphere needs to be fostered step by step. By promoting the Cultural-Easy Card through the widely accepted Tourism Year Card, the tourism industry and cultural industry can be integrated so as to make a new name card for Yichang.” （Reporter Wang Ying, correspondent Cao Mengwen）