The second season of Zhejiang Television's cultural reality show "The Shape of 
Culture" has impressed global audiences with intriguing world heritage tales 
and stories. The "youth troupe" led by Shan Jixiang, director of China Cultural 
Relics Academy who served as the curator of the Palace Museum in Beijing 
between 2012 and 2019, has journeyed 11 destinations in the first 11 episodes 
of Season 2, with a keen focus on the heritage values and continuation of 
Chinese civilization and intermingling of global cultures. The 12th episode 
will be aired on March 6, sharing the heritage tales of the Beijing Central 
Axis, the best-preserved core area of the old city of Beijing and best 
embodiment of the Chinese urban construction idea of "respecting the middle."

"Along the journey, our strongest feeling is that once we recognize the great 
charm of the cultural heritage around us, everyone will feel a sense of 
happiness from the bottom of our hearts, evoked by nostalgia, and some inspired 
by pride," said Shan. "I have a wish to integrate world heritage into the 
modern life of Chinese people, to make more young people fall in love with 
traditional Chinese culture and bring China's world heritage to the world in a 
vivid, cultural attitude." 

Following the huge success of season one, the show has elevated the creative 
concept and narrative logic, presenting more in-depth, structured answers to 
the three key questions: What is world heritage? Why is it world heritage? What 
can world heritage do?

In terms of selecting the heritage sites, this season has especially emphasized 
diversity, featuring a wider range that not only includes archaeological sites 
like Yin Xu but also natural and cultural sites like Mount Wuyi, highlighting a 
distinct down to earth style of youthful spirit, artistry and critical 
thinking, which all together has endowed the show with a wider, deeper 
perspective in time and space. The "youth troupe" also participated in the 
story and planning meetings of the second season, expressing their personal 
understandings of the world heritage sites.

The new season also optimizes the content structure to improve content 
richness: each episode opens with a suspension or curious fact, using 
personified expression to have the treasures "talk" about the legends and 
historical tales, by documenting the lively moments of modern city life, 
recording 24 hours of real life scenes around the heritage sites, through a 
history chatroom that virtually asks the historic figures to tell the stories, 
or using heritage big data to highlight the uniqueness of Chinese heritage in a 
global perspective.

The program, aiming at to awaken the culture of World Heritage sites, combines 
technology, aesthetics of traditional clothing, music, peotry and mock dialogue 
with ancient people to enrich and explore the extradinary way of culture 
presentation. In the show, audience are able to watch the tradtional clothing 
fasion show, enjoy themselves at concerts of traditional music, and join the 
poetry session in the midnights through the lens.

Visually, the film language of the new season not only emphasizes "beauty," but 
different ways to interpret the various kinds of beauty. To achieve this goal, 
the production team used the meticulous design of the camera angles as part of 
an integrated system that converges sound, lighting, graphics, style and copy. 
Through stage performance, theater interpretation and modern art, the show has 
deconstructed Chinese aesthetics to inspire the public's perception of the 
beauty of China.

Source: Zhejiang Television

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   Caption: “The Shape of Culture” Season 2 Wraps Up Premiere with Last Episode 
to Air on March 6.