From Traditional Culture to Lifestyle - A Case Study on Local Specialties in the Lingnan Area

Abstract

Local specialties or souvenirs are called ‘shouxin’ in the Lingnan area. Through market research on a number of shouxin enterprises in Zhuhai, this thesis contrasts different products of the same type investigated with multi-dimensional analysis, and summarizes the features and benefits of the various products. Referring to theories and experience of cultural innovation in Taiwan especially the design context “building a brand on the basis of culture and using it in daily life in the form of a specific product”, it proposes that souvenir enterprises in Zhuhai could take humanity as the core of its creative design and culture as the basis. It constructs a development strategy and framework of creative design for local shouxin enterprises in Zhuhai.

1 Introduction

From Taiwan, shouxin can be a small gift and doesn’t have to be expensive. And it is mostly used in occasions when you meet someone for the first time or see a relative, a friend, a colleague or a teacher again after a long separation. The word shouxin is widely used throughout Lingnan in areas such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Hong Kong and Macau, and it represent culture and lifestyle in the region. Shouxin becomes one of the important carriers of the local lifestyle with high endemicity, strong cultural features, ease of use, accessibility and affordable.

It’s quite clear that an essential difference exists between shouxin and souvenirs. On one hand, a souvenir is set commemorating as its core concept, its product categories are usually crafts and daily necessities. Bought on journey, souvenirs definitely represent certain aspects of the tourist spot and serve its value in a specific limited of time. The word “cultural and creative product” can also explain it. If only from literally, it is designed based on culture combined with originality as its core concept. It covers a wider range involving more content centering on any crafts and daily necessities which can be redesigned and sold depending on local culture. On the other hand, shouxin refers mostly to food products, but includes more than local specialties. While in this thesis, shouxin refers to an extended scope of objects including many souvenirs and cultural creative products.

2 Classification and Characteristics of Shouxin Products in Zhuhai

Being endowed with a broader meaning in modern society, shouxin products have grown to include crafts as well as more and more other products besides food items. From 2015 to 2017, in order to boost tourism, promote local culture and make the local characteristics prominent, Zhuhai selected a total of 22 products as the representative shouxin for the city, including four food items, four crafts and fourteen daily commodities. Most of the selected products are easy to carry and affordable, but not all of them are highly endemic with strong cultural characteristics, some of them don’t even have such characteristics at all. Therefore, some of these products have been “shouxinized”. Great design plays a vital role in making them local representative shouxin products by focusing on cultural creativity development to effectively improve the shouxin characteristics and its cultural value.

Nine pieces of the products were selected for our market research to gain further insight into shouxin enterprises, their representative products and design features for organizing targeted design thoughts. Including three of food, three of crafts and three of daily commodities, the nine pieces’ characteristics, selling points and design feature of the nine pieces were analyzed and concluded as Table 1 below.

Table 1. Advantages and disadvantages of different products

As a coastal city, Zhuhai is known as “City of a Hundred Islands”, seafood is the main aquatic product of Zhuhai where seafood souvenir is also a market that many food enterprises actively explore. The products provided by the three enterprises include ready-to-eat seafood (Fig. 1), frozen seafood (Fig. 2) and Duck Feet Wraps which are included into intangible heritage (Fig. 3). These three items are highly endemic with favorable market prospect and good reputation score, well accepted by retailers and consumers. However, disadvantages are also obvious especially poor design. The package forms and design are still following those from more than ten years ago, the graphics and texts of the packages are not seriously designed but casually processed with grafting of photos. Besides, the attributes of the food are not well considered in package color selection, and the unappealing colors can’t bring strong visual identity.

Fig. 1.

Conghai aquatic product

Fig. 2.

Zhenzhi seafood

Fig. 3.

Duck feet wraps

Crafts are one of the essential shouxin categories. One of the selected crafts is a Craved Glass Plate (Fig. 4), which features special multi-layer glass carving craft and the graphic design of the plate. The second is Tin Tea Canister (Fig. 5), of which the main selling point is physical attributes of the metal such as good sealing and sterilizing functions, as well as the graphic design and carving of the body. The third is a miniature metal model of Amussium Theater, a new landmark building of Zhuhai (Fig. 6), mainly for display with major selling point of local representative shape. All the three products are easy to carry and affordable, but weak in representing culture of Chinese traditional crafts. What’s more, they can’t represent the characteristics and heritage of the local endemic crafts.

Fig. 4.

Carved glass plate

Fig. 5.

Tin tea canister

Fig. 6.

Miniature model

Compared with the two categories above, daily commodities cover a wider range and involve more products. All the three selected products, a wine bottle opener (Fig. 7), a pocket umbrella (Fig. 8) and a ceramic telescope (Fig. 9) are easy to carry and affordable. The wine bottle opener is one of a product series based on wine culture. Under the design and development idea of products related to wine tasting, this product series has relatively integrated logic of design with distinct design appearance and features. The pocket umbrella is designed and marketed around the selling point of its hand-freeing handle design, but it’s rather weak in cultural representativeness and endemicity. Featured by its body of ceramic material, the ceramic telescope bears cultural value in the form of “ink painting outlined in gold”.

Fig. 7.

Bottle opener

Fig. 8.

Pocket umbrella

Fig. 9.

Ceramic telescope (Color figure online)

The different products above have different characteristic in package, product and technology design, and design concept. How to construct idea and models of creative design products for a certain category is the key question for the following discussion.

3 Analysis on Shouxin Products Under the Idea of “Building a Brand on the Basis of Culture and Using it in Daily Life in the Form of a Specific Product”

Professor Rung-Tai Lin of National Taiwan University of Arts proposed the business model “building a brand on the basis of culture and using it in daily life in the form of a specific product” [1] for the cultural creative industry of Taiwan. This model guides well the development of products, design, packaging and brand building analyzed in this thesis. The three products of the daily commodity category are selected and analyzed for establishing design idea and a model for this category.

“On the basis of culture” means that the product design (shape, pattern, color, structure, use, etc.) shall be originated from culture instead of pure imagination or casual transplantation. “In the form of a specific product” means various forms and shapes originated from culture should be used for product design. “Using in daily life” means the products experienced the previous two processes should be used and accepted in various life styles. “Building a brand” means the product design rooted in culture will certainly be accepted by market and build great brand image. The four processes are closely related to each other step by step in logic and can well guide shouxin products design.

Being one of numerous product lines, the Swan Bottle Opener (Figs. 10 and 11) catches one’s eye by its appearance. Based on the outline of two swans face to face, it reserves lines which can best describe as having a swan appearance with high visual tension by segmenting the original lines. However, no cultural origin can be found in such aspects as its color, structure and use method when exploring the cultural source. Consumers won’t feel or experience endemicity and cultural characteristics when they buy and use these products, which in turn can barely be regarded as shouxin, but rather as an average commodity. The manufacturer of these products cannot be seen as a shouxin enterprise with brand benefit or firm corporate culture and market recognition.

Fig. 10.

Swan bottle opener

Fig. 11.

Details of the bottle opener

The most attractive feature of the pocket umbrella is the modification of the normal umbrella handle (Figs. 12 and 13). The handle is the only sector of the umbrella in contact with people’s hand when an umbrella is opened. [2] Fully understanding umbrella’s restriction of people’s hands during use, the designer considers it necessary to redesign the handle to relieve fatigue from holding umbrella during long use. However, only the handle, not the entire umbrella, is redesigned, and no trace of cultural origin or ergonomics has been added. The clamping of the handle with clothes does help when hands are not free, but the size of the handle is clearly not enough when held by hand. The design catches one but loses another in the lack of further optimization of the shape and material, resulting in an uncomfortable holding experience. As to the umbrella cover which takes up the largest area, it doesn’t represent the local culture or endemicity of Zhuhai because of no further design or conception on the color, pattern and material. Thus, there is still much left for improvement on the way of enhancing culture transmission through shouxin, which we can call it ‘souvenirizing’.

Fig. 12.

Handle design details 1

Fig. 13.

Handle design details 2

Compared with the umbrella, the Ceramic Telescope has an even narrower application range and more limitation for users. It’s classified as artware by its material and daily commodity by its usability. The telescope has a simple shape consisting of several cylindrical parts in different diameters. Its two ends are made of metal material and the body part of ceramic (Figs. 14 and 15). In respect of “on the basis of culture”, traditional cultural elements can hardly be found from its shape but can be found some in the graphic pattern. An endangered Chinese traditional technique “ink painting outlined in gold” originated in the Qing Dynasty is adopted on the body surface and pattern of the telescope. The figures and patterns include iconic subjects of Zhuhai, traditional figures or landscape, or reproductions of famous Chinese painting works. This product expresses local culture and endemicity to some extent with an affordable price. However, there isn’t much value added through “using in daily life” because of its limited audience, which also limits its ability in “building a brand”.

Fig. 14.

Ceramic telescope (Color figure online)

Fig. 15.

Ceramic telescope set (Color figure online)

Culture is a complex combination of value, taste and life style [1]. From design of the three shouxin products above, we see an inability to deliver cultural identity to consumers and designs which stay on a rather primary level. The creative design of shouxin products can be divided into three levels: outer (appearance) level focusing on color, texture, shape, pattern and etc., middle (behavior) level focusing on operability, safety, convenience and constitutive property, and the inner (psychology) level focusing on story, emotion, special meaning and culture [3]. It is evident that the three products remain on the outer level, as it pays much attention on primary design of color, shape and pattern, but little attention on constitutive property and operability, even none on story, emotion or culture.

A 3-dimensional model of consumer, market and provider is shown as below (Fig. 16) for the needs for product design.

Fig. 16.

Schematic diagram of the 3D model

In the diagram above, “functionality” refers to the most primary demand of consumers about whether it’s practical. “Appearance” refers to shape, form and so on, reflecting further demand from consumers and market. Meaning personalization and differentiation, “model” is the demand at an even higher level. And “emotion” means being designed in emotional and experience-oriented way. Design reflects life taste, creativity represents acceptance based on affection, [3] which are the highest of consumers and the market. Building a brand will be well-reasoned if a provider or the designer can pay close attention to these demands.

It can be seen from the graph above that needs of consumers and market change gradually. The consumers develop their wants from survival needs at the primary level to experiencing and aesthetic needs at the top, while the market’s needs change from passive acceptance to initiative choice of cultural consumption. Accordingly, the provider is supposed to attach importance on creative design and develop from the primary stage of focusing on functionality and appearance to the higher levels of differentiation and emotion. The core value of design is the integration of art, culture and technology to solve social problems and redefine life style. [1] The function diagram shows the market, consumers and enterprises’ wants and choices at different stages considering. If enterprise is unable to keep pace with the two other factors, it is up against unfavorable situation of being replaced by an alternative provider at the whims of either the market or consumers.

Designers are supposed to consistently think about all the matters in the consideration of enterprises, market and consumption factors. The model in the diagram guides significantly both cultural creative products and the generalized conception of shouxin mentioned above. Not only crafts and daily necessities, but also food package designs are expected to highlight aesthetic demand and cultural selection, supply products and package with emotional sense of belonging for consumers in addition to catching their eyes and arousing a psychological response. Therefore, this model is ideal as a framework for designing shouxin. The detailed thoughts and application method within the framework will be analyzed and discussed more.

4 Conclusion

Shouxin represents reminiscence, endemicity and local culture. Shouxin is not supposed to be created because it should be native-born and rooted in the culture. We don’t deny that more and more enterprises have realized the market demand and “shouxinized” their products, or that governments put shouxin labels on some products for the development of local tourism and creative industries. However, in an age in which economy has evolved gradually from agricultural, to industrial, to a service dominated economy and now finally to the current experiential economy, consumers’ pursuit for “high technology” has transitioned to the taste for “superior experience”. [1] It’s time for our enterprises and designers to in turn transition their practice from designing for OEM and manufacture to independent brand and aesthetic experience creation, complying with the times and market development [4].