关键词: 仿制景观, 形象塑造, 佛山日本街, 新媒体

Abstract:

The past two decades have seen the emergence of a great amount of simulacrascape, which reshapes China's urban space economically, socially, culturally and politically. Unfortunately, as a new genre of urban space, the simulacrascape has not attracted widespread attention from scholars. This study shed light on a micro simulacrascape – the Foshan Japan Street, to examine its rising reasons and image building under the influence of new media. Located in Dali town, Nanhai district, Foshan city, the Foshan Japan Street is a pedestrian street approximate one-hundred-meter away from Wanda Plaza, which is constructed by the Wanda group and opened in the August of 2020. This paper was based on field investigation conducted in October and December of 2020, and on web-based text data drawn from various social media platforms, such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo and Bilibili, which are very popular among the youth for online discussion and communication. This study started with clarifying the imitated elements and characteristics of the Foshan Japan Street through field investigation, followed by the discussion of reasons for the emergence of Foshan Japan Street. Secondly, this study explored the image building process of Foshan Japan Street that was influenced by new social media through analyzing web-based text data. Finally, this study concluded with the discussion of the reasons for the opposite images of the Foshan Japan Street. In sum,the study found that: (1)the imitated elements of Foshan Japan Street are inspired by the urban Streetscape from Japan and ACGN subculture, but in reality, the Foshan Japan Street has become a cultural borrowing photo hotspot, which attracts a massive amount of young people for photo taking and online tagging; (2)the capital competition and new socializing ways are the two main driving factors for the emergence of the Foshan Japan Street. In addition, the change of tourism environment influenced by the new crown pneumonia also plays an important role, as it largely promotes the clout and publicity of the Foshan Japan Street; (3) the image building of the Foshan Japan Street is influenced largely by the new media. Under the influence of new media, discussions of the Foshan Japan Street by users of social platform focused primarily on two aspects, including cultural authenticity,and plagiarism and infringement, these discussions produced coexisting positive and negative images of the Foshan Japan Street at present.

Key words: simulacrascape, image building, Foshan Japan Street, new media