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

摘要：

自2000年以来开始出现的大量仿制景观，从经济、社会、文化和政治方面重塑了中国的城市空间，但却没有引起学者的普遍关注。以新兴出现的微型仿制景观——佛山日本街为例，运用实地调查和话语分析方法，首先理清佛山日本街的仿制要素及其特征，以及佛山日本街的兴起原因，其次利用社交平台的文本数据分析新媒体影响下佛山日本街的形象塑造，进而探讨佛山日本街不同形象的产生根源。研究发现，佛山日本街的仿制要素虽受到日本城市街道形态以及ACGN亚文化的启发，但本质上是一种文化借用式的网红打卡地；资本竞争和新型社交方式是佛山日本街兴起的主要动力要素，而新冠肺炎疫情影响下的旅游环境变化进一步刺激和提升了佛山日本街的打卡热度和知名度；在新媒体的影响下，社交平台用户对佛山日本街的讨论主要聚焦于文化原真性和抄袭侵权两个方面，导致其塑造的形象正面、负面并存。

关键词: 仿制景观, 形象塑造, 佛山日本街, 新媒体