A single gourd vine delivers a far better publicity effect than the tens of millions of yuan in promotional expenses invested by Shaoxing's cultural and tourism authorities.
Recently, the "Grandpa Gourd" in Shaoxing has become a viral hit. The story began when an elderly man surnamed Chen grew gourds on his balcony, and the plant looked extremely similar to the gourd vine in the classic animation *Calabash Brothers*, making him an internet celebrity. A large number of netizens came to visit and check in, and the elderly man was affectionately called "Grandpa Gourd" by online users.
On September 5, due to the excessive number of tourists coming to check in, which disturbed the rest of Grandpa Chen and his wife, Grandpa Chen picked all the gourds off the vine. On September 11, in order not to disappoint the tourists who traveled a long distance to visit, Grandpa Chen hung all the gourds back on the vine. The local authority also installed guardrails on the riverside opposite Grandpa Chen's balcony, providing a safe area for tourists to take photos during their check-in visits.
Between the act of picking down and hanging back the gourds, netizens' enthusiasm for following this trending story kept surging, and Shaoxing's cultural and tourism industry also gained widespread public attention. The local cultural and tourism department released multiple public statements, introducing the story of "Grandpa Gourd" while vigorously promoting the beautiful scenery and delicious food of the ancient city of Shaoxing. The publicity effect brought by this single gourd vine is truly equivalent to tens of millions of yuan in publicity expenses that Shaoxing's cultural and tourism department would otherwise spend.
In fact, since the viral popularity of Zibo barbecue in 2023, such unexpected viral events related to cultural and tourism have almost become a normal occurrence. This summer vacation, a stall at Tianjin Happy Valley was located close to the water stunt show, so it was often splashed by water from the flying speedboats. Every time the speedboat performed, the stall staff would calmly take out umbrellas to block the splashing water, while customers who were about to scan the code to pay fled in all directions. This humorous and interesting scene quickly became a big hit on short video platforms.
People in the industry have long held two opposing views on whether such accidentally viral cultural and tourism events help shape the local cultural and tourism brand. One view holds that such events bring massive traffic that directly converts into a large number of tourist arrivals, whose effect is far better than that of the huge budget spent by cultural and tourism departments on TV commercials and billboard advertisements. The other view argues that the popularity of such events fades as quickly as it rises, the online heat is far greater than the actual driving effect on offline tourist flow, and everything in the local area will return to the original state once the popularity cools down.
Regarding these two views, Zhiku Cultural Tourism believes that we should not exaggerate the actual effect of the "massive unexpected traffic". However, in the current era where traffic is the top priority, a required course for cultural tourism enterprises and cultural tourism departments is to learn and understand the traffic rules in the short video era, and embrace new marketing methods.
First of all, it has long been a common phenomenon in the industry that cultural tourism marketing has fully shifted to platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. The vast majority of the marketing budgets of scenic spots, theme parks and hotels are invested in online platforms. Only the local cultural and tourism bureaus are still big customers of traditional marketing channels such as TV, newspapers, magazines and billboard advertisements. Online platforms not only have paid traffic placement marketing methods, but also content creation and dissemination drainage methods. There are also accidental viral effects brought by content created inadvertently by third-party tourists and bloggers. The Shaoxing gourd vine incident belongs to the latter case. This kind of accidental viral event brings huge traffic and outstanding communication effect, which actually saves a lot of marketing budget for the local area.
Such hot search viral events can also provide secondary communication opportunities for local cultural tourism projects, and even bring inspiration for project innovation. For example, in the aforementioned water-splashing stall incident at Tianjin Happy Valley, the Happy Valley later rectified the stall, added rain baffles for the stall, so that employees no longer need to hold umbrellas manually. Other parks in other regions even drew lessons from this "creative idea", and specially added sales points in the water stunt show area to create an interesting small scene.
Some people believe that the popularity of such viral events comes quickly and goes away quickly, the traffic cannot be converted into retained passenger flow, and it does not help much to the local cultural tourism economy. In fact, the prosperity of a local cultural tourism economic industrial ecosystem, just like the cask effect, is the result of mutual coordination and joint integration of all links, covering industrial planning, policy promotion, market cultivation, investment attraction, experience innovation, talent training and many other aspects. Only when these links are coordinated and unified without shortcomings, can the traffic be maximized and converted into retained passenger flow. Therefore, the problem that traffic cannot be converted into retained passenger flow is not a problem at the marketing level, and we should not deny the contribution brought by marketing for this reason.
When conditions are sufficient, traffic can be fully converted into retained passenger flow. The Mangshan Wuzhifeng Scenic Area is a typical scenic spot that achieved a turnaround relying on short video traffic, which also reflects that the traffic dividend of short videos still has significant effect on cultural tourism scenic spots.
As a scenic spot developed and completed only in 2019, Mangshan Wuzhifeng used to be a little-known obscure site among the numerous famous mountains and great rivers in China. There has long been a saying in the industry that the best mountain tourism resources in China were all developed in the 1980s and 1990s, and no new viral mountain scenic spot would emerge after that. However, such a young and underestimated mountain scenic spot completed its counterattack in only a few years. In 2025, its revenue reached as high as 190 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 64.9%, with a net profit of 84.4 million yuan, which can be called a money-making machine in the scenic spot industry. This performance surpasses most 5A-level mountain scenic spots in China.
The important breakthrough for Mangshan Wuzhifeng is short video marketing. It has established a professional short video and live streaming team, launched an incentive plan for all staff to create short videos, and regularly organizes influencers to shoot content and internet celebrities to make recommendations. The video content is very attractive, highlighting the precipitous scenery and fashionable gameplay of Mangshan Wuzhifeng, leaving a deep memory anchor for the public. In 2025, the total exposure of Mangshan Wuzhifeng on video platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu reached 1 billion times, and 70% of the tourists were attracted to visit after watching related videos online.
The case of Mangshan Wuzhifeng is not unique. Laojun Mountain in Henan is also a mountain scenic spot that rose rapidly relying on short video traffic in 2020. Its annual passenger flow was 780,000 in 2018, and it has soared to 5.5 million in 2025, all thanks to the viral short video marketing of Laojun Mountain.
Of course, the premise of "converting traffic into retained passenger flow" for Mangshan Wuzhifeng and Laojun Mountain is that the foundation of the project must be solid, there are no obvious shortcomings in products, experience and services, and the scenic spot has characteristic scenes and unique gameplay. The product is the fulcrum, and the traffic is the huge lever that leverages the surge in performance.
It can be said that the viral popularity of Shaoxing's cultural tourism brought by a single gourd vine is actually a microcosm of cultural tourism marketing in the traffic era. Cultural tourism projects can capture some small scenes with warmth, memorable points and fun in daily life, and turn them into communication content, which is likely to arouse emotional resonance in the public and leverage massive traffic. However, the long-term internal strength of product, experience and operation is still the foundation of cultural tourism projects. Only by consolidating these foundations can an occasional viral popularity become the starting point for the soaring passenger flow of the project.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhiku Cultural Tourism", the author is Zhiku Jun, and it is authorized for release by 36Kr.