Can "Grandpa Dante" coming to China save China's scenic spots from the "scarcity of top-popularity NPCs"?
On October 18, "Grandpa Dante" finally arrived in China. This Italian performance artist officially announced that he would hold a short-term residency performance at Henan Wansui Mountain Scenic Area, which instantly sparked a public outcry.
The "Grandpa Dante" whose real name is Marco has been playing Dante at the entrance of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy for more than 26 years. Whenever a tourist drops a coin into his small wooden box, he will give a warm hug in return, which makes him quite well-known locally.
Such an interesting performance artist was discovered by Chinese tourists exploring the world, and then the name "Grandpa Dante" became a hit across China. He has not only become a must-check-in NPC for Chinese tourists traveling to the local area, but also jumped to become a top overseas NPC, known by Chinese tourists as the "Italian soft landing visa". This visit of "Grandpa Dante" to China also makes Wansui Mountain the first scenic spot in China that boldly goes overseas to grab top-tier NPCs.
Interestingly, not long ago, another popular internet-famous scenic spot in China, Situ Ancient Town, grandly announced that it would invest 30 million yuan to recruit excellent NPC actors across the country.
One goes overseas to grab top-tier NPCs, the other competes for high-quality NPCs domestically.
If we connect these two incidents, we can spot a trend: the fierce involution of NPCs in Chinese scenic spots is further intensifying. The deep-seated reason behind this involution is the uncontrollable "top-tier NPC shortage" plaguing Chinese scenic spots.
01
Although the NPC industry in Chinese scenic spots has only boomed for a few years, this track has long been a red ocean with three obvious rounds of involution escalation.
The first stage: Top-tier NPCs are created by scenic spots themselves. The first generation of top-tier NPCs in Chinese scenic spots are strongly bound to the scenic spots. Most of them are employees of the scenic spots, and some have even worked there for many years. The most representative ones are "Non-Falling Girl" Pi Ka Chen from Datang Never Sleeps City, Aunt Wang from Wansui Mountain, and Snow Cake Monkey from Changchun Zoological and Botanical Garden.
These first-generation top-tier NPCs are nurtured step by step by the scenic spots from scratch. Take Snow Cake Monkey as an example. When he first became popular in Changchun in early 2024, the scenic spot did not rush to cash in on his traffic dividends. Instead, it gave the actor Wang Tiezhu greater development space and preferential benefits: not only arranging for him to move into the local talent apartment, but also helping his mother open a grilled sausage stall in the scenic spot, and even making him the local cultural tourism ambassador to provide him with more performance opportunities, especially supporting him to participate in hit variety shows like Beyond the Edge to polish his performing skills and accumulate public reputation.
With the unremitting cultivation of the scenic spot, the fame of Snow Cake Monkey spread from Changchun to the entire Northeast region, and this year it became popular across the country, becoming a well-deserved top-tier NPC in Chinese scenic spots.
The second stage: Out-of-fame celebrities achieve "NPC re-employment". Some scenic spots found during the process of cultivating NPCs that since popularity is one of the core competitiveness of scenic spot NPCs, why not simply invite already famous film and television stars to act as NPCs?
Top A-list film and television stars are unaffordable, but there are plenty of out-of-fame stars of B, C, D, E and F tiers in the entertainment industry. In recent years, the film and television industry has been in a downturn. After scenic spots extended olive branches to some of these out-of-fame film and television stars, they readily agreed unexpectedly.
The most well-known ones are veteran stars such as Kou Zhenhai who played "Yiping's father", Zheng Guolin who played "Emperor Taizong of Tang", and Ma Jingtao known as "Roar Brother", who brought unexpected huge online and offline traffic to the scenic spots.
These out-of-fame stars playing scenic spot NPCs are a form of "dimensionality reduction strike". They themselves have strong performing skills and professional qualities, and no matter their level of fame, they come with built-in topic attributes and even their own fan bases. Scenic spots can reap considerable online and offline traffic without paying too much cultivation cost, which is obviously a win-win choice.
As a result, we see that domestic scenic spots began to compete frantically for out-of-fame celebrity resources, and even small stars and minor actors were targeted in the end. Actors of the 18th tier such as Shi Yuanting and Chen Ming have grandly entered scenic spots to work as NPCs, realizing a win-win situation for both the scenic spots and these stars for a time.
The third stage: Involution intensifies, and scenic spots go overseas to compete for NPCs. When all scenic spots are still competing for NPCs domestically, Wansui Mountain once again leads the trend and directly goes overseas to grab NPCs.
There was a piece of news a few days ago that a Chinese tourist traveled thousands of miles to Italy to interact with "Grandpa Dante", but when she arrived in Florence, "Grandpa Dante" had already landed in Kaifeng, which was a rather ironic and funny situation.
Wansui Mountain's strategy of going overseas to grab NPCs focuses on "surprise" and "strong contrast". It is not only a successful marketing plan in itself, but also raises the involution of NPCs in Chinese scenic spots to a new level.
In fact, Wansui Mountain has long planned to go overseas to grab NPCs. According to the approval document for foreign-related commercial performances issued by the Henan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, Wansui Mountain has introduced multiple batches of foreign actors this year. Other scenic spots that introduce foreign actors only make small moves, but anyone who has been to Wansui Mountain knows that there are really a large number of foreign actors in the scenic spot. These new foreign faces perform frequently and interact actively. As long as one of them becomes popular, the scenic spot will make huge profits.
02
Some people may wonder, it's just NPCs, do scenic spots have to compete so fiercely?
They absolutely do. Essentially, scenic spot NPCs are fast-consuming heavy assets with fast depreciation and slow production speed. At the end of the day, this is a traffic-driven business.
Every NPC, no matter how famous they are, has a shelf life. As the industry involution intensifies, the shelf life of scenic spot NPCs is visibly shortening.
A major feature of scenic spot NPCs is the actor's in-depth shaping and ultimate restoration of a certain role. To interpret this NPC vividly enough, the actor must be highly focused and devote all their efforts to the role. The advantage of this approach is that once the actor grasps the essence of the character and performs it properly, the NPC can quickly win the public's affection, become widely popular and achieve huge success.
But this is a double-edged sword. The long-term fixed image and style of the NPC are not only very easy to be imitated, but also, in the face of tourists with changeable aesthetic preferences, once aesthetic fatigue sets in, the "death" of the NPC can happen in an instant.
Pi Ka Chen is a typical case. Back then, Pi Ka Chen made the "Non-Falling Girl" NPC role a huge hit. At that time, every smile and frown of hers was stunning, captivating thousands of tourists, and winning hundreds of millions of likes and attention across the entire internet. Now there are countless "Non-Falling Girl" NPCs prettier than Pi Ka Chen, and a huge number of "Non-Falling Girl" NPCs with more exquisite skills than her. However, the "Non-Falling Girl", who was once a top-tier scenic spot NPC, has now been reduced to a standard NPC in almost all scenic spots.
It only took a few years from being a top-tier NPC to becoming a standard configuration. On one hand, top-tier scenic spot NPCs are depreciating at an accelerated pace, while on the other hand, the speed at which scenic spots can produce top-tier NPCs cannot be increased at all.
It takes an extremely long time for a scenic spot to cultivate a top-tier NPC from scratch. After Snow Cake Monkey, Changchun Zoological and Botanical Garden created the new popular NPC "Tang Sanzang"; after Aunt Wang, Wansui Mountain also has new popular NPCs such as Granny Lyu; Heshou Old Street has the new popular NPC "Li Bai"; Hengdian World Studios has the new popular NPC "Ruhua"...
Frankly speaking, the new popular scenic spot NPCs that have emerged in the past two years are at most second or third tier in terms of influence and popularity, and there are no top-tier NPCs comparable to Aunt Wang and Snow Cake Monkey anymore.
The real problem facing Chinese scenic spots now is that there is no shortage of ordinary NPCs, but a lack of top-tier NPCs. Chinese scenic spots simply cannot wait to cultivate top-tier NPCs on their own, which has led the entire scenic spot industry to fall into a collective "top-tier NPC shortage".
This also explains why Chinese scenic spots rack their brains to find out-of-fame celebrities, and even go overseas to grab top-tier NPCs. Competing for NPCs does not guarantee that scenic spots will thrive; but not competing for NPCs will definitely lead to the demise of the scenic spots.
03
In the next two years, Chinese scenic spots will inevitably enter a more brutal "NPC grabbing war". A number of scenic spots represented by Wansui Mountain will accelerate the development of more NPC channels, and overseas NPCs will become a key direction for competition.
In the future, we may see more foreign top-tier NPC faces in Chinese scenic spots, aiming to allow Chinese people to interact face-to-face with overseas top-tier NPCs without going abroad.
A number of internet-famous scenic spots represented by Situ Ancient Town will accelerate the pace of competing for high-quality NPC resources domestically. Not long ago, Shi Yuanting left Changchun Zoological and Botanical Garden to guest star at Situ Ancient Town for a few days, and the news about his job change spread everywhere. Although the official later refuted the rumor, it is foreseeable that a large number of scenic spot NPCs will change jobs in the future.
Head scenic spots have sufficient funds and resources, so what should the small and medium-sized scenic spots do in the NPC economy?
On one hand, small and medium-sized scenic spots will invite top-tier NPCs to hold short-term guest performances to attract tourists and enhance their reputation. On the other hand, small and medium-sized scenic spots will poach talents from each other, and many locally well-known NPCs will be scrambled for by scenic spots in the region.
Some industry insiders also worry that if all scenic spots "only want to pick peaches instead of planting trees", will no scenic spots be willing to spend time, effort and money to cultivate NPCs in the future? It can only be said that Chinese scenic spots will still attach importance to NPC cultivation, but they will definitely not nurture new top-tier NPCs step by step like they did for the first generation of top-tier NPCs.
In the future, the scenic spot NPC industry may move closer to the actor industry, placing more emphasis on the innate qualifications of actors, relying more on the personal endowments of actors, and competing more on capital and resource investment. The threshold for scenic spot NPCs will gradually rise, and this industry will no longer be a field that ordinary people can enter casually.
Back to "Grandpa Dante". He stood in Florence for 26 years before he finally became a top-tier NPC. However, what Chinese scenic spots are willing to give him is only a one-week itinerary. Chinese scenic spots simply cannot wait 26 years for an NPC to grow. "Grandpa Dante" cannot ultimately solve the "top-tier NPC shortage" of Chinese scenic spots.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Jinlv", written by Chen Jie tigereat, and authorized for release by 36Kr.