Imagine ancient Cantonese architecture—think green brick, black tile, Qilou arcades, and Xiguan mansions—leaping across time and space into the bustling streets of Bianliang in the Northern Song Dynasty, the setting of Call Me Big Boss. It's a fresh, trendy take on the cultural beauty of Guangzhou, the 'Millennial Business Capital.'
Recently, the official WeChat video account of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee Propaganda Department released a video highlighting that Guangzhou boasts approximately 3,000 game companies. In 2022, the city's game industry revenue neared 100 billion yuan, ranking second nationwide. Established in 2011, #37 Interactive Entertainment stands as a representative of Guangzhou's cultural and entertainment enterprises, actively exploring the fusion of 'culture + technology' to promote outstanding traditional culture. The video showcases the collaboration between A-share game company 37 Interactive Entertainment's Call Me Big Boss and Cantonese culture. Guided by Guangzhou's cultural industry management authorities, 37 Interactive Entertainment, focusing on 'culture + technology,' launched a Cantonese cultural exploration journey within the ancient-style simulation management game Call Me Big Boss, inviting users across the internet to experience the charm of Cantonese culture. The activity aims to realize the creative transformation and innovative development of outstanding Chinese traditional culture through cross-border collaboration, creating a cultural innovation landmark for the city.Travel Through Time Experience the Charm of Cantonese Culture in Call Me Big Boss
Guangzhou, with over two thousand years of history, is the heartland and birthplace of Cantonese culture. Throughout this long history, Cantonese culture has nurtured the urban roots of Guangzhou, the millennial business capital, with its spirit of innovation and pragmatism.
To introduce this traditional culture with thousands of years of history to more young people, the Guangzhou Cultural Center, Guangzhou Museum, Guangdong Folk Arts Museum, Guangzhou Cantonese Opera Theater, and Guangdong Music and Quyi Troupe jointly collaborated with 37 Interactive Entertainment to embed diverse Cantonese cultural elements into Call Me Big Boss. This approach aims to activate the vitality of Cantonese culture and seek 'resonance' with young people through more innovative and interactive methods. It’s really cool to see these institutions working together!
Call Me Big Boss uses the 'Song Dynasty commercial culture' as its overall story background and the Along the River During the Qingming Festival as a blueprint for scene design, allowing users to experience the essence of Song Dynasty culture by participating in urban business activities.
In this collaboration, Cantonese characteristic street scenes such as the Five Rams statue, Qilou buildings, lion dances, and dragon boats are placed throughout the streets of Bianliang, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, in Call Me Big Boss. The heavy ink wash painting style gives them a unique charm. Taking a stroll here allows you to experience all the classic attractions originally scattered throughout Guangzhou in one go. "On the streets, we also set up some Cantonese cultural Easter eggs, and these surprises are waiting for users to explore and discover by themselves," said the relevant person in charge of Call Me Big Boss. "We hope that users here can not only see but also actively participate and experience the fun brought by Cantonese culture."
It is reported that to enable more people to deeply understand the characteristic culture of Canton, Call Me Big Boss has also launched a Cantonese culture popular science interactive column for nearly half a year, telling the characteristics of Cantonese, intangible cultural heritage, and food culture. In addition, large-scale offline linkage activities are also actively being planned. "Culture" + "Technology" Let Young People Become "Die-hard Fans" of Traditional Culture As a successful attempt at the creative transformation and innovative exploration of Cantonese culture, the linkage between Call Me Big Boss and Cantonese culture aims to interpret traditional culture with modern thinking, thereby encouraging more young people to participate in the inheritance and dissemination of traditional culture. As one of the first national historical and cultural cities, Guangzhou has always taken innovation as its background color, solidly promoted the construction of a strong cultural city, and interpreted profound culture with fashionable technology. In recent years, Guangzhou has also produced a batch of high-quality cultural products that can resonate with young people. The release of the Cantonese opera movie The Legend of the White Snake·Love promoted the modern expression of traditional drama and triggered "cross-circle" communication; the launch of Guangzhou's first meta-universe intangible cultural heritage camp unlocked new ways to disseminate intangible cultural heritage, allowing users to experience the fun of intangible cultural heritage culture without leaving home; the debut of the world's first lion dance robot with human-machine integrated operation technology made Guangdong lion dance younger and younger; the combination of Guangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Block (Beijing Road) and the meta-universe presented Guangzhou's "most Cantonese" side to guests from all over the world in a new way.
With a series of innovations, the above-mentioned cultural works have won the love of a wide range of users. According to incomplete statistics, the movie The Legend of the White Snake·Love broke the box office record of Chinese film history opera movies in less than 20 days after its release; the topic of "Intangible Cultural Heritage Guangzhou Red" has more than 140 million views on Weibo; the Baidu search volume related to "Lion Dance Robot" exceeded 1.21 million.
Through the integration of "culture" and "technology," elements with deep Cantonese cultural imprints have come to life. These new works and new forms of expression that stimulate cultural innovation with digital technology have also allowed people to see the diversity of Guangzhou culture and promote the emergence of new highlights in Guangzhou's comprehensive cultural strength.
Adhere to Innovative Development and Create an Innovative City Cultural Business Card
In recent years, Guangzhou has been continuously deepening the concept of "culture +," encouraging all sectors of society to revitalize and utilize cultural resources such as artworks, cultural relics, and intangible cultural heritage, and develop cultural and creative products, and innovate the development and communication model of traditional Lingnan folk crafts.
Under the guidance of "culture + technology," Guangzhou's cultural enterprises have also taken advantage of the trend, with emerging cultural formats such as digital content, animation games, and digital publishing experiencing traffic growth, and a large number of outstanding cultural technology enterprises have emerged, providing new impetus and new engines for the high-quality development of Guangzhou's cultural industry.
In recent years, 37 Interactive Entertainment has actively responded to the goal of building a strong cultural city in Guangzhou, using a "technology + culture" integration model to spread the excellent traditional culture of South Guangdong. "The company's original intention is to inherit the excellent traditional Chinese culture. We have also been exploring innovation in cultural forms of expression. This linkage is a very good new attempt. We hope to use this method to make the dissemination of traditional culture more three-dimensional and more trendy, so that more young people can understand and like these excellent Chinese cultures," said the relevant person in charge of 37 Interactive Entertainment. The "Intangible Cultural Heritage Meta-Universe Camp," which attracted widespread local attention last year, was technically supported by the company. In addition, 37 Interactive Entertainment also uses the company's digital products to bring more and more products with Chinese cultural characteristics overseas, telling Chinese cultural stories to global users.
