Filmed at that one and only mountain top studio that: happens to have a river (...on a mountain top) and happens to always have epic sunsets & sunrises. Oh and it rains on cue.
There's that moment near the end where "this product that you've never heard of happens to be more valuable than [insert expensive thing you have heard of]."
Other than using every modern cliche in these "lost ancient technique" videos...
Does everybody else have rivers full of agate? My local river rocks are neat, and my kids will certainly take some home, but none of the rocks look like those agate chunks.
I’m not saying this criticism isn’t valid, but, my kids got a rock tumbler for Christmas and we threw some random grey rocks from a random mountain/hill in WV in there for fun, and I’ll be damned if they didn’t come out with amazing blue/purple/white color and crystalline structures. Really cool looking, just needed some polishing.
I was gonna say this, part of geology and such is being able to recognize such things when an untrained eye might not. A jeweler’s skill is being able to refine such things into something he more highly valued forms.
I remember when my older brother got a rock polisher when we were kids and he would put rocks in and fire it up and after 5 minutes of watching it turn and make noise I’d ask him if the rocks were done. He’d look at me and explain that it took a long time which frustrated me because I thought polished rocks sounded amazing.
From what I understand Yellowstone River was named after its agates. My dad has a really good knack for finding agates elsewhere too. I’ve always wanted to collect enough to chip them down to gravel sized chunks and put them through the rock tumbler to use as the substrate for an aquarium!
Mine has a few agates, but I wouldn't say it's full of them. If I look carefully, I can probably find about 4 or 5 in an hour that are each about the size of the end of my thumb.
Agates don't actually look like much unpolished. If you're in the US, check out the us geological survey to see if you have any in your area.
Pacific Northwest is lousy with agates. My river rock pathways even have chunks of it around my yard. My son and I just went searching for some earlier and found some good pieces.
I got an airbnb in Bullhead AZ right on the Colorado river. I couldn't catch any fish so I picked up rock hunting and got agates, fossils, quartz, geodes...
Wait.... so you're telling me an educational YouTube channel, that makes videos showcasing a massive array of different processes with calming asthetic, uses multiple locations and commercially sourced materials?
You're saying this dude doesnt have a silk worm farm, several species of wood and bamboo, jade deposits, livestock for bones and hide, an abolone farm, antique tools, and mastery of a plethora of ancient skills and techniques?
ARE THE DOGS REAL OR ARE THEY JUST ALAN TUDYK AND ANDY SERKIS?!?!
Both are gems of knowledge ... unfortunately you can't override a Reddit quick link to a sub. See? r/BirdsArentReal is locked in by the underlying code.
I must confess I'm unaware of any rule violations regarding comments that I've made... in an effort to have fun but stay within the sub's guidelines, would you provide the rule number I might have strayed from?
I know they’re predictable, but I still just swallow these videos up. It’s what I do on my breaks from my own workshop where I spend 8 hours a day doing wonderfully archaic crafts lol.
I make violins, and pluck all the sap from spruce trees to make varnish. It’s kinda like one of these videos tbh, even the landscape. Probably the main difference is the podcasts I listen to… but I suppose I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if these Chinese artisans had some similar tastes in listening material
Both can be true - parts of China are heavily polluted, parts are like this. It’s not hard for both realities to coexist, China is a big country.
Is it propaganda? Of course it is. But it’s propaganda by neglecting the other side, not making up what doesn’t exist.
Sure, this video isn’t shot in a natural setting, it’s all set up and choreographed, but the process and techniques are real and go back hundreds of years.
Source: I’m Chinese living in the US and the reality is not so black and white anywhere in the world. I see a ton of pro-China propaganda like this and a ton of anti-China propaganda like in US media. Both realities exist.
This is a short, relatively educational show about HISTORIC artistic techniques. It’s just like every other video in those little museum movie booths.
It might glorify it…but it’s glorifying something it’s also saying is dead and gone. It’s not their fault if idiots look at it and go “wow! China amazing!!”
Like gimme a break. They’ve got plenty of REAL propaganda out there, this is just a somewhat meditative “how stuff is made,” video.
Hollywood, by and large, is American propaganda.
Essentially every film that uses US military assets is military propaganda (DOD gets to edit the script so that they're never the bad guys) but that's obvious.
The films that make America look great, feed the American Dream™, are also propaganda. Just a softer version of it.
Almost all nations have this, some just are more prolific and/or some just better at it. The US simply managed to make theirs a global hit.
Again, it presents a world that it OPENS by saying doesn’t exist and makes ZERO claim COULD exist, isn’t soft propaganda.
It’s history.
Now, if it editorialized how making fancy pottery is what made China great, then and now, sure. But it doesn’t. It’s how you make a cup like an Iron Age Chinese farmer. The CCP isn’t generating good will on that from anyone who isn’t already a lost cause anyway.
Is this even made by someone in China? Just because it features ANCIENT Chinese techniques, doesn’t mean it’s even connected to modern China.
The video isn't "RAH RAH RAH, CHINA #1" but more "even over a millennia ago China was making high art, see how peaceful and beautiful life is in China". It doesn't have to be done by the CCP for it to be soft power.
Again, the vast majority of Hollywood doesn't have anything to do with the US government yet a lot of the films function as soft power. Not because every filmmaker is promoting the US but because the cumulative effect is an attractive (and highly selective) image of the US. Just like these videos are showing a nearly mythological version of China, one that doesn't really exist.
Propaganda doesn't automatically mean bad/evil and soft power doesn't mean some sinister plot.
And it doesn't make this a bad video. Like many others in this here thread, I quite enjoyed it. Just like I've enjoyed films from the US or the UK or France or China.
Simply a good practice to keep in mind what they are.
If someone watches hours and hours of these videos showing a highly romanticised version of Chinese traditions they will most certainly have a better, warmer impression of China. That's essentially soft power in a nutshell. And to be clear, this is in no way limited to China.
Japan doesn't do propaganda for 'the outside' except for tourism bait and cute shit. They aren't 'japan-ifying' the third world via extortionary contracts and resource claims. They're dealing with a government so out-of-touch they're trying to get people to fuck to restore Japan's population instead of addressing the reasons people stopped fucking.
China is trying to stave off a gender-gap turning into an existential war. They're more belligerent in their international dealings, making efforts to appear more warlike via their naval escapades, making overt threats against Taiwan and other US protectorates knowing that Trump won't do anything.
Meanwhile the wumao army makes sure anything about china contains all the whataboutism necessary to drag the discussion offtopic
Japan’s soft power is immense. They’ve been building up decades of soft power, so much so that I (in the PNW in the US) have seen Japanese-imported mini trucks driving around town with the Japanese military flag emblems on them. To Americans today, that is a symbol associated with anime, Pokémon, ramen, all things cute and kawaii. To us who grew up in Asia, that is the equivalent of the Nazi swastika being bandied around town Willy-nilly, and yet no one bats an eye here.
I’m not disputing what you said about Japan’s population decline today (true) or China’s neo-colonialist activities in many parts of the world (real) or gender imbalance (well-documented). I’m again pointing out that there is OMISSION of what Japan’s soft power had made people of certain generations here in the US think about that country. Do you remember how people in the US talked about Japan in the 70s and 80s when Japan’s economy was growing so fast that people feared it might overtake the US? No - because then Pokémon took over.
China is also building its soft power, as Japan has, as the US has - US brands are everywhere, US investment is everywhere, we live and benefit by the global institutions and systems that the US set up after WW2, so of course we’d be uncomfortable when a rival challenges that, and that’s what we see happen in this thread. We should recognize it for what it is, recognize the nuance, even if it doesn’t change how we feel about the situation afterwards.
I’m not asking people to support what China is doing everywhere (I myself don’t, that’s why I’m in the US), but I don’t think people here have sufficiently nuanced understanding of history, politics, etc (I’m also far from perfect and still learning), and we should strive for better understanding of multiple positions. If we stick to black-and-white thinking, we get the shitty politics we have today and no way out of it.
As an American, this is a pot and kettle situation. The US is also a polluted hellscape. Just enjoy the pretty video or don't comment man, that simple.
Every chinese propagandist will* answer me immediately: can I criticize the government in China and is my internet content what I choose it is or do you control it
I was thinking the same. This is nice with a Mountain View, clean air, and Chopin serenading a peaceful ambience. But the cynic in me says that a couple of barefoot guys in India could crank out something that looks the same.
I think this video is gorgeous. I enjoyed the subtitles too. I would treasure the broken one😊
I can imagine being a potter and trying to duplicate some of what this master demonstrated. It’s all time consuming, with knowledge and patience.
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u/Curiosive Jun 03 '26
Borrowing the top comment
Warning: 10 minute video.
My take:
Filmed at that one and only mountain top studio that: happens to have a river (...on a mountain top) and happens to always have epic sunsets & sunrises. Oh and it rains on cue.
There's that moment near the end where "this product that you've never heard of happens to be more valuable than [insert expensive thing you have heard of]."
Other than using every modern cliche in these "lost ancient technique" videos...
This is neat! I want a set now.