“Which has more aesthetic value: an imperial garden or Disneyland?”

Nie Ying, an associate professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, poses the question to a classroom of nearly 200 art design students in a short video shared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. In addition to the robust in-class discussion that followed on the day, the 59-second clip also inspired some 5,000 online viewers to weigh in on the conversation.

“Aesthetic appreciation is immaterial,” wrote one netizen after watching the video. “Disney and its subsequent associated profits constitute a departure from the essence of its parks’ aesthetics. There’s no way to compare it to an imperial garden because the original intentions of the two constructions were fundamentally different.” Another suggested that it would be better to discuss the “commodification of art and the artistic rendering of commodities.”

Nie, who teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the university’s Academy of Fine Arts and Design, began posting snippets from her classes on Douyin in 2022. Since then, she’s amassed 520,000 subscribers on the platform.

She says the interactions and critiques her videos inspire have come as no surprise. For a long time she had wondered: What would happen if a class were to break through the campus walls? She hopes to provide students inside and outside her classroom with knowledge that has “enduring value.”

Starting slowly

In one of her early videos, Nie — with her trademark short wavy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and crisp Beijing accent — sits at a desk and introduces the rare “oystered” architecture of Quanzhou’s Luoyang Bridge in the eastern Fujian province, which dates to the Song dynasty (960–1279). To combat the problem of water eroding its piers and foundations, bridge engineers lined them with oysters, which latched on and formed a natural defense, she explains.

Nie discovered this topic while conducting research for her doctoral thesis and found it fascinating. “At the time, I saw that no one was talking about this in architectural history. Such an important topic.” To this end, in May 2022, she shared a short video online in which she talked about this architectural phenomenon. The footage went viral, with more than 10 million views and 240,000 likes.

By then, Nie had only been filming videos for half a year, and she was still finding her feet. She would discuss Beijing architecture, the culture around colors, and architecture and art exhibitions outside of China, but these subjects rarely garnered interest.

Nie says she spends at least two weeks preparing for her classes, which last four hours. Her first video was on a subject she had lectured on while working in the Department of Environmental Art Design, titled “Are the floor tiles in the Forbidden City made of gold?” She explains that the supposed “gold tiles” are actually high-quality “Beijing tiles” from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), designating their exclusive use for in the capital. Made using a complicated fabrication process in Suzhou, in the eastern Jiangsu province, these bricks were sent north by boat and were falsely named “gold tiles,” as the pronunciation of “gold” in Chinese resembles the pronunciation of “jing” in Beijing.

The video has fewer than 200 likes and only nine comments. Like most content creators, the first step on Nie’s video-making journey involved her talking to herself. Yet, she wasn’t deterred and continued sharing videos. Each ran for under a minute, but “the content was high quality, so I felt happy,” she says. There were also signs of encouragement. One outcome of the “Beijing tiles” video was a message from China’s last remaining imperial brick kiln praising her detailed knowledge of the technology.

Nie, who has taught at Tsinghua for 25 years, says trying her hand at content creation was no spur-of-the-moment decision. She had already noticed changes occurring in her classroom. She found that sometimes while lecturing, students would begin doing online research simultaneously, attempting to discover more about Nie’s talking points. She began to think: Is there anything I can do in cyberspace? Could I put what I think is interesting online and let more people see it, hear it, and even critique it?

Nie could barely wait to get started. She created two accounts on Douyin: a personal account as well as one called Design Culture with Nie Ying. At first, she found herself in unfamiliar territory, and it would sometimes take five or six days to prepare just a handful of clips. Later, she recruited two young employees from a friend’s design company to help with recording and editing. One of these assistants, originally an IT engineer, later switched to videography full time after taking a course in filmmaking and script writing. Nie also feels that the collaboration has made her own thought processes more elastic.

To date, Nie has posted more than 700 videos and attracted more than 410,000 subscribers across her two accounts.

Classrooms without borders

In March 2022, Nie switched from presenting directly to camera to filming her lectures and class discussions. However, her classroom can appear at times more like a stand-up comedy venue. “I hate teaching like a boring academic because when I was a student, I hated that kind of teacher too,” she says.

Nie speaks bluntly, and she’s popular with students. No matter whether it’s an elective or mandatory course, the 200-seat lecture hall is always full. And when she began engaging online audiences, she reached a whole new level of popularity.

“By teaching only in the classroom, I wouldn’t ever have this number of students all my life. But now, by simply sharing the knowledge I’ve accumulated over many years, people like it, people feel that they’ve gained something, and I already feel so fulfilled,” she says.

While Nie does agree that in-person interactions between teachers and students are irreplaceable, she feels disseminating knowledge to others via social media offers variety and convenience. “The videos and the classroom have a sort of complementary relationship,” she says.

Nie’s two Douyin accounts perform different roles. Design Culture with Nie Ying tends to focus on one knowledge point, explaining it thoroughly over a series of short videos; it also serves as a resource for graduate coursework. Her personal account, which has many more subscribers, showcases more varied content in a lively and casual style.

One issue that Nie has to contend with is balancing the integrity of her explanations with the brevity of the Douyin format. For one video in which she discusses the materials used for coloration and paintings in classical China, she consulted an immense volume of material to confirm the mineral sources and their routes of transport. The comments were largely favorable, but the number of views was not ideal.

Nie is keenly aware that focusing on popular trends can help generate web traffic, but she isn’t willing to ride anyone else’s coattails: “If a hot topic is worth talking about, then I’ll just wait until it’s no longer hot to talk about it,” she explains. Nie once made a video discussing the architecture featured in a much-anticipated movie, but she specifically waited a month after the film’s release before uploading it. “I’m just doing my job, doing what I want. I don’t rely on (making short videos) to make money,” she says, adding as a joke: “Anyway, making money from it might bring me trouble.”

Various voices

Both Nie’s mother and 16-year-old son have given feedback on her videos. Her mother said she didn’t understand the content as the knowledge was “too dense, and you were speaking too fast.” Her son held an almost opposite opinion, she recalls: “Can you make it more interesting? Can you be livelier?”

To a certain degree, their comments are a microcosm of the internet. Nie’s videos receive a range of responses. In a clip from a discussion on the impact of the Industrial Revolution on art, she argues that “educated people are hideous” and a potential barrier to technological advancement, prompting one netizen to comment, “Are all university professors this extreme?”

Such comments don’t bother Nie. She knows well enough that short videos cannot fully convey a complete narrative or academic reasoning. “It’s normal for people to have biased opinions,” she says. When she encounters a valuable question or idea, Nie will “pin it” in the comments, making it more prominent, and sometimes records a special video response. She sees this as a virtue of new media. “Everyone can digest differing opinions, and for a lot of people, that means seeing things more comprehensively.”

As much as she can, Nie uses plain, simple language to introduce complicated concepts in art and design. However, because of the academic nature of the content, many people struggle to fully understand each topic. “The knowledge we want to talk about is based on academic logic, and we try to explain in a clear and easy way so it reaches everyone,” she says, adding that she hopes to “radiate” knowledge outwards for other content creators to use in their work.

Nie believes that this “part-time job” encourages her to keep contemplating and exploring new areas. “I think of it as a form of exercise. You have to make your body ache before you believe you really worked out, right?”

Lasting value

Design Culture with Nie Ying features a series focusing on artificial intelligence. The content originally came from one of Nie’s graduate courses, and she built on it through other teaching materials and interactions with students. “Some of the feedback I received from students inspired me a lot, so I decided to make a few videos on the subject,” she says. “When I teach this module again (at Tsinghua), I’ll share this series with the class. It represents my opinions, and I hope my students will give me new insights. It’s a group project.”

As a humanities professor, Nie believes that she’s in a sweet spot in terms of age. On top of her 20 years of experience, she says the digital age provides endless opportunities to generate fresh content. “I watch the work of other creators, and I like to see how they explain things even if I’m not fully allied with their opinions. When I see someone support their own opinions with strict analytical reasoning, it’s really inspiring.”

Nie plans to continue sharing online for at least another decade and hopes to leave behind something of lasting value to her children, students, and academic field. She believes that only knowledge has limitless and timeless power.

She also hopes to keep growing her online following, so that she can use her influence to help promote young artists and designers. “There aren’t many people who know about their art. The art market today doesn’t provide enough support to young artists,” Nie says. “If there’s a chance, I’m willing to help them through livestream selling.”

Reported by Dai Wen.

A version of this article originally appeared in Beijing Youth Daily. It has been translated and edited for brevity and clarity, and is republished here with permission.

Translator: Marianne Gunnarsson; editors: Wang Juyi and Hao Qibao.

(Header image: Visuals from Douyin and VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)