Yangguang News uses AI pop video to bring Tang poetry to younger viewers

Yangguang News released “Where’s My Chang’an, Tell Me Now,” an AI-generated music video that pairs a Shaanxi dialect refrain with upbeat pop music, Tang-poetry references and AI-made imagery. The video was released in Xi’an on Oct. 28 and is intended to make Tang poetry more accessible to younger audiences while promoting Chinese culture internationally. Wan Bo, Yangguang News’ president and editor-in-chief, wrote the lyrics. Yangguang AI Studio generated the composition and arrangement, while Xi’an Fusheng Film and Culture Communication Company supported production and refined the AI-generated visuals in post-production. The project took eight months to complete, with the lyrics revised more than 100 times. The AI music system adjusted its rhythm and instrumentation to the emotional progression of the words, while the visual team repeatedly changed prompts, styles and colour balance to align frames with the lyrics and musical rhythm. The opening and recurring line, “E di Chang’an zai a da,” is a Shaanxi dialect expression. The lyric structure uses seven-character lines to evoke Chang’an’s cultural history, and “Chang’an lives inside the heart” adapts Su Shi’s line, “Where the heart finds peace is my home.” The song was designed as a pop track rather than a traditional opera or storytelling performance. Wan said he selected dialect as a direct carrier of regional culture and a way of narrowing the distance between young people and Tang poetry. Liu Yanchao, head of Yangguang AI Studio, said the team sought a musical language that could resonate with young audiences without presenting the poetry didactically. One sequence illustrates the division of labour between AI generation and human post-production. For a lyric about Qin Shi Huang, AI created a scene of the Terracotta Army at the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor; particle-based lighting effects were then added in post-production. The video was the seed work for the global youth short-video campaign “A True Friend Remains Close at Heart, Though Miles Apart: Me, Tang Poetry, and AI.” It offers participants a reference for singing Tang poetry, depicting Chang’an and using AI creatively. Yangguang News said the video had drawn positive feedback for its regional character, melody and visuals, and it was used to open Xi’an’s 2026 “Poetic Chang’an, My Commitment to a Stronger Nation” event and its “Capital of Tang Poetry” promotional event. The campaign began in Xi’an in January, organised by Yangguang News and undertaken by the education new-media platform Youth and Homeland Letters. It brought together 31 co-organising institutions and responses from 126 universities, primary schools and secondary schools. By October it had received more than 100 short-video submissions; as of September, more than 20 works had each passed 100,000 overseas views, with related content approaching 6 million overseas views in total. Xi’an, known as Chang’an in ancient times, was an important city in the development of Tang culture and poetry. The city proposed becoming a “City of Tang Poetry” in August 2025, and the campaign used short video and overseas social-media platforms to lower cultural barriers to the material.