ReelShort is the latest Chinese export to conquer America

ReelShort——又一个意图征服美国市场的中国产品

A show called "Never Divorce a Secret Billionaire Heiress" dives head first into a seedy melee of passion and betrayal. Within the first 30 seconds of the micro-series, which consists of 55 two-minute episodes, a woman named Joyce is forced to give her husband's lover a blood transfusion in order to save the mistress's life. The first ten minutes depict coerced marriages, inheritance battles and sundry infidelities. The storyline is choppy and nearly impossible to follow. To say the acting is hammy would be generous.

《永远不要与秘密的亿万富翁女继承人离婚》这部剧的剧情在一开始就充满了激情与背叛的肮脏混战。在这部有着55集每集2分钟的短剧的最初30秒，一个名叫Joyce的女人被迫给她丈夫的情人输血以拯救她的生命。剧的最初10分钟包含了强迫婚姻、继承权斗争和各种不忠行为，剧情跌宕起伏难以捉摸，用拙劣做作来形容剧中的表演都略显宽容

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American viewers can tune in to dozens of similar rapid-fire dramas, with titles such as "The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband" and “Son-in-Law's Revenge”, on an app called ReelShort. If it all seems a bit foreign, then that is because it is. ReelShort is owned by col Group, a digital publisher based in Beijing. Some of its shows are adapted by Chinese teams at col's Californian subsidiary, Crazy Maple Studio, from Chinese scripts that were first written and produced for audiences in China.

美国的观众可以在一款名为ReelShort的应用上面观看到许多部这种紧凑刺激的剧集，比如《亿万富翁老公的双面人生》《女婿的复仇》。如果你觉得这些看起来有点像外来的，那是因为这些就是外来的。ReelShort属于一家总部在北京的出版商——中文在线集团，上面的一些剧是由中文在线在加利福尼亚的子公司Crazy Maple Studio的中国团队利用那些最初给中国观众撰写的剧本改编的

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That does not stop Americans from lapping them up. On November 11th ReelShort briefly surpassed TikTok to become the most popular entertainment app in Apple's American App Store. According to Sensor Tower, a data firm, it has been downloaded almost 2m times in the past month. Col's market value has more than doubled since the start of November, to 22bn yuan ($3bn).

但美国观众仍然对其欣然接受。11月11日，ReelShort短暂地超过了TikTok，成为美区App Store娱乐应用榜榜首。根据Sensor Tower公司的数据，上个月下载量差不多有200万。中文在线的市值达到了220亿元（30亿美元），比11月初翻倍还多

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Apps that trace their roots to China have become wildly popular in America in recent years. The cheap products sold by Shein and Temu have found deep markets in America, as have video clips created by TikTok's mostly Western users. ReelShort builds on earlier Crazy Maple apps, such as Chapters (a story-game launched in 2017, which lets readers choose their own adventure) and Kiss (which offers a wide selection of romance and mystery stories, and now ranks 14th in the App Store's books category). The trend contradicts the idea that Chinese cultural products do not translate well for Western audiences.

最近几年，拥有中国血统的应用在美国广受欢迎。Shein和Temu上面销售的低价商品在美国获得了深厚的市场，TikTok上面主要由西方用户创作的短视频也是如此。ReelShort建立在Crazy Maple早先发布的应用上，比如Chapters（2017年上线的叙事游戏，读者可以通过选择来实现自己的冒险）和Kiss（提供了大量浪漫和悬疑类故事，现在在App Store图书类排行第14）。这些趋势反驳了中国文化产品无法很好地翻译给西方观众的观点

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ReelShort has followed a path trodden by other Chinese apps in America. For a start, it uses a business model that first succeeded in China. During the covid-19 pandemic, when cinemas were closed, many big film studios began instead to produce micro-series. Local apps such as Miyou Short Drama and the state-backed Hema Theatre offer viewers many episodes of a series free of charge and then ask them to pay often as little as one yuan to watch further instalments. Viewers, most of whom are blue-collar workers, often end up forking over the equivalent of a cinema ticket to complete the series, says Malik Naibi of Duke 65, a social-media marketing agency. ReelShort has brought this concept, and the storylines for some of its Chinese shows, to its target audience in America: middle-aged women.

ReelShort已经走上了其他中国应用在美国所走过的道路。一开始，它采用了在中国首先取得成功的商业模式。在疫情期间，电影院关门，很多大型电影工作室转而开始生产短剧。像“密柚短剧”和官方支持的“河马剧场”这些本土应用先让观众免费观看一部剧的前几集，然后向观众收费1元来解锁后续内容。来自社交媒体营销机构Duke 65的Malik Naibi表示，以蓝领工人为主体的观众往往最终会花相当于一张电影票的金额来看完整部剧。ReelShort将这一模式以及一些中国节目的故事情节带给了美国的目标受众：中年女性

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Second, like other Chinese-linked apps that are popular in America, ReelShort does not advertise its Chinese roots. The Crazy Maple website makes no mention of China. Similarly, Temu, which is owned by pdd, one of China's biggest e-commerce groups, describes itself as being "founded in Boston". TikTok, whose owner, ByteDance, is based in Beijing, and Shein, which was founded in China and relies on Chinese garment-makers, have both moved their headquarters to Singapore.

其次，与其他在美国流行的有中国背景的应用一样，ReelShort不会宣传其中国血统。Crazy Maple的网站上没有提到过中国。同样，中国最大的电子商务集团之一拼多多旗下的Temu说自己“成立于波士顿”。TikTok的所有者字节跳动总部位于北京，而Shein则成立于中国，依赖中国服装制造商，它们都已将总部迁至新加坡

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The apps have something else in common—they have all targeted foreign markets in part to get around challenges in China. Although Shein and Temu sought their luck abroad from their inception, that may be in part because the domestic market has been looking weak.

这些应用还有其他共同点——它们都瞄准了海外市场，部分原因是为了应对国内的挑战。尽管Shein和Temu从一开始就寻求出海发展，这也可能部分源于国内市场的走弱。

COL's bet on America, too, may be a response to problems at home. By the end of February Chinese censors had purged the web of 1.4m micro-series episodes and shut down 2,420 mini-shows deemed to be explicit or vulgar. America has no government censors—and explicit vulgarity may be a selling-point.

中文在线押注美国市场也可能是为了应对国内面临的问题。截至2月底，国内已经下线内容低俗的微短剧约140万集，下架含有违规内容的“小程序”2420个。美国没有审查，粗俗露骨的剧情将成为卖点