Journey to grassroots
Online reality show takes six celebrities on a road far from stardom, Xing Wen reports.
Throughout the journey, they have to overcome various hardships and get to think about the true meaning of life.
Yan says the country's great advancement in the past few decades is owed to the hard work of numerous ordinary people, and he hopes that the reality show can more or less present the daily lives of people that are usually not noticed by the public.
Speaking of the reason why the six celebrities have been chosen by the show to take the adventure, Yan says all are performers in their 20s or 30s, who have the potential to grow to be the nucleus of the country's performing arts industry.
"Compared to the elder generations, the younger performers, who have their lives going along nicely, are more likely to lack the opportunity to experience and to live a life with all the ups and downs," Yan says. "I hope we can create a space in the show where they can observe and experience the aspects of life they're not familiar with."
As the show's second episode portrayed, before the six men embarked on the journey, they went to Shenzhen in Guangdong where they had to earn travel expenses by doing the work of property agents, assembly-line workers, security guards, demolition workers, as well as deliverymen who have to load and unload trucks manually.
For instance, Huang and Chen sat by the roadside before daybreak with other migrant workers, waiting for employers who come to find part-timers to do physical jobs. A van came to a halt near them, from which a man got off and shouted, "Two hundred yuan ($31) for eight hours to dismantle a stage in Shekou port area."