Hometown of web celebrity hot tourist spot

Hometown of web celebrity hot tourist spot muTu Note - Learn Chinese with Chinese Girl

A young man whose good looks and innocent（纯洁的，chún jié de） smile（笑容，xiào róng） have turned him into an internet celebrity（网红，wǎng hóng） has sparked a surge in interest in his hometown（家乡，jiā xiāng） among tourists.

Ctrip（携程）, an online travel agency, said that after a video of Tamdrin（丁真）, a 20-year-old ethnic Tibetan man from Litang county in Sichuan province’s Garze Tibetan autonomous prefecture, went viral online last month, the number of searches for Litang（理塘） soared.

On Ctrip’s website, searches（搜索，sōu suǒ） for Litang started going up on Nov 20. In the week from Nov 23 through Sunday, the search average shot up 620 percent compared with the previous week and was four times greater than during the National Day holiday in October.

Tamdrin first came to netizens’ attention after a photographer（摄影师，shè yǐng shī） posted a video of him on the Douyin（抖音） short-video platform（短视频平台，duǎn shì pín píng tái）. In the video, the young man wore a traditional Tibetan costume（藏族服饰，zàng zú fú shì） and smiled broadly.

He then posted a short video on his own Douyin account, introducing his white horse（白马，bái mǎ） in not-so-fluent（不太流利的，bú tài liú lì de） Mandarin, attracting millions of viewers and followers.

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, featured Tamdrin in three consecutive tweets on her Twitter account on Monday.

“The channel of Sichuan TV has a new ‘anchor（主持人，zhǔ chí rén）’. Tamdrin, who broadcasts（播报，bō bào） news（新闻，xīn wén） in his native Tibetan language（藏语，zàng yǔ） as a guest（嘉宾，jiā bīn）,” she wrote.

“Tamdrin recently became a social media star（明星，míng xīng） after a photo of his bright, sunny and innocent smile had gone viral.”

She also posted（发布，fā bù） a short clip of Tamdrin riding a horse and introducing himself in subtitling: “They call me ‘prince on a horse（赛马王子，sài mǎ wáng zǐ）’. The happiest thing for me is to race horses with my bros. I’m really good at（擅长，shàn cháng） horse racing and often rank first in our village.”

Tamdrin has now been hired（聘用，pìn yòng） by Litang Culture Tourism and Sport Investment Development Co. to promote tourism for the county.

Du Dongdong, the company’s general manager（总经理，zǒng jīng lǐ）, told China Central Television it hoped the herder’s son could grow and develop alongside local tourism, which has just started to take off.

He said that Tamdrin’s job included shooting（拍摄，pāi shè） short videos that introduce（介绍，jiè shào） and promote（推广，tuī guǎng） the beautiful scenery of Litang county and Garze prefecture, and operating social media platforms.

“To do the job well, Tamdrin needs to cooperate（合作，hé zuò） with colleagues and learn about a lot of things, such as culture, history, tourism and society. He also needs to improve his Mandarin（普通话，pǔ tōng huà）,” Du said.

Tamdrin said in a CCTV interview that he didn’t know why he had become so well-known to netizens, but he was happy that so many people knew of him, and he was excited to help people learn more about his hometown.

He added that he planned（计划，jì huà） to learn many things and hoped he would do well in his work for the company（公司，gōng sī）.

“At the same time, I still want to race horses and continue to be a champion（冠军，guàn jūn）,” he said in Tibetan.

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