Reconstructing the local: the writing and construction of "Cantonese-style life" memory in short videosA qualitative study based on grounded theory

As a culturally distinctive local symbol, "Cantonese-style life" has undergone a process of mediatized transformation in the wave of short videos, shifting from embodied, on-site experience to online spectatorship. Employing a qualitative research approach, this study takes short videos related to "Cantonese-style life" on the Douyin platform and their accompanying comments as empirical materials. Through grounded theory analysis, four core dimensions are identified: multidimensional spatial writing, embodied sensory experience, negotiated cultural boundaries, and theatricalized emotional interaction. The findings indicate that short videos do not merely document "Cantonese-style life." Rather, through spatiotemporally folded simulacral landscapes, epistemic contestations over cultural boundaries, the visual performance of bodily habitus, and an affective theater characterized by subjectobject reversals, they accomplish the digital reshaping of local memory and the dynamic construction of identity.